Well, I have to say I’m amazed. And I’ll say that a couple here have been pretty blunt…so I’ll be blunt too.
You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! (ala A Few Good Men).
Ok, so I thought it was supposed to be a GOOD thing for manufacturers to actually LISTEN to their customers and make changes based on those suggestions.
First suggestions I received was that $39.95 was too costly. I get it. Problem was that at $39.95 the company was LOSING money. The PerfecDraw was originally launched at $65. But of course that was too costly. I kept lowering the price until some started to sell at $39.95. I’ll admit it – I own one of the premier companies in the dental industry, so taking a loss for a while was OK.
Prior to dentistry four decades ago, my background was in mechanical engineering. The original design of the PerfecDraw was with the blades in a spiral pattern. And quite obviously the comments from the cheap seats tells me that some here enjoy making comments about such things that they have zero knowledge of. Manufacturing costs of $1???? Are you shittin’ me?
For those who don’t understand anything about CNC manufacturing, when you have such a long, thin shaft, and at the very end of the shaft you mill a spiral pattern with UNDERCUT, very sharp blades and an ultra-thin shaft within the blades – in a SPIRAL PATTERN – this creates tremendous torque. So much torque in fact that over 80% of the shafts ended up corkscrewing or breaking toward the end of the milling process. With the machining being so difficult, automation was not a possibility.
So even just this one part of the PerfecDraw required a machinist to make each one individually, and still more than 80% ended up breaking. The first manufacturer refused to make anymore after the first manufacturing run. You think that’s cheap to do?
Also, they were not able to create the “pitch” that I wanted. In other words, my drawings called for the spiral pattern to be stretched out so there would be more distance between the spirals of the blades so more tobacco could accumulate between the blades without clogging the blades. But the more you stretch out the spiral, the MORE TORQUE is created during milling.
As for ew1439, who stated so profoundly that you could twist the original design to make it work. All I can say is, if all else fails, read the directions. If you watch the videos – which are still the original videos, I plainly show to NEVER continue twisting the PerfecDraw once you have inserted it to the desired depth.
Twisting does pretty much diddly-squat! When you use it by twisting, the blades get clogged up almost immediately and nothing happens other than making some noise. No, the correct way to use the PerfecDraw is to insert it, and screw it slightly ONLY while inserting. Then STOP twisting so that when you pull the shaft straight out of the cigar, the blades can cut the tobacco and the three longitudinal “tobacco pulling channels” can “grab” the surrounding tobacco to loosen it up a little.
So ew1439 – the blades are a sharp 30-degree angle, and the edges in the longitudinal “tobacco pulling channels” are a sharp 90-degree angle. When PULLING (not twisting), these sharp 30-degree blades CUT tobacco, and the sharp 90-degree angles grab and PULL the tobacco. So what do you really think you’re doing when you just sit there twisting, twisting, twisting? For the design to work, you must not clog the blades, and these NON-clogged blades must be pulled straight out of the cigar.
By twisting, twisting, twisting you don’t accomplish much at all. But if it worked like you think it does when twisting, all you’d do is drill an open hole. That’s not what is intended. The intent is to remove some tobacco and loosen the surrounding tobacco.
So listening carefully to all comments I received…I set about redesigning (improving) the blade area. So instead of four twists around the shaft, I now have four separate rings of blades. This meant that I was able to move the rings of blades apart to the exact distance that my original drawings called for. This means more room between the rings of blades and therefore more space to collect tobacco – and less potential to clog up the blades.
AND…without having a spiral pattern, this greatly reduces torque during milling, so now I was able to decrease the diameter of the central shaft between the blades by 20%. This too provided more room for collection of tobacco debris.
The FACT is that the new version is more efficient than the original. That’s not an opinion. It’s a scientific fact. I don’t know if ew1439 above is one of the two folks that have contacted me about not liking the new design, but since his post was virtually identical to one of the two complaints I’ve received, I believe it was probably him. Other than the above post by ew1439, I’ve received exactly TWO complaints about the new design.
The first one was a guy that had purchased several PerfecDraws in the original design. He then received the new one and simply made the assumption that since the price went down and the design had changed, it must be cheap crap now. He didn’t even try it. So he contacted me pretty pissed off. I apologized and explained the changes that were made and offered to provide him a prepaid shipping label to return it for a full refund.
But he said he’d like to try it first. A week later he emailed and apologized saying he’d had the flu at the time and now sees that the new design does work better. That takes a classy guy to take the time to contact me again like he did, and I appreciate his effort.
The second complaint, which I’ll bet was ew1439 above, I responded to and never heard anything back.
HOWEVER, I’ve received now more than 40 messages from cigar smokers that have used BOTH the original and new designs that have raved about the new design.
Next, the materials. Exactly the same heat-hardened aerospace grade 6061-T aluminum housing and handle. Same 25 micron deep black anodized hard-coat of the aluminum casing. The shaft is the same surgical grade 304 stainless steel.
Personally, I didn’t like the original electrostatic coating of the shaft. It made it look like it was chrome instead of surgical stainless steel. I didn’t like it probably because I had a hospital surgical residency and have done tens of thousands of surgeries in my career. And surgical stainless steel does NOT look chrome. So, the current one is uncoated. But as I said, it’s surgical grade 304 SS and will never corrode. I think it looks better now.
Several told me they wanted the handle to be easier to grasp. They said the round, smooth surface cylinder shape was not easy enough to grasp. So I changed it to a hexagon shape, which I’ve had rave reviews about.
The previous orange icon was silk screened and could scratch. So now the logo is LASER ETCHED, which certainly ain’t cheaper to make.
A very few said they liked the pocket clip, but the vast majority (over 90%) said there should be no pocket clip because they keep the PerfecDraw in their cigar tool kit with their lighters and cutters. Some even said they were afraid the spring steel pocket clip would scratch their other tools. So I eliminated the pocket clip.
Some complained that when tobacco debris got inside the long sheath or inside the handle, it was difficult to get out. So since the pocket clip was discontinued, I made a cap on the end of the sheath (where the logo is and the pocket clip used to attach) that can be unscrewed so you can simply blow through the barrel and clean it out.
And I made the threads of the sheath, where it screws into the handle, significantly larger in diameter, which made the hole in the handle larger, making it easier to remove any tobacco debris that might get in there.
And finally, some said that the PerfecDraw was not long enough to effectively use it to clear a hard knot dead center in a Churchill. I didn’t want to make the PerfecDraw much longer and lose the convenient, portable size, so I made it just ¼” longer. That was just enough that when you insert it from both ends of a Churchill cigar, it will overlap in the middle by ½”, making it much more effective at clearing the knot dead-center in the cigar.
However, if you think that making the current design is now cheap to make with the quality that you see, you’re dreamin’. I feel like asking how the view is from the cheap seats. It seems like no matter how hard you try to please people and do the right thing, there’s always those very few that simply get a kick out of acting like they know everything.
Well, I lowered the price down to only $24.95. Compare that with the retail price of $18-$19 for those cheap plastic pens that are converted with a simple, dull-tipped shaft that they call cigar pokers. Really? And you’re going to complain about the construction of the PerfecDraw that will probably last your lifetime, but more importantly, works like nothing else ever invented? I just don’t get it.
I lowered the price all the way to $24.95 because I wanted to make it easier for people to buy so that the word would spread a lot faster. But at some point I would like to make at least a few bucks for all the work I’ve put in on this for the past several years. So at some point, the price will absolutely be going up a little.
OK, call me blunt. But hey, a couple of you have been pretty doggoned blunt yourselves.
And by the way ew1439, I don’t care if you’ve lost the original packaging. You want a refund? Glad to do it! I’ll even pay for you to ship it back to me. Just message me through the PerfecDraw site, and we’ll get it done.
And it is the NEW design that has been introduced in Europe. But of course far, far fewer numbers than here in the USA, and only over the past few months. Yet the PerfecDraw was not only nominated for the Cigar Trophy award for Best Cigar Accessory of 2018, but we’re now among the five finalists! The Cigar Trophy is the only award in the cigar industry based on the voting of real cigar smokers. This is by the Cigar Journal, which is an international publication. Only 20% of their circulation is here in the USA. And we have no affiliation with The Cigar Journal and certainly have never done any advertising in any magazine.
So with 80% of their readers being outside the USA, and for us to be voted into the final 5, I’d say the new design of the PerfecDraw has been very well accepted. We only just found out about this Cigar Trophy voting two days ago when The Cigar Journal contacted me. Go figure! The voting by any cigar smoker is currently doing on until June 27 at
www.CigarTrophy.com.
Anyway, sorry for my rant, but I’ve really busted my hump to get all this done for all the right reasons. So I just had to chime in.
Thanks for readin’,
Rod
