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What do you hammer?


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What do you hammer?
What is your hammer worth?
Figures to process, per hour.

Architectural iron
Hand (I rarely hand hammer) $400.00
250 lb. Mechanical $150.00
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Steam converted to air, diesel compressor. $350.00

Sculpture
Hand (same as the above)
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Seam $500.00


A mark left in a hot piece of metal?
PRICELESS.

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What do you hammer?
What is your hammer worth?
Figures to process, per hour.

Architectural iron
Hand (I rarely hand hammer) $400.00
250 lb. Mechanical $150.00
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Steam converted to air, diesel compressor. $350.00

Sculpture
Hand (same as the above)
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Seam $500.00


A mark left in a hot piece of metal?
PRICELESS.


Dillon, forgive my ignorance but I'm none too sure as to what these numbers refer to and kinda think it would be quite useful to know
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Dillon, forgive my ignorance but I'm none too sure as to what these numbers refer to and kinda think it would be quite useful to know



Why differentiate between the methods? Rent and other workshop overheads are more or less the same unless you hire a special tool to do a job. Cant really see someone short term hiring a 250kg powerhammer.

It's useful to calculate what your hourly rate should be be but I'm totally in agreement with NakedAnvil about charging by "percieved value", over here in known as "what the market will bear". Not quite the same as "as much as I can get" You might luck out and get a superb rate for one job, but chances are if you deal with architects, contractors etc word will get out and you'll be viewed as pricey. As anyone self employed knows, you've always gotta keep an eye on the future.

Terry Clark, who'se an extremely well respected "artist" blacksmith over here (runs a 250kg Massey), always says his first question with an artistic project is "what's the budget". He then works around this.

The man does very well for himself. Have a peek at his website:

http://www.artsmith.co.uk/
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I am interested in what you think a rate on each machine would be? I do not make much money hand hammering so that one is out for me (I never charged 400 an hour at anything) but if I look at the work produced from a hammer, how much can you charge. I understand there are many variables and different processes to make something and sell it. If you would like to expand on that feel free (welding, finishing, designing, engineering).

Architectural
1" square 28" long drawn to 38" square at the bottom octagon at the top about 5/8".

What always amazes me about good smiths is not how many times they hit the iron but how few.

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Why differentiate between the methods? Rent and other workshop overheads are more or less the same unless you hire a special tool to do a job. Cant really see someone short term hiring a 250kg powerhammer.

It's useful to calculate what your hourly rate should be be but I'm totally in agreement with NakedAnvil about charging by "percieved value", over here in known as "what the market will bear". Not quite the same as "as much as I can get" You might luck out and get a superb rate for one job, but chances are if you deal with architects, contractors etc word will get out and you'll be viewed as pricey. As anyone self employed knows, you've always gotta keep an eye on the future.

Terry Clark, who'se an extremely well respected "artist" blacksmith over here (runs a 250kg Massey), always says his first question with an artistic project is "what's the budget". He then works around this.

The man does very well for himself. Have a peek at his website:

http://www.artsmith.co.uk/


I've admired Terry's work for years, especially his ability to work big. Kinda the path I have chosen hence my tooling.
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If you would like to expand on that feel free (welding, finishing, designing, engineering).


Michael

Now that's not that easy to answer quickly. I'll have a think on things and get back to you.

I'm glad there's some meaningfull threads at last going on about the business side of what we do. I've always found it strange that theres 1000's of posts about different types of obscure widgets, ye olde worlde offeth thee blacksmythe, ....... and up till now 8 on earning our living. 8 for ****s sake!

Have you read Grants comments on "percieved value". I'm not sure what thread it's in but if you can find it it's worth a look

David
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Here is one, how bout 36" of 3" round tapered to 6' four sides, full bar. Definitely not going to try and hand hammer it.

I would be interested in the "perceived value" I do tend to follow his wisdom around, maybe stock can help locate it?



Grants views are in his thread "thought you might like to see my clock" He says it more elequently and with more authority than I ever could. His example on the bronze bolts is quite thought provoking. Terry Clark has a similar attitude. Years ago I was at a BABA forge in where he expounded on his attitude to pricing. T'was a bit naive back then, piped up with something along the lines of "what about the idea of a fair days pay for a fair days work". Can't remember Terry's exact reply but I was shot down in short order. Glad I was. Years of struggle later and i finally came to appreciate his philosophy.

As an aside, it was one of those SO educating weekends. Terrys talk on his thoughts on pricing, contracts, dealing with clients etc; demonstration of industrial forging under 250kg Massey; talk by Anthony Robinson of his forged work in stainless; talk by Alan Evans on using computers as part of the design and presentation process; other stuff that will come back to me ...
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I would be interested in the "perceived value" I do tend to follow his wisdom around



Just had a look at your website, there some good stuff there.

With Terrys attitude of "establish their budget first" in mind, you know your client has a budget of say £30,000 for a stair balustrade. They like the unique one off bespoke work you're showing them in your portfolio. They're unlikely to find a common or garden fabricator to do your work or get quotes from other people for similar work (always assuming your location isn't populated by dozens of others doing the same sort of work as you're showing them). You know from previous work and your hourly rate, the job should cost say £20,000 (lets put in the magic word "minimum" here). How much would you quote them?

All that said, there have been times in the past (hopefully not so often nowadays) when cashflow issues have meant that I had to charge less than my nominal hourly rate just to stay afloat.

Upshot of what I'm saying is, it's important to calculate your "base" hourly rate = (cost of overheads+salary)/productive hours but only to use as a yard stick, not something to stick religiously to.

Looking at your website, I'm sure you already know this.
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Not sure if you are talking about my work or the idea,

My work, speaks for itself.

The idea can be infectious, building the perception of value in my work to the customer, I believe this is part of the reason I have been successful. When someone actually observes me work on one of my hammers they to understand my drive and ability to transform the material adding value to the once raw material. Most of the time the customer does not view or even comprehend the process but can see the process in the material by the end result, back to my first line “My work speaks for itself.”

I think most people can identify with anyone with passion about his or her work. If someone is digging a hole with a shovel and is passionate, it too can even look like fun? At the very least you don’t mind paying them to do it.

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What do you hammer?
What is your hammer worth?
Figures to process, per hour.

Architectural iron
Hand (I rarely hand hammer) $400.00
250 lb. Mechanical $150.00
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Steam converted to air, diesel compressor. $350.00

Sculpture
Hand (same as the above)
500 lb. Mechanical $250.00
750 Seam $500.00


A mark left in a hot piece of metal?
PRICELESS.




I never charged 400 an hour at anything



Still a bit confused about your numbers. If you've never charged £400 per hour what is the £500 per hour for "sculpture 750 seam" for. Are these your actual rates or are they what you think you should charge.

Why is the 750 steam more expensive for sculpture than architectural but the 500 mechanical the same for both


very very confusedhuh.gif
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I don't really get the chart either. It's all about time (my time). Doesn't matter if i'm using my hammer, welder, belt sander or butter knife. Clients are paying for expertise and efficiency. One you have a piece of equipment, good, done. Maybe it ups your rate but its not really worth anything to your customer.

I'm down with the whole "perceived value" deal but you gotta start somewhere and usually that's time. Often the value (to the potential customer) is less than your time is worth and you gotta kick the job to the curb. I am also one to ask "whats the budget?" if I think I can get away with it. That way you can give the client your best for the money and hopefully have some profit in the deal. Usually only flies with people who trust you and your work

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I'm down with the whole "perceived value" deal but you gotta start somewhere and usually that's time. Often the value (to the potential customer) is less than your time is worth and you gotta kick the job to the curb. I am also one to ask "whats the budget?" if I think I can get away with it. That way you can give the client your best for the money and hopefully have some profit in the deal. Usually only flies with people who trust you and your work


Guess the trust comes from having a good portfolio / body of work behind you as well as good samples and previous satisfied customers you can refer new ones to.

Yeah, the hourly rate is a good indicator of when to kick the job to the curb or when to take in on a a reduced salary just to keep the cashflow going. There have neen times in the past when a poor salery was better than no salary and I didn't have the b***s to wait until a better job came along. Sods law meant a better/more interesting job would come along soon after I'd commited to weeks of low pay drudge. Crystal balls would be useful .... as would steel ones for parts of my anatomy.
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We normally have a KG rate for our different jobs, eg solid forged rings have a different rate to shafts, or discs, or tooled forgings. The rates vary a bit depending on the size hammer or press they will be forged on, EG our 2 CWT hammer is normally a one man job, where as our 400 ton forging press is normally a 3 man job, whether we use the manipulator or not, also has a loading to the KG rate, the more men working on the machine the higher the rate.
KG rate also allows us to factor in the heating time required, obviously 150KG of material takes longer to heat than 20 KG, and requires a bigger furnace also. At the moment I am trying to run my pricing at around $75.00 per hour per man.
I try to get the men to keep accurate records on their job cards of times taken etc so as I can adjust my pricing rates and my estimated job times to reflect the times acctually taken in the shop. I also have rates of charge out for each machine that I try to achieve, these charge out rates will include the hourly labour rate of the workers working on these machines. These charge out rates I adjust to the KG rate depending on what information I have come back off the job cards from the shop floor.

I know the rough charge out rates of the competition for each of their machines, but of late we have lost some quotes to them so they must be feeling the pinch and have cut some of their rates.

We always work out the weight of a job before we begin to quote on it, weight influences material cost, transport costs, surface coating costs Eg galvanising, weight needs to be known to calculate our KG labour rate.

It is industry standard that out of a 8 hour work day you will only really be productive for 6.5 hours the rest is taken up with non productive tasks, eg cleaning up, repairing tools/equipment, record keeping, washing up, toilet breaks, planning work for tomorrow. Some people may get more work in for 8 hours but 6.5 is good as a place to start.

Our work is probably easier to quote than doing architectural or ornamental smithing, which is why I try to stay away from that line of work. It also means I don't have to deal with the general public, just other companies.

Phil

post-5537-12675301140299_thumb.jpg

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We normally have a KG rate for our different jobs, eg solid forged rings have a different rate to shafts, or discs, or tooled forgings. The rates vary a bit depending on the size hammer or press they will be forged on, EG our 2 CWT hammer is normally a one man job, where as our 400 ton forging press is normally a 3 man job, whether we use the manipulator or not, also has a loading to the KG rate, the more men working on the machine the higher the rate.
KG rate also allows us to factor in the heating time required, obviously 150KG of material takes longer to heat than 20 KG, and requires a bigger furnace also. At the moment I am trying to run my pricing at around $75.00 per hour per man.
I try to get the men to keep accurate records on their job cards of times taken etc so as I can adjust my pricing rates and my estimated job times to reflect the times acctually taken in the shop. I also have rates of charge out for each machine that I try to achieve, these charge out rates will include the hourly labour rate of the workers working on these machines. These charge out rates I adjust to the KG rate depending on what information I have come back off the job cards from the shop floor.

I know the rough charge out rates of the competition for each of their machines, but of late we have lost some quotes to them so they must be feeling the pinch and have cut some of their rates.

We always work out the weight of a job before we begin to quote on it, weight influences material cost, transport costs, surface coating costs Eg galvanising, weight needs to be known to calculate our KG labour rate.

It is industry standard that out of a 8 hour work day you will only really be productive for 6.5 hours the rest is taken up with non productive tasks, eg cleaning up, repairing tools/equipment, record keeping, washing up, toilet breaks, planning work for tomorrow. Some people may get more work in for 8 hours but 6.5 is good as a place to start.

Our work is probably easier to quote than doing architectural or ornamental smithing, which is why I try to stay away from that line of work. It also means I don't have to deal with the general public, just other companies.

Phil


Phil,
I’m glad someone else actually put some number down, but I am asking your hourly rate “at the hammer” when I figure all the other process in my work I would be in the $75 to $150 hr. range. Unlike what you are probably used to in the industrial field the amount of hammer time is very small to produce a shape in iron because most are not real complicated forms (a taper).

I love that manipulator, thinking about building one on the front of a push lift with a 1000 lb. capacity, better photos or part list may help my endeavor, thanks.
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Still a bit confused about your numbers. If you've never charged £400 per hour what is the £500 per hour for "sculpture 750 seam" for. Are these your actual rates or are they what you think you should charge.

Why is the 750 steam more expensive for sculpture than architectural but the 500 mechanical the same for both


very very confusedhuh.gif


The sculptural work on the steam hammer is speculative, but I have recently been ask to sell forgings done on the 500 at the 250 rate with heat time. For me the sculptural forms are intuitive forging and I therefore have a much higher fail rate, so I need to be able to get more for the ones that do work.
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I don't really get the chart either. It's all about time (my time). Doesn't matter if i'm using my hammer, welder, belt sander or butter knife. Clients are paying for expertise and efficiency. One you have a piece of equipment, good, done. Maybe it ups your rate but its not really worth anything to your customer.

I'm down with the whole "perceived value" deal but you gotta start somewhere and usually that's time. Often the value (to the potential customer) is less than your time is worth and you gotta kick the job to the curb. I am also one to ask "whats the budget?" if I think I can get away with it. That way you can give the client your best for the money and hopefully have some profit in the deal. Usually only flies with people who trust you and your work


I don't believe you are going to forge 5" by hand and I don't think anyone going to hire you to do so. Patrick has given us some numbers for the one of the hammers a Scot Forge at $1200.00 an hour I do believe that is because of the equipment. I start with the budget and build accordingly, I give my customers a hell of a value for their money, but I'm not going to do it for nothing and I have been do this long enough I know what I'm doing and how to make money (usually).
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Hey Dillon, I think the operative term here is when Southshore said "IF" he could make $400 an hr.

Area can also have a big influence on pricing. I was at the Knob Creek machine gun shoot a couple of years ago, and the company I was with had an XM-175 full auto 40MM out of a helicopter for sale. Because it was one of like 4 that was fully transferable, the price was $350,000. One ol' boy looked at it, and remarked on the price. I said, yea that's a couple of homes. He replied, naw that's more like 10 of my homes. I had never heard of a $35,000 home on the West coast in the last 30 years. Some areas, and industries can sustain pricing that is totally in the stratosphere compared to other areas. Folks in San Fran can usually pay a lot more than say folks in Knob Creek KY.

Not charging enough was one of the reasons I closed my shop. There were jobs that we charged what the job "should have cost" using our hourly rate. We never added in the perceived cost, and lost money. Later when I was working at the Jelly Belly Candy Co. I saw what business' were actually paying for some parts. I looked at one simple item that I would have charged maybe $60 to make that they had paid $300 for, and there was a box of 20 of them. Our purchasing agent said that it was still less than the OEM wanted. I often wonder if this type of pricing is a double edge sword in a way, where eventually it has caused a lot of companies to seek offshore parts. I am not against capitalism, but I have to wonder sometimes, if we are our own worst enemy.

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Phil,
I’m glad someone else actually put some number down, but I am asking your hourly rate “at the hammer” when I figure all the other process in my work I would be in the $75 to $150 hr. range. Unlike what you are probably used to in the industrial field the amount of hammer time is very small to produce a shape in iron because most are not real complicated forms (a taper).



Michael

Am I getting totally the wrong end of the stick re your first post and rates?

My workshop is microscopic Low overheads mean £50 (pounds UK) per hour is ok. Always try to get more, sometimes have to take less, occassionally super efficient on job and it will come out at much more but more often totally ***k up on estimating the time and this hurts. Hence always aiming for more than base rate.

My biggest problem is I'm a one man band but 30 hours of billing work = 60+ hours of stuff to do with work. Getting older and it's beginning to wear me down. Need to employ soemone but this means much bigger workshop (+ b*** ache of moving). Will then have to cost much more per hour and keep a year in year out much higher turnover to pay for workshop-staff. Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!

This is why I like the costing by "percieved value" approach but I've got to try to make my work "look expensive". Good portfolio and samples help, website/ printed material are ok-ish but out of date and badly need revamping. Why is there only 24 hours in a day. Perhaps I should stop getting distracted by this forum ... its a bottomless pit of time ....also wish I could swear more on it, love creative swearing, do you guys get "the thick of it" over there" (precursor to "in the loop")

As an aside my website changed mylife. I used to basically just weld bars together using gluegun MIG welder, few months after putting up the website and I getting jobs from Ibiza, enquiries from Romania etc etc. Must find time to revamp it.
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