joiner desert??

[Dave Plowman (News)]

^^^^^^^^^^^

Should have read 'and don't attempt'

[Mike]

Well unless he's using the soon to be closed Luxemburg loophole I can't see how he can legally reduce the NI below the type 2 and type 4 cap if you are earning well above the limit. Of course in the old days you paid the wife and took the money in dividends but that's all been blown out by our Scottish 'friend' in #11.

[Mike]

Why not ? If that's the going rate for one's services and people are willing to pay it what's the problem. After all, Kate Moss charges around £10,000 per hour and one presumes she still gets clients at this rate.

[tony sayer]

Me neither, but our "learned friends" can, and do ,get away with a bloody sight more then that!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That's because they have a very effective trade union and are allowed all sorts of restrictive practices.

[Mike]

So if the tradesman can ask for and get the same without the benefit of a closed shop, why is there a problem. Provided he does a professional job I say charge what you can get. That's what capitalism is all about.

[Capitol]

Top posting to make a point is perfectly acceptable IMO. Only the usenet pedants object!!

Capitol

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

[Capitol]

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Get into the real world. Look at the turnover. The cost per job is quite low. The reason that servicing costs are so high is that the dealer can only make a profit on service, not on sales, as the sales margins are too low relative to the over heads. Only last week, I was discussing the problem with a dealer, who had been asked to invest £5M in glossy premises to continue to sell a brand. he told the manufacturer where to go, as the profit margins were so low, he'd sooner sell secondhand cars. Glossy reception areas do not make a servicing operation. Service and competence does. Most makes of car can be electrically serviced with a laptop computer, a few leads and third party software. The chipping industry is fully up to speed with the manufacturers, probably even ahead of them, partly because they don't bother with ISO 9000 paperwork as the product actually works. Very few special mainstream manufacturers tools cannot be supplied by third party suppliers at a fraction of the price. Servicing at many main dealerships can be significantly less competent than the experienced mobile mechanic.I've never noticed that changing the oil or adjusting the tappets etc requires that much equipment(the mechanic frequently supplies his own tools as he knows what's crap and what isn't)! We're back to joiners, if a large company supplies the joiner it's at least 4X the wage rate paid to the employee and you have no guarantee that the product will work! The jobbing joiner is only as good as the next job he can complete satisfactorily. If he fails, he's likely to be unemployable!

I'm worried, are you developing IMM tendencies?!! LOL

Regards Capitol

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well yes. But not whinge on a newsgroup about not being able to charge what they think they're worth.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Err, have you been following the thread? It's not about the pros and cons of garages. It's about a chippie claiming he has the same outgoings as a main dealer, and should be able to charge the same sort of money.

[Mike]

I think this is fast becoming uk.whinge anyway :-)

[Andy Dingley]

Well in my book, a "joiner" is someone who works from their workshop, and a "carpenter" is someone who goes on-site.

I'm looking for work, as I'm trying (and to be honest, failing) to get established as a furniture maker (If I cost more than Ikea, that's pretty much end of story for most clients). As I still have my bills to pay, I'm perfectly happy to go and do some decent simple work for a reasonable rate for that job. The fact that I _can_ make boulle work doesn't mean I should get sniffy about lap jointed softwood, if that's all that's needed.

Yet if I try and tout myself around builders, they're supremely uninterested in employing me. The ideal candidate is 23, strong, fit and thick. Most on-site building work is _not_ rocket science, and they don't have any need for someone who can do something they simply have no demand for - and why should they ?

I was offered a job recently, by a kitchen fitting company who'd gone so far as to look at some of my own work - inch thick solid oak cabinet tops, and a decent piece of work it was too. Then the guy offered me £6/hour ! (Lidl offer over £7 for shelf stacking).

I don't particularly _want_ to be a jobbing on-site carpenter or light builder. I don't have a van, I have my own money in my big workshop tools (so I'd like to make them work for me), and the last thing I need is to have to kit out a rolling workshop as well, so that I'm equipped to do anything and everything from glazing to roofing to floor sanding. I don't particularly want to be a sole trader on that basis either - there's a lot of overhead behind that yellow pages listing, the always-answered phone, and the good response that the OP was finding so sadly lacking.

So in a market when the simplest on-site carpentry work is making more profit for a builder than anything awkward, complicated, and with a resident customer looking over your shoulder, then can we be surprised if no-one wants to do the sort of joinery the OP is after ? The builders have better things to do, maintenance for commercial or "corporate" residential pays better than individuals, and anyone trying to do it on their own finds that the money on offer is basically insulting.

I'm also a skilled Java / J2EE developer, in a market that's pretty moribund for 40 year olds (hence the furniture). I've probably put more effort into learning what I know about furniture than I have software. The rewards for one are vastly more than the other, but the skill levels are no different.

[jacob]

Andy

I had exactly the same problem and started off not quite knowing what I'd be doing - I bought a box of blum hinges (only ever used 4 in the end) and MDF etc expecting to do kitchens or whatever. Got jobs doing all sorts of joinery work slowly but perfectly which people seemed to find a bit eccentric. Infact someone said recently that he'd been to someones house and he had had pointed out the curved skirting boards with the perfect mitres and scribes which I had done years ago. Did some crap work too - you can only learn by doing it! But then by chance I got in to period joinery and just specialised in that alone and didn't do anything else at all. Got loads of work and made a bit of a living.

it's a rapidly growing sector with lots of demand and shortage of skills. Leave all the crap work (and the crap clients) to the cowboys. So specialising might be your way forward - stick to a limited repertoire and become expert in that. I'm hoping to start anew when I've finished current project - chapel conversion, but with furniture instead of joinery, and have one or two particular things in mind which I hope to specialise in

cheers

Jacob

[Mike]

Odd. In my book a joiner comes to my house to do repairs whereas a carpenter makes things for me in his workshop.

Great thing the English language :-)

[Andy Wade]

In mine the carpenter is someone who does mostly framing and carcassing work using sawn timber whilst the joiner makes and fixes 'joinery' - doors, windows, etc., working generally to a finer scale of precision.

Carpenters work mostly on site, except perhaps for traditional timber-framers who have a 'fraymin place' for pre-fabricating frames for later reassembly on site. Joiners in larger firms will tend to be bench joiners (workshop based) or journeymen, working on site. In a smaller set-up they'll do both shop and site work.

[Mike]

Jesus's dad was a carpenter and he made furniture. One would presume this was in his own premises.

[Andy Dingley]

The use of "joinery" (orig. "joynery") for fixed "trim" work is of a later date, roughly when timber panelling began to be used. It was to make a distinction between joiners and cabinetmakers, not carpenters.

(ref. Cescinsky)

Joinery was originally) a furniture making term, the making of "joined" panels with a frame and central panel, as opposed to earlier boarded or clamped work.

(ref, Hayward)

A joiner also uses a plane at a bench, whilst a carpenter originally used neither (they'd use an adze instead).

(ref Goodman)

If we were to take descriptions of Jesus as a guide, then Mel Gibson's film version (hyper-accurate Aramaic and all) portrayed him using a type of screw-vice bench that's first known from a Nuremberg engraving of 1505.

[Stefek Zaba]

Yeah well, that's long enough ago for Hollywood.

All these Historical films - as my daughter explained recently - are set in the same place. That place is called Yore. It's where all of that Old Stuff happens. And it's probably why Yore-up is called Yore-up, 'cause it's summin' to do with Yore.

Y'see?