The Last Supper

[greasemonkeyredneck]

I ordered this pattern from Wildwood Designs. My wife wanted a cutting of the Last Supper. the cutting is cottonwood. The backer is cottonwood stained with ebony. This is another instance I talked with Travis a while back on. My backer boards are always wood planed down to an eight inch and stained whatever color I wish, usually ebony because I like black in the background. It works well with the light cottonwoood I usually do my cuttings in. I like using wood backer versus felt just to keep the wood grain flowing together. All my frames are made by me. They are usually just simple mitered frames like this one. This one is made of mahogany.

The cutting measures ten inches by twenty and took about ten hours to complete. I done something on this one that I don't normally do. I stack cutted two at one time. I usually don't do stack cutting on portraits. I don't know why, I just don't. On this one though, I needed one for my wife and one to sell.

 

 

That brings me to a question. I ponder a lot on pricing. So I thought, why not ask other scrollers what they think? I don't worry about time too much in my pricing. Because its a hobby and my pickyness takes a lot of my time, not even considering my health problems slowing me down, I can't consider time. I do think about value though. In that arena, I feel I often under price myself. Anyway, enough rambling. Does $60 sounds reasonable for a cutting like this one?

[britetomro]

Your cutting looks great and the frames compliment your work. Pricing is a hard one. I do believe however that at $60 your work is under valued. You also should consider what is your time worth per hour and your number equates to $6.00 per hour. You also should recognize the cost of materials and finally the end result of the project. You have alot of details in your cutting. I believe that based on your photos your pricing should be no less than $100 and more likely in the $150 price range.

Ron

[macfil20]

Man, that is awesome work. Such details, love the frame. I agree with Ron. $60.00 is not enough. Minimum of $150.00

JP

[joesawdust]

Beautiful job on that one. I would agree on the $100-150 range

 

Greg

[greasemonkeyredneck]

Thanks so much for the comments. The pricing suggestions told me pretty much what I thought. I already knew sixty was on the low side. Luckily though, since I'm the only one locally doing this type work, I don't have to feel guilty that I may be cutting someone else's throat. The downside though is that I cut my own throat. I live in an area where you just can't get that much for this type work. I sale online or travel out of state, and I get a fair price. Here in Mississippi though, raising my prices does nothing more than put myself into running an oddities shop where everyone comes and gives me oohs and ahhs, but no money. On fixed income, with this as a hobby, I have to sell some pieces, even at a reduced price, just to keep my hobby going. It's a dream of mine to one day make enough on this to travel more and get fair prices. For the time being though, that's what it is, a dream. I'm like Rick Hutcheson told one time though, if I can support my hobby and take my wife out to a nice dinner now and then, I'm happy.

[Firedkm]

Very Nice cutting. As far as your stack cutting goes......You just doubled your output by making 2 at the same time. Stack cutting is a way for you to make more money and be more efficient at your production.

 

I also agree $60.00 is too little. If you sold it at $100.00 you would have grossed $20.00 hr. In my opinion $20.00 hr is really good.

[Travis]

Those turned out wonderful! You did a really nice job on those. Pricing seems to be a tough one. I don't think I can get that kind of money in the market I'm in. But that's where stack cutting comes in. If you cut 3 or 4 of them, you can charge a lot less, and still make decent money for your time. Lower the price, the better chance of moving some product! So if you stack cut 4 of them, and they took you 10 hours, you could sell them for $60 each and still make $24/hr (4x$60=$240/10hrs= $24/hr). Not bad in my book.