TDB under new ownership

T

Tony H

Well-known member
Good evening everyone, The TDB and Armstrong boats have pretty much been MIA the past few years and the molds have been sitting collecting dust the past 18mths. I am proud to say that I was able to make a deal recently and purchase the Company.

The TDB is the original duckboat that many have copied over the years and Its my belief TDB ran themselves straight out of business with their high prices. We plan to change that.

We have gathered a huge assortment of information, data, books, videos and product literature from the past 20 years and plan to put it all to good use by bringing back the best duck boat ever built.

Just so there is no confusion, we own the company tdbco.com as well and all rights to any and all artwork, design molds and rights associated with the name as well.

We will welcome thoughts and idea's from those who own or have owned a TDB or Armstrong boat in the past as we want to make them better than ever before.

Unfortunately we are not and will not be responsible for warranty work etc on previously purchased boats. All new boats will have our HIN number which starts with the letters WFC on them any other HIN numbers we are not legally responsible for as we were not the owner and or builder of those boats.

info@tdbco.com
Tony Homer
Waterfowl-works.com
 
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Where will you be located? John
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SW Ohio. all small boats will be built right here in Piqua. The 17 and 21 will be built in Michigan.

Quite Ironic because was started as a search for a used TDB a couple months ago ended up in me buying the whole dang company and more. LOL.
 
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Tony,

I'd like to come up and see your operation in Piqua and meet you sometime. Thought I had an old TDB promotional video (from when Christian still had the company in Maine), but haven't been able to locate it yet.
 
Bob, Nothing fancy here at all. We build all boats at our home in our shop out back. that is how we are able to keep costs down. Building them 1 boat at a time all by hand no fancy machines or equipment. Just good old hands on labor.

Your welcome to stop by anytime and talk duck if you like. Were ussually here almost all the time building some kind of boat.
 
“…1 boat at a time all by hand no fancy machines or equipment. Just good old hands on labor.”
Interesting; that flies in the face of just about all manufacturing/production principles successfully used over the past century. I guess we'll see how it works out for you.
I don't mean to insult; it just sounds very strange falling on the ears of a mechanical engineer.
 
“…1 boat at a time all by hand no fancy machines or equipment. Just good old hands on labor.”
Interesting; that flies in the face of just about all manufacturing/production principles successfully used over the past century. I guess we'll see how it works out for you.
I don't mean to insult; it just sounds very strange falling on the ears of a mechanical engineer.
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Brents, believe it or not many people who work in fiberglass are still doing it by hand. Sure there are options but those options are very expensive and we would rather do it the old fashion way and save all the overhead and expensive machine costs and pass the savings on to our customers. In the fiberglass world you can only work so fast as your always waiting on things to dry before moving to the next step. So whether we vacumn bag them in half hr or hand lay them in a couple hrs the end results the same.

We have been building layout boats for 8 years all by hand and have no complaints with the process we use.
 
Congrats on not just purchasing a boat but you got the whole co. Nice!! This past spring I purchased a1999, 14 sea class. This is my first season using it and getting to know the ins and outs. Sounds like you have quite a bit of paperwork. But I do have the original owners manual and original bill of sale of first owner in case your interested in a copy. One suggestion if i may is to place a cover over the switches that control the lights,bilge, etc..... I currently find that my leg is turning the lights on when standing to run the boat or get in/out, I need to find a cover to prevent this from continuing to happen. Best of luck in the future with your business.
 

[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica] “…1 boat at a time all by hand no fancy machines or equipment. Just good old hands on labor.”
Interesting; that flies in the face of just about all manufacturing/production principles successfully used over the past century. I guess we'll see how it works out for you.
I don't mean to insult; it just sounds very strange falling on the ears of a mechanical engineer. [/font]

Interesting comment. As a manufacturing engineer I see this a lot. The desire to automate when it is not necessary. The high cost especially if the volume is low or process is not repeatable enough doesn't justify it in a lot of cases, yet manufacturing companies fall into the trap that it is "what they need to do" to be successful. Automation definitely has its place but manual operations do too. I also do not mean this as an insult I find it interesting that my thoughts were the opposite of yours.
 
BrentS,

As a 30+ yr ME working for an OEM Boiler company specializing in the after market business I can attest that we can not compete on price with a guy fabricating a part in his garage. We compete on quality, constancy, inventory and upgrades. Adding overhead almost never reduces the individual part cost. If they keep up with demand they are much better off doing the work themselves.

Scott
 
I guess it was the way you stated "NO fancy machines or equipment" etc., that seemed to imply that they are a detriment to the production process...a bad thing, that should be avoided.
I've seen a steady increase in "fancy machines" used by most boat manufactures; even while still using hand labor. And, I've been waiting to see if some of these processes/techniques would make it into a duckboat mfr.
I guess it'll come down to quantity; that will dictate your manufacturing process. In the duckboat industry...if demand stays low enough, "1 boat at a time" may continue to be the approach.
But the list of failed duckboat mfr's makes me wonder if/when someone will try to do something significantly different.

Thanks for the response. Yours will be an interesting venture to follow.
 
BRent by no means an insurt to industry advancements. We use some nice things here. Our prized possession is the automatic glue gun. LOL it amazes me how much better my hands feel when I dont have to squeeze the trigger to get glue out over and over. THe automatic glue gun is like an automatic gun. Just hold it down and out it comes. LOL

I hope we sell enough boats to keep us busy building them 1 at a time. I don't want to have to hire 10 people and buy a large building etc. Were small time and thats just how we like it. We build about 80 layouts a year and im sure we can add another 80-100 of the new boats as well no problem and thats plenty for me. THe 17 and 21 models are not built here and will be built by someone else. We cannot handle them here.

Again not insulting at all. Just old fashion I guess.
 
Congrats on not just purchasing a boat but you got the whole co. Nice!! This past spring I purchased a1999, 14 sea class. This is my first season using it and getting to know the ins and outs. Sounds like you have quite a bit of paperwork. But I do have the original owners manual and original bill of sale of first owner in case your interested in a copy. One suggestion if i may is to place a cover over the switches that control the lights,bilge, etc..... I currently find that my leg is turning the lights on when standing to run the boat or get in/out, I need to find a cover to prevent this from continuing to happen. Best of luck in the future with your business.
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Chris Thank you for the comments, I would love to talk to you about your boat and your thoughts. Would love to have a copy of the owners manual as well. That is one thing I do not have.

And if anyone has the manuals for any of the other TDB boats they would kindly make me a copy of that would be great. Thank You Everyone
 
Ok, that's an interesting approach. I'm sure this forum is no stranger to "old fashion" or "traditional" ways....which have my respect, as well.
But, at least you're using a computer :)

Will you have a decent website? I'm in the market for a duckboat, and I'm disappointed at how pathetic the websites are. To not even provide basic information like max HP, draft, or weight ratings....to me, is unacceptable.
 
Ok, that's an interesting approach. I'm sure this forum is no stranger to "old fashion" or "traditional" ways....which have my respect, as well.
But, at least you're using a computer :)

Will you have a decent website? I'm in the market for a duckboat, and I'm disappointed at how pathetic the websites are. To not even provide basic information like max HP, draft, or weight ratings....to me, is unacceptable.
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Website, we hope that its decent, LOL THe old website which is current is alittle messy but has the info your looking for. You can check out out other website, Waterfowl-works.com which we will be using a similar format for the new website. I got a little excited about the announcement but we wont be ready to take orders probably until spring when we can get the boats recertified and built to our likings.
 
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