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A man calls his wife at home. A strange woman answers.
He asks "Who IS this?"
The woman replies "This is the maid"

He says "We don't have a maid!"
The maid says "I was just hired this morning".
The man responds "I'd like to speak to my wife please!"
The maid says "She's upstairs in bed with a man that I assumed was her husband".

The husband is furious. He asks the maid "Would you like to make $50,00?"
"Sure" replied the maid. "What do I have to do?"
"Just go in my closet, get my gun, and shoot them both right between the eyes"

The man hears the maid put the phone down. He hears footsteps as she walks upstairs. Then he hears two gunshots. Then the maid picks up the phone.

"OK, it's done. What do you want me to do with the bodies?"
The man says "Dump them in the swimming pool"

The maid asks "What pool?"
The man replies "Oh uh-h-h-h..........Is this 741-395-1509?"

Putting silly superstitions aside, many upholsterers encourage their customers to shop the thrift stores for an older, higher quality second-hand piece and then have it recovered. Or see if Grandma has an oldie but a goodie she's willing to part with.

Great idea in theory. But much of well built furniture from the 50's, 60's, and 70's is now either at the landfill, or on it's 3rd-4th cycle of life. The thrift store pickings are getting slimmer every year.

I've heard upholsterers say "I don't work on this new junk. I only work on well-built older pieces". I don't see how they can base the future of their career on a constantly vanishing market.

And as for antiques, I'm just not sure that the pieces being built today will still be around long enough to someday be considered an antique.

Planned obsolescence may eventually be the ruin of our trade.

The alarm went off at the prison where a midget inmate was trying to escape.
One of the guards said to his captain "Look! That midget is climbing down the outside of the fence"

The captain said "Well........that's a little con descending".

Hey Doc -  glad you're stopping by - heck with that facebook site - come here more often  !
SA

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I still check in almost every day. There's just not much going on here anymore.

If you have the room - There must be some value holding onto a specialty machine like this ?  To me if I was a client and saw this apparatus sitting in the shop I would think you've been around the block a few times. Some restorers fill their shops for imaging with molding planes, glue pots, wood screw clamps, and miter boxes they never use but when a client comes in they believe this  guy / gal is a classical restorer. 
There's not one of them that won't first reach for a router, yellow glue,  Bessy clamps and the chop box first -
SA

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Even if you do have the room, it's still difficult to justify the space it takes up. No client would even know or care what it was.

A police officer spots a man driving down the street with his car loaded with penguins.
The officer pulls him over and says "You need to take those penguins to the zoo". The man says that he will comply with the officer's order.

The next day, the policeman sees the same man driving through town with the same load of penguins.
He pulls him over again and says "I thought I told you yesterday to take those penguins to the zoo!"

The man replies "I did........and today I'm taking them to the movies".

Mine takes up an enormous amount of room, and I absolutely never use it. I keep thinking that I'll find someone close by to take it off my hands (free). It isn't worth the cost to ship anywhere. It's totally useless for thick foam cushions.

Paul's chart is dead on. But he listed some welt sizes that I've never stocked.

I stock 4/32  5/32  6/32  8/32  10/32  welt cord.

For those sizes, I use 3/16  1/4  5/16  3/8  1/2  feet.

I sew my welt to the plate first, then add boxing.

NY passed a bill outlawing declawing your cat.

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It was probably the textile industry that lobbied to get that law passed.

Poking around on Youtube, I've watched a fair amount of "How-To" upholstery videos. Some pretty good, some not so good. Most of them tend to either rapidly gloss right over the tricky parts, or they dwell on the boring mundane parts far too long. I just don't have the attention span to fight through them.

For 20 years, I've been hearing about all the manufacturing that went to China coming back here again. I hear about it, but never see anything significant really happening. A few factories will occasionally pop up, but they usually fail (again). 

The tariffs imposed on Chinese imports will only force China to start producing even cheaper, crappier goods than they are now.

American consumers want a new couch for $500. American factory workers don't want to work for a wage that would be conducive to producing a $500 couch. So a void exists. Chinese factories are more than happy to fill that void.

The younger generation does NOT want their furniture to "last a lifetime". They really really don't. Say what you will about our economy today compared to what it was 50 years ago. But for whatever reason, Americans today have WAY more disposable income than they did in the 60's. And they LOVE to dispose of it.

The old "trade only" suppliers continue to dry up, and get replaced by online suppliers that will sell to anyone.

Some see the glass half empty. Some see it half full. Either way, all you have is half a glass.

A woman asks her husband "What would you like for breakfast? Bacon and eggs? Pancakes?"
The man replied "Sorry, I'm just not very hungry. It's the . I just don't have an appetite".

At lunch, she asks again "How about a sandwich? Or maybe we could order a pizza?"
Again, the husband tells her that the  has suppressed hi appetite.

Later that evening, she says "Well surely you're ready to eat supper. How about steak and potatoes with a big slice of apple pie?"
The husband responds "Sorry, but I'm still not hungry. This  has just totally killed my appetite".

The wife then says "Well would you mind getting off me then? I'm starved!"

I still do several of them a year. But it's rare that I get a good quality heavy one. Most of the ones I get in are actually lighter than a regular sofa (once the mattress is removed).

Tommy was in danger of failing his college English class.

He had a big essay due at the end of the week, that would determine whether he passed or failed the course.
His professor suggested that he buy a Thesaurus to help punch up his essay.

He received a big fat F on his essay. His professor asked him why.

Tommy said "I didn't have enough money to buy a good thesaurus, so I bought a cheap one. Not only was it terrible, it was also terrible".

A man boards a city bus, and takes a seat right next to a woman who is breast feeding her baby.

The baby is being extremely fussy, and won't take the breast milk. The woman tells her baby "If you don't take it, I'm going to give it to this man sitting here".

The baby continues to fuss and refuse the breast milk, and again she warns "OK, if you won't take it, I'm going to give it to this man".

Finally the woman has had enough of the fussing and says "This is the last time I'm going to tell you......"

The man interrupts her and says "Lady, I wish you would make up your mind. I was supposed to get off 3 stops ago".