Earning a living from wood working

[Tusses]

How many of you do ?

What do you do ?

how do you market it ?

I want to !

Do people pay for 'fine furniture' or is it only woodworkers and antique dealers that recognize the work and attention to detail ?

I am well into VW's and my bread an butter work will be converting vans into campers and making camper interiors to sell separately. Its all pretty much pattern cutout, glue and nail/screw stuff tho - no place for dovetails :lol:

A few years ago I tried to sell repro antiques from a pitch in an antiques barn, but I found people didn't want to pay for the amount of work involved ??

maybe I need to be in a 'quaint' little village somewhere !

I see stuff for sale in the net at the right kind of prices - but it doesn't mean they sell !

any advice ?

ta

Rich

 

[Tusses]

:?: :?:

no one want to give their secrets away ?

:?: :?:

 

[skipdiver]

Well i'm a joiner so i earn my living from woodwork but i dont think that is what you mean is it?I have built the odd kitchen and sets of wardrobes in my workshop and once fitted out a Peugeot Boxer van to turn it into a camper van for someone but whether i could get enough work to sustain a living purely from making stuff i dont know.I think it may be something you would have to build up to.Try and get some orders and do them in your spare time,slowly building up a customer base by word of mouth til you feel you have enough work to go it alone.

Just got my first commission for my new workshop today.Niece wants me to build some wardrobes for her.She works as a teacher and i suppose i could take some pictures of my work and get her to hand them around her school.Similarly,when i did a bespoke kitchen for another niece,i got a lot of feedback from her friends but didn't take it any further as i was too busy with my joinery work at the time.

I am also looking to do more home based work in the future as lugging my gear around different houses and building sites is starting to lose it's appeal.My good lady has suggested making some stuff and going to a few craft fairs or whatever and possibly setting up a website.I go to a lot of music festivals and some of them allow the setting up of stalls and even let you on the site for free.That could be one possibility for me,so if you give it some thought there are lots of avenues to pursue.

 

[NeilO]

I find its not a case of getting the work, but getting it at a price that pays for itself....

I recently got hold of a fair amount of reclaimed timber, and made a trio of coffee/occasional tables for our home, and did indeed have lots of comments for friends/family and visitors in general, but also find people are not willing to pay £40-50 for a coffee table.
now I know the wood didnt cost me the earth , but I would expect to be paid a reasonable amount for my time and effort and would say that a coffee table takes somewhere in the region of 4-6 hours work to complete (not all in one hit ) cuttting , planing, sanding, assembly, finishing.....

so why do they expect to get it for peanuts?
the likes of Ikea, Lidl, Aldi and the like that ship in from abroad, where the wood costs next to nothing and the labour is paid in pennies.


Thats why you cant make a living or profit from diy woodworking


I`m not really after making a living or a profit as such, just to pay for my hobby would be fine by me...making enough to buy the next lot of timber, and maybe save a tiny amount towards that next "I need" Tool...

 

[Mr T]

Hi Rich

The first requirement to being successful as a fine furniture maker is a spouse with a large income, a doctor, solicitor or merchant banker perhaps. Failing this, one must be in receipt of a large pension, perhaps from the services or a merchant bank. In the absence of the above, one needs a wide circle of wealthy friends and family prepared to buy your furniture.

This might seem a rather pessimistic view of things but it is true that it can be a struggle without something to ease your progress. I have estimated that to start from scratch as a furniture maker (ie no experience, premises or machinery) will require about £80,000 capital. Assume that you may need professional training £16,000 - £20,000, machinery £10,000, advertising publicity and web site etc £5,000, income for the first three years when you will not make any profit £40,000.

The other consideration is that making it a business will change your relationship to the craft, you will have to be more mercenary towards it, would this spoil it for you.

However it will mean that you are doing work (I hope) that challenges you, in which you will learn something new every day, that you will never clock watch (unless to check its not going too fast) and where you will get those "I made this " moments more often than you will keeping it as a hobby.

Chris

 

[Frank Drew]

Rich,

I found Alan Peters' book Cabinetmaking - A Professional Approach both good reading and absolutely accurate about what goes into setting up a professional shop. One thing he decided early on was to hire assistants, which spread the fixed costs over several income-producing benches. Unless you're so good, and well-known, that you can charge a king's ransom, it's tough making it as a one-man operation.

I don't know why this is, but there are several other crafts or artisan endeavors that at times can be priced at a significantly higher rate than cabinetmaking, at least here in the States. I once made a piece of furniture for a family who'd had some faux-painting done in their library; the fellow who did the work carried everything he needed for the job in a small box, was done in a short day, and -- this was twenty years ago now -- charged $2,000, more than I'd gotten for a piece that took me several weeks.

 

[mister henderson]

A good move for anyone thinking about doing fine woodwork for a living is to visit an antique shop. See what they charge for a table and chairs (or anything else for that matter) then consider how much you would need to charge for similar pieces. It can be quite frightening. Most antique stuff, the kind of thing you see in shops in places like Burford, sells for less than half of what a professional woodworker would need to charge.

In the past I have worked for many different people of the wealthy persuasion. When people like this want to furnish one of their houses they don't start looking for a local craftsman to build heirloom pieces for them. They go to the auctions and bid on antiques, or to the posher antiques shops, or if they want something modern they go to Harrods.

Furniture making is primarily a hobby activity. Even those people who claim to make a living at it are mostly doing so by teaching or writing or as Mr T points out, being supported by external sources.

Show me someone in this country who claims to make a living making fine furniture and I will show you someone who isn't telling the whole story.

 

[OPJ]

I read a comment (somewhere...?) recently that's stuck in mind since. It said that in order to justify the "high-prices" you charge as a furniture maker, you need to get the point across that Ikea stuff is only built to last around five-years max. You put all the hours in to making a piece of furniture so that you can confidently say that it will outlast your lifetime.

That makes a lot of sense to me, but I can't see a lot of clients actually taking that in when they're only looking to spend so little. :x

If you want to make a living from making furniture, it appears to have to offer something unique that no-one else has done before. Or, what a lot of companies do now is to offer a fine furniture service along with kitchen cabinets and joinery. That could be the way to go - and, indeed, I may follow suit at some point... :wink:

 

[BradNaylor]

Hey Tusses,

Don't let these negative waves put you off!

Messrs T and Henderson are quite right, though. It is extremely difficult to earn a good living making 'fine' furniture. Generally speaking people are not prepared or able to pay the money necessary for pieces of exquisitly designed and made pieces of furniture. I'm not sure they ever were. Even Chippendale couldn't make it pay and went bankrupt!

It is still possible to make a good living making furniture, however. The secret is to embrace built-in or fitted furniture and the wonder that is MDF! To some this may seem a compromise on one's values; however the important thing is to pay the bills!

There are many people on this and the other forum earning a living from their woodworking;

Jason B
OryxDesign
Karl
Tim
JFC
Dom
Me
Senior
and several others

One thing that we all have in common is that the bulk of our work would appear to be fitted furniture built principally from man-made boards and either finished with real wood trim or given a painted finish.

I am sure that we would all prefer to be crafting fine pieces in solid wood - and from time to time such a job comes up - but the bread and butter comes from fitting cupboards into alcoves or building a run of wardrobes.

I like your camper van idea. This could work well for you as it is a niche market that few people are in. I have been talking to a local importer of American campers about doing the same kind of thing.

I disagree with Frank about employing staff. I have employed staff for the last few years but it is only now, working on my own, that I have started to earn a proper living. The key thing is keeping overheads LOW!

By low I mean really low!

Ideally work out of a workshop at home. If you are going to have to rent somewhere try and find something you can share with another woodworker. I do this and it works great.

Marketing these days is easy. Build yourself a website and make sure that it comes up near the top of the Google rankings for your area. That on its own should bring in enough enquiries to get you started.

Figures are difficult but you should be aiming to turn out £1000 - £1500 worth of work each week. Material costs will take between 15% and 25% of this.

If you can keep your overheads down to £150 per week you can earn between £600 and £1125 per week on these numbers.

So yes, it is possible to earn a living from woodworking!

Cheers
Dan

 

[mister henderson]

Figures are difficult but you should be aiming to turn out £1000 - £1500 worth of work each week. Material costs will take between 15% and 25% of this.

VAT registration is required at £64,000 PA at the moment, so if you work 50 weeks a year then you need to keep sales (turnover) below £1,280 a week, otherwise you are going to be giving HRMC a lot of your money

So yes, it is possible to earn a living from woodworking!

Agreed, as you have made the distinction between fine woodworking, and woodworking.

Somehow, though, I get the feeling the OP was thinking about free standing pieces rather than builit-ins

 

[woodyone]

I'm really glad someone has brought up this topic as i am a student doing a resistant matrials GCSE at the moment and hoping to go through the education system studying furniture making and then hopefull starting my own business. I have always wondered how it all works really and all the posts so far have been really interesting so keep'em coming

Thanks for the advice

Woody.

 

[BradNaylor]

VAT registration is required at £64,000 PA at the moment, so if you work 50 weeks a year then you need to keep sales (turnover) below £1,280 a week, otherwise you are going to be giving HRMC a lot of your money

The VAT registration theshold is actually now £67,000.

You are quite right that one should stay below this if possible. I estimate that having to charge VAT on sales would cost a woodworker working at around that level of sales over £140 per week!

I have heard that some scoundrels stay under the VAT radar by accepting payment in cash from certain clients and not declaring it to HMRC!

:shock: :shock: :shock:

Cheers
Dan

 

[skipdiver]

I agree.The costs involved in fine furniture making are very high,especially the labour costs.People just dont want to pay for it and besides,most folk nowadays want to change their furniture every few years.We live in a fad driven throw away society,so making stuff from mdf like wardrobes is the way to go.Not ideal but better than your 9 to 5.

 

[BradNaylor]

making stuff from mdf like wardrobes is the way to go. Not ideal but better than your 9 to 5.

Exactly!

The main reason why someone should be self-employed is because they don't want to work for anyone else.

If you want to make fine furniture get a job with one of the high-end cabinetmaking companies that still exist, or do it as a hobby.

If you want to work for yourself you've got to do what the market demands - which these days is MDF wardrobes etc!

You can always make that Maloof rocking chair in your spare time - if you have any!

Cheers
Dan

 

[BradNaylor]

:?: :?:

no one want to give their secrets away ?

:?: :?:

Far from it!

It's just that any pro guy would have been in his workshop at that time. Saturday is just another working day for the self-employed.

Sunday too, for many!

 

[houtslager]

Saturday is just another working day for the self-employed.

Sunday too, for many!

well said Dan.

I am on a coffee break now as I type :? Getting the final touches to a GII. sofa table - this with some help from another member is very nearly ready to be re-united with its owner in Oslo.

I work hard at my hobby ! but to earn a living wage here in Germany I rely on a lot of my old clients who want a piece restored, no matter where there are in Europe [ or USA for that matter ] I will offer to do the work, further to earning a living wage I make "utility" furniture from MDF.

Occasionally I'll get a client that will want something made in REAL WOOD :shock: but when I tell the client how much ! they often need a chair to sit on,
why ? you ask -

well the timber will cost between 20 and 30 %

machining the rough timber a further 20%, then one has the other materials which can come too another 20%.

Then the real work starts, and that is where I have to earn a wage too. So, my wage is often 40 to 50% of the price of which I have to pay the fixed costs and the dreaded TAXMAN :evil: which, looking at the basic maths leaves with very little to have a beer with . :?

 

[Digit]

I have heard that some scoundrels stay under the VAT radar by accepting payment in cash from certain clients and not declaring it to HMRC!

Shocking! :lol:
Any form of of self employment requires a certain degree of masochism. The hours are long, the rewards often meagre and the customers a Damned nuisance!
But it beats being a wage slave every time!

Roy.

 

[Benchwayze]

Figures are difficult but you should be aiming to turn out £1000 - £1500 worth of work each week. Material costs will take between 15% and 25% of this.

VAT registration is required at £64,000 PA at the moment, so if you work 50 weeks a year then you need to keep sales (turnover) below £1,280 a week, otherwise you are going to be giving HRMC a lot of your money

So yes, it is possible to earn a living from woodworking!

Agreed, as you have made the distinction between fine woodworking, and woodworking.

Somehow, though, I get the feeling the OP was thinking about free standing pieces rather than builit-ins

I might be somewhat naive, but I thought that if you were 'VAT' Registered and paid VAT to the Treasury, you simply add that to your bill; the buck stops with the consumer?
I might be wrong of course, but that's what I was told. :?

regards
John

 

[Karl]

I might be somewhat naive, but I thought that if you were 'VAT' Registered and paid VAT to the Treasury, you simply add that to your bill; the buck stops with the consumer?
I might be wrong of course, but that's what I was told. :?

regards
John

That's true, but it also means (assuming all other things are equal) that you are 17.5% more expensive to the customer in relation to a non-VAT registered trader, meaning you will get less work.

Cheers

Karl

 

[mister henderson]

I might be somewhat naive, but I thought that if you were 'VAT' Registered and paid VAT to the Treasury, you simply add that to your bill; the buck stops with the consumer?
I might be wrong of course, but that's what I was told. :?

regards
John

That's true, but it also means (assuming all other things are equal) that you are 17.5% more expensive to the customer in relation to a non-VAT registered trader, meaning you will get less work.

Cheers

Karl

Very well put.

From a consumer's point of view, their concern is how much money is leaving their pocket, who keeps which portion of it is of no concern to them.