Chinese Busks...
There have been some rumors circulating about busks of Oriental origin in the past, so I thought I'd share this.
Since the cost of steel and postage has gone up so sharply lately, I've been looking for a source for busks other than Wissner of Germany. I love, love, love their busks, but the price (and the import taxes!) makes it difficult for me to re-order them for my supply site as well as for my own corsets. I have a hard time being comfortable with passing those costs on to my customers. While Higgins (of New York,) tells me that they have busk manufacture in the works, I have no idea how long it will take them to start producing, or of course, what their prices will be. I've placed many calls and emails to Paxton Manufacturing of Virginia, looking to purchase my stock from them because I've used their busks in the past and have always been more than pleased with the quality. Unfortunately, they do not feel inclined to send me the information I'm looking for. (I think that warrants a really big 'WTF!!??')
So, I scoured the internet for other manufacturers and only turned up one, in China. The representative (Leo Gao) was very nice and very helpful. Out of sheer curiosity as to how their quality might rate against other makers, I asked for a few samples of 11" white busks, the standard sort which are 1/2" wide per side. They arrived today.
I am actually very, very pleasantly surprised. These busks have the offset lower studs I've come to prefer, and the stud that I wrenched from its hole came out with a bit more struggle than its Wissner counterpart. I had to break the surrounding bone of the Chinese busk to get the stud out, but the Wissner stud came out once I bent the bone enough. The stud construction was the same...neither brand has studs that mushroom out in the back, which is what I thought. They're both only notched around the shank of the stud to keep it in the bone.
The loops are actually a bit wider than Wissner, and the inside of the loop has less "play..." the head of the stud fits more securely in the loop with less wiggle room. I tried to snap off one of the loops to simulate some rough treatment, and just like Wissner, it bent but didn't break.
It has a nice coating on it, and the dipping on the ends wasn't quite as anal-retentively tidy as Wissner, but the dip was of a different material. Wissner's seems to be of a vinyl nature, whereas the dip on the ends of the Chinese busk is a very hard, quite thick powder coating, which looks and feels much like enamel. I like that feature a lot!
The one quite large downside is that the Chinese busk, for all its competitive, if not nicer features, was almost half the thickness of the Wissner busk. Wissner comes in at about 1mm, and the Chinese busk was a bit more than 0.5mm. However, even though the Chinese busk was thinner, the stud still had the same depth as Wissner's. Arguably, I think you'd be able to accommodate thicker fabrics with it. Anyway...
I'm going to road-test one of the samples in one of my own corsets (most of you know that I beat the crap out of any component in one of my personal corsets before I even think about ordering it,) and see what happens. Leo was very accommodating and gave me the impression that they could make busks to any and all specifications, so perhaps they can make ones with thicker bones.
Cross-posted to corsetmaking.
Since the cost of steel and postage has gone up so sharply lately, I've been looking for a source for busks other than Wissner of Germany. I love, love, love their busks, but the price (and the import taxes!) makes it difficult for me to re-order them for my supply site as well as for my own corsets. I have a hard time being comfortable with passing those costs on to my customers. While Higgins (of New York,) tells me that they have busk manufacture in the works, I have no idea how long it will take them to start producing, or of course, what their prices will be. I've placed many calls and emails to Paxton Manufacturing of Virginia, looking to purchase my stock from them because I've used their busks in the past and have always been more than pleased with the quality. Unfortunately, they do not feel inclined to send me the information I'm looking for. (I think that warrants a really big 'WTF!!??')
So, I scoured the internet for other manufacturers and only turned up one, in China. The representative (Leo Gao) was very nice and very helpful. Out of sheer curiosity as to how their quality might rate against other makers, I asked for a few samples of 11" white busks, the standard sort which are 1/2" wide per side. They arrived today.
I am actually very, very pleasantly surprised. These busks have the offset lower studs I've come to prefer, and the stud that I wrenched from its hole came out with a bit more struggle than its Wissner counterpart. I had to break the surrounding bone of the Chinese busk to get the stud out, but the Wissner stud came out once I bent the bone enough. The stud construction was the same...neither brand has studs that mushroom out in the back, which is what I thought. They're both only notched around the shank of the stud to keep it in the bone.
The loops are actually a bit wider than Wissner, and the inside of the loop has less "play..." the head of the stud fits more securely in the loop with less wiggle room. I tried to snap off one of the loops to simulate some rough treatment, and just like Wissner, it bent but didn't break.
It has a nice coating on it, and the dipping on the ends wasn't quite as anal-retentively tidy as Wissner, but the dip was of a different material. Wissner's seems to be of a vinyl nature, whereas the dip on the ends of the Chinese busk is a very hard, quite thick powder coating, which looks and feels much like enamel. I like that feature a lot!
The one quite large downside is that the Chinese busk, for all its competitive, if not nicer features, was almost half the thickness of the Wissner busk. Wissner comes in at about 1mm, and the Chinese busk was a bit more than 0.5mm. However, even though the Chinese busk was thinner, the stud still had the same depth as Wissner's. Arguably, I think you'd be able to accommodate thicker fabrics with it. Anyway...
I'm going to road-test one of the samples in one of my own corsets (most of you know that I beat the crap out of any component in one of my personal corsets before I even think about ordering it,) and see what happens. Leo was very accommodating and gave me the impression that they could make busks to any and all specifications, so perhaps they can make ones with thicker bones.
Cross-posted to corsetmaking.