A nagging feeling

[Charles R. Stevens]

Yep, labor is a cost, even if your paying your self.

[VaughnT]

If you like bowls, figure out how you can use mass-produced metal bowls as a pre-form.  You might spend an hour hammering the bowl over a stump to give it that hand-hammered look, but at least you won't have had to start from scratch.

 

It might sound like cheating, but is it?  If you buy a large stainless steel salad bowl from the supermarket down the road, and then spend an hour hammering it over a stump, how have you done something different than a larger shop that can afford to have their bowls cut out with a plasma cutter or the like?  All you're doing is repurposing an existing product, just like folks do with railroad spikes or a dozen other mass-produced items.

 

Drill a 1.5" hole in the bottom of the bowl.... boom... instant high-dollar undermounted sink!

 

Caterers use a lot of stainless pots in a lot of shapes and sizes.  What you can do with them, though, is up to the imagination.

[DSW]

I was just looking at some sinks on another site last night a guy made  using some SS warming trays and salad bowls.

[Joel OF]

Sinks? Interesting idea & certainly ticks the functional box. I like ideas like that, I had so many ideas like that racing through my mind before i took up smithing, then I took (and still am) taking my baby steps to learn the basics but I feel I've slightly lost the imaginative spark as I've been mainly copying books & YouTube.

Queue the montage sequence where I get The Eye of The Tiger back & hammer something unique.

[yahoo2]

:) I can just see ya, down a dozen raw eggs in a glass of milk, run up a flight of stairs punch the air a few times, get the ninja headband on..............pause.........forge wont light :unsure: .  yeah, might just nip inside for a quick coffee before i start. Gee that lounge look comfy. Nup, its all to hard, looks like it might rain too, must be somethin good on the TV.

 

Seriously Joel, function is one of the hardest things to get the head around.

for example say you make candle holders to sit on a dining table. what is function in this case? romantic mood lighting? not falling over, dripping wax or scratching the table? holding the larger candle properly that women seem to love? having different height holders to give a tiered look for a table centrepiece?

 

Notice I haven't said "provide some light so I can see what I am stuffing in my mouth"

 

Can you explain the function of a $2000 tattoo? no shortage of them, and some of the wearers don't exactly look loaded.

bath candles? :huh: vintage booze? :blink:

If reliability sold cars we would all be driving 2003 Toyota camry's.

Some folks love rustic wagon wheels as garden features, but only when they are free!

 

People have no imagination, unless they have made the decision that they need some blacksmiths handmade wall hooks before they visit your stall, you need to SHOW them, dress up a piece of that waney oak and mount some hooks as a display. Keyring is easy to explain but its a hard sell unless the have a wow factor.

 

Textured finishes go in and out of fashion, at the moment the hammered look is IN here (as long as it doesn't look like copperart) so your Despres style bowls would sell at a premium at some of the country markets I visit.

[Joel OF]

Very true. Hopefully I'll start to learn what sells within "my range" as I've made simple VS elegant versions of most things. If not hopefully at least have a member of the public tell me what would be useful.

I've got simple straight round bar pokers with twisted loop handles & for double the price I've got square bar pokers with sheppards crook finnial scroll handles and many twists...we'll see what sells.

[ptree]

My experience is that often a market will devour an item as fast as you can produce for a time, say 18 months and then disappear. At that point you have just found everybody in that market who wants one:)

I made wine racks that were grapevines and hung on the wall. Made every possible configeration and size for 18 months, and always had a wait list. Then at 18 months the sales quit and the last one I made I had to give away!

I like to have as wide a variety of items and price ranges as possible, especially at a show that I have not done before. In my part of the US, this is history/heritage festival season. I have a demo every weekend till the end of OCT except for Quad State. At these history/heritage festivals they do NOT allow flea market sales and so the sales prices are better. I do NOT do demos where flea market sales are allowed, as the sales won't even pay the gas price to get there. I usually have a price range from $5 to $100(USD), but not many folks carry $100, and so I carry lots of the $5 to $20 range some in the $25 to $40, and only ocasionally above. BUT the fact that there are more expensive items lets them feel they are buying lux items and can yet get something in their price range.

I demo making and sell many leaf keyrings, and small split crosses. I have made so many that part of the show is "Watch carefully and there jump out of the iron" Sales come from engaging the crowd. TALK to them. Say a cheery Good Morning, How are you enjoying the show" or similar. They stop to answer and then they really see the table.  Remember it is a show and you are in fact doing performance art. So Perform, be friendly and outgoing and watch you sales double or triple over the guy who waits for the buyers to come to him.

Good luck for Southern Indiana where shows are probably very different from Kent.

[Joel OF]

LOL, a note to self, don't ask family members who are nothing like your target market "what would you pay for this?" to get an idea of what to charge. The worst answer was £25 for one of my 4mm thick 11 inch wide bowls.

[yves]

For what it may be worth, here is how I figure the price of an item.

 

I start with an objective : sell, let's say a copy of an 18th century iron hand to lift pot covers on the stove or in the heart (as some people have begun to do) for less than 30$ to keep it in the range of the impulsive buyer.

 

I work out a technique, a procedure for forging the item and then count the heats I have to take at each step. A heat equals 3 minutes. I want 50$ per hour. That means 2,50$ per heat.

 

And then, sometimes, I feel there is room for more money (this is totaly irrational), I add it up.

 

I will have a show for Xmas and I want to offer some of these iron hands. Using my "method", I came up with 8 heats if I forge only one at a time (1 bar in the fire),  another 2 minutes for marking and cutting and another 5 minutes for the set up. It came out at 25,81$.  These can sell for 27$ or 28$. I'm sure. I'll decide when I get to the show. It will probably be 27$ it sounds on the safer side of 30$.

 

Of course If I forge 10 of these, the set up now takes only 30 seconds ... and ,let's say, 4 irons in the fire, there is still a little more for me. But I figure out the price of forging one item and that is what I ask. If I can wiggle myself in a little more profit, good for me.

 

Of course some will take another heat for adjusting but the client should not be expected to pay for our apprenticeship, our errors or our "it's a bad day today".

[rockstar.esq]

I'd second the comment above about performance art.  Unfriendly booths have driven me off plenty of times.  I often see hand made articles in peoples homes and it's the rare exception when the owner doesn't relate who made it and how it's creation was explained to them.  Lots of lookie-lous but buyers are listening too.