The Professional Furniture Maker and The Hobbyist Furniture Maker
Got on a ?watch videos of pro furniture makers showing you techniques? kick and began noting how they do things versus how hobbyists do things. While the end results may be similar, or In some cases identical, the pro and the hobbyist are two distinctly different beasts.
Here?s the differences I?ve got down so far. Feel free to add those you?ve discovered.
The pro makes his/her living from furniture making so Time is Money.
The hobbyist makes furniture for fun/ therapy so time isn?t all that important. The money part of the equation may or may not be a factor. =============================
The pro makes furniture for customers.
The hobbyist makes things for himself/herself or perhaps a spouse, significant other, family member or for friends. =============================
The pro is in the shallower part of the learning curve as far as furniture making goes. The business side may be a different story.
The hobbyist Is in the steeper part of the learning curve for furniture making but doesn?t have to worry about any business end. =============================
The pro will spend semi-big bucks on a piece of equipment that will significantly increase productivity (read make more money by increasing productivity than spent on the equipment to do so). However, she/he is less apt to succumb to impulse buying slick doo-dads and or forking over money for a neat-o-spiral-cutting- filigree-making-laser guided tool or machine.
The hobbyist ?will make do with what he/she has? when it comes to big ticket items and agonize for months over Brand A vs Brand B and the hundred dollar difference between the price of the two ?final candidates?. YET - he/she will often buy hundreds and hundreds of dollars of ?look how pretty this thing is? and ?that?s cool - I?m sure I?ll find something to do with it? items.
(NOTE: The pro knows, or is acquainted with, a lot more woodworkers than the typical hobbyist. As a result, the pro is far more apt to pick up tools and equipment USED for less than half the price of NEW - and they?ll be on the high end of the quality, fit & finish and capabilities range. The pro seldom buys doo-dads - unless she/he knows the investment will yield a good return - or thinks it will.) =============================
The pro has developed a set of designs - four or five of the major pieces of furniture - chair, table, cabinet, dresser etc. - with several variations of each. He/she has a fairly clear mental image of what goes where and how, and knows what the finished piece will look like because he/she has made several of this item before.
The hobbyist hasn?t found a style and a set of proportions - yet. Since each piece, for her/him, is unique and exists only as a semi-general/ semi-specific mental image, the details of the components are often vague, coming into focus only as the parts are laid out, cut and set next to each other. =============================
The pro has made full scale templates of the major components of each of his/her best sellers as well as a few personal favorites. Some of the templates are designed to be used with a specific piece of machinery - a shaper, router table, router, etc.. The hobbyist, if he/she is methodical, lays out the components of the piece ?on the bench?, right on the stock being used. Being uncertain if his/her ideas will result in a finished piece that is worth doing again, by the time dry fitting answers some of the ?is this worth doing again??, parts have been shaped and dry fitted. At that point, making good basic templates is gone since there may no longer be a flat face or a square edge. =============================
Once the wood is in the shop, the pro doesn?t see it in terms of dollars per board foot. Its type, dimensions, color and grain become far more important than its initial price. Cut-offs are waste, to be disposed of. Ironically, for internal ?won?t show? parts a pro will spend time getting the most parts out of a given board.
The hobbyist initially tries to utilize every square foot of each board foot because $/bf, rather than grain direction and grain pattern, is more important. Cut-offs are treasures to be stored away for some future masterpiece. Hobbyists are Silas Marner when it comes to wood, not so much because of the beauty of the wood, but rather all those bucks spent on each board foot. =============================
The pro will have thousands of board feet of wood in the shop or a shed, much of it rough milled 4/4, 6/4, 8/4 and maybe some 12/4. The pro will spend some time milling what she/he needs when needed, knowing that properly milled stock is a key to parts that will fit together properly later.
The hobbyist usually won?t have a lot of wood ?just sitting around? in racks and what he/she does have was probably bought already dimensioned and sanded. Very little time will be spent even checking to see if a board is flat, the edges square to the face and straight - UNTIL it causes a problem or twelve later. Only then will awareness that wood moves set in and stock preparation become important. Most stock will enter the shop as 1/2 or 3/4 inch thickness. =============================
The pro has developed an efficient ?rough stock to finished piece? procedure, making all the cuts a given set up/ operation will do on ALL the parts that use this set up/operation. This not only saves time but also eliminates or minimizes matching parts that don?t in fact match. One chair or table leg that?s just a smidge shorter or longer than the others will make a difference later.
The hobbyist is often an example of Brownian Motion - do this, do that and then go back and do this again. The result can be ?matching parts? that don?t - in the worse case, a table with 16 and 7/16th inch legs .=============================
The pro sands to 180, sometimes to 220.
The hobbyist sands to 400, sometimes to 1000 - wet/dry of course and may continue on to 00000000 steel wool. =============================
The pro settles on one or two finishes and stick with them for just about everything but tints/stains to even out sapwood/heartwood differences. The objective is to get a durable finish on the piece that?s fast drying, low maintenance and looks nice. Returns and refinishing them is a money loser so when a piece leaves the shop it should never return.
The hobbyist has shelves and shelves of bottles, jars and cans of shellac, varnish, lacquers, tung oil, linseed oil, boiled linseed oil, walnut oil, teak oil, danish oil, poly and Bubba?s Secret Concoction with a box full of foam brushes. He/she is willing to use a finish that takes a week to dry between coats. =============================
For most pros, furniture making is work, at times fun, but mainly work.
For most hobbyists, furniture making is fun, at times work, but mainly fun. =============================
charlie b