Hi J-  

  Soon after starting  Avinet in 1987 we contacted Roger MacDonald to find out if he wanted us to handle his pliers sales.  He declined our offer. 

  I do most of Avinet’s manufacturing, but for several reasons MB handled making banding pliers from the beginning.  She gave it a good hard try, for a long time with the first vendor, but the project turned into a nightmare so we finally stopped pliers production.  Then (I don't remember how many years since our first contact) Roger called us back and offered to supply pliers to us, but not all the models.  Perhaps the other models were a too big a headache for him to make?  We agreed but, now that were were selling pliers again, MB had to find a another machinist to make the missing models.  Meanwhile she developed a warm and close relationship with Roger, so that part went very well, and while the new (third) supplier was cooperative they encountered one technical problem after another.  Then Roger died in May 2001.  After a time Roger's daughter enlisted Roger's nephew (our fourth supplier,) who is a machinist as well, to continue the MacDonald line of pliers, and hummingbird tools.  Remember, Roger was a retired machinist when he was making pliers.  He had the time and expertise to make small batches by hand; and he did not make much, if any money doing it.  We too did not make money distributing his pliers, and we suffered financially from working on the other models with other machinists.  But because she loved Roger, and as a service to bird banders, MB kept at it.

  Roger’s nephew is a different story. He is very capable machinist with a big machine shop but he has a business to run, and must at least break even.  He gave it good try, but finally decided that he didn't need the headaches and financial losses that were mounting up from making small runs of banding pliers.  After many years of ups and downs, ... mostly very frustrating downs, with sadness, we finally gave up too, and quit making all the pliers.  We will never recover the costs of tooling up to make them. 

  Now, ... plain steel pliers, without band openers would be much easier to make.  But, do you think banders will accept pliers that rust anytime soon?  After what we have been though, we are not keen to suffer another financial beating by investing money in the tooling for a line of new products that might sell at the rate of a few dozen per year. 

Now you know the real deal.

Best,
Sam

  The text above was edited 12 July 2004.  I corrected typos, and cleaned up some poorly written sentences.

 Note that machinists often grind off, or tape closed the finger loops of hemostats. Serious injuries occur when unmodified hemostats get caught, in a moving part, usually a lathe chuck. This sort of accident is unlikely to happen while bird banding, but I thought you should be aware that there is a risk, however minimal. I frequently use hemostats at the grinder but I do not stick a finger and thumb through the loops.

-s-