pricing

[newbladesmith]

i have a couple of people who want to commission me to make some knives, but i'm not sure how to price my work. When I'm making chainmaille i charge 10$ per hour plus materials, i was wondering if that would be a good way to go with my knives. I especially want to figure out how to price a 50 fold hunting knife because he want's to pay me ahead of time. I'd like the opinion of others. I've herd that you should add 20% to the cost of materials. anyone want to give their two cents?

[Mills]

For new projects I have never made before I'll shop for similar items and use that as a start. Your doing all hand work so thathas an intrinsic value. Bragging rights if you will. But also the flinch factor comes into play, set your price as high as you dare then add a bunch to it. double it. see How much THEY value your work not how much you do. Most people sell too cheap, myself included. Don't set prices based on your wallet but on theirs. If you don't deliver as promised you loose business if you do you gain.

[monstermetal]

i have a couple of people who want to commission me to make some knives, but i'm not sure how to price my work. When I'm making chainmaille i charge 10$ per hour plus materials, i was wondering if that would be a good way to go with my knives. I especially want to figure out how to price a 50 fold hunting knife because he want's to pay me ahead of time. I'd like the opinion of others. I've herd that you should add 20% to the cost of materials. anyone want to give their two cents?

Um I can tell you that here materials plus %20 is not enough... For that matter materials plus 120% would not be enough to make a folder it depends on your skill level, the complexity of the project and the market... But If your spending $20 on materials I hope you can get more than $24 for the finish product. I would look around for others in your area that are selling knives of the same type and quality and see what they are asking and base a starting price off that.... Its going to be real hard for anyone not familiar with your area and your skill to give you much insight as to value.

[kburd]

i think about several things when pricing blacksmith work. Cost of operation. where is my current financial standing. Ability to actually make any money doing the project. Future buisness from said customer. and unfortunatley percieved price on the buyers end. materials are usually no where near the cost of labor involved unless you are working with alot of copper or other more expensive material. I can give you an example from my area which is a mostly middle class to lower upper class clients. I make hardware for sale at the local upper end greenhouse. a standard hammered hook to mount on a post to hang a flower bag from with just a clear coat finish is $18 the material is about a buck. I start with 3/4 square so the hook is nice and heavy on the fastening end. This makes people think they are really getting something to last a lifetime. the labor in production to forge wire wheel and coat is about 12 minutes per hook. My shop time is $40. so i have $13 in labor $1 in material $.50 in clear coat. so that is $14.50. take that times 1.25 and you get 18.12 drop the twelve cents and charge $18. the ladys who's greenhouse it is gets a 10% commision on sold work. so minus 1.80 you get $16.20 not bad for 12 minutes work. If you times that by four you get 64.80 now subtract your material cost 4 bucks. You just made $60.80 in an hour (that is if you sell your work). any how that got long.... if you are still reading the bottom line is i think for no matter where you are and what you are doing you are way underpricing yourself if you are trying to run a buisness. I did this for a long time and cringe everytime i think about how much further along i would be if i would have charged properly for blacksmithing and welding work over the past ten years. But remeber if you wanna charge what the big boys charge you gotta act like one. Great work Great customer relation and a Great amount of effort go into be able to charge appropriatly for your work.

[monstermetal]

Here is a good point.... Kburd is making $16 roughly for a nice looking hook that took 12 min to make, Now how many hours is it going to take you to construct a 50 layer damascus folding knife? 50? 80? 100? So even at 50 hours to make the same rate as Kburd on his hook you need to be getting about $3000 plus materials for your knife....

[Dragons lair]

i think about several things when pricing blacksmith work. Cost of operation. where is my current financial standing. Ability to actually make any money doing the project. Future buisness from said customer. and unfortunatley percieved price on the buyers end. materials are usually no where near the cost of labor involved unless you are working with alot of copper or other more expensive material. I can give you an example from my area which is a mostly middle class to lower upper class clients. I make hardware for sale at the local upper end greenhouse. a standard hammered hook to mount on a post to hang a flower bag from with just a clear coat finish is $18 the material is about a buck. I start with 3/4 square so the hook is nice and heavy on the fastening end. This makes people think they are really getting something to last a lifetime. the labor in production to forge wire wheel and coat is about 12 minutes per hook. My shop time is $40. so i have $13 in labor $1 in material $.50 in clear coat. so that is $14.50. take that times 1.25 and you get 18.12 drop the twelve cents and charge $18. the ladys who's greenhouse it is gets a 10% commision on sold work. so minus 1.80 you get $16.20 not bad for 12 minutes work. If you times that by four you get 64.80 now subtract your material cost 4 bucks. You just made $60.80 in an hour (that is if you sell your work). any how that got long.... if you are still reading the bottom line is i think for no matter where you are and what you are doing you are way underpricing yourself if you are trying to run a buisness. I did this for a long time and cringe everytime i think about how much further along i would be if i would have charged properly for blacksmithing and welding work over the past ten years. But remeber if you wanna charge what the big boys charge you gotta act like one. Great work Great customer relation and a Great amount of effort go into be able to charge appropriatly for your work.

Juse my 2 cents. first your/my financial standing has nothing to do with anything. If I go in the hole this week
I should just charge more cause I blew a couple of grand? Second the math aint right $40 hr= .66 a minute X12 is about $8. After 40yrs I gave up and charge by the hr + matl. Yeh I get a little flak with a min 1/2 hr charge.
I just walk them arourd the shop. "this cost this much that cost so much" Asked a fellow smith at the last meeting.
his cost for making a s hook. Answer was about $2. I pointed out his new anvil Hofi hammer and gasser cost hin a few grand just to be able to make them. Charge what ya can. Don't take on more than ya can handle. If ya are really a newbladesmith ya shouldn't take on 50 fold blades.
rant over will go sit inna corner now.
Ken

[dablacksmith]

ok first thing i dont trust your coustomer cause he wants you to make sumthing new and give him a price before its made... i usually got burned with these .

[Dragons lair]

Had one of those the other day. Have done a lot of farm repairs for him and his dad. Called on Sat Asked if I
could do a 10 min fit up on a push bumper. 2 1/2 hrs later it was done. If ya haven't done it before and well
go with the clock.
Ken.

[forgemaster]

Material plus 25% plus labour. Labour I charge out as Aus $65.00 per hour per man. Cutting (eg saw) I charge $5.00 per cut. Don't forget to add delivery, cleaning, grinding, etc. I normally try to charge enough to make the customer hurt. Not bleed but hurt. I look at it this way, what does it cost from McDonalds for a hamburger, and that is made by a teenager with no real skills other than to flip patties. Surely you have to charge more than McD's charges for a teenager flipping patties.

Quality is like buying oats, if you want good oats you have to pay the price, if you are happy with the oats that have already been though the horse, then the price is a bit cheaper.

I had a bloke coming in to use 1 of our hammers on a Sunday to make damascas, he charged a minimum of $1500 per knife, just for a simple utility blade.

Phil

[Dragons lair]

Phil, Hope ya got something for cutting his labor costs by 75%. Beer? Had one friend stop by "I need to finish this today can I borrow your gasser anvil and hammer" I had to tell him. Bring your own gas anvil and hammer. Or buy some coal for your forge. Says I can't afford it. So what do I get for making him money(lots) Nada Zip Ziltch.
At this time my welding/blacksmithing shop is closed so no income still paying the overhead. Oh well 1 less FRIEND.
Ken.

[ThomasPowers]

Ken; I built my "beginner's set up" just to prove to a friend that he didn't need to use my equipment he could use his own!

"Too Expensive": the entire set up cost under US$25 and included forge, blower, anvil and basic tool set
"Takes fancy tools to make": the "fanciest" tool used to make it was a 1/4" drill.

Was a great little forge too; I used it as my billet welding forge for several years.

He's holding Hammer-Ins at his place now so I guess I didn't scare him off.

[jason0012]

Unless you are using some mighty special materials your material cost will be next to nothing in knife making. (I work in silver on occasion and very rarely with gold, stones get pretty expensive too) Materials like ivory, pearl, exotic woods, titainium, stealite, ect are kind of expensive bot not enough so to come close to the labor cost involved in making a nice knife. You are willing to work for $10 an hour? Can't recall the last job I worked for that kind of wage, I think it was back in high school! You need to charge enough to pay 1)you, for the time you invest 2) the shop, so you can make the next one 3) then enough to cover the materials 4) anything left will be profit, most of the time there isn't much left for this one , at least in my experience. I see a lot of very fine knives selling online for about 1/5 what I would charge, and I am not well known at all! I am impressed to see hobbiests turning out such nice work but so many are undercutting themselves selling entirely too cheap! I recall when I was turning out a lot of custom knives there were a lot of collectors who tried to convince me that the way to get famous and sell more of my work was to practically give my work away . I have never found such people to be worth doing business with.

[forgemaster]

Phil, Hope ya got something for cutting his labor costs by 75%. Beer? Had one friend stop by "I need to finish this today can I borrow your gasser anvil and hammer" I had to tell him. Bring your own gas anvil and hammer. Or buy some coal for your forge. Says I can't afford it. So what do I get for making him money(lots) Nada Zip Ziltch.
At this time my welding/blacksmithing shop is closed so no income still paying the overhead. Oh well 1 less FRIEND.
Ken.

I had a clause in my lease that said I had to provide a working demo on Sundays, he provided his own furnace, gas, and material, so it worked out OK. He got to use my hammer I got to stay home on sunday and have a sleep in.

[newbladesmith]

as far as pay goes, I'm currently making 9 an hour as a diner cook. so 10 an hour to do something that i love doesn't sound to bad. the only overhead I'll have on the forge is the materials and the fuel. And because people are finding out that I'm almost ready to start making blades again i already have about 5 commission jobs coming up. If i work hard experience tells me i can get them all finished in a couple of weeks and make well over 2 or 3 thousand dollars which is more than i make in a month and a half now. Plus i buy my stock in nine foot bars, the biggest of these jobs would only take three or four feet giving me 5 extra feet to just make whatever i want to make which I'd also sell. I'm definatly going to have the pieces that i'll price at more than a grand, but i'll also have the 50 to 100 dollar pieces to sell.
I was at an sca event a couple of years ago selling chainmaille and i walked into a potters shop. she had some huge, beautiful and ornate urns selling for 3000 a piece. she told me, "yeah, those get the people in, but these are what pays the bills." she was referring to a shelf of small pots priced from 20$ to 150$. Those are what sold and she sold a lot of them. She used the big expensive pieces to lure people in because they were gorgeous and great to look at, but most couldn't afford them, but they could afford the smaller pieces on the shelf next to them. when i got back to my vending booth i stopped trying to push the 500 dollar pieces and started pushing the small jewelry that was 10 to 100 dollars and sold out in a matter of hours.
That is how I've looked at it ever since.

[dablacksmith]

well just remember that 9 dollars a hr takehome is about 18 dollars a hr that your employer is paying .. if you do things legit and and above board you need to keep all the expences in mind .. if you can sell your items and make a decent wage GOOD ! but i wouldnt sell knives at 10 bucks a hr ...

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

Pricing is discussed in one of my gunsmithing kinks books. To make it short, it said to give a price for a base, then keep adding prices for additional actions done to the gun until the customer shows a reaction of some kind, then stop. Each customer will have a different "pain level" so to speak, and this method determines what it is. I worked on $8,000 Perazzi shotguns, and $25 Stevens .22's. The guys with the higher end stuff got leery when a price seemed too low to them, as they figured that a shortcut,or inferior work had been done.

Don't sell yourself short, I did it when I had my shop, and it is one of the reasons I am working for someone else now. I want to start another business, and that is one lesson that I learned, and will not repeat.

[jason0012]

$9 an hour costs the employer $18, who charges their customer $36. The money you take home cant pay the shop bills and still pay your paycheck. Thinking along those lines will have you out of business quick! You need to charge enough for your work to pay for the shop and materials and your take home pay. It might seem that your shop costs nothing since you are paying anyway, but you aren't running the forge 8-10 hrs a day, 7 days a week yet. There are also numerous costs involved in doing business that will eat you alive should you base your price on expected take home. Insurance, taxes, and advertising can eat twice as much of your income as you do! Anymore a shop rate below $50-60 isn't enough even for a hobby shop!

[hildenmw]

i have a couple of people who want to commission me to make some knives, but i'm not sure how to price my work. When I'm making chainmaille i charge 10$ per hour plus materials, i was wondering if that would be a good way to go with my knives. I especially want to figure out how to price a 50 fold hunting knife because he want's to pay me ahead of time. I'd like the opinion of others. I've herd that you should add 20% to the cost of materials. anyone want to give their two cents?

Go to ETSY.com and look through thier blogs. They give advise on pricing and retail math.

[Francis Trez Cole]

my 2 cents My formula is very easy I make good money and coustomers feel thay got a deal. I add up my cost, material (metal), fuel and supplys (grinding wheels and such). then I divide it by .33 so if I have $100.00 in a project I charge $300.00. I have always had satifided coustomers and return coustomers.

[hildenmw]

Keep records in a shop log too. I wiegh the gas bottle at the start and stop of a new job.

[Bluefeather]

I've been putting knives together for a few years now, and just this month started forging my own blades. I've had no trouble selling knives by doubling or tripling cost of materials. I lose track of time easily when I'm in the shop, so trying to do an hourly wage would be silly for me. But when I have $75 in a blade, another $70 in scales (mammoth tooth), $25 for nickel silver bolsters and $5 for custom pins (I make them myself)That's $175 and I'll sell it for $350 pretty quick.

Of course, there is much more time invested in forging a blade, and I'll price those knives higher. I also have a "friends and family discount" for those cousins and others who come out of the woodwork when they see something I've made that they like. It's 25% off, but I still make a tidy profit.

I'm still learning the in's and out's of pricing. I'm probably underselling as well. Be sure to take good quality pictures of your work too, so that you can still "show it off" after it has gone to a new owner!

Good Luck!
John

[jj2k]

Done a lot of time and motion studies of the stuff I make to sell at craft shows. Knowing exactly how long an item takes to manufacture is a good base to start with. If you are doing production work you can produce an item quicker when you are doing a bunch at once. My shop rate is $60 an hour. I figure the materials and the shop rate and THEN mark up a modest profit margin. I know exactly how long an item takes, how much material it uses, and what the market will bear. Sometimes an item will sell for much more than time and materials. I will ask and get that higher price to make up for the items that won't. Years of experience tell the tale tho.

A few years ago I was at a show and another blacksmith was there selling his stuff for the cost of his materials, (pretty much). I bought everything he had, cleaned up what he had done and marked it all up to market levels. He was a little ticked when he saw what I had done, but he learned an important lesson. I'd rather hang on to my product, (labor) than to give it away because someone else is to cheap to pay what it's worth. Never let a customer price your work. It's your work. The only thing you owe them is a good job for the value.

[jet45papa]

Ken; I built my "beginner's set up" just to prove to a friend that he didn't need to use my equipment he could use his own!

"Too Expensive": the entire set up cost under US$25 and included forge, blower, anvil and basic tool set
"Takes fancy tools to make": the "fanciest" tool used to make it was a 1/4" drill.

Was a great little forge too; I used it as my billet welding forge for several years.

He's holding Hammer-Ins at his place now so I guess I didn't scare him off.

Im a begginer and i was wondering, a starter kit for 25 bucks?
Can you please tell me how to make one like yours?
Thanks

[used-iron]

our shop rate is 65.00usd per hour.this is for machine shop, fabrication and welding. rather than raise our rates due to the increases to us , now charge for consumables,ie rods,wire,gas end mills, carbides and etc. now charge to clean the mud ,grease, cow xxxx etc off the work. One guy hollered real loud said he is never coming back,no loss,he was slow pay,and several bad checks over the years. the other ones got the message, now the work comes in clean. material gets marked up 30 to 50%. you have to pay your bills,taxes, insurance,tie money up in inventory etc.,and,take a salary,and have something for your old age. anything less is just a race to the bottom. Lee from NYS land of taxes

[nonjic]

Like others have said how much to charge is often just a case of how much you can get away with, without looking like you are robbing them.

50 fold damascus knife is a funny one. I can make a 50 layer billet of flawless damascus, from scratch in 2 or 3 hours. A lot of that time would be chopping up the steel before I start the forge welding.

ie, Stack 10 pieces of 15n20 & 1080. stick weld together on the ends & weld on a handle. one good heat in the gasser and a welding pass under a small power hammer (anyang 15kg). Then a 5 min soak at full welding heat, then draw out into a long flat bar (one or two heats). Chop into 5 pieces (4 cuts on chopsaw, ie leave the exisitng handle welded onto one piece), tack weld back together with stick and forgeweld, soak, and drawout.

If I was in a mood to work I could do it in less than half that time.

The point im making is if you are making 50 layer damascus by hand it could take you 2 or 3 days to make the basic billet. The hand forged patterwelding will probably have more flaws in it aswell.

You could finish the knife with files and sandpaper, I could do it on a belt grinder in 1/5 of the time, and so on.

OK, so ive probably got £4k+ in my setup, but there will be a compromise with the tools somewhere that lets you work efficently and ulitmatly charge a reasonable price. (or work very fast, charge the same price and make a killing)