I know, right? I have a feeling that despite all of my calculations, this won't work nearly as well as I hoped, at any point in the process, nor be remotely as successful as on paper. Regardless, I feel I need to give this one a shot, because who knows?
Scary is right. I did some thinking over the break, though, and I'm tired of always being afraid to just try things that I've always wanted to do my whole life. It's probably 2 decades now that I've longed to make and sell my designs and inventions, but something always holds me back. It may be fear of failure. I think this is a nice, baby-steps way in, though. I'm not married to it. I don't even cook! I don't care about cutting boards themselves. However, I think my last attempt looked product-worthy enough, and what I want to do next would be bigger, sleeker, and more fun. The only downside is if no one buys them, I'm out money, and some time, the latter of which I'm just wasting anyway while *not* making saleable items. The former I'm tempering by starting out with a low quantity as a test. Might as well give it a shot, I figure. At some point I'm going to have to just plunge forward and try out all of these old dreams of mine.
I've told you before, make toys. Chessboards. And especially Go boards. They command high prices and in the case of Go boards, you can charge more for using a single piece of wood!
Yeah, I think it'll happen. Go boards like the ones you showed me are a bit weird. Where do I get the wood? Those are like end-table sized blocks. They can't possibly be dry when they're sold. It takes about a year in an arid climate for inch-thick wood to dry, and another year per inch. Those boards appeared to be 18" square. That's about 2 decades of drying time. They must be selling them still quite wet inside.
Don't I need to make chess pieces, too, if I'm going to sell boards? I'm not saying I don't want to, just curious about protocol. I've had an idea that for knights I'd turn a rotation of the head shape first, then run its sides against a belt sander¹ to flatten it with an arcing taper, then notch out behind the head and under the neck, probably with a knife or chisel. Then it would be down to some light detail work. For most everything else, I'd just go with what came off my CNC mini lathe, notching things like crowns and crenels.
Sounds like you've been thinking this through quite a bit. Biggest hurdle that I can envision is moving the product. I don't think you'd get those prices you mention on sites like Etsy...
Yeah. Some people vastly undersell themselves there. I was looking just now, and found this one. That's 7"x12"x1.5" = 126in.^3, ~= 0.875 BF. Call it 1 BF with waste and sanding.
It's made of maple and walnut. At my local plywood shop, walnut is $7.95/BF, maple is $5.95/BF. Online at Woodworkers Source, they're normally $8.99 and $5.99, respectively, on sale currently for $6.74 and $4.49. It looks to be maybe 70% walnut, which is the pricier wood. Figure about .61 BF walnut, and 0.26 BF maple, and even if we go with the sale prices, that's $4.11 + $1.17 = $5.28 just in material. The work of cutting, jointing, gluing, and final sanding/rounding is $4+. That's a very small profit margin.
Also, this is discouraging. That's way more work per board than I'm planning, and they're still <$200.
Incidentally, I wouldn't want to use that board. It's a plethora of unsafe wood choices. I see end grain oak, which is one of the most massively porous woods, even used by some fish tank hobbyists as airline bubblers, and there are videos (saw one on YouTube) of people blowing air through long dowels into glasses of water. This traps food. I've actually cut >1" ends off of boards that I can hold up to light and see through, somewhat like this. Red oak also has a stinging chemical in it that burns my eyes when I plane it
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Yeah. I want quality, and good service. If someone is unhappy, I'll do what I can to make it right or have them return the product for a refund. Word of mouth will be a big help for me
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I'm no woodworking hobbyist [though I did get an A in my 6 week woodworking class in 7th grade!], but some part of me thinks there will be great problems trying to cut a 4' cutting board into smaller boards. I am picturing end pieces torquing and glue not holding and small wood blocks flying everywhere. Unless I've completely misunderstood what you were explaining.
Do you have a link to your photo set of how you made the first one? I know you've posted it somewhere, but I am lazy. I clicked through some, but I can't remember how all the pieces ended up together.
I see what you're saying, and if I hadn't done a bunch of this kind of thing already, I'd think the same thing. The glue is unbelievably strong, though. If you glue two pieces together, then stress the whole thing enough to tear it apart, the glue almost never tears; instead it tears apart the wood around it.
My original plan was to make 10"x11" boards with 1/2" squares, but I think it'll be such a waste of wood to do it that way for no benefit, and smaller boards that are harder to glue up and don't command a higher price. I'm going to go with full 3/4" squares, which bumps it to 15"x16.5", both dimensions of which are too big for my band saw's throat. I think instead, I'm going to glue strips into extruded rows, then glue half of them to form one half of the columns of the boards, then the other half separately, slice each of those off into board halves, then glue them together as 2 pieces.
The set is here, and the LJs post is here. It was a monumental hassle to work with individual blocks. That's why I came up with this new
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Sounds scary. Good luck! :-)
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And thanks!
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I have a feeling that despite all of my calculations, this won't work nearly as well as I hoped...
Word. That's why I, and the 150 books in my garage, think it sounds scary.
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Don't I need to make chess pieces, too, if I'm going to sell boards? I'm not saying I don't want to, just curious about protocol. I've had an idea that for knights I'd turn a rotation of the head shape first, then run its sides against a belt sander¹ to flatten it with an arcing taper, then notch out behind the head and under the neck, probably with a knife or chisel. Then it would be down to some light detail work. For most everything else, I'd just go with what came off my CNC mini lathe, notching things like crowns and crenels.
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And I'm sure high-end Go boards are made from centuries old wood from certain prefectures of Japan, so it may have had plenty of drying time...
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It's made of maple and walnut. At my local plywood shop, walnut is $7.95/BF, maple is $5.95/BF. Online at Woodworkers Source, they're normally $8.99 and $5.99, respectively, on sale currently for $6.74 and $4.49. It looks to be maybe 70% walnut, which is the pricier wood. Figure about .61 BF walnut, and 0.26 BF maple, and even if we go with the sale prices, that's $4.11 + $1.17 = $5.28 just in material. The work of cutting, jointing, gluing, and final sanding/rounding is $4+. That's a very small profit margin.
Edited: Everything. All my math was way off.
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Incidentally, I wouldn't want to use that board. It's a plethora of unsafe wood choices. I see end grain oak, which is one of the most massively porous woods, even used by some fish tank hobbyists as airline bubblers, and there are videos (saw one on YouTube) of people blowing air through long dowels into glasses of water. This traps food. I've actually cut >1" ends off of boards that I can hold up to light and see through, somewhat like this. Red oak also has a stinging chemical in it that burns my eyes when I plane it ( ... )
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I told you when I visited, if you do good work and charge prices within average, you'll build a business on the back of that quality.
Also, don't forget to consider operating expenses like electricity and wear and tear on your equipment when you're figuring costs per board.
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Do you have a link to your photo set of how you made the first one? I know you've posted it somewhere, but I am lazy. I clicked through some, but I can't remember how all the pieces ended up together.
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My original plan was to make 10"x11" boards with 1/2" squares, but I think it'll be such a waste of wood to do it that way for no benefit, and smaller boards that are harder to glue up and don't command a higher price. I'm going to go with full 3/4" squares, which bumps it to 15"x16.5", both dimensions of which are too big for my band saw's throat. I think instead, I'm going to glue strips into extruded rows, then glue half of them to form one half of the columns of the boards, then the other half separately, slice each of those off into board halves, then glue them together as 2 pieces.
The set is here, and the LJs post is here. It was a monumental hassle to work with individual blocks. That's why I came up with this new
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