Making a Living Woodworking

[Mike Henderson]

Is it possible to make a living woodworking out of my garage making small projects and selling them at flea markets or other places?

I have a bandsaw, router table, planer, miter saw, table saw, spindle sander, drill press and an assortment of hand tools.

I am tired or working for electrical contractors and would like to go into a new direction.

My answer is "No", you can't make a living doing woodworking in your garage. If it was possible to do so, a lot of woodworkers would be doing it.

Whatever it is you make, you also have to sell it, and that takes time. Many people have tried doing small things and selling them at fairs but very few have succeeded, and most of those buy stuff made in China (or some other place) and resell it. You just can't make those small things as cheaply as the factories can.

And if you make your stuff, you'll be competing with the guy in the next booth who's buying his stuff.

Mike

[Martin Wasner]

I'm not saying this is wrong Martin, I'm just asking because to me it seems off? I don't own and business and never have.......but for the OP to make a living out of his garage expecting $50k a year or so he has to sell $350k in woodworking?

Pretty close. I'm pulling this stuff from memory, but taking capital investments and taxes out of the equation I could've taken home almost 23% of my gross last year, or a bit less than $60k. Last year we did $255k gross, and I paid myself $3500, and I only had to work about 3000 hours to make that happen. The rest of that profit I spend on equipment, so hopefully this year I can be more efficient, and make more money with less effort. Granted, I will say that I was aggressive in my spending, but I had cash on hand, and a lot of good opportunities presented themselves. You should spend money on improvements whenever you can afford it. It's money well spent.


Working out of a garage, your overhead is going to be significantly lower, but a small space can only produce so much and if he is growing, he will outgrow that 1000 square feet very quickly. I've outgrown my space many times over. For the 2500 sq/ft that I'm currently leasing I spend $16,200 a year just on the floor space. Another $7000 on insurance, (liability, coverage for the tools, product in transit, a trailer, and two work vehicles). My electric bill seems low compared to most places, but thats about $2500 a year. Heat costs me another $1200 a year. So I spend almost $27,000 a year before I've even bought a single scrap of wood. That's 10.5% of last years gross. My shop is in a very small town, in the middle of nowhere. I could easily be paying more than double that for a better location.

My cabinets work out where about 40% of the cost is material and hardware. Going off of last years numbers, thats $102,000. Which sounds about right.

I spent I think $4,000 on fuel last year. The company pays for my commute too, which is a nice benefit. But that's another 1.5%

Labor last year was about another $26,000. I had one contract employee last year and he started in about June. There goes another 10%

That all adds up to about $217,000, or 85%. Like I said, I'm just running off of loose numbers from memory. Pretty easy to spend another $40k on other services. ie, sharpening, tool repairs, turnings, etc. We don't do any finishing in house. I don't have enough to justify a full time finisher, or enough space to dedicate to finishing, and most of my stuff, the finishing is handled by the builder. Either done on site, or I deliver it to a finisher. I easily spent $15k on finishing last year though for the small amount that I had to deal with. It's also really hard to justify putting something in a lathe and expecting to make money at it when I can drop off a blank and pay a local guy $15 per to crank a post out and it takes him five minutes on a cnc lathe. That's not a huge expense for me, but it's there.


This is a very capital intense business. You have to spend a lot to make very little. Welcome to the real world.

[Jebediah Eckert]

Thanks, makes sense.

[John T Barker]

This is a very capital intense business. You have to spend a lot to make very little. Welcome to the real world.

I learned to make furniture while working for a guy in SE Pa. He employed about 20 guys when I was there but had started out smaller. He always whined about expenes but from everything I could see he was making a good bit of dough. He sold 18th century repros in an area that was rich in history, money and people willing to buy well made pieces, some not really understanding what they were buying. The company had highs and lows like many. People came and went and from what I can tell many of the past employees have kept their hands in woodworking and are successful. There were competitors to this business that could probably tell similar stories. My point is that I THINK an attempt to be a successful woodworker, or restaurantuer, or shoe store owner is only as good as the attempt. There is a right way and wrong way, things one should do and not do, locations that work better than others, etc. Some people are successful in this business and it doesn't always take a huge investment.

[John T Barker]

And if you make your stuff, you'll be competing with the guy in the next booth who's buying his stuff.

Mike

It might be worth remembering that there are craft fairs and shows where people selling stuff made in China would not be allowed in. There are customers that don't want some piece of Chinese made garbage but look for well made crafts.

[ron david]

it would be interesting how many here singularly make their income from woodworking without pensions to subsidize themselves. there is a lot of speculation of what could be. unless you step in those shoes it is hard to know. there is quite a bit that can be said of some of the difficulties
I have been doing it now for 41 years. I have more than likely paid a price for it.the funny part of it I still enjoy doing it every day. I have never done any production work and I work out of commercial space.
ron

[Brad Barnhart]

Mr. Tom, I posted here earlier in your thread. I explained to you how my wife & got started. There are going to be slow times, just like anything else. But, you have to become willing to expand your business. Light furniture repair, maybe refinishing, whatever. This isn't something that's going to happen in just a few days. You've got to get your name out there, advertise, go to craft shows, local fairs, etc. Be willing to take on new jobs, & learn from them. Don't get stuck in the middle of making just a few things. You can still get great satisfaction from your woodworking by building other things besides bread boards! There is always someone needing something repaired, built, redone, etc. Start with the folks you work with. Put flyers up in & around your neighborhood. You can make good money at it, but for the time being, don't give up your day job, brother! Keep your chin up, & keep looking to the future.

[Bob Glenn]

Historically, most woodworkers have never done very well financially. You'll be better off working for minimum wage.

[Martin Wasner]

Some people are successful in this business and it doesn't always take a huge investment.

There are certainly some smart cookies out there. I'm not one of them. I'm good at building cabinets. I'm okay at running a shop. I'm a horrible salesman. I'm not a great business guy, I make plenty of mistakes.

I disagree with not needing much of an investment. I've spent a lot more on tools than on my house. I started with not much, but those early days were really hard and my capabilities for what I could build and how quickly it could be produced were very limiting. Efficiency and repeatability only comes from equipment. The cheap stuff is too expensive, the good stuff is is hard to acquire when the funds are extremely limited. That was an expensive lesson for me. The more you grow, the deeper the rabbit hole becomes too. My next really big tool expense is over $100k with a smattering of stuff in the $20k range. It's not a cheap business to get into

[Larry Edgerton]

Pretty close. I'm pulling this stuff from memory, but taking capital investments and taxes out of the equation I could've taken home almost 23% of my gross last year, or a bit less than $60k. Last year we did $255k gross, and I paid myself $3500, and I only had to work about 3000 hours to make that happen. The rest of that profit I spend on equipment, so hopefully this year I can be more efficient, and make more money with less effort. Granted, I will say that I was aggressive in my spending, but I had cash on hand, and a lot of good opportunities presented themselves. You should spend money on improvements whenever you can afford it. It's money well spent.


Working out of a garage, your overhead is going to be significantly lower, but a small space can only produce so much and if he is growing, he will outgrow that 1000 square feet very quickly. I've outgrown my space many times over. For the 2500 sq/ft that I'm currently leasing I spend $16,200 a year just on the floor space. Another $7000 on insurance, (liability, coverage for the tools, product in transit, a trailer, and two work vehicles). My electric bill seems low compared to most places, but thats about $2500 a year. Heat costs me another $1200 a year. So I spend almost $27,000 a year before I've even bought a single scrap of wood. That's 10.5% of last years gross. My shop is in a very small town, in the middle of nowhere. I could easily be paying more than double that for a better location.

My cabinets work out where about 40% of the cost is material and hardware. Going off of last years numbers, thats $102,000. Which sounds about right.

I spent I think $4,000 on fuel last year. The company pays for my commute too, which is a nice benefit. But that's another 1.5%

Labor last year was about another $26,000. I had one contract employee last year and he started in about June. There goes another 10%

That all adds up to about $217,000, or 85%. Like I said, I'm just running off of loose numbers from memory. Pretty easy to spend another $40k on other services. ie, sharpening, tool repairs, turnings, etc. We don't do any finishing in house. I don't have enough to justify a full time finisher, or enough space to dedicate to finishing, and most of my stuff, the finishing is handled by the builder. Either done on site, or I deliver it to a finisher. I easily spent $15k on finishing last year though for the small amount that I had to deal with. It's also really hard to justify putting something in a lathe and expecting to make money at it when I can drop off a blank and pay a local guy $15 per to crank a post out and it takes him five minutes on a cnc lathe. That's not a huge expense for me, but it's there.


This is a very capital intense business. You have to spend a lot to make very little. Welcome to the real world.

I have gone the other way, from a large commercial building to a shop at home. The thing is the large operation is what paid for all my tools, and there is no way even at my skill level with the contacts that I have that a one man operation could pay for the tools I am working with. I do about $150-200K a year, and come out of it with about $50K, but... I already have all the tools.

If I had a son I would not encourage him to get into the business. But, three girls........

When the dust settles I am making about $20Hr on a $250K investment and about 48 hrs a week average. Not good numbers, but I do work at home. A home that is paid for, another huge consideration. I could not do it if I had a mortgage.

Martin, if you are getting your finish done that cheap, run with it as long as you can. Finish can seriously eat up some cash. I try to sub it out but around here they are insane. I just got a quote for $7400 for the project I am on, so I am doing it myself, unfortunately. I hate finish.

Pm me your address/number. When I get done with this job I need a road trip. Minnesota is a possibility. I have been working 12-14 hrs seven days a week for two months, need to wander. Deadline is Memorial day weekend, but I will probably be a couple of days late.

[Martin Wasner]

I have gone the other way, from a large commercial building to a shop at home. The thing is the large operation is what paid for all my tools, and there is no way even at my skill level with the contacts that I have that a one man operation could pay for the tools I am working with. I do about $150-200K a year, and come out of it with about $50K, but... I already have all the tools.

If I had a son I would not encourage him to get into the business. But, three girls........

When the dust settles I am making about $20Hr on a $250K investment and about 48 hrs a week average. Not good numbers, but I do work at home. A home that is paid for, another huge consideration. I could not do it if I had a mortgage.

Martin, if you are getting your finish done that cheap, run with it as long as you can. Finish can seriously eat up some cash. I try to sub it out but around here they are insane. I just got a quote for $7400 for the project I am on, so I am doing it myself, unfortunately. I hate finish.

Pm me your address/number. When I get done with this job I need a road trip. Minnesota is a possibility. I have been working 12-14 hrs seven days a week for two months, need to wander. Deadline is Memorial day weekend, but I will probably be a couple of days late.

My finishing isn't cheap, I just don't have to deal with much of it. Either the builder has their own finisher that I deliver to, or it's finished on site. My average job now, (not including little stupid stuff, the filler work), is about $40k in cabinets not including installation or finishing. Pretty easy to have a $10k paint bill on $40k worth of cabinets. I've got one builder that I just started sending whatever is natural out finished. Interiors, shelves, drawers, etc, and cabinets that aren't painted, which most are painted, get painted on site. Typically the island and the master bath are the only wood finish cabinets in the house with these guys. Even that I had a $4200 bill on it, and that was about an average sized job.


Will do.

[Robert Engel]

That all adds up to about $217,000, or 85%.

This is a very capital intense business. You have to spend a lot to make very little. Welcome to the real world.

You have to look at ways to cut expenses. You didn't mention that.

[Martin Wasner]

You have to look at ways to cut expenses. You didn't mention that.

And that's unique to each shop or business as well. My ways are to make operations faster and easier through equipment. Some people disagree. Whereas the shop next door to mine adds people to get things out the door. Another way that I try to save money is to buy as much as I possibly can in bulk to get a lower price, or to at least meet a minimum order for free shipping, whether that's material or hardware. I recently found out there's a significant price break when you buy more than one hundred sets of Blum slides from my hardware supplier. I think it was almost two dollars a set less than the previous price break which was about thirty sets and that was about a dollar fifty. It's a kick in the seeds when you forget to order something and you get socked with $12 in shipping. A few dollars here and there adds up, but if you can negotiate a lower price because you have been buying a certain amount of something that helps greatly too in the long run. Every dollar not spent is a dollar you don't have to earn again.

I recently had a cabinetmaker buddy who owns his own shop, in my shop. He laughed at the giant stack of staple boxes on the shelf. "Got enough staples?" "Nope, I'll use them eventually, free shipping when you buy two cases." I used to buy a couple of boxes at a time, now I try and buy at a price break.

I'm nowhere near big enough to buy hinges or slides by the pallet, but that would be nice if I had either the space or cash on hand to do so. I hate when people say "I work in a high end market", but I do work on more upscale houses. People that make way more than I do, who don't want corners cut. I build a fairly expensive cabinet, and there's plenty of places where I could eliminate both labor and material expense, but then I wouldn't have the same product that appeals to a certain clientele. For instance, if I spend $30k on and edgebander and could have a shelf that is edged and ready to go in 20 seconds, but I choose to glue, nail, clamp, and sand a solid wood edge onto every single shelf I build. I like the option of being able to route a profile into it, that 1-1/4" dropped wood edge adds some strength even if it is just left square edged. I could buy melamine for $20 a sheet, but I use white two face birch plywood for $69 a sheet. I could skip putting backs in. I could buy dovetail drawer boxes instead of fabbing my own, but they wouldn't be to my specification. But, I wouldn't have the product that I want to sell. There's no sense in building anything and selling it to people like me. People like me don't have any money.

Rework is a killer. Either when you screw up and have to build something again, or you've got a customer that is really good to you and you just eat it even though it's not your fault. You don't feel so bad when you're helping somebody out, but when it's all on you because of a typo or misinterpretation of a drawing or notes, that's frustrating. There's no getting entirely around it, just minimizing it. In a small shop it can be difficult to change gears and remake something. Especially when you're balls deep in the next project. A lot of that boils down to software. I've got a good drawing program, but when I bought it I couldn't afford the version that does cutlists for doors and drawers. I have to manually figure out the size of the door/drawer front/drawer, and enter the size into a spreadsheet that creates my cutlists for those items. Sometimes I figure the size wrong, sometimes I hit "2", when I wanted "3", and it gets missed. So a few doors get built incorrectly. That's expensive. The amount of screw ups I've had over the years would've easily paid for that software upgrade, but I keep stuffing money into other things. Eventually I will have to upgrade when it comes time to step into a cnc, but that's a ways down the road. So that cnc purchase will be a two fold increase in productivity. Speed, accuracy, and eliminating an idiot, (me).

[Albert Lee]

I dont think you can make money by selling at local fair/flea market.

I operate a hobby business in my workshop, I am in New Zealand, I sell across our tiny nation, our population is 4.5 million. I have a full time job.

I can honestly say I am not a woodworker - I dont concentrate on the details like how a proper woodworker suppose to do, I sell product to what the market wants.
I only make what I can replicate easily with minimum setting up time, I find a niche market and I concentrate in that. I dont make what everyone else makes.

I only started this within last 6-7 years, and got serious 3 years ago and invested about $50,000-$60,000 on my machinery and workshop electrical/ducting so far. am looking at setting up a proper spray booth at the moment.