What I find extremely sad is that the experiences you two are reporting are unfortunately the norm in the industry. It's also the main reason I never want to get into chassis coating or expand into a huge facility because quality control goes right out the window. I'll guarantee you both though that no one in my customer stable has ever had to drill out excessive powder or metal shavings and will testify that my parts are ready to install straight out of the box. I just wish more powder coaters felt the way I do and actually gave a $hit what they returned to their customers.
My experience from powder coating is from 20 years ago, and at that time the coating thickness was tremendous. Coating thickness often exceeded .030 of an inch. For example, getting a metallic finish required multiple coats that made the finish extremely thick. I had them coat a bunch of stuff and was very pleased with the results, a lot of my parts were metallic blue and the color depth and consistency were excellent, but chasing threads seemed to be the norm.
I went and checked out your webpage, and from the pics the quality of your work is tremendous and it appears as though coating thickness is much thinner than it was years ago. I am most impressed with your multiple color parts, this seems to be new, at least it is to me. I am also particularly impressed with your refinishing of the center console.
I am very glad you take such pride in your work and from the looks of your price list, you are at least trying to keep things affordable.
As far as people taking pride in their work, I am a bit more hesitant to be critical, mainly because people often take restoration parts to a shop that specializes in production work rather than a shop specializing in custom work. There's a big difference between powder coating a 500 table legs and the intake manifold for a show car.
Further many people are unclear what problems any refinishing process can solve. For example, in anodizing, the anodizing process will EXPOSE flaws in the parent material. Thus people will bring in a beautiful piece that has been polished and once anodized you can see how they welded some corroded portion, milled it flat, and then polished it. Unfortunately since the welding rod is a different alloy than the parent material it will anodize different and thus come out a different color.
Another example, people are often not willing to pay for work required to get the desired level of finish. In looking at your parts it is clear that you or your employees spend a LOT of time properly prepping the materials. For example, on your website you have a beautiful set of stamped steel valve covers powdered coated Hemi Orange. That level of finish didn't just happen. Someone had to bead blast them, carefully pound out any dents, and finally sand away any deep scratches, to make the part was pristine prior to coating because any imperfection will come right through the final coating.
Nice work, just wish you were closer to where I live.
Regards,
Joe Dokes
