As almost everyone knows, if anybody posts anything on the Network 54Yellow forum, regarding me (CDT), the GRT trigger, or the GTA forum it is immediately deleted and if a person makes further posts is likely to be banned. I, as well as anybody else that has posted on the YP’s have been in the past and are still now continuously hassled and berated on the YP’s (and only there) by a few of individuals, including Steve Woodward aka: Steve-in-NC AKA: (pneuguy) as well as the forum owner, Steve in CT, referred to by some as “the butcher” to name a couple. Any post that is negative toward me, although few (and are posted by their cronies usually), are allowed to stand but any positive posts supporting me are immediately deleted. If they be allowed to stand, for every negative post, there would have been dozens of positive posts. They couldn’t handle, accept or allow that and immediately delete them.
But there has been a very positive side and because of their activity and it has been extremely beneficial to not only me but the GTA forum. Because of their relentless and persistent attacks and their activity they in fact draw attention to or create questions or doubts in the readers minds and they go searching for answers. That in turn will eventually draw them to either my website or the GTA forum and it don’t take them long to determine the truth for themselves both about CharlieDaTuna, the GTX-III, the GRT-III trigger and the GTA forum.
They were determined and did everything in their power to destroy the GTA forum, CharlieDaTuna and the GRT-III trigger. However, they have in fact helped in a huge way to make the GTA forum as well as the GRT-III trigger the success that they are today. They conduct continually bring us into the public interest and we cannot ask for better advertisement than that. We owe a great deal of our success, both the Gateway to Airguns forum, the GRT-III trigger as well as CharlieDaTuna (CDT) to the YP’s and especially Steve-in-NC and CT Steve (the forum owner) because of their vindictive and malicious behavior. Their conduct and actions has been a blessing to me and the GTA.
But I would like to give you a little background info regarding this conflict.
I’ll do this by simply taking a couple of the posts from the different forums and lay them out. It would be impossible to put up everything that transpired but this should give a person a general idea of what has happened.
After a couple of years of dealing with Steve-in-NC (pneuguy) and all of the product problems that he had been handing me, I decided just to part company with him. In addition to that, both he CT Steve, the YP forum owner had gone ballistic because I was co-founding the GTA, another forum.
This was the post (in part) that I made in June of 2006 when I finally decided to part company with Steve-in-NC.
Regarding the future of the MK-II-GTX as well as the other products that were available in the past including the HDD, SuperSears, 13/22xx sears, 7-8-953 sears, DP-392 couplers and the BMD's.
I am making this announcement publicly so there is no misunderstanding in the future and that I have made an attempt to come up with a solution. I feel that the airgunning community should have access to all of the items that were available in the past if a solution is possible and reasonable and fair.
There is a possible solution in the air proposed by a third party which, if comes to fruition, will benefit everybody in the AG community. It is possible that Steve-in-NC could take over all of the HDD, SuperSears, 13/22xx sears, 7-8-953 sears, DP-392 couplers and the BMD's market. I would retain the GTX sales only. There is actually very little inventory other than the HDD's and inventory has always been held to a minimum. Steve is well aware of this. That was the initial proposal.
In addition, I am offer the following:
I would liquidate (sell off) any of my share of the remaining inventory of the other products after the division of the remaining inventory after 7-1-06. . Once I have sold off my share of the inventory, I would agree to no longer sell any of the products with the exception of the GTX trigger. If Steve would like, he can buy out my half of the inventory at 1/2 the market value.
I am absolutely not interested in and will not even consider marketing any of the other products. That is not a subject of consideration.
I would reinstall all of the information on the CharlieDaTuna website including informational, instructions and testimonials to assist Steve in the marketing of his side of the products. This would include all articles that were in place prior to 6/18/06. This would be for an undetermined period of time.
None of Steve's parts will be listed on the website order page. The only items that will be on the order page will be any items that pertain to my marketing interests. There will be no ordering of Steve's products directly from the website. I will however, on his different product pages, put a link to an address that Steve selects for ordering that the potential customer can click on to access ordering.
Although I would endorse and assist in promoting his products, I would take no responsibility for products he would market including any product issues, replacement, or delivery of the products that is posted on my website. All inquires regarding his products should be directed to Steve and all inquiries received through the website will be forwarded directly to him.
I have not discussed any of this with Steve as of yet but I would agree to it. It is an agreement that as I said would benefit the airgun community as a whole. According to this third party, Steve has contacted him and has tentatively agreed to the initial part and I feel I have made it more beneficial to him. So far I have not heard from Steve and there is no doubt in my mind that Steve will be aware of this post in a matter of hours, if not minutes.
I feel that I am being more than fair in my proposal. From here on it's up to Steve to contact me if he wishes to agree. If Steve elects not to agree then I would guess everything will come to a halt on 7/1/06.
I have absolutely no interest in the Co2 pistols or pumper pistols or pumper rifles or the modification parts for them. My only real interest in the past has been in the springer's and the guns that the GTX applied to. I marketed the other parts for Steve's benefit because it provided him a way to market his mods and at the same time, provide me with some additional income. I don't see anything wrong with that other than the fact that until I re-worked them, for the most part, they didn't work well. I really wasn't interested in them then and I'm surly not interested in them now.
Bob aka: CharlieDaTuna
This was a response post put up by Steve-in-NC
As you know, when we first introduced my (MK-I) GTX, the costs of production (in both money and effort) were high. But over the two intervening two years, costs have dropped precipitously, but our price didn't. Currently, each piece costs only $3 or $4, all tooling has been paid for, and they come finished and ready to drop into the poly bag and mail. That makes the current net markup on the most recent $35 price about 800%!
Therefore, since you gave as the reason for your retirement last week not having enough fun, and since you say that you have the benefit of the airgun community at heart, I'm sure you can have no objection to dropping your markup on the GTX to a more reasonable retail number: say 50%?
So, as soon as you've made a public announcement of intending to reintroduce and sell the GTX for the new (and still generously remunerative) price of 1.5 x $4 = $6, please get back to me. I think we can do business!
Here is Steve’s version of the of MK-I- and II GTX after chopping and grinding away the material on the nose to make it work.
The MK-II and was almost the same thing. Steve would send me those to me and they too would need to be modified and cut out to make function. They would need to be ground off as you can see and the pivot holes repaired and fitted for the pins (as did the MK-II ).
The one on the left has been repaired, the adjustment screw hole re-tapped and the spring and screw installed. It did not come that way and it is nothing like the later design that the manufacturer and I designed later.
Pictured, below, although not good pictures, is the latest GRT-III trigger and slightly improved over the GTX-III that the manufacturer and I designed. As can be seen, there is a considerable difference in design, it worked, it was safe, and was machined correctly to fit nearly all guns using the Theoben/Gamo trigger design.
My Response was (in part)
As most of you know, I keep most of my criticism to myself....however
Just as with many other things Steve has said in the past, he again has stated some inaccuracies in an attempt to discredit me. That might be what it cost to him to make his original MK-I-GTX that was so poorly designed, dangerous and very inefficient. I'm not sure if I ever knew the original production costs.
And his statement of "and they come finished and ready to drop into the poly bag and mail" is a bunch of crap. They were a mess. I had to order additional parts, cut springs to fit, and every one of them had to be modified to work, pivot pin holes reamed out to get the pins to fit, they had to be assembled, tested, set up, packaged and mailed.
And I didn't set the pricing, Steve set the pricing.
The production costs that he has stated are far from accurate for the manufacture of the new GTX-III and not only that, the production costs will go up even more if there is another production run due to the fact that I will need to find another manufacturing source and start all over again.
And further more it might be noted that regarding the statement about the costs and profits. They were fine with Steve until now and as long as those profits were going into his pockets. Now all of a sudden it was absolutely outrageous. That should in itself tell you something about Steve. Never has he ever mentioned a price drop until now when he see's money not going into his pocket.
That cost figures that he claims might be what he paid for his MK-I-GTX design and production for the original junk that he had ordered and were made off shore in India or where ever they were made, but that's certainly not what the cost of his the later MK-II-GTX to be made here in the US.
The manufacturing of the GTX-II and the later GTX-III that I manufacture now is made with far superior quality material, far superior machining and tolerances, far better anodizing, and the two later designs are far superior to the original designs of Steve's and no thanks to Steve. He had absolutely no part in the latest two designs of the GTX trigger and the later GRT-III trigger.
Steve did of course designed the original MK-I-GTX and MK-II-GTX such as it was, but it was such a mess that for all intent and purposes was a failure that wouldn't even install properly and were in a way even dangerous because the safety would not work. I had to hand rework every single one of them that he sent to me in order to be able to market them even without the safety. Even then, I had to either replace or refund a bunch of them. The second ones that he designed wasn't not much better and still had the same safety issue and they too had to be reworked and pivot holes had to be resized and finished to even get the pins in. They didn't even have a hole drilled for a first stage. I had to make a jig, drill them as well as tap them, one at a time.
Later I finally after months of searching, I finally found a machinist that would work with me and we spent many nights changing a good part of the geometry and making and testing several prototypes until it's what it is today. It's what I would call nearly perfect and Steve deserves absolutely no credit for the GTX-III or the GRT-III and what it is today. Much of it is completely different than his design. However, I never said a word about it until now and let Steve have all the credit. Big mistake.
The same thing with the SuperSear. After he had them produced, they were a failure because they were not hard enough. I had to replace many of them also. I then had to hand heat-treat every one of them and then refinish and resurface them to be able to make them acceptable and put them on the market. In addition to that, the sear was not drilled properly and the spring had to be modified to work.
The 13/22's were a tragedy, a joke and breaking apart. Nothing but a bunch of rusty junk and a good part of them still are. I remake/refinish and test them only as needed. I'm sure he will pawn them of through Skyler.
Even the DBG's that Steve designed were designed improperly and would not work after being manufactured until I modified them.
In the past I've worked my butt off remaking the junk parts that he ordered and either sent to me or drop shipped to me from e-Machine because they were so bad. Nothing that he ever sent me worked as designed.
Then Steve had the guts to tell me that he thought he should get 60% of the business and I get 40%. I will say that without his initial ideas, it would have never happened although most was doomed to failure. All Steve has done is set back and let me resolve and fix all of his mistakes, clean up his junk, redesign it and then take all of the credit and the checks that I sent him for all of the work that I put into it. Steve never had to lift one finger. I have been told I was a fool, that I was nothing more than his stooge and the sad thing is that I and a few other people knew it but I didn't do anything about it and that makes it my fault. And I'm sure that he laughed all the way to the bank. Most people know Steve for whom and what he really is…including and especially me.
The parts that I have been producing today are a far cry from what Steve sent to me to pass on to our airgun community regardless of what he might say. I turned the old MK-I-GTX and MK-II-GTX into something that is a good reliable product that now performs and functions as it should, something that I can be proud of. I owe him nothing and have cheated him out of nothing and he deserves nothing including even credit for most of it.
My impression of Steve after knowing him and working with him…. He is intelligent but that is the only thing that he has going for him. Steve is always right in his mind and if you disagree with him, beware. I feel that he considers anybody else to be inferior to him. He is arrogant, egotistical, self-serving, selfish, a manipulator, uses people to his advantage regardless of the harm it may cause, and has little or no respect for anyone. His attitude has caused him to be banned from several forums and is not well liked on most for good reason but is one of those people that are tolerated. But he does have some weak spots and being a geek for the YP’s owner, Steve in CT, shows that. He was banned from there until he caved in to him.
I’m just grateful that I no longer have to a associated with him and at times wish I had never become involved with him.
Now you know the real and whole story.
and I passed half of the remaining inventory of the new SuperSear-II’s on to him at that time.
Here it is Sept. 2007 and it now appears the Steve is in the process of making the SuperSear. And guess what? It’s not his design but the one that my machinist and I developed Not only is it the new design that my machinist put together that Steve was not impressed with but as you can see, he has also taken the pictures on my website showing the new sear in the trigger and it’s installation and makes it appear as it was his. Then, Steve added some script to it showing how it functions. And this is the guy that’s always screaming “plagiarize” and “stealing” from him. That's typical of Steve though.
and I passed half of the remaining inventory of the new SuperSear-II’s on to him at that time.
Here it is Sept. 2007 and it now appears the Steve is in the process of making the SuperSear. And guess what? It’s not his design but the one that my machinist and I developed Not only is it the new design that my machinist put together that Steve was not impressed with but as you can see, he has also taken the pictures on my website showing the new sear in the trigger and it’s installation and makes it appear as it was his. Then, Steve added some script to it showing how it functions. And this is the guy that’s always screaming “plagiarize” and “stealing” from him. That's typical of Steve though.
