Packing & Shipping

Tom and I are just 4 days away from flying ouselves out to Thailand but our pots, now that's a different story. Before we even left the country, our adventure began. Here is a reason why one should plan, plan and then plan again... always leaving room for problems and new solutions.

Tom and I packed 2 large 3' x 3' x 3' crates filled with our vessels and tiles. The crates were built with plywood, and the interior was lined with 2" x 4" pine reinforcements. We also put two 2x4's underneath the outside of the crate as feet on the crate, so the forklift can pick it up. We delivered the crates last week to Nippon Express, our shipping company in Ohio.

Everything seemed to be fine until the shipper noticed our 2x4" pine wood feet under the crate. "Is that Heat-Treated wood?" he asked. "No." we said. Well, apparently what the shipper failed to tell us and what we did not know is that all crates going overseas must be constructed with heat-treated wood - so the countries receiving the packages can be ensured that no insects will come in through the wood. It is a safety mechanism no one told us about, despite dozens of phone calls back and forth.

And so, with 2 hours to spare before the company closed for the evening - Tom and I rushed over to Home Depot, purchased a reciprocating saw, drove back to the shipping company, and began sawing off the feet on the outside of the crate (Tom did most of the sawing!). The shipper thought it would raise a red flag and possibly stop our work from shipping to Bangkok, if we didn't take care of the untreated pine. And so we did. The shop closed at 5pm and by 5:30 (they were nice enough to stay open while we madly went about the task of sawing through the dozens of 3" screws holding the untreated wood to the outside of the crate). We then attached one of the shipper's plastic pallets to the crate so it could be lifted by a forklift.

What about the untreated 2x4 liners on the inside of the crate? We're hoping no one notices it while checking the contents and we don't have any problems... more importantly, we're hoping we have pots in Phuket in time for the exhibition.

And so, we gave ourselves several extra days to ship - and so far, we're needing it.

The next issue we're running into, we can't seem to get in touch with our representative in Bangkok who is suppose to clear our crates for us. Once crates arrive in the country, they need to be received by someone and cleared while authorities open the crates, read the inventory list and make sure you're shipping what you say. Our "clearing guy" stopped communicating with us and now we may have to clear the work ourselves, which adds another 3 day delay in getting the work to Phuket. Again, the exhitibt opens on Nov. 30th and we'll be in Bangkok on Nov. 24th - leaving us enough time to be our own clearer, if need be and still get the crates into yet another plane and shipped to the Island of Phuket.

We'll let you know how it goes!