CASE STUDY: HACKER CRAFT BOATS
Client Background
The company started in 1908, formed by John Hacker. Building blue prints for boats, the company actually went dormant when WW2 came about, but came back strong in the 1980s. George Badcock bought the company in 2010 and began focusing on modernizing the process and bringing things up to date. Part of that included bringing in naval architects and modern technology, standardizing woods(now using Mahogany) and products. To date, they have a production goal of around 15 boats a year, (custom built and normal) aiming to increase as they get settled into their new facility in Queensbury.
Part of the modernization is moving away from hand applying their finishes and moving to a spray application. This wasn’t possible in their old location due to the booth they had. Very little air flow, no controls for temperature. “If we wanted to move forward, this part of the process was next to change in the new building. We needed a booth built to handle our needs,” Production Manager Bill Calogero says.
The Client Challenge
Calogero says, “The boats we refinish aren’t exactly small but they also aren’t all the same size. We needed to upgrade to a modern booth with all of the modern controls and benefits.” Here’s the catch, Hacker Craft wanted to move to actually spraying their finishes, but also wanted to be able to hand apply as well on certain applications. So they needed a modern booth, with plenty of size, and fully customizable air speed settings for two completely different application methods.
How Accudraft Helped
“I heard nothing but positive things about Accudraft in my research for what we needed. They were able to help to build a custom sized Pro Series booth for us, designed exactly for what we needed. As far as from Point A to Point Z, from looking to purchase to finalizing the install, everything went smoothly,” Calogero said.
The Results
Hacker Craft now has the ability to refinish their hand crafted boats in their custom Pro-Series booth AND has full control of air speed for different application methods at just the push of a button with custom tuned VFDs.
Bill says, “Support was great and the install team made themselves available to me. Any questions I’ve had or anything I forgot, I got an email returned immediately or a phone call. Seriously, there’s no better wording for what I’ve had in terms of support and results other than GREAT.”
Contact:
315 Corinth Rd.
Queensbury, NY 12804
Phone: (518) 543-6666