Woodworking Goal

[Prometheus]

Reminds me of that Steinbeck novel "Tortilla Flat", where the guy was building the perfect boat on shore, and never got it sailing because he was afraid of the water... :)

[Ba r r y]

That might be a local thing.

I'm in the same area as Mike, and there's some pretty tasteful work in these parts. We're between NYC & Boston, two cities that contain plenty of taste AND money. Both cities have just a pinch of influence on the world of fashion and design, with a great appreciation for classic form.

If you watch the "current work" section of FWW, you'll see terrific examples of classically styled work on a regular basis from the Northeastern US. This includes Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.

Barry

[mac davis]

recreational boat: hole in the water designed to pour money into. DAMHIK

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Bill]

To --sell-- to Tom Plamann for his personal use and for far more than he intended to pay.

[Robatoy]

When I hit 50, I took aim at winding down my workaholic lifestyle. Workshop and workers to the left, customers and the regulation (tax, safety, workman's comp, insurance, bankers, accountants, suppliers and weasels) to the right...and Rob in the middle. A continuous act of putting out fires, starting new ones and always running into-and setting deadlines. I hadn't turned on a piece of equipment on in a few years. That corporate treadmill already cost me two marriages and I was burnt out and freshly divorced. I had it up to here with the bullshit. Sad part was... nobody to blame. I couldn't even take a vacation without my cell/satellite/internet connections. Even a 10,000 mile trip in 1999 to Australia wasn't far enough from the rat-race.

But it was on the way back from the Great Ocean Road through the Otways rain-forest in a pub in the town of Forest, that I had a few pints with a few locals that it sank in. I actually caught myself relaxing... what the hell.. my plane wasn't leaving for another 2 weeks... When I came back to Canada, I set the wheels in motion to liquidate my assets to start all over. I had to cut clean. Sept 2003 I went out the laneway from the shop and retired.... well... semiretired. My new lady-friend at the time made the effort to show me around her province, The Cabot Trail, seafood, beer and people similar to those I met in Oz. Laid back. Many people come by it naturally. I had to acquire the skill of being laid back. Piddling around in my garage/workshop (then empty) allowed me to think. I LIKED working with my hands, using my head. I could whip up a solid surface countertop in my sleep... the money is good.. so I decided to fund the growth of a woodworking shop entirely from the proceeds of my solid surface sales. So far so good.

30 years of millwork experience on all levels has left me with enough experience not to do foolish things. I do continue to slap myself when I ohh-and-ahhhed at that General 24"(?) Heavy Duty Industrial planer with the serrated feedrollers that David Eisen at Federated Tools showed me a few days ago...

Perspective and therapy.... and a project plan. What to build first? I'm working on a new cherry headboard, then what? Was thinking about Harley Davidson rocking horses..there are no plans I like, so I'm drawing away.. I could easily make a 100 of those and make some money

*SLAP*

[Tom Watson]

I was only able to make nice stuff because I lived in an area with a lot of wealthy people in it. The Main Line area contains several of the richest zip codes in the country.

For the last fifteen years that I was in business I never worked in a house that was worth less than a million dollars and most of them were in the three to seven million range.

The work you can do is driven by the market that is available to you.

My business model, if you could call it such, was simple.

I wanted to do all the work, including marketing, designing, selling and producing. I wanted to have a life that didn't take a lot of money to run. I didn't want employees.

The marketing was done by getting to know which builders and architects were involved in my target market. A letter of inquiry, followed by a visit with portfolio in hand was the next step. Most cautious builders and architects will try you out on a smallish project, which I would discount until I was running close to cost.

Once you're in, if you are a one man shop, you have to find a way to handle all the work that a busy design/build firm can throw at you. If you can't they'll start looking for someone else.

Since I wanted to be a hands on sole proprietor, this problem could get dicey.

Eventually, I found that I was better off not trying to handle all the needs of a company and started to solicit only special projects, allowing a lot of the bread and butter work to go to others.

Towards the end I was only doing word of mouth work for individual homeowners - because that was all that I could handle.

Had I been interested in growing a business, this would have been insane, but that isn't what I wanted.

I knew too many guys who had started out as good mechanics and wound up growing a business monster that needed constant feeding. They spent too much of their time trying to feed the monster.

The design work started out as a necessary chore but became one of my favorite parts of the business. I learned it on the fly by stealing bits and pieces of the good drawings that I would get from architects and designers. Later I spent a good deal of time reading and studying designs from the classical era on.

My area has a lot of people who want a very traditional look in their homes. On the other end of the scale are those who want only modern stuff. I happened to get typecast as one of the traditional guys, which was partly a result of the market and partly that of personal temperament. It is almost always the case that a shop will get known for a particular kind of work and this becomes their niche.

When you have a niche and the beginnings of a repeating client base, you are really in business.

When I would begin to get a little bored with another run of base units and bookcases, with the same details as the last few projects, I would try to find a job where the customer would let me play a little bit.

I did a lot of design drawing that went into overhead but wound up paying off in sales. Sometimes I would like the design so much that I would sharpen my pencil enough to get the price to where the customer would have been crazy not to take the deal.

Oddly enough, these jobs often wound up being very profitable because they would lead to additional work - at better margins.

I don't know what to say about selling. I often thought that customers felt comfortable with me because we had similar educational and cultural backgrounds. I think a lot of them thought of me as a charming anachronism - a hippie carpenter who never went corporate.

On the production side, I wanted to take everything from rough lumber to finish and installation. Eventually I made certain compromises and would buy out prefinished doors, drawer fronts and door boxes, if the time demands were too great. When I realized how I was being taken away from my vision of what I wanted to do, I slowed down and started making it all myself again.

Once I turned fifty I started to have a number of physical problems with things like bad knees, a chancy back and a good bit of arthritis here and there.

I knew that I had to back off on the work load and was gearing up to turn the business into a pure one off furniture shop, with a mix of items that would be built on spec, mixed in with commissioned work. I was hoping to do a fifty fifty split between the two, with an idea of growing the spec business to a point where I was well enough known that I could increase my margins and reduce my hours on the shop floor.

A visit to the doctor, who said that I was looking at twin knee replacements within a short time, if I didn't get off my feet, convinced me to get off the shop floor.

Most guys that I know who have small shops work about sixty to seventy five hours a week. About fifty or sixty of that is spent on the shop floor.

Now I spend about forty to fifty hours a week, mostly at a computer, or dealing with client contact, with some visits to the production facilities to see how things are going. I have better health benefits, a better retirement program and make more money than I did in most years of running the shop.

Had I decided to make my one man shop into an actual business, I would have had to mortgage the house, move out of the 1200 sq footer that I'm in, into larger quarters, buy different equipment, hire people (a very difficult problem), and spend all of my waking hours running a business.

I decided to go help run a little piece of someone else's business.

The cool thing is that I get to make whatever the hell I want now - as soon as I finish the exterior trim on the house, the painting, the new fence, refinish the hardwood floors, plumb the new bathroom, etc. - which I never had time to do when I was working for myself.

As JOAT often remarks, "Life is basically good."

If you want to work with your hands, as I did - I think that's great - but remember that you will age and that you might not always be able to do what is easy for you to do today.

If you are any good, it is actually pretty easy to grow a business - what is hard is not having it grow to overtake your whole life.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Thanks for the story, Tom. It is nice to like your work as much as you did. Your last comment shows a lot of wisdom.

[Tom Watson]

"All I wanna do is have some fun

And I get the feeling

I'm not the only one..."

(apologies to Ms. Crow)

I want to take all of the elements of the furniture that I have seen over the last many years and synthesize them into a few pieces that reflect the history of those items that I respect the most - and give these pieces away to the people that I love - in the hope that they will keep them and treasure them forever.

I want to build the most perfect tall case clock, that has a traditional look and feel but is unique in its design to a degree that it can't be thought of as a copy - and I want the person I give it to keep it forever.

I want to learn to carve as well and as sweetly as Mike Hide does.

I want to build a modified version of the classic knee hole Goddard Townsend Desks, to be used as night tables in my bedroom.

I want to develop the pleasant personality of Norm, the phlegmatic approach to the work of Dave Marks and the apparent insensitivity to pain of Roy Underhill.

I want my son to get tall enough so that he can work at the tablesaw without fear that a kickback would take his head off.

I want to make a cherry tall chest with a crotch figure for the doors

- that I am still searching for.

I hope that I don't die before I get to build my Herreshoff skiff.

I've recently come to want to build a new version of my old carpenter's tote box, with nice wood and joinery, well above its station, to give to my son as a twelfth birthday present (he's eight - there is still time).

I want to live long enough to see the wooddorking magazines back off of the 'how to do' stuff and allow a little room for the poetry of wooddorking.

I want Tommy Plamman's new shop.

I want to learn how to turn wood so thin that you can damned near read a newspaper through it.

I want to sell my Leigh and be able to see well enough to sharpen my dovetail saws.

I want Keeter and O'Deen to come back to the Wreck.

I wish that I was twenty five again, so that I could do everything over that I have already done.

As Momma used to say, "If wishes were horses - beggars would ride."

Still, it's the wishing and the wanting that keeps us moving forward and, like our cartilaginous cousins, the sharks, if'n we stop moving forward - we sink to the bottom and die.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Dave Balderstone]

Nice list, Tom.

I just want to build a piece that doesn't have some stupid mistake that I pray nobody sees.

;-)

djb

[Tom Watson]

Thanks for the kind words, Dave.

As to the wish for perfection -

I've adopted a modified version of the concept of The Persian Flaw.

As it was related to me, Persian rug makers, although capable of creating a perfect rug, would include an intended flaw, so as not to give offence to The Only Perfect Being.

I call my implementation a modified version because I know damned well that I have not and probably never will produce a flawless piece - yet I take succor from the humility expressed by those more capable.

You may notice that I used the word, "probably" - I haven't quite given up yet.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Lew Hodgett]

RE: Subject AKA Operating your own business.

I am reminded of a fraternity brother of mine who one day, quit his job, borrowed $5K and started a consulting engineering business that over the next 10 years made a ton of money.

Along came CAD, he didn't choose to invest, began losing customers, and ultimately closed the business.

We were having lunch one day and I asked him why he closed the business.

His answer was a classic, IMHO.

I got sick and tired of having to go to the bathroom and hold everybody's wiener every time they wanted to take a leak.

I understood.

Lew

[Tom Watson]

Thanks Edwin - Wouldn't it be nice if wisdom would grow on the one plate of the scale without us having to balance it with life's lumps on the other?

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Dave Balderstone]

I did say "stupid" mistake.

;-)

Some years back I had a copy of the "Monty Python Bok", actually, the "Paper Bok" 'cause it was in softcover. One of the pages in the "Bok" announced:

"Find the Deliferate Mistale!

Yes, somewhere on this page, there is a deliferate mistale!..."

etc.

The deliferate mistale. That's what I aspire to.

[Tom Watson]

Hiring good people is the hardest thing that you can do in a business

- as far as I know.

I got out of the construction business, which I was doing pretty well in, to go into the shop and work by myself. I was real tired of the people problems.

Swingman seems to have a handle on it and maybe he'll chime in. Seems like he just builds a little bit each year and keeps some time out to do those things that he enjoys.

He must have damned good subs that he's worked with for a good bit of time.

A buddy of mine always says, "Hell, the making is easy - it's the people that make it hard."

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Tom Watson]

I think that all mistakes are stupid.

I can't recall one mistake (in or out of wooddorking) that I couldn't have avoided.

Regarding Those Pythons:

I rented this day copies of The Holy Grail and The Life Of Brian to spring on my unsuspecting thirteen year old daughter.

Some might call this an attempt at the transmittal of culture.

I actually just wanted to give her a case of the Sillies.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[gary]

For some, buying a boat is the two happiest days of their lives; the day they bought it and the day they sold it.

Gary

[Norman D. Crow]

I know everybody has already heard this, but . .

Definition of a boat . . . "A hole in the water, into which you pour money".

Daughter & SIL just bought a 26' cruiser w/Mercruiser V8 that has suddenly developed a bad case of "not gonna go". Can't get more than 2800RPM out of it. He'll eventually get, but it's supremely frustrating(and costly).

[Norman D. Crow]

You want to have another chance? I think you just want to avoid living like the rest of us . . "I have to learn from other people's mistakes, I don't have time enough to make them all myself".

[gary]

As a newbie and a hobbyist, my goal is to seek praise (and avoid snickers at my screw-ups) from SAMBA and anyone else who sees what I've made. I think about this all the time, "Loops, screwed up, what will people say?" "Neat-of, bet I get lots of compliments on this project." Making money from this hobby is furthers from my mind... maybe when I get better and quicker?

So far I've made cabinets for SAMBA and mother-in-law, and blue bird houses for a Church fund raiser. Oh , and a few jigs and cabinets for my shop. And I built my own house, I suppose that qualifies as woodworking.

Gary

Gary

[gary]

SAMBA??? Where the heck did that come from? Lion King? Please replace with SWMBO.

Gary