On Sat, 4 Dec 2004 19:41:56 -0000, "Sam Berlyn"
wrote:

how much would you charge?

They usual answer is "not enough"

I would think you charge on a per job rate, or is it hourly?

If you don't want to starve, you charge hourly, and you choose work
where you can do this.

Installing junk MDF shelves pays better than veneering and french
polishing. The reason is simple - one of them is done "on site" and
the client sees you there, sees you working for a few hours, then pays
you for your _time_ at a reasonable rate. Skilled benchwork however
is unseen, and unseen work isn't valuable. Spend a couple of days
making a table and their first response is "It's just like the one I
saw for £25 in Ikea".

I was recently offered a job by a local kitchen fitting company -
fairly well known, reasonably high-end. They saw some work I'd done
with inch thick solid oak tops - low budget, but we had the materials
for free and it was a good piece of work. Then the guy offered me the
same as the rest of his crew - £6/hour. I politely pointed out that
shelf stacking in Lidl's supermarket was paying £7, and I'm proud to
say I chased him from the workshop with something sharp.

Say the materials cost £15 and it took 5 hrs, how much would you charge.

There's a saying in the craft market of "three times materials" as a
rough rule of thumb. Now obviously this is crazy - woodturning might
begin with green local timber for free and just your skill, some
simple jewellery work might be an hour setting a £500 stone into a
£100 factory-made ring mount. But it's not bad when you can't think
of anything better.

As a comparison figure, try asking a plumber or electrician how much
to change a tap. Even allowing for the callout / workshop difference,
you will get a huge hourly rate from them. Why should woodworking be
any less ?

Unless it's tiny, your materials are more than £15 too. Don't forget
the finishes (and the rest of the tin that you waste), the consumables
(glasspaper) and the electricity of heating. Ikea's cheapest bookcase
is something like £45, and that's just chipboard (I have several, as I
can't buy timber for that little)

--
Smert' spamionam