james78uk":2unjxd9f said:
My question is has anyone done this on such a small home scale and and found it easy/hard?
Im thinking of selling on Ebay/Etsy and I know they take a good slice the money.
Does anyone find it better selling though local craft shops?
What sort of margins do you work to - is it fair to say if Im selling a board for £50 I net back £20 to £25?
Ideally I would be working 4 days per week on woodwork.
I'm surprised this question doesn't get asked more often. There are plenty of threads on this forum about becoming a full time woodworker, but relatively few about turning "hobby" woodworking into a "paying pass-time" or a "semi-retirement occupation".
In my experience (I'm a full time furniture maker) it's not difficult to make an annual gross contribution (i.e. revenue less materials and other variable costs) of £20-30k, but it's almost impossible to get that consistently up to the £40-50k level that turns bespoke furniture making into a viable career choice by reliably covering commercial overheads. I target £50k gross contribution, I can sometimes hit that for several months in succession, but then it always trips up, consequently I've never achieved £50k across a full year and I'm sceptical I ever will. However, I was hitting a £20-30k gross contribution running rate within the first year, and in all likelihood so can you.
Those numbers, or something pretty close to them, seem to be virtually an economic law of physics for independent furniture makers. I've spoken to makers in Canada and the US as well as the UK, and we all seem to end up in a similar earnings bracket. Which is why so many full time makers share specific characteristics, a supportive partner with a well paid job, bailed out of a city career with a pile in the bank, took very early retirement, split their time between furniture making and more lucrative timber related work like fitted furniture, yacht fit outs, heritage joinery, etc. The other common characteristics are either access to a decent mortgage/rent free workshop, or run a commercial workshop that also takes paying pupils. These seem to be the essential props that make the numbers add up for full time furniture making.
But back to your question. Yes, it's entirely possible to hit your targets and indeed a bit more besides. However I'm not sure that chopping boards and the like is the best way to go. For one thing you'll be bored stiff after a few months, and once the first flush of enthusiasm has worn off there's little enduring satisfaction to be gained form churning out such simple artefacts. I'm not saying you have to produce Guild Mark quality work, but I'd recommend that you raise your skills and your projects that little bit higher.
In my opinion furniture making falls into three broad categories. There's the "thousand hours of training" level that allows you to produce most rectilinear furniture to a professional level (think the straight lines and 90 degree angles of Shaker style furniture), then there's the "ten thousand hours of training" level that gets you to full cabinet maker status where you can confidently tackle the compound curves and complex joinery required for joined chairs and higher end furniture. And finally there's the Guild Mark level, which is more about personal aptitude than actual training, where you're figuring out how to make things that have never been made before, and you're doing it to the highest possible quality levels.
To have a decent part time income and rewarding work I'd argue you should be in that "thousand hours" category. It's nice for your own satisfaction to be a little higher, but in my experience the majority of commissions are fairly straightforward rectilinear pieces of furniture that you're fully capable of making (albeit a little slowly) after a thousand hours of structured, disciplined training.
Skills are the most important component of your armoury, but there are a few other things that come close behind. A decent dry workshop is one, but it sounds like you've got that already. Another is a plan for getting your work to market. Personally I believe that's immeasurably easier if you live in a fairly well off, urban or suburban part of the country, where you have access to plenty of affluent house movers (you'll find they're the backbone of your client base). Having said that I don't have much experience of on-line selling, so I'd be happy to proven wrong. I sell my work via several routes, but I manage to wrangle some free space in a few big county shows each year (that's "big county shows" as opposed to "small craft fairs") which together gets my work in front of well over 100,000 people, plus I've got furniture placed in a few local art galleries and fairly up market interior design shops. In my experience those routes alone would give you comfortably more than the income you're chasing.
A final point is that to make a success you need reliable sources of good quality timber. We're all used to having most goods and services right there at our fingertips, either on the web or on the High Street. Quality hardwoods just aren't like that. It's a highly variable natural resource with a fragmented supply chain, so you'll have to put some effort into tracking down materials. It's a challenge that often takes many hobbyist woodworkers well out of their comfort zone. I once trained at a workshop that held regular open days, the two main questions asked by hobby woodworkers were, "how do you sharpen your tools?" and, "where do you get your wood from?". To make an income you need a ready answer to both!
Good luck
