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I Forge Iron

What would you charge to make this? (Time wasting "customers")


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I quoted her $25 each unpainted, which was probably on the cheap side as I am not sure if I have material in the rack.  Most of my work these days is in alloy steel which is ordered in large batches and delivered.  Sending someone out for one length of ms flatbar  is almost $50 in shop time.   I did not try to up sell her to a fancy decorative one as we hare fairly busy here right now and the only person here who could do the fancy decorative one here is and I doubt she would have gone for it anyways.

In retrospect I am probably more frustrated in myself in not being able to politely disengage myself or not just saying we don't do that work and either saying I don't know or not my problem to her request for a solution after it seemed apparent that the Home depot price was as big an issue as the quality.  It would have been much easier had I gotten a blunter response "that is too much" .   I have had the older guy walk in where he wanted cane bolts he bought at home depot modified, his response was "that is more than I paid for these"  My response was to say Ok and go back to work.  He very quickly said Ok and left the parts.  While the best thing might be to just say no to all the walk ins we have had periods where we have been really slow and it would have been good to have even a small amount of money coming in.  Sometimes they can also be quite profitable. I had recent job where i spent 10 minutes drawing up a grate on CAD subbed it to the laser guy and marked it up nicely. 

As to the different trades pricing the grass is always greener...  However I do feel that manufacturing trades have been hit harder by price stagnation.  We do both Patternmaking and Blacksmithing here.  The Pattern shop rates have not risen very much in the last 15 years and I find I am actually quoting lower to get the work in many cases than I was 10 years ago.  In most cases trades such as plumber  electrician auto mechanic can not have there work "offshored" which is good for them and I do not begrudge them getting the rates they get.  But I have significantly more invested and higher expenses than John Mcpherson's example.

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3 hours ago, JNewman said:

  However I do feel that manufacturing trades have been hit harder by price stagnation.  

The trend on this is actually quite a long one.  U.S. Steel used to have a small fabrications division in their steel warehouses around the country.  In the 70's, SOP to price items they'd weld up/fabricated from steel (almost like the parts in question here but also welding, drilling, and a few other things) was $ 10 per pound---adjusted  up if it was something much more complicated but never down.  That's $ 47.00 per pound in todays dollars (starting with 1975 dollars).  They got that too.

Today it's in the low single digits.

I recently dug up some old price calculating records from 1950 for product  machine work which we still do today and in the same way--no significant change in process.  Bore and key a hunk of cast iron and put in a couple of set screw holes.  Today you get $ 20 for that on a good day.  In 1950 equivalent dollars, you got $ 85 all day long.

So yes, there has been remarkable price stagnation in fabricated steel manufacturing.  IMO, it's from many sources and can't be pinned down to one.  I was going to start listing my opinions on those reasons but I decided I'd let it slide here in case others saw reasons which they wanted to point to.  In any case, the result tends to be a race to the bottom.

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Well you could tell them to go to the local auto repair place and get their per hour shop charge and then come back and you will make it for that charge times your time plus materials and warn them that if you have to go buy steel for it, that time is on the clock!

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Being a self employed engineer its a great source of frustration how people complain about how much things cost and yet are completely happy to pay for clothes etc that have 300% markup on them, Part of the problem where i am is there is back yard industry where someone with a welder does things very cheap and so makes no money but it suppresses the prices so nobody else makes anything either. I was also venting my spleen to the manager of one of the largest engineering shops in Invercargill who I do contract work for when they need extra or specailist labour and i was talking about margins on steel/materails and i said I always try to get 40% margin and he said he was happy with 10% which makes me wonder why they bother when doing nothing but investing in a bank they would get 4% or more and do nothing. I am not interested in dealing with Joe public and my pet hate is people wanting old car trailers right now but dont want it to cost much i am usually very blunt

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