another table

[tule peak timber]

Yes, I certainly do, Richard somebody or other-never smiled.....

[Den Socling]

Boone I believe.

[newoodguy78]

That is one serious undertaking you have going there. 8) I enjoy seeing your projects and some of your "outside the box" techniques. No doubt you'll pull it off, definitely will be watching this one closely.

[Peter Drouin]

How do you price something like that? With the cutting and drying you must have close to $5/600 in to it by now.
I know you do stuff like this all the time and that will give an Idear how long it will take. But, all wood is not the same.

[tule peak timber]

Good questions. Bluntly; the economics of logs, wood and woodworking vary quite a bit from coast to coast. I earlier posted that I have continuous progression of tables/bartops going through here and I am booked out through sometime next year. We just recently finished a job we started in early 2015. That said, if you built these things one at a time, with the amount of time it takes to produce an exceptional piece, you would go broke. There is not a lot of profit margin in any one of these pieces and if we didn't multi task in the shop, the shop rate would dive preciously close to single digits when it needs to be triple digits. So, there is an old saying, I make up for my losses in volume. When I fished, I used to occasionally come to the docks and see guys coming in with 30-$100,000 swordfish loads. I chose another path with rockcod and slime eels at 0.50/lb but I pounded at it 7 days a week. The swordfish guys would sneer at me with their 2-3 trips/year and me working like a crazy person. End of the year, every year, I was the one who sneered at them, in private, looking at my tax returns. It's just sort of the way I do things.
Going back to pricing, it is a combination of the obvious business plan of what it takes you to run, plus a little profit and what the traffic will bear. I can't get the prices for my quality work -  that lesser work gets in the big city because I own a sawmill. The assumption is, people are buying cut rate wood/services when they go to a sawmill. And we all know the fallacy in that. We are just thinking about changing our business and adding basically a storefront and salespeople and that will drastically change how we figure pricing. As a matter of fact, that is something we are working on this weekend.
How do you figure pricing? It's a little science, a little math and knowing your business (and a little magic).

[OffGrid973]

I smell a pig roast for the metro area coming together with MM as the guest of honor.  I can imagine rite leg would take the trip down, now we just need a location where there are lots of table tops and projects underway for show and tell.  TPT - any ideas

[tule peak timber]

Nothing better than the aroma of pork a' smokin, but the metro area for me is LA, San Diego and Palm Springs. We certainly support any functions of the FF.

[Ljohnsaw]

Now that there is a Pig Roast I could actually make! 8)

[Peter Drouin]

No matter where you are Pricing can be a big factor. For me, long timbers are Tuff sometimes .
Thanks for the info tule

[Jemclimber]

I love to see your projects, and I know documenting them takes time. So, I want to say thanks for taking us along.

[WDH]

My strategy is to price the wood for a project as if I am selling it to the customer.  Then, I quote them an hourly rate to build the project.  I keep up with my shop time, and multiply the # of hours x the hourly rate, add the cost of the wood, and that is what they get charged.  If the customer is so concerned with paying me by the hour for quality, one-of-a-kind pieces, then that is a customer that I do not want, anyway. 

There are times where I quote a lump sum price, but that is for projects that I have had a good bit of experience making, so I know the reasonable amount of time it will take, and I can go from there.  However, most times when I tried making something new or custom, and I tried to estimate the time to build, I almost always came out short.  It seems that it always takes longer to make something than you think. 

[scleigh]

It seems that it always takes longer to make something than you think. 


I hear that every weekend when I come i from sawing :D :D :D :D

[YellowHammer]

TPL, you park a forklift on the slabs?  At what EMC? How long? Don't they cracK?

[Den Socling]

I wondered about that, too. Doesn't that leave stressed wood?

[tule peak timber]

The heavy lift is strategically driven over the kiln dried slabs to induce cracks, thereby relieving wood stress. There is a sandy spot in front of the shop where I dig shallow trenches, chalk out where I want to fracture and then pressure is applied. On a work table, I do the same thing with dozens of clamps and steel bars and then a sudden strike with a 20 lb. sledgehammer. I liken my method to cleaving a diamond or as I said earlier, realigning a bad break in an athlete's bone. Stress in a slab can also be corrected by scoring on the back, then clamping to a true surface but my method is a procedure that doesn't produce the unpleasant side effects of saw kerf marks, plus it is very fast. Rob

[Magicman]

I liken my method to cleaving a diamond

I like this definition because you Sir are indeed "cleaving diamonds".

[thecfarm]

Mighty clever guy!! May I ask how you figured all that out??

[tule peak timber]

How did I get to this point, I pretty much tried everything else in the book. I've tried steaming, scoring, preloading with an antitwist, each with some success but the crack and reset is rapid and I have to do a lot of slabs per week. I have attached a pic of the partially flattened slabs laid out on the floor to be oversized trimmed for the proper character pattern I want on the top. I am trying to get the overall look to be like a giant 4 legged spider using the crotch flames for legs. This necessitates angling the cuts on each of the bookmatched/endmatched sets to get things to point to the center. Tomorrow we will continue our flattening journey. Rob

 

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

This is getting deep. Keep it up.

[tule peak timber]

The first of the four slabs was flattened to near perfection today, and squared on two edges . Next it is grooved to accept the splines that will hold the table together. Got my leg design "ok'd", and we are working on the finish/edge sample.  Rob

  

  

 

[tule peak timber]

The last of the four pieces, sanded flat then dadoed for the splines. It is important to dado right out of the sander when the wood is good and flat and atmospheric changes haven't affected it yet.

  

 
  Next I map out the scrap pieces for the leg and stretcher parts

 
After resawing ,and planing, and sanding oversized I let the veneers relax a bit overnight before final sanding to size. Tomorrow I will start setting up the curved stretcher with these veneers.  Rob

 

[Raider Bill]

Table number 2 complete. My days of woodworking are numbered. 3 end tables to go.
I put at least 15 coats of poly on this table. After about 3 coats I'd have to sand it all down and start over for various reasons like dust, brush strokes, sweat drops.
I'd never make a body/paint man
Sanding sucks


 


  

  

 

[thecfarm]

Table looks good!!
Brenda would like the floor.

[Kbeitz]

All that work and you use poly?  Do you ever use epoxy?
I think it's so much faster for tables and bars.

[21incher]

What is going on? all those nice looking slabs are rectangles now.