Total Housing Starts Increase 2.8% in January

"The housing market finally may be finding it's footing," says Alison Rice, editor for Builder magazine.

A key gauge to the growth of this market are building permits. Regarding building permits, the article continues that "compared to January 2009, this is a 16.9% jump from those admittedly weak levels during the depth of the downturn." (underline added)

Michael Rehaut, a housing analyst with J.P. Morgan states, "...we believe this data continues to support our view that housing demand continues to stabilize, if not slowly reemerge."

See the full article here.

BUILDERnews Magazine Reviews SawGear!

Art Waldal with BUILDERnews magazine, recently took the SawGear out to the jobsite and used it for over a month.

We're quite proud of their review. Check it out below.

http://buildernewsmag.com/tool-review/2741-shifting-gears

The New Universal Brackets Unveiled!

Making something that’s complicated is easy. Making something that’s simple, versatile, rugged, and economical for consumers is another story.

After months of prototypes and redesigns, we’ve unveiled our new Universal Brackets.

This new design is adaptable to most chop saw stands without modification. It’s also compact and easily installed and adjusted. Once installed on your saw stand, it’s just a matter of tightening two knobs to securely mount SawGear to your exact deck and fence position.

We’ve had a lot of great feedback from customers who have received the new design, and we’re glad that those long hours in development have paid off. What do you think of the new design? Please leave your comments below!

SawGear - It Keeps Getting Better!

With the delays getting out our first shipment of orders, we’ve had time to work on some design improvements. Some of these actually came to fruition due to suggestions by AWFS attendees!

We are really pumped about the upgrades, and hope you will be too!

Here's a sneak preview of some noteworthy changes we made to the current SawGear design.


Keypad – The SawGear keypad has had a makeover :

1. Brighter colors
2. Improved design
3. Easier to read
4. More intuitive graphic layout
5. Solid click feeling when pushing the buttons.

Software – The software basics are the same, but with several improvements :

Calibration has been even more simplified :

1. Measure your cut board
2. Press Calibrate
3. Enter in actual width
4. Hit Start.
   

No more pressing Start then Stop!

Now you can calibrate your X, Y and Z measurements the same way :

1. Press Calibrate
2. Press either X, Y or Z (whichever needs calibrating)
3. Enter in actual measurement
4. Hit Start.

Easily adjust the incremental increase/decrease amount (the [+ / -] key). Here’s how :

1. Press the Calibrate button
2. Press the Increment key [+ / -]
3. Enter any incremental width you want
4. Press Start.

The factory default for this button moves the stop in increments of 1/32”. For framing, I think it would be awesome to set it to the width of your studs, to quickly add or subract corner wall overlaps, wrap-arounds or header board overhangs. Feel free to share ways you might use this feature.

We hope all of our customers at the show will be excited about these awesome design improvements. We will be featuring video outlining some of these changes in the upcoming weeks.

So, what do you think? Leave your comments below and let us know!

If you are new to the SawGear Blog, thanks for stopping by. We encourage you to subscribe so you can be notified of new postings, and stay current with any news regarding SawGear.

We still have more to unveil, so we'll showcase our new mounting bracket and stop designs next week!

Spend Smart

My name is Brandon Vaughn, and I am a tool junkie.

If you are like me, going to your local tool shop is like reverting back to being a kid in a candy shop.

Now, we all try to act like logical adults in these places - wearing serious faces while browsing through the aisles. But, that inner child quickly visits when that giddy feeling creeps up in our guts while checking out the latest gadget we can't live without.

Oftentimes, I find that inner child tugging on the sleeve of my more logical, “adult side”; perhaps begging for some measure of justification to buy this automatic, dual-speed, self-loading, 3' long backer board screw gun.

Usually the conversation goes something like this:

“But I want it!” my inner child yelps.

“We don't do enough tile; it's not worth it,” logical adult replies.

“But it's sooo cool!”

“No!!”

Now, even though I often annoy myself with this inner-debate, both of these two voices in my head are completely necessary. The inner child drives creativity, innovation, the ability to offer something no-one else has. While the logical adult makes sure I don't go broke in the process.

Here are some things I've learned to consider when purchasing new tools:

1. While this tool is in use, how much time will it save me? 10%? 20%?


2. How much is this time worth to me in dollars? (How much money would I normally make in a day, week, month, while performing this kind of work?)
   
3. How often will this tool get used? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?


4. What is the total cost of this tool? Is it complete? Will I have to regularly buy extra parts or more expensive fasteners?

Be honest with yourself when answering these questions so you can be confident of your purchases. If you don't do enough of that specific work to justify using that tool, don't buy it!

Financial gurus call this kind of calculation ROI, or Return On Investment. They answer these same types of questions to find out how much money an ad campaign, or whatever, will make them, before they launch it. You should also use it, to make sure you are spending your hard-earned money smartly.

So make sure you listen to both sides of your inner-battle. The best specialty tools I have bought were when my inner child and my logical adult were in complete agreement. We often need that inner child's voice to convince us that it's time to try something new, even when it’s scary.

But, the logical adult should be in agreement before you pull out your wallet... because your inner child thinks ROI is the name of your neighbor's dog.

Good News on the Horizon?

In 2005, the sales rate of new homes per month in the United States was 1,374,000. Now it's less than a quarter of that. At 329,000 per month average, many builders and developers have found themselves on rocky ground. When will this turn around?

Well, a new report from CNNMoney.com said that new home sales came in much higher then was expected over the last few months.

Economics professor Peter Morici says this is 'really good news.'

“Considering what's going on in existing home sales, with all the foreclosure activity sending down home prices, for new homes to jump like that is a good indicator that the economy is bottoming out,” Morici says.

With new construction practically skidding to a halt over the past 3 years, potential home-buyers are finding inventory levels of new homes falling drastically in most areas.

Read the full article here.

From my personal experience, contractors are not out of the woods yet. These times are still proving very difficult for builders/construction companies for a few reasons:

1. Builders and developers have thinned out over the past couple years, and the construction companies left over are finding themselves working very hard to keep up the pace with work demand.


2. Many companies are finding themselves short handed due to layoffs and worry about taking on new employees.


3. Consumers are more cautious than ever. Many potential home-owners and clients have been burned over the past 3 years. Contractors are now bidding against several competitors and often end up wasting many hours preparing bids they won't land.


4. Many contractors are finding their overhead has skyrocketed. Bond premiums, credit card interest rates, vendor account rates and more have drastically increased, due to late or no payments over the past several years.

With more and more problems facing the construction community, business owners need to get creative. The drive is certainly there. One look around and they see their peers dropping like flies.

If you are in construction, how are you coping with these problems?

Welcome to the SawGear Blog!

The SawGear blog is finally up and running!

Check back often for lots of great stuff, from company news to things I think are useful, things that have no use whatsoever, and everything else in between! Vague? Good.

We are thrilled if you decide at any time to chip in your two cents, or two dollars worth (I often find my opinions end up being worth around .002 cents), because our vision is really to work together with contractors and professionals around the globe, and better our product to better our customers.

Hopefully you will find helpful tips, insightful articles, cool new tools, and more often than not, poor attempts at humor.

If you've found us via our website www.sawgear.com, great! We have many, many more videos scheduled in the very near future to further showcase our trek across the USA and beyond, getting the SawGear into contractor's hands, and getting their feedback.

Now that we're live, please take a moment to introduce yourself, comment or e-mail me any suggestions on what you would like to see, with our blog, with our company, with our products!

Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about my picture being front and center on the website. I've already tried...

Cheers!