Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware Blog

Wow, has it really been 4 months since the last blog entry? Well, lots of people thought that dog collar in the last entry was pretty cool, and have asked when we are going to add one to the catalog that is human size. We have finally gotten around to doing that. Take a look at the fully Machined Metal Collar- Available with a bright Aluminum finish, and an Antiqued Aluminum finish:

They aren’t quite as spikey as the dog collar, but if you want one with holes in it to attach spikes, that can probably be worked out.

Anyhow, this collar is 1″ tall, and fully machined from 6061 grade Aluminum. It is made of 5 hinged segments that each rotate freely on steel hinge pins. The front segment has a 1″ pyramid spike machined right into it to give the collar an elegant yet edgy look. The collar closes with a thumbscrew and comes with a choice of finishes. The collar comes in sizes large, medium and small.

We’ve added lots of other products since the last post, and have been busy and having a blast, but this is the product that finally motivated me to update the blog, so I suppose its the most exciting.

Thanks for your interest in G.P.S.Hardware – Ben C

October was great – hope everyone had a good halloween. We recently finished a pair of awesome Dog Collars done as a custom order. They came out really good we think, and Id like to adapt them to human size and add them to the catalog over the next couple of months. Take a look:

This one is 3″ tall and 23″ around, so its for a really big dog. Maybe something about 1/2 the thickness and big enough for a person would be cool.

We also recently added two cuffs and a pair of goggles with a Black Anodized finish to the catalog. An anodized finish is a high quality, Scratch resistant finish, that keeps the look and feel of the metal while giving it a deep inky black coloring. Those items are listed on the right hand side of the home page under “new additions”.

Anyhow, we’re having a great time cranking out products and designing new ones.
Hope everyone has a great November – thanks for your interest in G.P.S.Hardware – Ben C

Hello from G.P.S.Hardware – Its almost officially Fall! Love it – and its time to update the blog. Over the past couple of months we’ve added several new products to the catalog as usual.

Most recently we finally got around to turning some 1.5″ spikes out of 1/2″ thick stainless steel. Previously all of our brass and steel spikes were limited to the 3/8″ diameter variety. The half inchers look great – they are a much more substantial looking spike for sure.

We’ve added several new cuffs as well – we’ve had a great reaction to our pyramid spike cuffs and have high hopes for them. Weve also added a bulky D Ring cuff that is pretty cool.

We love getting customer photos, and we’ve had some really good ones to show you recently. Here is the most recent sent to us from Amsterdam of the model LivingDeadFairy http://www.facebook.com/Livingdeadfairy wearing a belt made with our stainless steel bullet spikes.

Thats all for now – thanks for your interest in G.P.S.Hardware – Ben C , owner/designer

Hello from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware

Its been a few months and I’ve been meaning to get around to posting an update of all that’s been going on at the studio. For the most part we’ve been doing our standard routine of designing new products, and filling orders, cutting metal and having fun doing it. It has been pretty busy so far this summer which is great. I should say thank you to all of the people who have liked us on Facebook – we’re at about 4,000 fans now and it really feels great when people let you know they like what you’re doing.
What finally motivated me to do a blog update now was that a customer took some awesome pictures of a couple of our cuffs and I wanted to post them. These photos are by Felix of FelixRust.com Thanks a ton Felix- they look great-

We love getting photos from our customers, so please send them in. I would really like to see some photos of people using the 5″ and 8″ cone spikes to decorate cars and scooters as well as using them in interior design applications.
That’s going to be it for now – thanks as always for your interest in Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware Ben C- owner/designer

Hello from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware

I guess I might as well make this entry count for the beginning of April rather than for March since the month is in its final days.
There have been several exciting developments at the Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware Studios over the past month since the last blog entry. At the time of the last entry, we were in the final weeks before doing our second photo shoot, and so we were scrambling to get all of the stuff made that we were going to use. We finalized several new products during that rush and Ill list them now.
First, we redesigned our Machined Cyber Industrial goggles.

They now are made so that the entire cover plates of the goggles are removable, and an acrylic lense fits into the goggle underneath the cover plate. The goggles can be worn with just the acrylic lenses, or with the metal cover plate for the full on apocalyptic industrial look. Of course our goggles are machined from solid engineering grade aluminum, and we decided to go all the way and give them an anodized finish. You can see that we have done them in red and in black. The anodized finish is a top quality finish for aluminum. It provides a scratch resistant surface, and gives a deep solid color as well.

We also decided to upgrade our giant spikes to the anodized finish. Anodizing is kind of expensive, so we cant really do it for all of our products until we get our own anodizing capability in our studio (or until we find someone local that does it out of their garage and wants to take on some production work at a good price;) Anyhow we have decided to go with the anodized finish in red and in black for our 5″ cone spikes, and 8″ spikes.

We also added a super giant 12″ tall cone spike to the catalog. this spike is 1.25″ in diameter, and weighs around 3/4 of a pound. It is a monster.

We’re thinking that these super giant spikes will be great to use on cars, or motorcycles, or in interior decorating applications, like in a tattoo studio or artists studio of some sort. They’ve got to be some of the largest spikes available, and with the beautiful anodized finish, Im sure there will be plenty of uses for them. As always if you think these would sell in your shop, get in touch to set up a wholesale account.

Ok, Moving on- So, we finally made it to the photoshoot, and it went great. Check out the splash page of the website to see all of the pictures .

Thanks to the models and terminal blue photography. They are all linked on the splash page in the flash application. Here are a couple of my favorite shots

I guess the latest occurrence after all of that is that we added a handful of Alchemy Gothic items to our own catalog. They have some totally great items, so we picked out a group of our favorites to compliment our own items. You can peruse those on our Alchemy Gothic page, and remember that we offer free shipping on orders over $100, so you can pick up one of our items and an Alchemy item at the same time and get it all shipped for free – so thats a good deal. One of my very favorite items is currently out of stock, The Black Death Goblet

but there are lots of other cool ones. This Black Canvas pouch for instance is really great

That does it for this entry,
Thanks as always for your interest in Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware – Ben C Owner/designer

Hello from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware

We’re coming up on the last week of the month, and its time to check in to list off all of the new stuff we’ve added to the catalog over the past 4 weeks or so, and to let everyone know whats going on at the ever-exciting G.P.S.Hardware studio.
Lets take the second part first: The main thing we’re up to is getting ready for our second photo shoot which is coming up in a couple of weeks. The models are chosen, the photographer is booked terminalblue.net and now it’s all about the mad scramble to get all of the belts, goggles, cuffs and other hardware together in time. Im sure we’ll make it…. It should be a lot of fun, and with luck, we’ll have the pictures back and up sometime next month.

As a side note, we try to do photoshoots every 6-8 months or so, so if you want to model in one of them, send an email and a photo to model@gothicpunkspecialtyhardware.com anytime and we’ll keep your name on file.
What else, what else. Check out this video that a designer in New York put together for a fashion line he’s working on. He ordered all of the large spikes and all custom from us. They are all solid aluminum with a gold anodized finish. We were quite impressed with that.

This is cool – The fashion designer Cushnie et Ochs used our spikes on their shoes at NY Fashion week. They bought some spikes toward the end of last year and said they were for shoes, and what do you know, there they are. Check out their runway show.

Ok, on to the new items:

I guess the really exciting thing for this month is that we found this bright red latigo leather, and so have been making a lot of belts and forearm cuffs with it. We also got a bunch of 1/2″ red pyramid studs, and so have been using those on belts. Im going to go ahead and insert a gallery of new product photos here, and then finish talking about them afterward:

In the spikes category, we’ve added a few brass spikes. They of course come in a bright and a crusty antiqued finish:

Mordekai.com special orderd 12″ and 15″ cone spikes. Those aren’t in the catalog, but they are pretty cool, and available if you need them. get in touch for pricing on those.

There’s a new jacket up.

And Goggles – we are going to probably be discontinuing our current line of machined goggles in favor of a slightly updated design thats a little easier to manufacture. The goggles in the galler are the new design. They will have front plates that are completely removable, and probably interchangable with other styles. They will have a leather lining that is glued on rather than sewn on, which saves huge amounts of manufacture time, and we are probably going to take the plunge and start having them anodized rather than doing a black oxide finish on them. The anodized finish is a better finish for sure-it is a more solid color and it gives the metal a hard scratch resistant shell. Its expensive though. The time savings we get from the redesign in other areas should allow us to do it though. Anodizing also allows you to have more colors than just black. We will probably have the goggles in raw aluminum, black, and red.

Anyhow, Thats the deal for this month – Thanks as always for your interest in Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware- Ben C- Owner/designer

Hello and Happy New Year from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware

I guess this blog update will basically have three sections – Announcements, New Products, and New Advertisements.

Lets start with Announcements:

We are searching for models for our next photo-shoot. We need one male and one female model with a gothic/punk/industrial type look to be our next models. The shoot will be sometime in March 2011. It will be in Albuquerque New Mexico. It will be a paid gig. So, if your’re interested, please send a photo to model@gothicpunkspecialtyhardware.com to apply.

We’ve also added free shipping on all orders over one hundred dollars on a permanent basis to the website.

Next: Lets do the New Advertisements.

We booked a spot in Profane Existence for the first time, and here’s the ad that will be appearing in there

And we’ve taken the big step of moving up to a half page spot in Gothic Beauty Magazine, and heres the spot for issue #33 which comes out at the end of February

Now for the New Products:

We have added body jewelry to the catalog. We’ve wanted to add some body jewelry for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it until now. We’re starting with 316L Stainless Steel jewelry, which is surgical stainless. Perhaps eventually we’ll get into niobium and titanium, and organics etc. but that will be a ways down the road.
Our first piece of body jewelry is a plug with a spiked tip. heres a pic. The one in the picture is a size 00.

Next, spurred on by a customer request, we have added a metal collar to the catalog.

At the time of writing, those are only up on the etsy site. They should be on the regular site soon. There is a black one as well as the raw aluminum version.
We will be making some that have some features machined into them probably at some point this month as well.

We have wanted to ad jackets to the catalog for a long time now, this month we put the first one up. The idea is that we’ll find cool jackets at military surplus and thrift stores and the like, and dress them up with patches and spikes and other hardware in the studio and put them up on the site.
Here’s a picture of the first one we did:

It came and went, but we have a pile of other jackets to treat and post, so there should definitely be more coming soon.

Finally, we added a new gas mask to the catalog- here’s a pic:

What we did here was to take a British Tactical Gas Mask, and machine our own custom hardware to screw into the air intake ports. The tusks on this “Metal Tusk Gas Mask” are cut from solid Engineering grade Aluminum, are threaded to screw into the mask, and have a black oxide finish. The tusk’s are 3″ long and 1.5″ in diameter. These are limited in supply because our supply of gas masks is kind of iffy.

Anyhow, That’s the news and the excitement from the G.P.S.Hardware studio for this month – Thanks as always for your interest
Ben C – owner/designer/machinist
Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware

Hello and Happy Holidays from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware,

Another month has gone by, and Im always surprised at how many new items we’ve added to the catalog. It seems like the more we add, the more the list of items we need to add grows. Its like every project completed leaves 3 ideas for new projects.
This month we’ve added goggles, cuffs, spikes, belts, and also a free shipping promotion. It started as a one day promotion, but we’ve decided to continue it through Christmas. So, there it is Free Shipping worldwide from now until Christmas. In order to get your order by Christmas, you need to order by the 17th in the USA, and by the 6th internationally. You can order later and still get it by xmas if you want to pay the priority shipping, but that does get pretty steep, especially internationally. Its not too bad domestically – $20 or so for USPS Express 1 day. am I rambling?
Ok, so here’s where I list the new products.
At the time of the last post we had added the 2.5″ Industrial Cuff 2 with slots in black and silver. We added a black rub-off version of that, and also added a version with a grid of holes. The one with holes also comes in silver, black and black rub off. Heres a picture of the black rub off version

We’ve applied that same style to the 1.25″ cuffs as well, and so they now come in versions with slots and holes, also in silver, black, and black rub off. Here are a couple pictures of those:

We’ve added a new version of the 1.25″ cuff that is made from larger pipe, and is more of a standard round shape rather than the pill shape of the other cuff. I would like to add some type of feature to it and really make it one of our core products. Im still trying to decide what to add to it- a d-ring of some sort; a cut out; some type of nut and bolt stuck on it… I dont know yet. Anyhow this is how it looks at the moment:

If you follow the link, you’ll notice that they are also available in different colors like red and blue.

In an effort to reduce the cost of our belts, we have made our Pointed D rings out of Aluminum in addition to Stainless Steel. The Stainless ones are much heavier and more rugged of course, but also more expensive. And especially when you sell wholesale, and the retailer has to double the price, every dollar counts.

I actually dont have those D Rings up on the main site at the time of posting this, so Im going to link to them at the Etsy store. Here is a picture of the black ones though:

Boy, that’s a giant freaking photo….

Its going to be too large photo time for a little while because the next several items are also only up on the etsy site, and those are the photos Im linking in….

Maybe I wont put up pictures of all of the new belts we’ve added since the photos are giant. Basically we added a gothic belt in Black with the aluminum D’s, and one in silver with the Aluminum D’s. We also added a 5 D ring Belt in black with the aluminum D’s, and that one I will put up a picture of:

Let us now turn to the subject of Gothic Cyber Industrial Goggles shall we? At last post, we had added a pair of our new style with slots. We have since added a pair with holes, and also a pair with Slits. Slits are distinct from slots in that there are only one of them on each eye, going horizontally. They are kind of like the eskimo goggles that have been made for thousands of years to fend of snow blindness; and kind of like classic 1950′s robot eyes; and kind of like killer machine age cyber industrial goggles cut from solid Aluminum- take your pick.
Anyhow, we have also given the goggles a leather lining around the back to make them a little bit more comfortable of a fit against the face. Those also are only up at the etsy store at the moment, but should be on the regular site within a week or so.

Those come in silver and black of course.

The ones with Slots will have lining on them soon, and original ones, without the screw-on ring cover will probably be dropped from the catalog before too long in favor of the new kind.

We actually added 3″ cone spikes to the catalog at a customer request- so those are available:

Dont forget that we have gift cards on the website.

And that does it for this post. Thanks for all of the ideas and requests we get from customers keep them coming. Also please get in touch if you are interested in buying wholesale. You can start a new account with a small initial purchase to try our products out in your store.

Thanks as always for your interest in Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware – Ben C – Owner/designer

Hello from Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware,

This month has been a wild one – We try to come up with new products whenever we have a minute to spend time on it, and looking back over October, it seems we had more time on our hands than usual, because we added a handfull of new products to the catalog.

First, we made a new design for the the 2.5″ tall industrial cuff, and since Im not very good at coming up with clever names for every new item we make, its called “Industrial Cuff 2″.

The design is basically just like the 1.25″ tall cuffs we make, but extended to a 2.5″ tall cuff. Because of the oval shape, the cuff is too narrow to make  a large size cuff for a large wrist like we can with the original 2.5″ tall, but for a small or medium sized wrist, it has a more close fitting look than the other cuff.

We will add a black version of this cuff to the catalog, we just havent had a chance yet.

Next, we’ve taken this same new cuff, and added some industrial stylizing to it.

These cuffs are called “Industrial Cuff 2, Slots”  and “Industrial Cuff 2, Slots, Black.”    Yes, very imaginative I know.   Anyhow, they look cool, and thats the important thing.

We have also updated the look of our goggles. Please direct your attention to:

“Apocalypse Goggles 2, slots” and  “Apocalypse Goggles 2, Slots, Black” !

These are just the same as our other Apocalypse Goggles, but the cutouts in the center have been shrunk down slightly, and the screw-on cover piece has been added to the design to give the goggles a more chunky, industrial look.   Im sure we’ll add the ones with the holes too, and probably some with other designs cut into the front.

Ok, what else?     Looking around at other supplier of spikes and studs, I didnt see anyone that had a 1.5″ Brass tree spike in their line up, so, we jumped in to fill that niche. Here we have the 1.5″ tall Tree Spike, machined from Solid Brass:

I guess I need to add that one in Antique Brass as well. Anyhow, as far as I know they aren’t available elsewhere, so we’re happy to make them available here.

We modified our 1.5″ pyramid spikes to make some 1.5″ tall Claw Spikes in Silver and Black-  take a look at those here:

So,  those are exciting.  We also added a new belt using those spikes to the catalog. It is the Burgundy, Claw Spikes, Spike D Ring Belt, and you can see that here:

This actual belt is sitting right now at Free Radicals Punk Greaser and Gothic Shop here in beautiful Albuquerque New Mexico if your in the area and want to check it out.

What else what else……..

Oh,    We’ve added gift cards to the webstore as well. They are paypal gift cards and you set the amount. So they might make a good gift for someone this holiday season .

I guess thats about it and my 3 year old is anxious to go to the playground, so Id better wrap it up -   please contact us if you are interested in carrying our stuff in your store at wholesale prices.   Also feel free to contact us with custom requests.

Thanks a lot for your interest in Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware – Ben C- owner/designer/machinist

Hello all,

We are in the process of moving our blog from the blogger site, where it has been for the past year, to here.  This wordpress blog is quite a bit more complicated than the blogger blog setup it appears, so it may take a while to get it working correctly.  Basically we just need a place to post the latest info on whats going on with Gothic Punk Specialty Hardware, so it doesnt need to be super fancy.

Anyhow – Thanks for checking out the site and the blog -   Ben C- owner/designer/machinist