Making a Living Woodworking

[Irvin Gomez]

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.

Odds are whatever you make is being made better, faster and much cheaper by a factory somewhere. Not trying to sound negative, but that's our reality: look at the thousands of excellent small products selling for very little money at Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ikea, etc.

[rudy de haas]

I have several friends who try to make a living from wood working. One is extremely good, one pretty average but neither makes enough for the family to live on.

In looking at their problems (and I made my living as a systems management consultant) I came to the conclusion that woodworking is a rewarding activity, but not generally a profitable one.

Nevertheless there are opportunities in niche markets. For example, I think that partnerships offering restoration services constitute a viable opportunity today: get a group together in which you have serious expertise in the key areas of sales and management, woodwork, interior finish (paints, wallpaper, curtains, carpets etc), and flooring - then add some on-demand business partners (e.g. electricians) for additional skills and labor - and go after fire, flood, vandalismm, and crime scene repair jobs. Lots of business, little nickel and dime bitching by the payor, but you do have to be able to placate and manage the homeowners and other injured parties.

[Robert Engel]

Here's the answer. You gave up on the idea in a little over two hours because of what a few people said. I went off on my own and started selling pieces for good money (including a grandfather's clock for $7000 in 1990's) but had to give up on it because the logistics problems, not the lack of market. If you have a passion for this I would say you should try it. What is the worst that could happen, you aren't going to starve to death, are you?

Got a chuckle out of this one.
I'd like to know where the market is for $7k Grandfather clocks.
Citing one example of a huge payoff doesn't make quitting your job a good choice.

As for starving to death, I was being figurative. J
Before this happens they lose their house, their car, and zero out the bank account.
Hopefully they figure out they shouldn't have quit their day job.

Taking the plunge is daring and brave for the single unattached man, but for one with other humans depending on them, its stupid.

I'm not saying don't chase your dreams, just don't do it with your head in the clouds.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I think there's huge difference between making MONEY woodworking, and making a LIVING woodworking. One is fun, makes you some money, and the latter is work, and if you don't sell, you don't eat. I make a little money selling stuff, certainly not a living, I'd be dead by now. BUT if you find that little line of products that sell well, you certainly can make THAT into a living. I do know several people (well, 2) that are solely wood workers and work alone. DON'T get discouraged. Start your business, but as many have said, don't quit your day job. And, if you do find that market for $7K grandfather clocks that sell, you can make a living at that.
On the other hand, I picked up a few barely used tools from a guy who had built a fully set up shop intending to start a guitar building business. Never made anything..... Took a luthier class and realized it takes weels/months to complete a guitar. Had to take huge losses on tooling from planes to a Sawstop table saw. 2 band saws, drum sander. This guy had everything..... I would not do that method either. Buy as you make some money.

[John T Barker]

Got a chuckle out of this one.
I'd like to know where the market is for $7k Grandfather clocks.
Citing one example of a huge payoff doesn't make quitting your job a good choice.

Share what caused the chuckle. Can I help explain what I was trying to say or do you just want to continue chuckling? The market was Main Line Pennsylvania...i.e., western Philadelphia suburbs. A good combination of furniture history, history and money. At the time I sold that clock for $7000 the people I had worked for were selling it for about $10,000. Not many of the guys still doing the work don't put their prices online but they are up there. Good work, mortise and tenon and hand cut dovetails and a good number of people still doing it. I worked for an outfit called Irion Company and a number of the people I worked with are making a go of woodworking, a few incorporating teaching in their business ventures. Oh, and their were other good sized projects.

[Cody Colston]

Certainly there are people making a decent living doing woodworking. Custom made fine furniture can be lucrative but you have to have the talent to build it and the clientele that will buy it...the upper 1% of the population, generally.

If building and selling craft items, just ask yourself how many $20 items you will have to build and sell at flea markets and craft shows to earn enough to live on. Here's an example: $50k per year would equal 208.3 sale items at $20 apiece every month...and that's gross. Taxes, insurance, overhead all take a big wet bite out of that $50k gross income.

I'm not trying to be discouraging but I'd suggest keeping the day job and doing what you suggested as a supplement to your income. It will at least cover some nice tools every now and then.

[Rich Riddle]

Great way to ruin a perfectly good hobby.

David

Exactly. Steve Mickley found out when he opened Hardwood Lumber and More. A great woodworker but it ruined the hobby for him.

[Robert Engel]

Share what caused the chuckle. Can I help explain what I was trying to say or do you just want to continue chuckling? The market was Main Line Pennsylvania...i.e., western Philadelphia suburbs. A good combination of furniture history, history and money. At the time I sold that clock for $7000 the people I had worked for were selling it for about $10,000. Not many of the guys still doing the work don't put their prices online but they are up there. Good work, mortise and tenon and hand cut dovetails and a good number of people still doing it. I worked for an outfit called Irion Company and a number of the people I worked with are making a go of woodworking, a few incorporating teaching in their business ventures. Oh, and their were other good sized projects.

What tickled me is advocating taking a very serious financial plunge based on your own very unique opportunity, one he certainly can't build a business model on.
This is why I said what I said.

No one is saying you can't make a living in ww'ing all they're saying is "don't quit your day job", that's all. Sorry if I offended.

[jim mills]

Tim. Don't let these boo-hoo'ers discourage you. It's a common theme on this forum. I can cite several success stories, depending on your definition of success. Mine is one of them. I quit a successful career in the medical field to pursue my dreams, and haven't looked back. After 10 years, I still cant wait to get to "work" in the morning.
I know a couple locals that started in their garage with a chop saw, some old palates, and a collection of acrylic paint from the hobby lobby. They moved twice into rentals, and now own a stand alone building, and can't make their product fast enough. It's junk in my mind...but cool junk, and people love it.
I know someone else that started out making soap in their basement not too long ago. They now employ several dozen people and are a huge success story selling $7 bars of soap. Who'd a thunk it?

Find your nitch, start small, get it out there, and see what happens. Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

[roger wiegand]

Very interesting thread. I was one of the early "don't quit your day job just yet" posters, but I've been reconsidering. IF you have the passion and IF you don't have a family to support then there is much to be said for giving it a shot. You will never know otherwise. I know a reasonable number of people who make an OK living woodworking. None of them are going to get rich, but they live a life they enjoy, doing something they (most days) love. That's worth a lot. They are also, at this point building very pricey custom furniture and have long waiting lists of projects in the queue. Each of the folks now in that situation spent a decade or more working 80 hours a week for starvation wages perfecting their craft and building a customer base. They all did it out of passion-- they couldn't stand not woodworking. It is asserted that to get really good at something (almost anything) you need to put in 20,000 hours of serious practice. That's consistent with my experience of becoming a competent scientist, and being perhaps a quarter way through that number of hours seriously working on woodworking, a reasonable guess as to what it might take there too.

There are also woodworking-related jobs that can help ease the transition. Around here, for example, carpenters with the skills and interest to do competent old house restoration work are in heavy demand and command a very decent wage. Most of the guys I know who do that are also building skills and a business in custom furniture-grade built-ins and freestanding furniture.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

Another woodworking related option is commercial cabinet shops. Not a lot of "real" woodworking, but that depends on the specific shop. Some shops specialize in veneer and wood millwork, while other do more plastic laminate. If your ambitious, and have some skills, it's not hard to make $50K a year. If you're really good, and work in a busy shop, you can make a lot more with overtime pay.

[Martin Wasner]

A greenhorn pulling down $50k a year without side jobs and little to no overtime? Very unlikely.

I live in the weeds, but an experienced bench hand would be hard pressed to make much over $20/hr here. Working 55 hour weeks gets you $65k per year.

It ticks me off how little cabinetmakers make. Short of excavators nobody has as big of a capital investment. There's knowledge and skill that I feel aren't easy to achieve compared to electricians or plumbers and the skills are incredibly diverse. Yet we make squat because the market won't support a decent wage in the USA.

[john lawson]

I agree, go for it you are single. I attended a woodworking school in Maine for three months and as a part of our training we visited several one man shops of craftsman who were earning their living making furniture. One of the humorous sayings that I heard more than once was "the first requirement of a professional woodworker is to have a wife who has full benefits".

There is a reason that a lot of professional woodworkers share that humor.

[John Schweikert]

My advice would be to expand beyond just woodworking and add metal work. You do a few projects and the next thing you know everyone and their brother wants you to build something for them.

I've been a hobby woodworker since I was a teenager and now I'm 43. I've been a full time photographer since 1998. Once I started building a boat 4 years ago, house projects led to client projects being requested. I built out a sandwich shop inside a larger food area. Then built almost everything for a bar a few blocks from me which included many walnut tables, cedar curing room, steel and cedar bar back, walnut bar, game tables, outdoor eating bar from cedar and steel, douglas fir benches with steel bases and the list goes on. Then the restaurant across the street from that wanted a steel and mahogany bench and also steel parking bollards. I've built store signs from wood and metal. Welding and steel tools along with woodworking tools opens up huge opportunities. It's what people want as materials, wood AND steel.

I added a plasma cutter recently which is helping tremendously to expand what I want to build in addition to what others want me to build.

I will continue to be a commercial photographer, but I have no desire for that to consume all my time anymore. Building things is a wonderful creative outlet.

Currently I'm building a 12ft high vertical carousel out of steel and BB shelves, huge chain and sprockets to hold 170 beer steins.

Start building things that other people want and the ball will start rolling. Fulfill the desires of others and you'll have plenty of projects.

[jack duren]

You can make good money as a cabinet maker.
You can make good money as a Commercial shop.
You can make money as a furniture maker.

Every shop does different work and pays differently.

I lost my helper last week. Now I need an apprentice. These are hard to find. It's roughly 15-17 hr. I need a cabinet maker,etc that understands how tools and wood works. Actually hard to find.