[Brent Deines]

I understand what you mean Blind Squirrel. Heck, I had to take motorcycle safety to get my high school diploma and I almost failed that. Apparently they were not as impressed by my wheelies as I was. Some people have no sense of humor!

Seriously though, I do think the specs matter, but can also be misleading. For instance, many companies report their resins have a very high tensile strength, but fail to specify if that is adhesive tensile on glass, film tensile strength, or some other form of tensile strength. Even the lab that we use for testing fails to provide exactly the same information for every product tested, which is very confusing to say the least. It is also easy to put too much emphasis on one test and ignore all the others. I have said it many times, it's the combination that is important.

Even more to the point, who is to stop a supplier from mis-reporting the specs? The only way to know if we are telling the truth is to send our products to an independent lab and have them tested for yourself. We sometimes do that with competitors products, but then what? Do we sue our competitors for not telling the truth? Even if we did and won, what would we gain from it?

That's why even though the BSI standards are not perfect, they do set a benchmark that is equal and fair to everyone who is willing to foot the bill to be tested. Of course a supplier could lie about that too, which is why we posted our BSI results on line and encouraged other suppliers to do the same. Proof is proof.

I'm not accusing anyone of misrepresenting their products, just pointing out that there are always ways to do so if that is the intent. SGT just about drove me nuts when we first started selling to him, but I certainly respect his attention to detail. I think he is an educated consumer and therefore avoids many of the mistakes that cause others to struggle unnecessarily.