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Old Joe

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I put a picture of this on a social media blog and a couple of people expressed interest in buying it. I wasn’t actually trying to sell it, just showing off, but one lady seriously wants a price. I have no idea how to price this, or another Alex Fox piece I did a couple of weeks ago, the Girl with a Violin. Because the patterns are not my originals, I feel that lessens the value somewhat, but I also feel that in both cases the work was done well and they are very intricate pieces. Any suggestions from those of you that have experience selling your work?

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Hi, Old Joe,

Great pattern from Alex and great cutting!
As for pricing your work, if you figure your materials and then add the price you want to make per hour for your time
times the hours it took to cut, you can see if your area will pay that price for your work.
That being said, if you had stack cut four of these, you could have definitely reduced the price but, I would not
reduce it by 4 just because you got 4 done in about the same amount of time it would have taken for just one.

Unfortunately, some areas of the country just aren't willing to pay for "hand made works of art". Everyone wants
a bargain price.

God Bless! Spirithorse

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Beautiful pattern and nice job cutting.. I personally find the detailed portrait type cuttings hard to sell at the same hourly type wage that I would get for ornaments and the other things that I sell... which is a big reason I don't typically do portrait type work.. but seems like that is what most pattern designers make..  the few portraits that I have made.. I always stack cut to help keep price points down.. I do have an hourly wage I make for my work plus add the supplies cost.. I do divide the stack cut pieces but also do add slightly more because most portrait type work sets around for a couple years before you sell all of them.. so then you have storage and overhead in something that's not flying off the shelves so to speak..  I've been known to do a raffle drawing on these type of things where I sell tickets if I have enough interest in the item to help bring up the dollar value to my pocket and have a little fun with it..

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Thank you all for your compliments, and for sharing your experiences and advice regarding selling detailed portraits and other scrollsaw pieces. I don’t really get much joy from stack cutting ornaments, and the thought of trying to stack cut four of some of Alex Fox’s patterns is daunting to me. This one pictured here would be challenging to get a blade through the micro holes on multiple layers of wood, but the Girl With the Violin has fretwork with some bridges that are not any thicker than the blade. As to the cost of the wood, I buy Baltic Birch in 5’ square sheets at a pretty low price, but virtually all of my fretwork is mounted on true 1” hardwood, or occasionally 1” nominal. The backs all have keyhole slots routed into them and a personalized Steve Good “Hand Crafted”coin inlaid in the back, giving them an overall professional finish.I literally would rather give them away as gifts than to sell them for too cheap. That said a local gift shop was interested in selling some of my bud vases but they only wanted the most simple designs. The thought of sitting at my saw knocking out dozens of the same vase has no appeal to me. But, getting back to topic, I have been getting folks asking me a price for both the fretwork portraits and the vases and I just don’t know where to begin to set a price. 

image.jpg

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On 10/23/2018 at 4:56 AM, Old Joe said:

I just finished this Alex Fox pattern. It took a while, and my Dewalt developed issues when I had about 75 cuts left to do and I nursed it through. 1/4” Baltic Birch, mounted on nominal 1” Poplar. 252 cuts! 

CF102900-A17C-4A1D-9438-D496091045D6.jpeg

 

On 10/23/2018 at 4:56 AM, Old Joe said:

I just finished this Alex Fox pattern. It took a while, and my Dewalt developed issues when I had about 75 cuts left to do and I nursed it through. 1/4” Baltic Birch, mounted on nominal 1” Poplar. 252 cuts! 

CF102900-A17C-4A1D-9438-D496091045D6.jpeg

Great except for the ones I meet it's a devil instead of a dog

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