Scroll Saw Village

Village News

Inkscape Class – Want to learn to make your own scroll saw patterns?  We’ll be starting an Inkscape class in the Village University forum starting September 1st.  The class will last 4 weeks with 2 lessons released each week.  The lessons include video demonstration, written instruction, downloadable source material, and classroom discussion where you can have all your questions answered.

Guilds – A new feature has been added to SSV.  Now you can join special interest groups within SSV.  Interested in cooking?  H’bout woodturning?  Is fantasy football your thing?  Join the special interst groups that suit you.  If there isn’t one, create one and moderate your own private forum.  Check it out.  (You must be logged in to see the guild feature).

 Project Rudolf Challenge – Project Rudolf is an organization that sends care packages to soldiers during the holiday season.  This care package includes handmade ornaments.  SSV challenges you to create Christmas ornament patterns and/or cut ornaments for our soldiers.

Pricing Your Work

Your walls are covered and your shelves are overflowing with your scroll saw projects. Then it finally dawns on you…maybe you should start selling your work. But what should you charge? This is a tough question to answer. After all, you want to make it affordable so people would actually buy your products. But at the same time, you don’t want to short change yourself. While pricing structures can range from picking a number out of the air to complex formulas, here’s a good way to come up with a price for your scroll sawn art.

First, you must decide what your time is worth to you. Are you happy making $15/hr? $30/hr? Be sure to keep this figure realistic. While it would be nice to make $150/hr, chances are that my work isn’t worth more than $15/hr. Once you come up with a number, this becomes your target income goal.

Next, figure out what it would cost to make your product. Figure in your time and material cost. Material costs not only includes the materials used to make your product, but it also includes expendables like scroll saw blades, masking tape, paper, and printer ink. Figuring out the costs of your expendables might be a bit of a guessing game, but try to put a ballpark figure on it. While you’re at it mark up the material costs by about 20%. After all, you still have to hoof it over to the lumber store, pick your stock, haul it back home and organize it.

Don’t overlook expenses that occur in the sales process. Are you going to craft shows? Chances are, you’ll be spending all day trying to sell your wares. Be sure to compensate yourself for your time. Plus there’s booth fees and travel expenses to figure in too. Online markets charge listing fees and take a sales commission. Plus any time that you spend listing your products. See where I’m going with this?

Now its time to figure out what price to charge for you product. So take your time multiplied by your target income goal plus material costs. This is your price. But wait. We’re not quite done yet. Now that we have a price, we have to figure out if the market can bare that price.

When you come up with a number, compare it to what others sell similar items for locally. If others are selling it for more, raise your prices. If they’re selling it for less, decide if you’d be willing to take less. If not, see if you can reduce your time or cost to get the widget price closer to the market price. There are many times where it just isn’t worth your time to make that particular product. But there are many other items that you can make that has a nice profit margin. You may also concider the law of averages. Perhaps one product has to sell below what you’d be willing to take, but another product is selling for more. These two products may balance each other out in the long run.

Naturally custom work will cost more than items that can be "mass produced." Making several of one item is usually more time efficient than making them one at a time. If you do portrait style cuttings, be sure to stack cut your items so you get 3 or 4 copies. Other items, make jigs where possible to speed up production. Also keep an eye out on how to reduce material costs and any expendables. Often little compromises result in huge savings, thereby increasing your profit margin.

And lastly, know who your customer is. Flea market folks won’t pay $35 for a free standing puzzle, but a patron of an art museum would. Be sure to research your customers and what others are doing. Find someone who is doing well and copy them (their method, not their patterns). No need to re-invent the wheel.

Hopefully these tips will get you on your way to selling your wares. Its nice to earn a little extra money to keep yourself in sawblades and buy a new tool on occasion. But if you don’t sell anything, don’t worry. After all, its the journey, not the destination that counts.  —by Travis Cook

Member Spotlight – Grampa

Hi my name is Paul (grampa). I am 57 years young and live in Preston, Lancashire, UK. I also have relatives in Monroe, New York.
When I left school I joined the British army and spent 8 years in Germany with my wife. But being a single mans army she got fed up so I left the forces and returned to the UK, and did nothing for a few years (it was hard to adjust).  Then I got a job as a press-setter and spent 25 years with the same firm then retired.  I have always been interested in woodworking, but with a young family, the money was tight I had only the basic tools.  But now I have built up my workshop and have made all sorts, beds, rocking horses, and toys for the grand-kids, plus furnishings for the wife (got to keep them happy}.  I got a scrollsaw about 2 years ago but never really used it.  Then one day I was online and found a site about scrolling and that was it I was hooked.  I do mainly portraits but would love to do intarsia to the standards of some of the scrollers in the Village (maybe in time, practice practice practice). I have always been interested in digital photography and manipulating photo’s on the computer.  So making the patterns for my portraits was fairly easy for me.  Anyway you must be bored by now so I will cut it short and say thanks for all your tips and funny banter and sharing your ideas.  I am learning all the time.

Handy Tips

Here is a handy intarsia tip.  If two ajoining pieces don’t fit tight,  take both pieces to scroll saw.  Hold the pieces tight together and saw between them carefully.  This will even up any gaps for a nice tight fit. -– Tip by Hosie

Project of the Month

Eye On The Prey

by britetomro

Pattern of the Month

Horse & Kitten

by grampa

 Wiki Watch

 Looking for software to create your own scroll saw patterns?  Here’s a list of your software options, from free to professional graphics suites.

Great Threads

• Free Wood Sources
• Ultimate Scroll Saw Workbench
• Wildflower Carousel Horse Project
• Finishing Baltic Birch
• Paint Thinner/Mineral Spirits