We have made a decision to no longer carry cloth covered wire. There are several reasons for this.
First, the wire is getting more challenging to obtain. Most of our historic suppliers have stopped carrying the size we use to build self winding clock pigtails. While other sizes are available, they don’t work with things like tip pins. Since we’re here for the purpose of providing supplies for self winding clock applications–not lamps, vintage radio or appliance repair, the available wire is less useful for our purposes.
That said, we continue to investigate and try different wire styles and suppliers. We won’t let this supplier situation compromise our ability to restore the clocks. For starters, we have a small safety stock here for SWCC restorations, so we have some time to resolve this and believe we are making progress (partly because we are not merchandising away our safety stock). I am sure we will get this resolved in due time.
Second, it’s rather unfortunate but the costs associated with cutting, bagging, labeling, and shipping a 1ft or 2ft length of wire for $3.00 or $6.00 is simply prohibitive. If it is part of another order, that helps. But, much too often people have ordered a 1 or 2 ft length of wire by itself. We cannot sustain that. We have fought for years to avoid minimum order amounts, but that too may be coming soon. Costs continue to rise!
We’ve also had folks order wire, then ask for the terminations to be added after the order is placed. This is not a free service, is time consuming (even to invoice after the fact), and distracts from other more salient work here, like the backlog. It’s just not worth it, sadly.
Along with this, our PK-1 Pigtail Kit is no longer available since it depends on the (un) availability of the cloth covered wire. That said, we don’t want you to feel helpless or lost. Contact us and we will see what we can do if you have a specific requirement related to wire and pigtails for your self-winding clock application. But please keep in mind that wire, terminations, and the labor to put it all together is not free. Our minimum charge for any pigtail order is $30.00. Again, costs just continue to rise and we are not immune from these increases.
Finally, we are aware that many folks bought our wire for uses in addition to self-winding clock applications. For those customers, here are some references to help. There are other suppliers who offer cloth covered wire for lamps, radio and vintage appliance repair. You might take a look below and see what’s out there. Some are quite remarkable!