# Birch Ply



## boysie39 (13 Oct 2012)

What thickness should I buy 3mm 6mm or 9mm . Also has anyone tried White Deal is it any good for scroll work .


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## Hardwood66 (13 Oct 2012)

What's the ply for?


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## boysie39 (13 Oct 2012)

Nothing particular in mind, just a go to for somethings a newbie might make or in my case try to make .General purpose ?? :roll:


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## Chippygeoff (13 Oct 2012)

Hi Eugene. Birch ply is the best you can get for scroll saw work, its in a class of its own. If I were in your shoes I would go for 6mm. Its such a useful thickness for so many things. Starting on Monday I am going to make 1000 hearts, 6 x 5 inches in size from 6mm ply. This is an order for a school that teaches people with learning difficulties. I have other shapes to make for them as well. I can make one every 10 seconds, I timed it. These will be painted with various designs by the school. 

I have made a few for my craft fair stall, I cut the words, I love you into it and sprayed them red and with a hole close to the top put a red ribbon in it. 6mm is also a useful size for Christmas tree decorations and if you look at Steve Goods (scrollsaw workshop) site you can download several patterns and I am sure you have family and friends that would like them as gifts. If you have a problem getting the designs I can e-mail them to you.


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## boysie39 (13 Oct 2012)

Thanks Geoff ,thats just the info. I was seeking . I will try to download the patterns but I am not having any success with downloads .When I try to get info. on what I have to do all I get is a load of GEEK thrown in me face. With me auld Dell I just gave it a kick and it sorted it's self out , these iMac's are a breed of there own.  :roll: .I often wonder is confusion just waiting for Me . :shock:


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## mac1012 (13 Oct 2012)

high geoff do you run your craft work as a ful time buisness ? i have often day dreamed about it but always doubted i could make it pay enough and i know it would be extremley hard work considering the volume of stuff i would have to sell to make it pay

how do you find it and what are your outlets for selling stuff , fairs , shops ? 

just curious thats all 

Mark


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## Chippygeoff (13 Oct 2012)

Hi Mark. I had to give up work 3 years ago on doctors orders as I became disabled and thats when I started doing craft fairs. Its a funny old business craft fairs, at one craft fair you could take £200 and at the next you may just cover your expenses, its all down to who comes through the doors and who likes your stuff. Be careful though as there are now people starting a business organising craft fairs and charging £40-£50 per table. I pay on average £5 per table. I sell to craft centres and sell at the same prices i charge at the craft fairs and they add 30% for their profit but craft centres are more like galleries and can command a higher price. I don't supply shops, most are very greedy, they want my stuff for next to nothing and want to add 100% for their profit, sometimes more so I never supply shops. I undertake a lot of commissions for one off items and I am doing he contract work so all in all I am a very busy chappy but I love every moment.

I am am not dependant on craft fairs for my living expenses, they do bring in a lot of money but most of it goes on equipment, more wood and consumables like blades, sand paper etc. I am getting a buffing machine soon for polishing the wood and also a router table with a beast attached as I have come up with some designs for some very unusual scroll saw work but it needs a powerful router to make it all come together. 

I doubt if you could earn a living from craft fairs. As you know, making the stuff is very time consuming and if you have a good day and sell £200 of things you have made it is going to take you 2-3 days to replenish your stocks. I have over 100 different items I display at the craft fairs. The more variety and choice you have then the more you will sell. I may have one item made from 3 or 4 different hardwoods and have a dozen in reserve in a box under the table. I had one item. I made 6 of them and took them to the craft fair, I sold everyone before lunch time so I thought I would make 20, which i did, and then I did not sell another one for 3 months, thats how it goes. I tend to have 6 of everything and I am pretty well covered then and I try to keep my stock levels up but it is very difficult. Some weeks I just have one craft fair, other weeks I may have 3. Now is the best period as people are buying for Christmas presents so between now and Christmas its manic.


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## mac1012 (14 Oct 2012)

ok thans geoff i can identify with a lot that you wrote , i did a craft fair yesterday and hardly took anything yet i can do another and people can hardly get enough of my stuff ! good to know i not the only one who experinces this !

and like you say you make something and it flys make some more and it goes slow lol 

i know one guy who does full time but he travels all over country to markets and is full on making stuff a lot off time its really hard work for him 

the holy grail for me is something thats easy to make but is desrable and you can sell for a good price hard to get that combination sometimes !!

i looking into making templates for my rocking horses and getting a router table and router

i going to get some mdf today and make a start i got a friends old bosch router i going to try handheld first to see how it works out.

the rocking horses sell well i just got to find ways of speeding up cutting and less time finishng each piece i hoping termplates will do that plus twin pieces will be spot on same.

i got two more fairs before christmas and i think they be better than yesterday which was tatty church hall one that no one wanted to spend money apart from odd quid like you say it all depends who come through door i never doing one like that again 

i just tagged aslong with someone else 

Mark


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## Chippygeoff (14 Oct 2012)

Hi Mark. I agree with everything you said. Most of the things I make are quite quick to churn out but people like what i produce. My number 1 seller is a set of 3 penguins and my second best seller is name signs, I have about a dozen on display and take orders but because a lot of people are quite thick I have to put signs up for everything, like "orders taken," I did some animal jigsaws and weeks went by without selling many, as soon as I put a sign by them saying, ANIMAL JIGSAWS, they sold a lot quicker. Don't hand write signs, it cheapens the products, print them out on the computer on cream coloured card and also print your prices out the same way, you can put a price by each item very easily and always end the price with 95, like £5-95 or £7-95, to the customer its £7 but to you its an extra quid in your pocket.

I would be careful with free hand routing, its not as easy as it looks. In your shoes I would make a template you can fix the the wood and follow it round with a guide bush on the bottom of the router, you can produce a lot of things quite quickly this way. 

I know people that do it full time but they have other people behind them making the stuff, I am a one man band, i do the designing, the cutting, the finishing and the selling. I even make the tea. We are going through a hard time Mark and although people like what they see its either spend £10 with me or put food on the table or pay a bill. There are of course people with spare cash and thats where I make most of the money.

I will give you a good tip Mark when you are doing craft fairs. When people are standing at your stall looking at what you have made you have to break the ice, you need to have a way of putting potential customers at ease and the easiest way is if they are looking at a particular item on your table is to tell them what sort of wood its made from or something like, "everyone loves loves," straight away you have put the customer at ease and this gives them the confidence to buy. Also have raised displays, you can go 3 or 4 feet above the table if you like, people like to be in eye contact with what they are looking at and the more variety you have the more you will sell. If you want some simple patterns i can e-mail you some and I can show you some of my displays to give you an idea.


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## Grahamshed (14 Oct 2012)

boysie39":3av90ajy said:


> I am not having any success with downloads .When I try to get info. on what I have to do all I get is a load of GEEK thrown in me face. With me auld Dell I just gave it a kick and it sorted it's self out , these iMac's are a breed of there own.  :roll: .I often wonder is confusion just waiting for Me . :shock:


Downloading PDFs ( if that is what you are trying to do ) on a Mac can sometimes be a pain. For some reason I do not understand I can download them in firefox using the same inbuilt program that Safari says does not exist.


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## boysie39 (14 Oct 2012)

Thanks for your reply Graham. There has to be something that the Mac can do that the Dell can't but I had not found it yet .I am trying to download Adobe Flash player so that I can see Scrolling videos ,without much success ,I thought that this could make tea and everything . My 10 yr . old Grandson will be down next weekend to sort everything out for me .

In the meantime I will continue with me scroll saw practice , But its annoying to go to youtube and look at all the videos I should be able to watch .

Just reading the posts from Mark and Chippygeoff , I'm kinda glad that this is really only a hobby for me ,As was woodturning for which the same selling problems were evident. I never sold anything that I made as I wasn't dependent on it .Most of what I made was for friends and family and they were happy with it .I was asked on many occasions would I do commission work and refused by pointing them in the direction of somebody who was making their living from what they could sell .Plus I would have hated being told what to do and when it was wanted .I had enough of that in over 50 yrs. working.

I wish everyone who has stalls at fairs and those who are trying to make a few bob the best of luck .We are living in tough times .!!


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## mac1012 (14 Oct 2012)

ok thanks geoff , i been selling stuff for a couple of years now and i do the things that you advised like printing signs , pricing , and display etc , ive had my own cards done to place on the gifts that look really nice and i use a pricing gun that sticks the price on in a discreet place i have proper drapes and display at different heights, all this ithink you learn as you go along, as for engaging customers well i deal with general public in my day job as physio asisstant so have learnt a thing or two along the way ! body language is important i never sit directly behind the table , i think sometimes people want to be left alone to browse but also engage when appropiate

yes i would like you to send me some of your plans the penguins sound interesting and i would like to see how you do your name plaques etc and i would like to see your display 

my email is [email protected]

eugene i have to say i really enjoy making and selling stuff it has paid for all my machinery and paid for 2 chrisrmases for me nad my daughter if it ever became a chore i wouldnt do it . also if a customer ask for something made to their tastes i am more than happy to oblige it gjves me great pleasure to make something out of a piece of wood and then have someone who is happy to pay for it , i also make stuff for my family and for my daughter for school gifts at christmas/ making stuff just for myself wouldnt do it for me , but eveyone different what they get out of scrolling

Mark


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## Chippygeoff (14 Oct 2012)

My sincere apologies Mark. I had wrongly assumed you were new to craft fairs and was giving you the benefit of my experience. From what you say you have everything spot on, well done. I am sending you some patterns and some pics.


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## boysie39 (15 Oct 2012)

Mark I am not for one minute criticizing what you do to make a few extra quid  I think it is admirable that you make a few quid for extras doing something you love doing .I did all that years ago when I was young and had plenty of energy :roll: The point I was trying to make was having done all that I am now reaping the benefits and for the past number off years doing what I want to do ,well if the Doc. allows that is .And Clair :mrgreen: . I envy you your youth and energy and you and anyone else who has the gift for scrolling have a bumper Christmas period for selling your art.
Apologies to anyone who may have thought I was being critical of selling what they make . #-o


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