hello there, someone with first hand experience of doing exactly what you are considering. Had a fairly comfortable fairly well paid job in events but didn’t love it any more.
So they’re a few observations, most of which I’m sure have been talked about above.
Are you already a master craftsman ? Because if not, you really should have training. I was incredibly lucky to get an apprenticeship through contacts I already had. This is likely not an option for most, as during the second and any further years your employer will have to pay you minimum wage for your age, which obviously for someone of 17 is far lower. They also have to pay you for your time at college.. but training is in my opinion necessary, particularly if you want to make some kind of living from it..
at the college I attended there was also a “full time” class (two days a week, I’m certain at some college this would be one day a week) which older students had to pay to attend.
The pay in this industry is in my opinion very poor, particularly relative to the level of skill required. I’ll qualify this, I work full time for a very high end fine furniture maker and am very lucky to work on interesting projects, but if you want to make fine furniture in the uk at least for the first few years I would say you want to work for someone good to build skills and experience with the equipment. The prices charged to customer may seem very high, but in fact there is a ceiling for high end work, and the sheer amount of hours required (and the risk of masses of excess hours needing to be put into a project unquoted, or dealing with mistakes On a bespoke project) make it difficult to charge more.. I have been absolutely grinding for at least the past three or four years. Working weekends and evenings as a freelancer in events after a full weeks work, doing small “foreign” jobs fitting kitchens and furniture onsite, making things that I don’t particularly enjoy making that I can sell on Etsy etc, delivering pizzas a few nights a week etc.. bear in mind that even if you complete a full apprenticeship you will effectively be a beginner at that point, so several more years before you can garner the top end of local companies advertised pay scales which is usually still not great, so do thorough research here. Depending on what part of the country you are in starting salary after a suitable apprenticeship will be perilously close to minimum wage for a 25 plus year old.
There is more money available for certain jobs, but it is not the land of milk and honey it might seem - for example a common one advertised is fitted furniture or kitchen installer. The real question is - do you actually want to be a fitted furniture installer ? Travel, likely long days onsite probably working alone so can’t imagine great for your body, and definitely really working against very tight deadlines to make the good money advertised.
Most companies making fine furniture are small and none are bigger than small to medium. There are contract furniture houses running off and rattling together cnc carcasses a bit bigger but do you really want that ? There are usually inherent issues with smaller companies, not always but things like culture, promotion prospects, organisation, communication, job security, autonomy etc will likely be very different if you are moving from a bigger employer.
If you do get a job with even a top flight fine furniture maker a lot of the jobs that are a function of the job probably aren’t what you are imagining. Days upon days of sanding, emptying extractor bins, loading and unloading and moving around incredibly heavy materials and furniture, sweeping or hoovering up etc. you might not love the design or the finish choice or blah blah blah on a specific project you are working on, as at work you just have to do what you have to do.
If you intend to immediately work for yourself - do you currently have a full and profitable order book and need to upscale this, if not then you would probably need to spend 100% of your time in the first instance finding profitable work. If aiming at the fine furniture market, there are already lots of brilliant makers and designers out there doing it - what is your usp ? I would suggest for this route at the bare minimum I would want to get it off the ground totally in my spare time in addition to my main job. For example I wouldn’t want the added pressure on a new business of having to find money to buy all the freestanding equipment you need, nor renting a space..
Thinking about the above it’s all quite negative - the obvious positives are it’s incredibly rewarding and engaging, solving problems and deciding how to do something and coming up with jigs etc.
