I need to weld an exhaust and since my regular welder is 1780 km away, excluding the 60 hour ferry ride, I decided it was a good time to purchase another welder. Having heard the Binky partners speak well of Sip Industries I decided to check them out. Apparently things are (like Nik has suggested before in a different context) a bit different in the real world from voice-over-land. But the beginning looked nice. Googling "Sip welding equipment" gave me sipuk.co.uk and they had nice a little number that I put directly into the cart and proceeded to check out. But, oh no, Sipuk (like the name actually suggests) only does business in the UK. No shipping address available outside of the European Quitters Country Club. I'll freely admit that I was mildly disappointed.
But I refused to give up there and after some persuasion Google suggested Sip-group.com as viable alternative. The only problem was that the Tig welder that Sipuk was selling was not available at Sip-group. #headscratch. Well I am not telling the full truth here. There is another problem. Sip-group does not believe in informing customers of the price of their products, probably to reduce the load on their sales team. Well, it worked, I closed the browser on that website. I guess they have simply had too much sales lately, after they started sponsoring the Binky project.
Now, there was something that was nagging me about the neat little number that Sipuk had me lusting after. It had almost looked familiar in a weird sort of way, something was nagging me in back of my brain. A while later, when I was looking at the webpage of the supplier of my old welder I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. Hmm, that looks naggingly familiar I thought. I then spent the time I needed to drink a whole cup of tea while comparing photos and came to the conclusion that, apart from the colour, many of the Sip welders bear uncanny resemblance to Telwin welders. They are so much alike you might think they were twins, separated at birth. 
On Saturday I'll be driving to nearby adult toy store (not that kind) and having a look at a nice Telwin welder.