As shown, all in distressed clear white pine, finished as follows. Back of the upper open part is a milk paint color on pine beadboard, everything else gets a sealer to prevent stain blotch, then a handwiped stain, then a satin clearcoat in multiple coats.
What would you charge, other than $99,950?
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Replies
Shooting from the hip, $2500-$3000.
About 600.00 a running foot=7200.00 + 8 doors ( RaisedPanel?) at 150.00 ea.=1200.00. TIF (things I forgot) =800.00
No install, 9K.
Guess I need to adjust my pricing a bit.
Depends. What does your work look like?
When I build cabinets, I use only the finest duct tape hinges on all my raised cardboard doors.
Gene,
I get a $1200.00 design fee a similar job. Non-refundable. To fabricate: $42.50 per LI. $150 per door.(inset $195) $85.00 per drawer.($135 for self-closing undermount) No drawers shown in sketch. IMO no drawers is is a design breakdown. Delivery and install is $11.00 per LI plus a AGV fee, if applicable, for a local delivery.
My price would be scaled shop drawings, not Autocad or Sketchup. When I used CNC, it was all plotted in woodwop5.0 and 20/20.
Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
Chuck, I gotta ask.
What is the value of "scaled shop drawings" in view of what a Thermwood-equipped shop can do?
The eCab software is used to design the arrangement, and then to render it to obtain the final design sign-off. There are other competitors doing this seamlessly integrated approach using software and CNC cutters, but I am only familiar with eCab. Here is an example of the rendering the customer gets.
View Image
And a photo of the finished work. Where do scaled drawings come into play?
View Image
One more Q, and it relates to your door pricing. $150 will certainly buy a lot of door. I am looking at a stack of quotes covering four jobs in various species and finishes, from the usual suspects in the door biz (Conestoga, Walzcraft, et al), and the largest of the way-more-than-a-hundred doors is the lower one in a tall pantry. Fully finished, hardware-prepped, and at about 10 square feet of surface, expensive species and finish, and it has a price of about $170, but the great majority of the doors in all these quotes are about one-third that.
Are your figures used for "typical" wall-height bookcase units such as what I showed with the SU rendering, and the per-door figure is simply an adder for when and if the customer wants part of the opening done with doors, as in this case?
I like the results when I extend the numbers. I calculate around $7,500 for the build, and the $1,200 for the design work just sounds like pure gravy.
Gene,
No arguement here. What a good CAD designer can do in 20 min. takes me a day. I have attended CNC training at Stiles Machinery in Grand Rapids, MI.
The price I mentioned did not include the AGV charge which varies.
Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
You know on some forums you can award reputation points or karma or . . . for posts you think are particularly good. Wish we had that here. Dandy one ya got there hoss.Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
Neighborhood of 6K, depending on details. I'll say between 6 and 7. Guess I'm closer to sphere.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
That is LOT of clear pine, and distressing means Handplane and spoke shaves to me.
I'm just helping out some friends who already have the job. I'm pretty sure it has been booked at a number about like yours.
If bought from Conestoga, the doors would run about $500, distressed, but unfinished, and would be beautiful.
All eight carcases, four up, four down, will be CNC cut from an eCabs file, and the twelve shelves will be cut at the same time, then lipped by the shop selling the package. The finished ends will be included for the exposed L end. Package cost, less than $700.
That leaves two pine faceframes, square-whacked and pocketscrewed, plus the midrail lip, the two piece base, and the built up crown. Oh, I forgot the beadboard pine bookcase back. That doesn't add much.
It all looks to me like about $1750 in materials, including the canned finish stuff, then maybe two days of assembly and installation, and another three to finish.
Not a bad profit at your kind of figure.
The problem is that a lot of folks are selling something exactly like this for more like the $2500 to $3000 spoken of in an earlier post.
Go over to the Woodweb forum, the Architectural Woodworking section, and you will see. But those guys are using the power of fully integrated software that meshes with CNC, and are doing the work regularly.
I never intend to compete with that type of CNC work, BTDT.
I have been lucky, some folks still like the handplane surface, and know what goes into it. I don't ever expect to buy premade parts, not geared up to work that way. I enjoy the glue up, grain matching, color matching too much. machines ignore all of that and if my customer wants IKEA looking stuff, I send them there.
And actually, "profit", is not what drives me, the essence of doing a craft I happen to enjoy, and making a decent wage at it is the force behind my reasoning.
I've gotten similar jobs like that handed to me, at my rates...had to turn them away due to lack of shop area, and/or time.
When Shaker style was "In" a few decades ago, I was BOOMING, then it sorta peterd out and Craftsman/Stickly style took over as the rage, in the mean time, I was away doing other ventures and since lost the finger on the pulse so to speak...am going thru a transition right now,we'll see where I wind up.
Labor in mostly in the leg work and the finishing. But we know that.
CNC just lowers the number of payrolled employees in the shop.[email protected]
Yup. I can't see CNC and Craftsmanship being the same.
Excepting the touches like distressing and a scrubplaned surface look, most everything a fine woodworker does, is an attempt at perfection in forming parts. That means parts cut square, miters that are true and meet at hairline joints, dados that offer that kind of fit when you have that few thousandths of room you want for slide and glue, etc.
A tuned up CNC cutter gives that every time. So what's wrong with that?
A cnc STILL gets stock fed onto the table by a human that selects grain orientation, color, and even density.
You claimed "Clear White Pine" an CNC gonna defect the knots away in material prep?
Joinery and milling parts, is not "Most everything a Finewoodworker does" , no way.
BTW, I ran a 2 head CNC that chewed out parts all day, guitar bodies in that instance, ALL the hand work was maybe 10-20 the time of that initial rough out. It ain't magic.
What are you so hot about? All that is being CNC cut is a batch of carcase parts, cab backs, backside nailers, a couple of finished end panels and a dozen shelf parts.
The rest will all be cut using tablesaws, chopsaws, pocketscrew jigs, a jointer, drillpress, and maybe the bandsaw. Sound OK?
Would you prefer we begin with a broadaxe and pitsaw, and continue through to the end with only hand tools?
What's the argument here with technology and efficiency? Explain the difference, really, between this example, parts for a built-in wall cabinet cut with a CNC machine, and clamping up a huge rack of 2x12s and gang cutting rafters with jig-modified saws?
BTW, how about that bookcase design? Did you like it?
Edited 7/26/2007 9:03 pm ET by Gene_Davis
LOL. I'm not hot about anything.
Just saying a machine can't replace a human in quality.
LOL. I'm not hot about anything.
Sucks gettin old eh chicken?[email protected]
Yeah. I need brainagra, cant get up a good thought.
I clipped these two pics from one of hundreds of photo posts, over at the eCabs site, where the users of the software and the CNC routers show examples of their work.
Looks OK to me, but I'm standing way way back. Maybe if I get up close I'll see some scrapes and nicks.
View Image
View Image
That would really take you two days to fabricate and install? I.E. 16 hours? I think that would probably take me a week to fabricate, maybe more. Give me a quick overview of your fabrication breakdown, if you get a minute. All carcases and doors are milled elsewhere?
Thanks,
Dustin
Dustin, the parts that are purchased are:
Four upper carcases.
Four lower carcases.
Twelve shelves with front lips attached.
One upper and one lower finished end panel.
From RTA parts such as what these would make, I assembled a kitchen last week that had 11 basecabs, 8 wallcabs, and one large fridge box for a SubZero. Total time to assemble was 6.5 hours, working solo, and the 8 wallcabs were done in the last 1.5 hours. I spent a lot of time on the lowers, fiddling around with spacers, stretchers, partitions, and drawerslide hardware, none of which was in the uppers.
The 8 boxes in this bookcase are much like wallcabs, and can be built in less than that 1.5 hours. After another 1.5 hours, they have been ganged and fit to the wall. Prior to coming to the jobsite, I spent half a day in the shop, making the faceframe parts for the fronts, and the beadboard back panels for the uppers.
There went day one.
Day two, start off with pocketscrews and assemble the faceframes, then fit them, and fix them on with biscuits and glue. Have coffee. Continue on to fix on the finished end panels, then do the built-up crown, finally the two-piece base. End of day two.
The rest is all finishing, but we wisely bought the carcase and shelf parts all prefinished, so the only thing to do is the backs (we should prefinish those beadboard panels) and all the fronts, including doors. Three days for the finishing, which includes a lot of downtime for finish curing.
Thanks for the breakdown, Gene. All of the built-ins, cabs, what have you, that I have built were completely made by me with the exception of the hardware. Your posts lead me to think that it may be more productive for me if I considered purchasing some components.
So here is another can of worms-are there any times when you will mill and construct parts usually purchased in-house? Like size restrictions, finish limitations, material limitations, etc? Also, who are you using these days for these parts?
Regards,
Dustin
Beautiful stuff. Just isn't my method of production.
Oh Baby.You are so hot.sizzle sizzle.Mongo
Where you been hiding?
I've sort of morphed into a lurker, logging in and taking a look around a couple or three times a week.Seldom post. No need to be repetitive.You hottie.Mongo
I can't see CNC and Craftsmanship being the same.
You cant be serious can you?
Just cause a CNC cuts some of the pieces out doesn't somehow make it IKEA. In our shop the CNC isn't cutting out the solid wood parts unless its some radiused pieces and then the operator selects the wood to be cut. Don't mistake a CNC for a robot without a mind to think.
People that suggest that the CNC's somehow lowers the quality of the work either have never been around a CNC or just plain don't know quality when it hits them up side the head!
A lot of well made, high quality work has been in part provided by CNC work.
Doug
Edited 7/27/2007 7:14 am ET by DougU
Look, I'm not up for a "discussion" of what a CNC is or is not capable of doing.
My point is that it is not MY method of production, your milage may vary as they say, quality ,craftsmanship, are personal definitions. I'll leave it at that. OK?
Duane,
I know where you are coming from. From What I see Gene writing, I get the feeling that he is turing what I consider to be craftmanship and art into production work. Not to take away from the beauty of what he has shown but it just doesn;t "feel" the same to me.
Liken it to a beautiful statue. Why would I want to pay a talented sculptor when a cnc machine could do as good a job? We eliminate the distinction between an artist and a layman.
Then again, there is a distinction to be made between fine art and perhaps the utility facet of cabinetry. I just can't help but think that we are cheapening the trade in a manner of speaking.
I CAN tell you this... I would certainly be charging closer to your price tag to have built something like what was presented. I am also bothered by how many talented guys will undersell their talents for the sake of competitive bidding against others and now, machines.
http://www.petedraganic.com/
Thank you, I just didn't feel the need to explain my convictions or warped sense of getting satisfaction out of a vocation.
Being one with the process is not an easy thing to convey, if that person has never experienced it on an esoteric level.
Zen and the art of woodworking..LOL
Plugging info into a computer to do what I am fully capable of doing, with heart and soul..somehow just don't mesh with my passion for creating.
Plugging info into a computer to do what I am fully capable of doing, with heart and soul..somehow just don't mesh with my passion for creating.
Precisely!!
http://www.petedraganic.com/
i can always tell the difference between a CNC machine built by a man and a CNC machine built by another CNC. The CNC built by a man has way more soul...the CNC built CNC...soulless, lifeless.
"I just can't help but think that we are cheapening the trade in a manner of speaking."
I'm sure someone said that when electric power tools were invented...
and plywood...
and nail guns...
and spray finishes...
and adjustable hinges...
All a CNC machine is is a router that is controlled by a computer instead of an employee. It doesn't assemble the project. Doesn't finish or install it either. It makes the owner more efficient. It's a tool.
"I never met a man who didn't owe somebody something."
The difference between CNC and craftsmanship is that the craftsman embiggens the work by sharing a piece of his soul with it. I can stand across the room, way to far to see mere details of joinery and finish, and "See" the soul fire in a lovingly hand crafted piece. A CNC piece just looks dead to me unless the tree it was milled from was already "Alive," and even then it's comparatively subdued from being rudely treated. I remember that guitar you showed me. It has a rich, powerful soul.SamT
Well said.
See my last (just now) photo in the Photo thread under "Hey,David Doud"
Tell me, if a CNC can IMPART any soul or breathe life, like I attempted on two little bedside tables.
Fell free to tel lme I failed as well, if you feel that..wait..here is a pic, DUH.
View Image
I can tell the difference.
Oh, that si the wood he sawed, I hauled, and whacked out some stuff with...beautiful material. Something about a floor covered with curlers, makes my feet happy. versus the scream of a 22,000RPM router.
Failed?No creation can spend time under the focused attention and hands of its' creator without a spirit being born in it. Even the crudest pottery, born in the hands of a child, naive of distractions to his/her focus, joyful in the phsyical sensations, is strongly alive and shows its' certain beauty to anyone willing to percieve it.Like any other progeny, a things' spirit will take on the emotional characteristics of its' parent(s.) I think you were feeling a little down or sad as you worked on the top of the left hand piece.SamT
Bad camera angle maybe, I don't recall any "down or sad" recently..been feeling pretty damm chipper actually...
There was a nasty grain tear out on that front edge, but hey, it's wood, not plastic coated particle board like some of the crap I see in the stores.
I knew you of all would be able to understand what I am doing such a lousy job of conveying to Doug.
I'm not taking any high horse here, I was stating MY preferences, and NOW he makes me sound like the "bad" guy..I don't get it.
Check emailSamT
and NOW he makes me sound like the "bad" guy..I don't get it.
Duane
I'm sure both of us are missing something in the translation but I'm not trying to make you out to be the bad guy, not even close. Sometimes I wish these damn computers had two way pictures, then we could actually see each others responses.
I just wondered how you could say that craftsmanship and a CNC could not go hand in hand, thats all. Has nothing to do with the two stands that you made.
I dont give a good rats behind about the "zen of woodworking," I dont even know what that means! And thats not dissing your thoughts on it, just mine.
I think I'll let it go cause its obvious that I'm missing your message and versa vicea, not to mention that I dont have a clue what the hell Sam is trying to say - that existential stuff is way over my head!
Doug
AYUP.
Peace out.
That's better than what I'm usually told; to wit, "Sam, yer outa yer head."SamT
"Sam, yer outa yer head."
Sam, I'd never say that!
I'm a black and white guy, hidden messages and all that stuff goes right over my head.
Doug
Hey, so whats YOUR price?
Duane
I'd a probably priced it somewhere in the neighborhood of what you did, maybe even a bit more because of the distress.
When I first thought about it, and it was a quick think, I figured between 6 and 10K. Then I started to think more about the detail and hand work that went into it and I wouldn't be to bashful about asking 8 to 10K.
Having access to a CNC would only get me the box part of the cabinets, the face frame, doors, mouldings, trim, all that has to be done another way and that takes time.
When I think about the "distress" part of the job I think about the "soul" or "my touch" part of the job, the part that makes it my work and that's the part that is going to cost the most!
As you know anybody/everybody thinks that they can distress a piece of furniture/cabinetry but it ain't all that easy, not if you want it to be believable, that's the part of the job that makes it a challenge to me.
Were doing a job for a nice couple that want the distress look. Unfortunately for us our finish guy doesn't have a clue what "distress" is and for my money it looks like shid! The customers are happy but I wouldn't be.....
I gave the finish guy some tips about how to think about distress, how it happens/occurs over time, it helped some but it was to late for the pieces that we built for this customer.
Someone posted a picture of a cool kitchen a few years ago and I thought that he said the distress part of the job was comfortably into the 5 figure area(been awhile so I could be wrong on the numbers), looked like it was worth every penny though.
Doug
Edited 7/28/2007 12:13 pm ET by DougU
See? Now we're back on topic ! (G).
Yes distressing can be distressing to do right. The Co. I was at was called Stephen Von Hohen Furniture, I see now they are called Bucks Co. Furniture
http://www.buckscountyfurn.com/
Web site sucks but this is the stuff I was making back then. Could be similar to what Gene put out for us to see, that is the only way I knew what goes into making that style, having done it before.
A dye stain followed by Cat Lac would be a faster finish than what Gene called out, but thats neither here nor there.
I run from totaly transparent to totaly opaque with more colors than there are in any rainbow (|:>)SamT
Heavy flow day?
Get over yourself Duane, you think your the only guy on here that puts any "soul" into their work?
You show us a couple night stands that you say in your own words that you used to crank out for $200 a week, wheres the soul in that?
Doug
Edited 7/27/2007 3:50 pm ET by DougU
I guess you just don't get my drift,. My bad.
"soul" in work has NOTHING to do with $$$$, or speed...that is my point.
Read up on Krenov, or Nakashima then get back to me. I never claimed to have thought that I was the only one to put soul into anything..I was ineptly explaining my WAY...
Sorry the concept has you riled up.
Some people have soul filled "eyes," some don't.Some people have red hair, some don't.If you can judge one of the above, you must judge all. If you can't judge all, you mustn't judge any.SamT
The problem is that a lot of folks are selling something exactly like this for more like the $2500 to $3000 spoken of in an earlier post.
It's not a problem going by your numbers if you only want to make a hundred a day for the time you actually put into making it.
I can't see how anyone could make a dime of profit on a venture like this.
Maybe you should go into business reselling this stuff if you can buy it so cheaply.[email protected]
I was tha low baller and thats why I usually dont just shoot from the hip. If that were to take me a week i'd probably have to go $3k just for labor.
Missed that part. I think I'd just set the boards in the drive and run over them a few times. That oughta do, no?
The bright side is you dont have to sand, isnt that how it works?
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
No, sanding is still gonna happen. As much as I dislike it.
But, being as it is "distressed", a flat , piano quality surface is not needed. That gets tedious.
$7500, plus $400 shipping to upstate New York.
It's not too late, it's never too late.
Glad you posted this when you did. Funny, I was your low bidder and today one of my customers asked me to build 6' of kitchen cabinets and a countertop.
Guess you guys helped me make some money. After this thread I should make about $700 on this job than I would've before.