Handling Scammers

 

There have been a lot of folks worried about scammers on social media phishing for private information from crafters/creators/artisans. The problem is real. And, as time goes on, those scammers are getting a whole lot more sophisticated in manipulating people into falling for their scams. This blog post is all about how I've handled them in the past, and have been able to avoid falling into their traps thus far.

Whenever I get a private message from someone asking me if a piece I've posted is still available, I immediately become skeptical because if the post is still up, it means yes, the piece is still available. So, I proceed with caution from that point forward.

When I say yes, the piece is still available and they come back with asking me where I'm located, that's it. The conversation is over as far as I'm concerned. Bottom line is they don't need my location. That's phishing plain and simple.

If they ask what shipping costs, I tell them that depends on a number of factors, but shipping is always on top of the cost of the piece being shipped.

Their next question is usually whether I accept Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, Apple Pay, or something else. I tell them PayPal is the only one I accept at this time. Next, they usually ask me for my PayPal information. This is where my Spidey sense kicks in big time! 

Reality is anyone shipping anything anywhere should never give out their payment method information. It needs to be the other way around. If a scammer asks me for my information, I ask them to give me THEIR information. Most of the time, that ends it and I never hear from them again.

This next part is critical: If they give me their information, I tell them I'll get a shipping quote from the shipping company. I only use UPS, but I'm pretty sure every shipping company provides quotes. While I'm standing in the lobby of the shipping company, I text, the recipient the amount of the shipping quote and remind them that's in addition to the cost of the piece. I conduct my entire conversation with them through Facebook Messenger, never a phone text or email.

The next part is even more critical: If they agree to the total cost, I then send them a payment request through PayPal. Since they've already given me their phone or email attached to their PayPal account, PayPal takes it from there. As soon as I see a payment has appeared in my PayPal account, I give the UPS folks the go ahead to pack and ship the piece. You don't need to give anyone on the other end any personal information.

This method isn't 100% fool proof, but I have yet to have a scammer go all the way through MY process, and, once the payment appears in my PayPal account, that's it. They can't take it back.

I thing the best piece of advice I can give to anyone wondering how to address the issue of scammers is to always be in control of the conversation. Back out if, at any point in the conversation you feel it may not be legit. In other words, pull the plug. You don't owe anyone anything. How long you stay in a conversation with someone depends on how long you're actually willing to allow them to string you along.

I hope this helps. It has worked very well for me thus far.

DWR

The 'Process"

 

It's been a loooooooong time since I posted a blog post here mostly because I've transitioned to sharing a lot of how I do things to Facebook on my Dead Wood Renaissance page. The reason I'm posting here now is because I put a bowl (photos to follow) out on a 'crafts' Facebook page. One person suggested/recommended that I share some photos of the process I use to get finished pieces because people, as he said, need to see the process used to get to the end result in order to better understand what goes into making the pieces that I do. He's right. The art of hand crafted artisan work is getting lost in today's world of machine produced products. And that's the genesis of this post. So, here goes. 

The process I use is similar for almost all of the pieces I do, but not the same because no two pieces are ever identical. Bowls, vases, tables, candle holders are just a few of the things I've made. To see more photos of work I've done, I also have a Dead Wood Renaissance Instagram account, as well.

For my most recent piece, I started with a burl attached to a douglas fir tree trunk log. The bark was still intact in some spots, but loose in other areas of the log:

The tools I used to get the bark off are on the deck of my workbench in the photo above. Chisels and screwdrivers saved the day!

Once all the bark was removed, the next step was to try and come up with proper orientation. Not an easy task because my focus was on keeping as much of the burl intact as possible. In fact, I worried about keeping the burl solid and not carving into it at all. As you'll see later in this post, that option wasn't viable with the orientation I eventually ended up with.

Nothing I did seemed to be right for this piece. The last photo above is the initial orientation I came up with to make a sort of big vase......or so I thought.

After I decided to make a vase, the piece needed to be leveled on the bottom so it would be stable and not run the risk of constantly tipping over (that burl is heavy and kind of makes the piece top heavy). In order to do that, I got out my trusty router planer sled and let the levelling begin:

All the paraphernalia you see in the second photo above under the log was to kinda sorta level things off so the top (upside down in the photo) would be fairly level to accommodate the router as it planed the bottom of the vase level. This thing was really heavy, so I wasn't too worried about the router moving the piece as it was pulled and pushed in the sled over the top of the piece.

The next step was to hog out the center of the log. I started by trying to plunge cut with my little chain saw......too dangerous! Besides, I'm OLD and not as proficient with chain saws as I used to be. 

So, plan B.....use a spade bit in a drill to drill holes to different depths and get as much out of there as possible before using an angle grinder with specialty Arbor Tech carving attachment:

It was after this phase was done that I noticed how big a crack there was in the log. I mean, I noticed the crack before hogging out the log, but it seemed to become kinda unstable the more I hogged out, or so I thought.

That wasn't going to do for what I wanted at ALL!

So, I had to come up with a different orientation than originally planned, and I'm so glad I did! I turned it upside down, and started carving out a 'lip'.

From that point forward, it became a matter of rough carving followed by more finesse carving followed by rough sanding, followed by fine sanding followed by finishing. The tool I used to rough carve was the Arbor Tech planer shown in one of the photos above. For more fine carving, I used a Kutzall grinding disc (pictured below with another bowl project I did):

Sanding involves a variety of aggressive grit sandpaper followed in sequence by finer and finer sandpaper until it's smooth as a baby's butt. Well, not really, but close enough.

Finishing involves a sequence, too. Initial coat is rub on Watco Danish oil followed by a spray coat of Zinsser dewaxed shellac to help seal up the open end grain followed by multiple coats of Minwax semi-gloss polyurethane. Most of the time, I apply the poly by hand rubbing it on. Sometimes, in the more difficult to reach areas (nooks and crannies), I apply the poly using semi-gloss spray. Of course, there was sanding in between each and every coat.

The finished bowl:

And, some photos of the end result:

And there ya have it!

Folks continue to ask me how long it takes to do these pieces from start to finish. I almost always tell them if I kept track of how much time I've invested, I likely wouldn't do them at all!

Thanks for reading and looking.