What I recieved and the old ball stake by Hal for comparison.
A couple of months ago I ordered the stake system from Hals deluxe newbie kit, he responded quickly and started making things.
Then my son was born and I went from earning $600/week in I.T to making nothing, not having any savings I was understandably a little worried as I had orders pending not only with Hal but one or two other people for other things (eg a new Del Tin that I ordered in June through Medieval Emporium), after explaining things to Hal he said He'd happily wait and that everything had been finished and boxed up ready to go (The one lapse in communication Hal had made was not messaging me when the kit was finished like he said he would). He also sent me the customs number, something I've never needed to use but I always feel alot better about things when a merchant includes them.
Less than 2 weeks after finally scraping the money together I had a nice big USPS box sitting on my doorstep.
My first impressions were immediately good, you can tell when someone cares about what they've made when you have to get a knife or scissors to open the box because your keys won't cut the tape they've used to seal it.
On opening the box I managed to fill the room I was in with the amount of newspaper Hal had used to carefully pack each and every item.
Everything I toutched that came out with the exception of the four mounting bolts Hal had included in the kit (again anothing little toutch that speaks volumes about the way this man does business) covered me in black dust from the spray used to coat all the non-working surfaces, all the non-working surfaces were clean and at a high enough polish to see my face in them albiet still covered in linishing marks.
Then ther were the free bonus tools thrown in, the planishing hammer and pipe stake, without even knowing the contents of my shop hal managed to solve another of my tool problems - namely having to clamp an old bit of pipe in (a now shattered) bench vise to bend metal, as for the hammer, well one can never have too many hammers so i'll quickly find a use for it even if it is a little heavier than I like for planishing.
All up
communication was excellent just short of perfect
quality was fantastic - the littl faults I've mentioned I wouldnt expect to see in a product 4 times this price but for what Hal charges I certainly can't complain.
delivery was fast, he posted the kit the day/day after recieving payment
value for money: fantastic
Dude you are definately getting repeat business from me
