Review - Polar Bear Forge (Marshal Gauge)

Gregoire de Lyon · Post by **Gregoire de Lyon** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:58 pm

Summary: Good product, great service

Communication: Jamie was very good with communication and answering my questions. It was a fairly basic transaction, but I felt confident throughout the process that I was going to get what I paid for in a timely manner.

Price: $6 for a SS marshal gauge. Can you beat that?

Quality: I ordered 6 gauges - 4 or 5 had a small burr on one outside corner. Nothing to worry about, nothing to complain about. Easily removed with a file or sandpaper.

Turnaround Time: Fast. Less than a week I think. All six came wrapped up inside of a USPS flat rate envelope so shipping was cheap.

Overall: 5.0 - If I ever need another gauge I wouldn't hesitate to do business with Jamie again.

Halberds · Post by **Halberds** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 1:19 am

I love it when our people get good reviews.

Got pics?

Hal

freiman the minstrel · Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:05 am

Gregoire,

Thanks. I have made up the card like this

Price - 5 (Ex)
Quality - 4 (Gd)
Customer service (communications) - 5 (Ex)
On time shipping - 5 (Ex)

is that correct?

f

Gregoire de Lyon · Post by **Gregoire de Lyon** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:26 am

Halberds wrote:Got pics?

No, but I could probably get one. It looks like a marshal's gauge, made from 10 ga. SS.

Freiman wrote:Price - 5 (Ex)
Quality - 4 (Gd)
Customer service (communications) - 5 (Ex)
On time shipping - 5 (Ex)

If you give fractional scores I would bump the quality to 4.5. There was really nothing to complain about, but it wasn't perfect.

polarbearforge · Post by **polarbearforge** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:09 pm

Thanks for the review Gregoire!

Hal, here's a quick pic of the guage,
<img src="http://www.polarbearforge.com/temp/marshalls_guage.jpg">

You can actually see the small tab at the bottom right hand corner near the hole that he's talking about.

Jamie

btw, the stainless are $8 apiece.

Halberds · Post by **Halberds** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:31 pm

Nice gauge. Did you use a milling machine?

We call that a small burr, no big deal.

polarbearforge · Post by **polarbearforge** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:50 am

Nope, no milling machine. I laser cut them.

Jamie

Sean Powell · Post by **Sean Powell** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:36 am

Hello,
I ordered a series of these for the local community a few months ago as well. I love them as do most of the other marshals. I keep 1 in the shop, one in my armor bad with a copy of the marshals handbook and the necessary waivers just in case, plus I keep a spare in my gauntlet bag. At that price, why not.

I would rate as follows:
Price - 5 (Ex)
Quality - 5 (4.9) (Ex)
Customer service (communications) - 5 (Ex)
On time shipping - 5 (Ex)

Besides the aforementioned burr at a non essential corner, the edges are rough which is consistent with the laser cutting process. That is acceptable as changing it would increase cost.

Because I'm an anal engineering type I had our QA department double-check my caliper measurements. Gage sizes run .002" to .004" undersized at 70deg F. That means technically they will fail a helm or sword that is barely within sheet of papers thickness of being legal. It's important that a gage be more restrictive then the standard. For REALLY picky people I keep a class Z 1.25+0/-.0001" gage pin handy.

The 0.1 off of quality is I think he could tweak his laser cutting pattern a thousandth of an inch to compensate.

(I have milled gages by other people that are a lot less accurate. I'm sticking with these)

So other then his customer being picky, the gages are awesome!

Sean