[bertha32]

I've done real wood boxes that are as smooth and bright as a reflection, with the feed looking amazing when the mild hit's it. Next season I'll be enjoying around with using a 2-pack design shine over the Danish Oil to see how that goes for some really high-wear items, I believe it should perform excellent.


fashion | womens clothing

[jm82792]

Things continue to sell (not that it's enough to live off but things continue to improve), today I broke the routine and sold in person.
During a sale I had several people taking second looks at my work that was on a small food court table in Costco while I was trying to sell myself. During that time a lady came over to the table to look at what I'm peddling to the buyer. Just before her arrival I was telling the buyer about where I'm at pricing wise, that what I make is rather high quality, and overall this stuff does sell. The lady came in a minute after that, told me she worked for a gallery, and that I need to come down there since they get requests for what I make all the time. That's a rather nice thing to have happen since most galleries aren't hospitable. I need to go down there and see what happens sometime soon, it's two hours away, and Costco along with the rest of shopping is 1.5 hours away

I was trying to finish some stuff on the morning of my departure, I had some "interesting" occurrences, and now I'm trying to fix them. There were some pieces that needed some holes bored for magnets (used to hang the pieces onto flush set screws on your drywall), and it's rather easy to drill nice holes in thin 3d profiled pieces of wood with spiral drilled pockets on the machine. So I went out to my shed, the computer wouldn't start (and I tripped the GFI a few times before I saw the obvious), and there was a lovely burnt smell in the case.
So I had the fun task of using a hand drill and dremel to do several holes in $900 of wood work which was 1/4" thin in some area. Surprisingly the magnets were flush and with calipers I knew where I was depth wise.,
In the end the PSU in the PC probably died from the dust and fried my stepper drivers since my steppers arne't locking up. The replacement PC (an older atom board) was operating the XY axis decently, then they stopped, and now it's not working.
I did solder the THB6064 well but it's enclosure was poor, and I don't want to bother with them again (soldering, getting an enclosure and other time wasters for a business) although they did me very well. I'm guessing I'll spend half my day of successful sales on a G540 that I just order, a nice enclosure, premade cables, and two spare steppers.

All of this is an interesting learning experience for me (failures are what you learn from and not success it seems). I'm definitely learning that less DIY is better for many things that I've considered doing myself. I have a decent amount of work I can't do so I'm hoping to satiate the orders I have with an appology and a discount...

The next thing I'm buying to keep myself from derailing again is a Microcarve MV3 frame so I'll have two machines with identical components.
Then I need to get a subpanel or 220 out to the shed since I'm barely able to run a planar on the 15 amp circuit.
I also should expand the shed to an adjacent 12'x12' slab since it's packed with wood, a planar, and the CNC machine within a 100' square foot building.

[jm82792]

I can't keep anything in stock, it's sold before it's made, and I'm thankful.
I recently bought a Microcarve MV3 from John, and will have a second machine up.
Then I'm going to turn my 8'x8' shed into an area for just machines, and move out all the koa I have.
Finally, I'll be investing in VFD driven spindles for my machine, dust collection, and so forth.
I have been buying wood in larger increments and have gained an education on Koa since it's expensive stuff.
Sometime when I get everything organized, setup, and cleaned up I should post some photos of my little operation.

[aarggh]

Despite whatever dust extractor you go with, I'd highly recommend investing in a Dust Deputy, it will be the best money you'll spend you'll find!

cheers, Ian

I can't keep anything in stock, it's sold before it's made, and I'm thankful.
I recently bought a Microcarve MV3 from John, and will have a second machine up.
Then I'm going to turn my 8'x8' shed into an area for just machines, and move out all the koa I have.
Finally, I'll be investing in VFD driven spindles for my machine, dust collection, and so forth.
I have been buying wood in larger increments and have gained an education on Koa since it's expensive stuff.
Sometime when I get everything organized, setup, and cleaned up I should post some photos of my little operation.

[TarHeelTom]

One interesting dynamic is my "supplier" for koa mentioned koa is rising in cost, and can be around $65 per board foot.
That could be a damper on profits and will raise the stakes of when I screw up.

I wasn't familiar with koa, so went to Wiki and read up on it. One thing that looks frightening is that the supply of koa is finite, and decreasing.

With this in mind, you need to consider your long range options. One option is to start hoarding it. If you are a young man, you might buy some cattle grazing land and remove the cattle and let the koa grow. In about 20 years you'll again have a good supply of koa. Another is to start developing your other hardwoods, and increase the price on your koa. But the decreasing supply of koa is going to have a major long term effect on your business.

Tom

[awerby]

Congratulations on building up your business to this extent! If it's really selling faster than you can make it, it might be time to raise prices a bit. Your investment plans all make sense to me. You might also consider advertising locally (Craigslist?) for odd lots of koa people might have stashed away; if it's the mainstay of your business, laying in a stock of it would also be a good investment if you can get it relatively cheaply. And as Tom says, think about diversifying into other species, especially local ones like Milo and MonkeyPod.

[jm82792]

Thanks for the compliments and your time to give me suggestions.
I had a post written up but I thought I'd think of a better one a day later.
(I'll get to the koa in a second)

I've owned a dust deputy for a while and love it. I just need more suction, and a 1hp extractor sounds good.
A lot has to happen for my shed, right now it's not funny on how disorganized it is, and how much work needs to be done to it
Hopefully less dust will help keep things cleaner

For the revenue, and my little business in general.
One thing I'd like to ensure is known is what I am selling and am doing is volatile.
Out of the 20 to 50 people a day who see my work (and spend 1 minute on average) according to Google Analytics, perhaps one to three a week decide to buy something. But that's online, and in person most people love what I make, yet it's usually out of their price bracket.
Statistically the most people come from Hawaii, and spend about twice as much time as those from California, which is my second best state traffic wise.
Now if I had a booth at the right place with some cheaper goods, higher end ones, and a square card reader maybe I'd be able to sell a ton of goods in a few short hours. I don't yet have the ability to make things fast enough, yet the orders seem to be right where I'm just a bit over "scheduled" to make things.
I did a small price increase to mitigate some costs, but I don't feel comfortable going past where I'm at.
CNC milling is becoming the easier part along with prepping everything for it to be cut. The second machine will be great since I can load more up, and I'm going to be busy working for my father so I can squeeze more time from say 6 to 10 at night.
The harder parts of making things is the sanding and finishing. I'm going to fix my foredom tool so I can sand faster, and try out a brew of tung oil/polyurethane/paint thinner to see if that works better than my current system.

The amount of revenue does vary($1500 to $4k, with not enough months to know what to predict other than it seems to be going up), I can only "forecast" a week or two into the future, and it's just one product idea. I'm hoping I can stock up this holiday season, and perhaps I could make great money. But it's still me flying by the seat of my pants, and thankfully there is enough money to help me with my blunders.
Not to be negative but a competitor could come, and potentially cause this to be difficult. But if I were perpetually pessimistic I would have stopped a long time ago, it's just merely I always try to adopt a (quasi) unbiased perspective so I hopefully don't do something incredibly stupid.

Now for koa I've learned a lot (and will learn a lot more) about it over the past month or three. Now a lot of the older trees are harder to get, and the older ones have the curl you see in koa. The older ones produce wider stock, and therefore wider stock with character is harder to find. (Defects in stock makes it cheaper since it won't work as well for many things.) There is a good amount of effort being placed into replacing koa. Ironically, it's still one of the most abundant native trees out there, it grows rather fast, and it even fixes it's own nitrogen.

So why are the prices so high past the fact it's a bit harder to get the wider and better stock?

Sentimentalism plays a part. I sell a few folds more koa than mango. Most people don't even know or care about grades.
I try to tell them I have other pieces that look really nice and cost 25% less but few go for it.

Marketing... Most mills want their stock to be sold expensive, they want to give every sort of character/style/curl a different name, and they want you to price your work based off of what you can get. I keep a reef aquarium, and in the 48 states many places come up with all sorts of names for coral that has a different color that you might have not seen before People eaters, nuclear death, purple slime and so forth are commons names for coral of various morphs. I even got a coral here in Hawaii named Leprechaun Blizzard !

Finally, there is the obvious factor of your price depends on where you go. From a retail store I'd pay twice as much as wholesale.
Wholesale can be a board from one place, or a place that won't sell you less than 100 board feet. It can be from a large outlet (I just tried that, and next time I'm going through their room full of defect pieces. They have tons and tons of koa) or a single guy milling up wood (bring cash, take wood, and repeat).
It's heavily based off of the right person at the right time. When that lines up I can get a good deal on the wood needed, otherwise, the cost is higher than I want but at least I can get what I need.

I've tried other woods but people don't seem interested in them. Koa has that magical name to it, regardless of how nice it might be.
My next thing I want to try is cold casting my models since that might open up another set of customers.
Amazon ships alumilite free and so I'm going to try that. Past this I have other ideas... Still torn on all of this though.
I have half a bachelors degree I want to finish (I took a massive amount of college test, need to take more, and then I transfer them in) so I need to get significantly more efficient with this. Perhaps I could offload some of the sanding/boring work to a sibling of mine for $12 per hour or so forth. But sanding has to be really good since I won't settle for less.

[jm82792]

Well it's weird with how unpredictable things are still.
Sales have picked up since tax time is over and so this month should shape up to a couple grand.
But to counteract that I spent $500 on koa at $45 ish per BF, then $900ish on a CNC frame with an extra Z axis, $1k more on koa at $25 per BF since it was a great deal from a friend/supplier that needed the money, and then I have a 8'x8' shed I'm building that's adjacent to my current shed.
Finally, to furnish the current machine I've had forever I want to spruce it up with Igus drag chain,
finally move it to a G540 from the chopper drivers I have, get a Wj200 VFD, and a .8KW spindle. I'm also tempted to somehow attach some 8020 to it to beef up the MDF frame. Then for the new machine I want to set it up also, and to ask more I want them both to have working dust shoes.
Money in and money out is how it's been going. Thankfully I don't spend much of it, and try not to be reckless with it.

[slopecarver]

Don't forget you value both in equipment, customers (goodwill), and knowledge will keep increasing even if your money in pocket doesn't increase.

I have a full time job I'm not too happy with and I'd love to branch out into something more independent like you are.

[jm82792]

I agree that now I'm more setup with equipment and I'm messing up less. No full time job as I work with my father when he gets jobs, and then I'm trying to get college over with. Unlike most I'm not distracted with a whole lot (I probably have no life to some people's standards) although my ideas scatter me and I'm stuck regrouping a lot...
For equipment the new VFD setup is amazing and I refuse to use a router ever again unless it's a 300 watt brushed unit for wax or tiny pieces.
I'm getting a few folds better tooling life, and it's just awesome... Now I need to cleanup my rats nest of wiring which would horrify any electrician that would see it.
I have yet to setup the second machine which is beefier than my all MDF one,
but I have enough parts that only the control PC, stepper PSU, and the spindle don't have spares which will change sometime this year.
I'm using Cambam, Meshcam, FEngrave, GIMP, Inkscape, and Blender still since it all works well plus it's cheap.
I combine it all in CamBam, and sometime when I can spend the money Vectric's software will be a treat.
So I know enough I can get anything to work it seems, although customization for the masses isn't easy

Sales have slowed down (I'm going into cold casting, precious metal jewelry, and other bits soon) by 35%-40% since summer is slow (no competitors or anything have surfaced) from what I am told and won't pickup substantially until October. I think .004" to maybe .006" is the max for backlash for parallel pass finishing of jewelry with a 1/32 ballnose bit. I'm stuck with acetal nuts that wear down and when I put use on them they go out after 6 months.. AB nuts sound good but having them screw in instead of press fit means a crash could become ugly. I'm good for 6 months to a year before I have to figure it out since backlash will be too high for small stuff.

I did get an inquiry which I thought was a total scam, and in the end my work is in the Pentagon now.
I just sent in my invoice with my tax ID, and two weeks later I got the money all squared away. It arrived there today, the presumed assistant along with others like it from what she told me, and if I'm lucky I'll get to hear what ADM Locklear thinks.
I can "dominate" the internet all I want; which is what I've been doing. However, the truth is it's hard to bring in the right customers for the single product I sell. Hopefully diversification will enable me to garner more sales, and help stabilize this volatile venture. Lost wax casting, resin casting, and working with PMC sounds fun plus I think it will be a good market provided people don't copy my work the next day.

[jm82792]

Business has been a bit slow but summer is supposedly slow, although when a sale comes the profit is good.
This slowdown has made me get back into college more, and it's more or less starting back up which is something that should happen.
I'm trying to focus on a few things, and try to work what I have since the hard work has been done.
I'll probably ride out what I have, add a few things, and see what the holidays do.
With all the online exposure I have no idea where the sales might lead.
Also, to figure out how this stuff is "supposed to work" I've been trying to network with a few real "artists" as what I make is deemed art.
I'm being told I should try some high traffic smaller galleries in Honolulu as they are far bigger than what's here, and could give me a lot more business.
Right now I sell my main product near "wholesale" as a gallery would put it. I'm going potentially raise my price 25%, and then have the gallery price almost as low as my online price. I'm not sure if galleries are the next step or a giant hindrance. I've tried them here, but the $$ is in Honolulu from what I'm told.
Past this for equipment it's just one desktop machine since I don't need the other one running right now.
Eventually if I get past this curve I can hopefully expand and get more stability. I get a lot of ideas on all sorts of random things which tend to harass me. But I'm thinking more college, and using the things I've already had success with is a good goal to have for this year.

[jm82792]

Well not a lot has changed minus that the new LInuxCNC trajectory planner is awesome and my tooling life is always getting better.
Sales have came back some and the holidays might be great for me.
I'm pushing my little machine to it's limits, and have my older one moth balled still.
I managed to do some trading of my finished work for some koa and so what I bought months ago has lasted.
Sometime soon I'll be buying a lot of it as somebody I know likes cash, and the more I spend the better.
Past this other ideas float around but I've been working 50-65 hour weeks for a while with my father (I should be back to 40s soon), and this business has taken what time I have left. I'm saving money though since my work at home makes a few times what I get with my father.
Soon I'll be in Japan for all of October teaching English at a school for room and board to see things there. It's something new and different since I never travel, and since I'm in my early twenties now is better than later.
I'm trying to double up on stuff to get more stock for that month, the holidays (it could be double or more business), and then get some more wood.
And then I'm thinking since I know a bit about CNC then I should learn about being a machinist, and how to work with commercial machines in an actual shop. If there was a shop close by I'd be there working there some but there aren't any shops within driving distance.
There are a lot of things that need to be done on the observatories here and sometime I'd like a piece of it.
I don't have the ten years of actual experience that the ads I see want, but perhaps I can get in there someday for some reason or another.

[just_james]

congrats, sounds like you are doing well for yourself. what is your website? i could use a few presents for the holidays.