On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 4:51:36 -0800, Art Ransom wrote
(in message ):

Turning has always been a labor intensive endeavor. A well done 12" bowl
from one piece of wood can easily take 10 hours and when you get into
segmented and stave work the time involved jumps dramatically. When you
consider that a commercial shop needs $45 to $65 per hour shop fee to stay
in business it is easy to see how expensive turning can become. The only
way to reduce prices is to use the copy lathes and mass produce an item. To
set up a high volume copy lathe is expensive. Lathe $75,000 and up, sander
$75,000 up 3 people to prepare stock, one to run lathe and one to run
sander. I run my shop with a shop fee of $25/hr but that is only possible
because of some VERY special circumstances. There is a lot of custom
business out there for the small custom shop that the big companies can't
afford to do.



10 hours for a 12" bowl!?! are you talking about in the past? like before
electric motors?