Maybe they are getting greedy?
I believe Sandelving do consolidated shipping from Aircraft Spruce i.e. they bundle up orders for say a week and then get it all shipped on one big box, which with today’s crazy courier prices is a lot cheaper. And if they use air freight then they must do that; no way to ship anything small that way.
Incidentally Sandelving is not the first outfit to be reselling Spruce parts. LAS also used to do it, or still do it, but they always show it as “non stock”.
I use mostly LAS as the first choice, but many common parts they don’t carry so I use Saywell in Worthing, UK.
I came across this thread while googling for places to buy AN17 bolts…
I do buy a fair amount from aircraftspruce.eu, but mainly in smaller orders. In my experience they tend to be a little more expensive per unit than some other places, but the shipping makes the difference. For bigger orders I always buy elsewhere because they can’t compete.
However sometimes I have no idea what their pricing strategy is. This evening for example: I ordered several sizes of AN17 bolts, AN960 washers, MS21059 anchors nuts, and CCR264 rivets, from LAS… the aircraftspruce.eu price for just one size of AN17 bolt, excluding shipping, was more expensive than the entire order from LAS plus shipping to Germany.
A friend comments, “everybody owns one polished plane” (i.e. nobody buys a second!)
Once a year is OK, but I’d say 13 hrs assuming the wings are painted… There’s more surface area than the casual observer would believe.
I had a half-polished C140 in the US. We polished with nuvite.
That’s one job I don’t miss. A solid 8 hours of work every few weeks to polish just half of a very small aircraft! Those polished DC-3 Dakotas you see at OSH must need an army of polishers.
It’s a lot of work, but there is no need to polish more often than each year. It will become dulled down of course, but that does no harm other the looks. Then, a couple of days each winter, and it’s good to go.
I had a half-polished C140 in the US. We polished with nuvite.
That’s one job I don’t miss. A solid 8 hours of work every few weeks to polish just half of a very small aircraft! Those polished DC-3 Dakotas you see at OSH must need an army of polishers.
100% Nuvite S Grade + Cyclo polisher :
LeSving, if you can find a Cyclo polishing machine it’ll be useful when you get to grade S… but very expensive. I’d loan you mine but the shipping would be very expensive! Either way your arms are going to be tired.
Tungsten is the best stuff for balancing weights, it machines like iron and you can screw it in a tapped hole. But I digress…
Maybe you’ll need a 1 lb jar of Nuvite some day
I ordered a total of 2 lbs. 1 lb of grade F9 needed as the first run on 6061 sheets (non clad). Then 1/2 lb of C and finally 1/2 lb of S. Guess what I will do for some weeks 
But the result will be shiny indeed. I tried some painting, and I can only conclude I am no painter…
which is either minting it in Europe (easily done, on the back of the ripoff aviation parts distribution pricing here) or is not getting any reseller discount from the USA.
They are not the only one. LAS Aerospace have this on their web site:
LAS is the UK and European distributor for the well known American company Aircraft Spruce and Specialty.
We keep many popular items in stock and for everything else we have shipments leaving Aircraft Spruce almost every day. Items are usually delivered to your door within 5 working days subject to stock availability.
You can check price and availability of any spruce item by searching using their part number. Our prices include carriage from the US and import duties, so the price you see is the price you pay!
I have ordered some stuff from them as well, but they somehow manage to create larger shipping costs than from the US.
Some years ago I ordered Tungsten bucking bars. Tungsten (Wolfram) is a metal that is almost as heavy as gold, but hard as steel. These are extremely expensive, typically 200 dollars a piece, and 100 dollars in shipping cost. However, they are all made in China, where all the Tungsten in the world is made, and I ordered them there from the factory at 1/4 the price and zero shipping cost. The fact that they are cheap in China is understandable, but zero shipping cost? how do they do that?
Maybe you’ll need a 1 lb jar of Nuvite some day
Shipping cost can add up and it surely makes sense to combine orders on different items, especially from Europe, and even in the US. I can order from Aircraft Spruce and the stuff will be delivered the next day, but if you do that for every item individually as it comes to mind the shipping cost adds up. Its still less than flying to the store though 
