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I've written quite a bit about estimating both here on IFI, and on my blog. Reading through what's been posted, I'm reminded of why I spend a lot of time discussing perspective. I would suggest that you ask your client to name their budget . Their answer may save you a lot of time.

George, you gave a much more elegant example of market analysis than I did, thank you. Thomas, I've personally encountered the picture-theft, as well as "stolen" content and social media links. Sometimes they will steal to capture traffic to a site that has nothing at all in common with their own. The social media companies actively punished us when we filed a complaint about our content being stolen on their platform. It's my opinion that social media is detrimental to marketers, entrepreneurs, and society as a whole.

I forgot to mention something about "free" services like online marketplaces, or social media. If you're getting something valuable for free, you're not the actual customer, so the company providing the value isn't motivated by its goodwill towards you. Some people/users profit despite this arrangement, especially when the original company is "building its brand" but most don't. As this was becoming common knowledge, I noticed that there was a big push among companies to create/promote niche celebrities who are uncommonly successful for their level of value to the buyer. The niche celebrity attributes this success to their brilliant marketing efforts, but few of them can replicate that performance in a different market. More to the point, there are scores of entrepreneurs following that marketing lead to no fruitful end. "XYZ forge is doing quite well selling hammers on Etsy" is more or less the entirety of their market viability research. That one visible success encourages lots of people to join these marketplaces. Now consider something. Cheap cars come from expensive factories. It takes a huge investment to build an economy of scale. Before rich people make those kinds of investments, they want proof that the venture will be profitable. Paying sites for that kind of market information is an obvious solution. That probably goes double for shorter term investors in the business of sweatshop knockoffs. Ever notice how there's always a sweatshop knockoff version of anything that's selling profitably? Maybe it's not the best idea for a craftsman to put their wares on a site that has a built-in incentive to steer sales towards that kind of competition.

I've seen some artist work in that line as well. My immediate concern about sharing it here, is how dangerous this process really is.

Being an electrician, I thought I'd mention lichtenberg figures, or "fractal" burning. Sometimes it's found as driftwood or high altitude dead-fall that was struck by lightning.

jason0012, Many answers to business questions start with; "it depends" and end without making a definitive statement. In an effort to be more helpful than that, I thought I might offer some insights into sizing up your available options. Fundamentally speaking, you can spot a risk versus reward relationship. Online marketplaces with little to no barriers to entry are low risk, low reward for the vendor. You don't have to spend much time or money getting yourself set up, but neither did the other vendors. If the site doesn't sort wheat from chaff, everything becomes a commodity. For clients, the only obvious variable is price, so the cheapest vendor is the only one selling. Conversely, you could go high risk, and build your own website in hopes of earning a higher reward. All of which is ignoring the most significant component of your success. What you actually need is access to paying customers at your value level of your particular market. That's what you need to focus on. I'd bet that for the solid majority of vendors, common online marketplace sales won't break even on the cost of your time. Some artist found a customer willing to pay $120,000 for a banana duct taped to a wall. In contrast, there's a sweet lady a block down from me who paints photo-realistic portraits in her garage as a sideline. Honestly, I'm not sure I could capture her subject matter as accurately with a camera! I do however, have a roll of duct tape and plenty of fruits... I better hurry before 3M and Chiquita team up to flood the market!

Reading through all of this reminds me of business and psychology classes where a couple of "major studies" are cited as the gospel of how things must be done. Even if history shows that they're not very good ideas. Take the grocery store for example. Piggly Wiggly upended the traditional norms by setting up the store to allow customers to gather their own purchases. Prior to that, everybody had to wait for the shop keep to gather your order one item at a time, one customer at a time. Psychologically speaking, traditionalists could argue that the old way was "better" because there was more personal customer service. This of course assumed that everybody loved spending social time with their clerks. Financially speaking, this inefficient mode of commerce ultimately meant that the store had to charge their customers more to cover the overhead. One of my first jobs was a "bagger" at a local supermarket. Most people paid with cash or check. It took forever, so they built seventy lanes and staffed each one with a cashier and bagger. Credit cards existed, but most people didn't use them for groceries. Electronic Bank Cards came along, and within months, it was only "old people" who were holding up the line to write checks. Within 6 months, the handwritten check was getting processed as an electronic bank transaction. By 1 year in, the store only staffed half the checkout lanes because we had no trouble keeping up despite the increased customer traffic. Now, it's getting to where there are as many self-checkout lanes as there are cashier lanes. The selfsame grocery run that used to consume three hours of my day, is now done in a half-hour. When these grocery stores put their remodel projects out to bid, there's always a significant shift being made in the refrigerated cases. As an electrical contractor, I'm keenly aware that the store has limited resources and patience for the transfers from old cases to new. The milk is never their primary concern. The frozen treats like popsicles, ice cream, and deserts are. We were told that the frozen treat section, just one product deep is worth a quarter million dollars. Everything melts from the door side first, and it only has to lose the "temper" of the candy coatings for it to be scrapped. Take a look at your average grocery store and ask yourself how many of them have frozen food sections next to the checkout? I see them getting moved further and further away. Ever notice how there are handy mylar bags for sale? These stores spend an absolute fortune on remodeling. Everything is based on what drives sales. They can (and sometimes do) put a frozen goods "boat" right next to the checkout. The store doesn't stock shelves themselves, that's the vendor's problem. They could put the milk wherever they wanted without compromising food safety. Honestly, I think the main logistical reason for milk coolers on the back wall is because they're frequently stocked from the rear where a ruptured jug is more likely to leak into the milk cooler's floor drain. A gallon of liquid covers a whole lot of square footage on the sales floor. Slip and fall settlements aren't cheap. As for the original question about the psychology of rounding the price. I think we live in a different age. Many stores offer applications where you can use your phone to "scan" the UPC codes as you put items in your cart. Old timers would say it's rude to impose on your customers. Here's the thing, pricing isn't transparent. Taxes are seldom if ever included in prices posted in the U.S. Then there are items that are sold by weight leave a lot of uncertainty, especially since the available scales are seldom inspected or calibrated. For a person trying their level best to stick to a budget, it's a small miracle to be able to see the running tab on your phone. The stores using theses systems universally label weighed goods like produce. Speaking of sales psychology, how come nobody ever considered shame? If the total gets too high, there's significantly less stigma in putting something back on the shelf while shopping compared to asking the cashier to remove it from your order while other shoppers look on. That "personal touch" isn't always positive. For all the bookish arguments about psychology and trend data to support annoying marketing techniques, there's a lot to be said for being sensitive to what doesn't actually work well for people. Speaking for myself, I virtually never have cash, even at an art show. If people can't/won't take a bank card, I don't make the purchase. That being said, most ATM's will dispense in $20 bills. ATM's are the only thing that matters to me because banks have been consistently closed whenever I've needed them, for most of my working life. On the incredibly rare occasion that I do use an ATM to make a cash purchase at a show, I'd much rather make a purchase that lands on an even dollar. So I guess I'd say that if your goal is cash sales, figure out everything, taxes included, and adjust to an even dollar. Most fairs are too loud for easy conversation so when I ask how much, it's far easier to hear "twenty bucks", than "nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents". Anything I could easily find online needs to be better or cheaper than online, so using Etsy to set your prices is a non-starter for me. Plus there's a huge difference between "asking price" and "selling price".

George, As an estimator, I've seen a lot of situations where people's fondness for percentages and "round" numbers led to mistakes in judgement. I think it's critical to "do the math" for whatever it is you're pricing. If at that point, you want to adjust to an even dollar amount, at least you'll know the impact it will have on your bottom line. Bear in mind that just the tax difference from one city to the other might be significantly more than you'd originally set aside for profit. It's also worth mentioning that hagglers are pretty common at trade/craft shows. Most of them won't buy at the posted price as a matter of principal. I've met quite a few who will haggle the total down, then say "no tax" as they're going to shake your hand! I also think it's important to point out that there are use taxes which apply to materials and rental equipment when the seller installs the widget. Most municipalities will collect these use taxes along with their review fees before issuing a construction permit.

I've long since lost track of where I read about it, but basically all materials glow the same color when they're at the same high temperature. Spark testing to semi-scientifically define metal alloy contents is another cool thing. There's more to it than just looking for bursting sparks. Higher carbon steels will ring at a higher pitch than lower carbon steels of the same cross section. Plain high carbon steel will harden using the same process that would anneal (soften) non-ferrous metals like Copper or brass. Most Coal is slightly radioactive. I've been told that charcoal doesn't decompose which is one way that archaeologists can locate forges. Coal gas is very flammable, and it's heavier than air. On bottom blast forges with a blower attached it's possible for the gas from an idle coal fire to build up and work it's way out the inlet of the stationary blower, where it can drift over the fire and detonate. I have a cast-iron forge that split in two this way!

JLP Services is right about the slip fit. Every example of a functional holdfast here has a tight fit.

George, you're right, Coloradoan's are spending 33% of their income on housing.

Thomas, Thank you for your post. I agree with you that something has to give. In the mean time, I think it's imperative for every parent to be honest about how things have changed with their kids. Right now, debt will likely play a bigger role in defining a kids future, than their education, or work experience will.

My daughter wasn't motivated to do her best on the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test). So I decided to give her an assignment which I hoped would put her choices today into a meaningful context for her future. I asked her to roughly define her dream life with everything she cared about laid out over time in the future. Now working deductively from the assumption that her dreams are achievable, I asked her to roughly define how she might overcome the obstacles that separate her from her dreams. In practical terms, that meant estimating the cost of her dream life, then figuring out what careers currently offer sufficient compensation in the place she wanted to live. This is where I learned something a bit unexpected. Working off commonly available information on median incomes, home prices, and mortgage calculators, it's pretty easy to rough-out some understanding of what's going on in a given area. Back in the dark ages when I was in school, we were taught a maxim attributed to Ben Franklin, that one shouldn't spend more than a quarter of their income on lodging. So I took the median home price for a local city and chunked it into an online mortgage calculator set to "standard" defaults, and got a monthly payment. I multiplied that by 3 (12 months times one quarter) and arrived at the post-tax annual income for the household. I multiplied that by 1.2 figuring about 20% income tax, then compared the result to what census data says on the median household income for the city. I repeated the exercise for a half dozen cities in my area. In every case, the calculated income necessary to heed "traditional advice" was about 70% higher than the actual median household income. Now I realize that older folks might read that and conclude "well duh, everybody knows that home prices went up". Sure, but just for fun, consider taking Franklin's advice and applying it to yourself in today's housing market. Based on the census numbers, most people couldn't purchase their current home without exceeding a quarter of their household income. It's a humbling exercise. While investigating the most appealing of the available options, I asked her to look into what sort of experience, education, and social connections, she would you need to arrive at such a job. This naturally led to an investigation into the time and expense of higher education relative to it's reward. As my daughter was roughing out the necessary years of education and experience to hit the wage range to facilitate her dreams, I noticed something. High risk pregnancy due to maternal age starts at 30. If her dreams include having kids, she's gotta consider how much time she'll have to make that happen. Even assuming that a person graduates with an in-demand Bachelors (4 year) degree, their starting wage won't be sufficient to break even on the combined effect of supporting themselves, and the payments on their education loan. Super-rough calculations lead me to think that most of the "successful" graduates from higher ed, will still be accruing debt for at least five years after graduation. By the averages, that means a diligent, student who landed a job right away, will be 27 years old before they can expect to make progress on education debts they took on as a teenager. From personal experience, I can tell you that having kids is an expensive undertaking. A young couple waiting until they can afford to have kids, is likely to run out the biological clock. Couples that take on the debt to have kids while they can, may well struggle to save enough to purchase a home by the time they're 50 years old. This exercise taught me how much the world has changed in the past 20 years. Growing up, I heard plenty of career stories that started with a job sweeping the floors and ended with a corner office. As a teenager, college was presented as a near-magical pathway to prosperity. There are still opportunities for people to work their way up, and college can be vital to advancement. However, the stakes are higher than they've ever been. The truth for most of us is that there's never enough money or time to follow the "traditional" route. My daughter came up with a "plan A" which involves a staged approach to her career. "On paper" it'll take about five years longer to get from here to her dream, as compared to the uninterrupted college to work path. However, her plan would reduce her debt, while also providing a viable vocation to provide the means for her to get from stage to stage. All without sacrificing her dreams to accumulated debt. Oh, and for what it's worth, she came to see the PSAT a bit differently.

Thomas, your posts about Bach music composed for organ reminded me of this. Leo Kottke was/is a huge influence on me. While listening, please consider that the original piece was composed and played using both hands and feet. I learned to play his version of this piece as a teenager which introduced me to several ideas and concepts. For example, the guitar is tuned to an open G which means that strumming the open strings will get you a G chord. This lowers the register to bring the requisite bass notes within fretting range of treble notes. The trade off, is that the guitarist now needs to work within a framework where most of the notes are in a completely different location. The inherent complexity kept it out of mainstream music for the most part. However in the 1990's some of the simpler open tunings came into favor in grunge, nu-metal, and alternative music because it lowered the register to better accompany baritone singers like the Tibetan Throat singers above. Another critical aspect of his technique is to introduce a very slight delay to make the lead stand out from the rhythm. Both "parts" are played at the same time, and a literal reading of the sheet music calls for the notes to happen in the same instant. Without his slight delay, the dynamic quality of the two parts tends to cancel one another out. His version of Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's desiring is on "6 and 12 string guitar" album which is often called "The armadillo" record because of the jacket illustrations. That album includes several pieces where the melody is relatively slow, but the requisite tempo to sustain the multi part composition borders on what people expect in electronic dance music. If any of you are interested in this, check out "Vaseline Machine Gun" about one minute in.

I think it serves to add questions to the questions... The only soft tail that comes to mind is a Harley Davidson Motorcycle which doesn't make much sense. A 48" diameter auger could be for drilling caissons or planting trees.

I have an old book called "Foxfire Five" which touches on blacksmithing, logging, bear hunting, and blackpowder rifle making. Another good one is "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow" by Saxton Pope.

pnut, According to the author I mentioned earlier, there are a lot more lightning strikes in nature than suburban people would expect. Many of them strike the rocky tops of mountains where there's little fuel to keep a fire going. They specifically mentioned that charcoal doesn't decompose. As a result, animals encounter the smell of smoke more often than we might think.

JHCC's comment reminded me of something tangential to this discussion. I have a book on longbow archery where an archer tried to use "primitive" archery equipment in the 1940's and 1950's. He used charring and smoke to conceal human scent on his clothing and equipment. He also used a fire to heat the lignin in the wooden arrow shafts to straighten them. Once cooled, the arrows stayed straight(er).

For what it's worth, I've used sand and ash in lieu of clay for a few years. Wet everything down to form it so there's a depression below the tuyere, then light the fire. Even if the clinker sticks to the ash/sand, it'll still come free very easily without caving the whole deal in. The other advantage of the ash/sand liner is that I can unload everything into a bucket for easier transport/storage. My next forge will have a knock-down box sitting on folding steel sawhorses. I plan to make a wooden frame with a steel lip so long stock doesn't burn it.

Building on what JHCC posted, I've noticed that some parts of wood grain burn differently than others. On charred hickory handles, there will be slight hollows between grain lines. I found that the resulting grain lines run from end to end where they mostly increase grip to resist torsion. I've read about primitive wooden arrow and spear shafts being charred for durability. Perhaps there's a point where outer char helps to seal fibers so they're less inclined to dry out?

That's an interesting approach to a punched eye. I would imagine there is less time spent drifting, but the trade off is slitting a narrower cross section.

I found this article which suggests higher SFPM figures than listed above, along with some data on horsepower requirements.

Supaflupa, You could also try out "wet" forging where the anvil and hammer are wet. Hot steam blows the scale off the work with the first strike. It's messy and can be extremely loud if you have the right combination of large steel, and wet surfaces. Another angle that's seldom mentioned is that you can use borax to prevent scaling. That's more helpful when you're dealing with mostly perfect work going in for the last couple of heats. Borax is easier to get out of nooks and crannies than scale is. Finally, you might want to consider using a bucket of sand to clean up your work. I've had good results swishing small stock through sand at black heats. The sand works it's way into and around the curves.

Sooty, I think Irondragon is right. My suspicion is that most folks make a guillotine are only thinking of how awesome it would be to strike a hammer blow with higher precision. They don't realize how much of their hammer swinging effort gets wasted overcoming the drag and inertia of their guillotine tool until they use it for the first time. After that, they probably don't want to add any more drag to the system. There's an episode of the woodwrights shop with Roy Underhill where he visits with the Colonial Williamsburg blacksmith. I noticed that the smith was using this stubbly little cold chisel to cut plate iron. At the time, I put that down to thriftiness. Now, I realize that the stubby length reduced mass which means every blow cuts just a little deeper. It also keeps the point of impact closer to the anvil height which means the smith is getting a more natural swing with his hammer. If that wasn't enough, the stubby chisel also allowed him to hold the plate and the chisel against the anvil face with one hand.

Somber, I've successfully made a pair of tongs this way. I used 5/8" square stock. I started by making the boss area more perpendicular to the handle which I left straight. That allowed me to slit the boss working down towards the edge of my anvil. Once I got it punched, I put a rectangular drift in, and bent the boss area closer to 45 degrees. That got me the angled hole without needing a special bolster. Then, I forged the set downs for the inner jaw, being careful not to let the jaw dimensions exceed 5/8" in cross section. I took a short section of 5/8" square stock, and forged a taper working from opposing corners. I kept the width at the chisel end at 5/8". The resulting tool is what I used to convert the rectangular hole into a more square opening. It didn't stretch the sides very much at all, because there's very little surface contact. If it get's hard, tap the jaw end towards the handle like you're upsetting . When inserting the inner jaw, there's a fair bit of fiddling because the outer hinge surfaces need to be brought in as soon as the jaw passes through the opening. A longer slot doesn't hinder performance, especially if you're going to drill and put in a rivet. I hope that helps.