A few years back, I was deep into a Land Rover project — and running up against the same wall every rural NZ tinkerer knows well. Local custom machining is expensive, and a one-off part can cost more than the job's worth. I felt it again building a Suzuki DR350 scrambler, paying $300 for a set of custom fuel tank mounts I could've drawn up myself.

Then, on a work trip, I got talking with Jonny — an engineer who builds things like motorcycle engines from scratch, and who also happens to own a Land Rover. Somewhere between swapping project stories, he mentioned a way to get precision parts machined overseas for a fraction of the local cost. I'd never heard of it. He rated the quality without hesitation.

That's when it clicked: imagine it's 1960. You send a drawing overseas, and three weeks later a beautifully machined part turns up at a third of the local cost. To an old-school workshop still running on paper invoices and a healthy dose of scepticism, that would look like magic.

So that's what we do. We maintain relationships with vetted international machinists, and Jonny checks every file and every part before it ships to you. I run the business, he runs quality — between us, we handle the sourcing, the logistics, and the accountability, so you just get the part in the post. We're trying to make good machining affordable for the thinkers, tinkerers, engineers, machinists, and students who need it.