[lumberjack]

I've seen this elsewhere and what baffled me was the startup aspect of it all.

He spent 5 years doing this and a non-insignificant amount of money. How does he know it will eventually all be worth it?

It seems like such a baffling risky step to take.

[comboy]

I can't imagine him getting back money that was spent on the equipment visible on the video selling these tubes. It seems to me more like the money wasn't a problem, and he just really wanted to start making these tubes (which is awesome).

[dogma1138]

He is getting money, he started the business with a loan IIRC, he's located in the Czech Republic which means that the cost of some of those things isn't as high as you would expect.

He's selling them at around 150$ per tube, his complete Nixie tube clock sells for 1700-1800$ and he's shipping these units about as fast as he can make them.

The volumes aren't high but like with any other artisan crafted item they are making money of it.

[comboy]

Great to hear, after watching the video (I recommend 2x speed) it feels like he very much earned it, but starting this business with a loan, wow..

[crististm]

On the contrary - I recommend watching it at 1x for the pleasure of discovery. What's with the rush?

[drivingmenuts]

I watched it at 4:30 in the morning and it almost put me back to sleep.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

[dogma1138]

About the comment:

icantdrive55 7 hours ago [dead] [-]

If you know what you are looking for; you can buy used lab equipment very cheap. Most sellers don't even know what they are selling. You do need to spend a fair amount of time browsing. I've been thinking about a glass lathe on CL for awhile now. My problem is space.

What the frak HN?! Why is this have been downvoted to a flag kill?! This guy is absolutly correct! you can buy lab equipment on Ebay on the cheap, many sellers don't know and don't care.

Local listings are even better you can sometimes buy a whole lathe for "free" by just agreeing to take it of their hands these things are huge and heavy and the transport costs are usually higher than the cost of an old machine.

Here is an example of a Machine Shop Lathe for 150 GBP not that different than the Lathe He uses (He doesn't seem to use a glass lather with it's own heating elements, but just a glass chuck and a torch).

https://www.gumtree.com/p/other-power-tools/machine-shop-lat... (yes a "faulty" motor, which is usually fixed by a new fuese or a drive belt).

Here is a fully functional one for 500 GBP https://www.gumtree.com/p/lathes/metal-turning-lathe/1191030...

And here is a beast 15X50" refurbished lathe for 2500 GBP

https://www.gumtree.com/p/lathes/colchester-triumph-15x50-la... With his slightly smaller brother (more in line with the size of the lather the guy has in his shop from what I can tell) for 1500$ http://www.ebay.com/itm/CLAUSING-COLCHESTER-13-X-40-ENGLISH-...

Do they need work? sure but you can buy an entire shop for less than 10,000$ if you are buying used, have some patience and can fix things up (and if you are planning to run a shop and you can't fix your own tools, when sorry but don't bother unless it's a hobby you don't mind spending money on since if you can't fix 99% of the problems yourself you'll be out of business pretty quickly).

You can see from the wide shot of his shop that the lathe he uses is a pretty old one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awkzCmQ0kVA this isn't some high end CNC lathe, this is a pretty large prescision shop lathe which can be bought for <2000$ in good and working condition, and usually for <500$ if it needs some repair simply because the thing requires a small crane to offload (these things can weight 2000 or more lbs.).

Old lathes are the "free couch" (or almost) of the machining world, people can't get rid of them because they are too big, and they aren't a rare item to command a huge premium unless they are relatively new or highly specialized.

Other testing equipment is also pretty darn cheap, I've bought signal generators and scopes for <100$ on many occasions of Ebay and local listings which were probably worth 5-10 times more (and I've resold them after a short refurbishment).

[pavel_lishin]

It doesn't look downvoted/dead to me: http://imgur.com/IYl7FLw

[dogma1138]

It was dead a few hours ago ;)

[icantdrive55]

If you know what you are looking for; you can buy used lab equipment very cheap. Most sellers don't even know what they are selling. You do need to spend a fair amount of time browsing.

I've been thinking about a glass lathe on CL for awhile now.

My problem is space.

[djaychela]

He's got another business running, a classifieds website, which he says paid for him to experiment with nixies.

As for how he knows it will eventually be worth it, isn't that the case with most new businesses?