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Just wanted to share this sign I am working on for my living room! Love the new season so I had to make this. It landed up not being as big as I planned it to be but it’s still a good size! 20"x14". This is my first glue up I’ve done, and it turned out alright for a first try. Especially considering I was using MasterCraft tools (Equivalent of Harbor Freight tools I believe) Anyways I used the jointer for the first time after watching some videos. I’m thinking the jointer was either not calibrated or just an inferior product. I did not get clean joints at all and there was a very noticeable wobble to the fence that I couldn’t seem to tighten. So I think for the next one I am going to try a different option. Ive seen people use router table’s as a jointer, Going to try that next. The joints on the glue up weren’t the greatest but there wasn’t any large sized gaps so I guess it passes! I finally spent the extra money and worked with something that wasn’t Pine! I used poplar for this, although I DO regret it! I probably should of used Pine since it was my first time doing a glue up and would of been a cheaper mistake.
Carving this was a terrible experience! I probably should of just waited and bought the right bits for the job! The entire carve took about 10 hours and it decided to randomly freeze/timeout 6 hours through… Needless to say I restarted it and didn’t get to go to bed until 7am the next day. Lesson learn’t buy better bits. I currently only have a small tapered ball nose. I also freaked out as the fins I guess you would call them where coming out jagety, I thought for sure my machine was way out of calibration. But turns out it was apart of the design. Not sure how I feel about them I almost think it would look better with ought them. Enough talk here is the piece, Still got some more sanding to do, and since money is tight I’m just going to use the red mohogany stain that I have here to stain it. Closest thing I have to what I’d like it to look like.
Should of mentioned I didn’t design the file. The file was bought from a 3d file site and then I imported it into vcarve messed around with it and got it cut. I use vcarve desktop
I’ve heard most people still charge machine time. That s 16 hours I couldn’t carve anything else. The damn thing also kept me up the whole night. If I could get 90$ for this I guess I would be somewhat ok with it.
I’ve always been adamant on always watching the machine, I feel like anything can happen. I was on my computer beside my machine one day and I start smelling smoke. I turn around and my router collet is through my work piece and my waste bed burning the wood. Luckily no fire yet since I caught it within a minute. Since then I;ve been scared to even go upstairs while its on
Not that I have actual been paid for anything, but I have kicking around numbers, trying to come up with a pricing schedule. I picked number, $10 hr for machine time. (Later I did some calculations, estimating cost, deprecation, bits, electricity. It worked out pretty close to $10/hr )
So my formula for my base price is:
Material Costs + $10/hr machine time + $5 setup per board + $5 for staining. (more for painting - still figuring that out)
-20% Friends and Family Discount
-20% Prototype (Flawed / Defects) Discount
Most things work out being pretty expensive.
Part of that is I don’t feel that confident about my skill, quality of work, or time.
So I figure better to set the price and add a discount then low ball the price and devalue my work.
)