It’s not always about the money.
Hello everyone the story for today is about two of the men that were business mentors during my life. The first one’s name is Danny Carr, he was the local engineer in Wonthaggi who had his workshop in McKenzie Street just not far from where I live. I got to know Danny from young age as my dad is still there to his workshop on his semi trailer. Honestly, Danny is one the most clever man that I have ever met, and very humble and gracious.
He’s the man that invented barbecue heat beads. He invented the machine that makes him and built himself in his workshop with his employees. He then opened a factory in Cyclone Street to manufacture the first heat lead ever in Australia.
He also opens part of a local mind at 1st to supply his own Cole slack in which to make the beads. It instantly became a very successful business selling beads right around the country. I’m pretty sure Sweden contacted Danny to ask for his help to make them shoot them a machine to do the same thing . I asked Danny if he took out a patent out on it, he replied. No I’m not worried about the money. I’m comfortable so I don’t mind sharing technology with other countries. That’s how Danny was and still is.
So the next part of the story is I own a panel shop with a partner and we didn’t have what was called the spray booth in back then, which is a it’s a room that you put a car in that extracts by fan, all the paint fumes and keeps dust down to minimum.
There are a few other panel shops in town that sort of watch might call the spray booth they won’t high-quality. One day me and my partner decided it was time with bias because every time our painter painted the car we couldn’t be in the workshop we have to do other things so we wasted a lot the productive time in that essence. So I left it with my partner to look into it and eventually he rang Seetal spray booths ,
The office worker there faxed down a sheet with five options on it for secondhand spray booths , with a bit of two and frowing , because I wanted to buy a water floor model, but my partner didn’t want to because they came with specific problems when you had to deal with the EPA for waste compliance., we decided to buy an over 20 year-old
Seetal spray bake oven , it was deisel fired , I’m still in a shop in Sydney. We paid the money and waited for it to be delivered to our workshop.
While we waited, we had to extend our Shed slab so the booth could be positioned and we put the columns and roof trusses up as well.
One morning a semi trailer taught liner pulled up and I borrowed my uncle Kevin‘s forklift from down the road. The driver looked like he hadn’t slept for three weeks went into our morning tea room and while I unloaded his truck he drank countless cups of coffee in a row. I couldn’t believe how much stuff was in that semi trailer and it was all spray roof. My partner had organised with the boss of Seetal for two of his workers to come down and assemble the spray booth, my mum Diana fed them and we put them up in the motel while they do the job. I helped of course I was always interested in learning about things that are new.
When the boys were finishing up there was all the wiring not connected it was like a huge birds nest of what looked like hundred otherwise inside the control cabinet. The boys told me the boss will be down in the next few days and get it run. A few days later I fancy this man you red sports car turned up. Out steps a man I guess in his mid-50s and introduce himself and his name was Paul and he actually owned the company. In our conversation when we look at the booth I said I hope you’re brought an electrician with you. He looked at me, smiled and said it’s alright Curly, I invented this machine and it’s my baby. He got to work and I watched him feed those wise into the connection grid very quickly and put the cover back on.
When he was finished, we discussed the technology of that booze and he told me how to bring it up to modern standards. and Off Paul went.
Straight away, my Dad Curly senior and I got to work on our new booth with angle grinders welders modifying the airflow of the bike cycle down to the ground to pull the hot air onto the bottom of the car while in baking mode. We used big flexy ducting on the roof.to finish the job . And we were good to go.m
I maintained that booth for the whole time I was there.
The booth ran for a long time before something just went wrong. I had a bit of a look at it, and I decided to ring Paul and discuss the fault light , turns out that he needed a new optical eye for the flame switch and he had one in stock.
I drove down to Bayswater to Paul’s factory to get part of him to fix the booth , when I arrived and went into meet him in the office I can see how neat and tidy this man was. He offered me a coffee first from a fancy coffee machine so we sat down at his desk for a chat. That was my opportunity to ask him a few questions about the booth and about him and his history. It turns out he came over from Sweden as a younger man with the plans in his hands for a spray booth and the idea of building and selling them here in Australia. His original factory was the one in Bayswater but he also opened one in Brisbane, and later in Auckland New Zealand. He made a top-quality products and he was proud of it and proud to show me after we cut the coffee inside his workshop and factory where everything happened. He manufactured everything they could there on site he had one of his own booths set up in the middle of his workshop, that he hired out to the public to paint their cars and bake them for a thing it was about $250 and there was usually a queue that I saw waiting outside for their turn. He explained to me that that’s where he could try out new ideas and test modifications in real time.
I enjoyed looking around at his workshop and all the equipment ad must be worth a fortune. I think you told me just to fold the guillotine is $280,000 so he got the part for me off the shelf and we went back up to the office. We will talk again. He said to me that he had 34O patents on everything he had made in the in the filing cabinet.
He told me that he actively protected his inventions and other spray companies they developed had on occasions used his ideas without permission so he will take them to court and sort it out. He pulled out a piece of paper from the filing cabinet to show me a patent. To me it
ment nothing.
But I didn’t understand exactly patent was back then or its financial cost.
I then told Paul that I really wanted the water floor model can you assure me that we had made the right decision without chosen booth. He went on to explain to me the problems associated with the water floor starting with legionnaires disease to sludge problems to disposal of the waist and short pump life.
Then I headed home to fix my spray booth and basically forgot about Paul until the next time something went wrong and rang him , I out of all the years use that we had the booth, 9 out of 10 times. There was a problem, Paul gave me the answer over the phone and I did the repairs. So somewhere in the back of my mind the water floor booth problem was ticking over, and the next time I had to go down to Seetal Paul had a coffee and chatted about things and I bought up my thoughts to him on the water floor.
I said that I thought maybe you could put two pipes on the outside and one leading in to the top of a wheelie bin which has a semi permeable liner inside and a pipe coming out from below into the pump and return through to the sump of the booth .
I said this will increase the flow of water in the sump minimising the legionnaires risk, also increases pump life as the ward is clean so it’s more efficient and the best parties you open the lid of the bin pull the string and lift out the waist straight into the bin.
Bit further down the track I had to go there again this time Paul let me into the workshop over to his test booth and proudly pointed to the bin filter prototype. It was working model. I smiled after I left the place thinking I know that he has got
341 patents in his filing cabinet now, I’m not quite sure how it went but it wouldn’t surprise me if all the companies are using that concept and paying his company for the privilege.
I was happy for the coffee and experience, I was hoping he’d offer me a ride and helicopter but it never eventuated,
But that’s life.
Cheers
Curlyg