stryped wrote in news:05a886e1-9e56-47d1-b7ee-
:

Watched Orange County Choppers last night. I know, it is reality tv
and you never know the whole story. I know the dad started making
ornamental iron in his garage or something.

Is there anythign someone can do in his own shop part time starting
out that would be some income? Even if you had to buy some equipment?
I always hear people doing this starting out then turnign it into a
business.

Just curious your opinion.

A friend of mine was a free-lance custom machinist that worked out of his
home shop. He passed away about a year ago, unfortunately.

His secret was that he got hooked up with some orthopedic surgeons.
There's all sorts of FDA headaches if you make hardware that goes INTO
and STAYS in the body, but they need tools to precisely cut ends of bone,
drill holes, etc. It's all stainless steel, and they pay big bucks for
custom made stuff. They would tell him "we need a tool that does THIS",
and he'd work with them on a design and fabricate them. Heck, one of his
big money makers was just an array of stainless steel hammers in
different weights. He also made stainless steel "nails". They were used
to hold drilling & cutting jigs onto the ends of broken bones. This was
in Boston, and presumably these were doctors from a research hospital
developing new techniques. I suspect he got additional customers when
the word got around about the tools he helped develop.

Not sure how he got linked up with them, but he'd barely make a nickle on
a lot of his simple repair jobs for folks in town. Any time his bank
account was running low, he'd crank out a batch of hammers for the
orthopedic crowd. It certainly didn't hurt that the guy was a real
artist. He used to teach silversmithing at one of the local art museums.
The hammers were works of art themselves, with a bead blast finish, and
knurled oval tubular handles. I assumed he knurled them & then
"ovalized" them in a press before welding them onto the heads.

Making money in a home shop with any sort of production work is probably
really tough unless you have CNC. His trick was doing custom work that
big shops won't touch, and the design aspect made it a lot more
interesting. Having customers with deep pockets helps too. Most folks
can't afford to pay a decent wage for high quality custom work.

There are also a lot of customs gunsmiths around the country, but there
are legal hassles involved, and a lot of it requires specialized
knowledge above & beyond just running a mill & lathe.

Doug White