BadBob

I did it because I kept breaking the #1&#2 blades.

Same here.

I don't see heroes, I see comic book characters and ball players.

Yes, you can use a guitar tuner. You need one that has a microphone in it. Place it next to the blade and pluck away. I used a tuner for setting the tension on some of my previous saws.

I have been selling toys online for more than six years. Competition is intense. Keep in mind that not only are you competing with other toy makers, but you are also competing with commercial toy makers. Some things never sell but get many views and bring potential customers into your shop who may view and buy something else. I price my toys using a spreadsheet that considers everything I can think of that affects the cost of making them. For example, painting doubles the price. Here are some of the things that go into my pricing. Part Count Length Width/Height Thickness Finish Transportation Uniqueness Insurance Wood Internal Cuts Drilled Holes Packing Materials Consumables Hardware Wheels Axel Pegs Dowels Gift Box You have to do a lot of work that has nothing to do with making toys. I could not guess at prices for these toys because there is not enough information available. Your basic costs will depend on your shopping skills and just plain luck. Do you buy your materials from a big box store in small quantities? Is your lumber free because your friends or family give it to you, or do you pay premium prices for S4S boards? Do you buy ready-made parts such as wheels and axle pegs in bulk or a few at a time at a craft store at exorbitant prices? I buy hardware direct from as near the source as I can get. This means that I am buying my washers 500-1000 at a time from someone in China, and they cost less than four of the same washers at Home Depot. You can see that pricing is complicated, and every maker's situation is different. You are going to need to figure this out for yourself.

Yes, there is. Dremel makes one. It is small and made of plastic. I don't have one. I would not have any issue routing small parts with a 1/8-inch round over or even 1/4-inch, especially the size of a Christmas ornament. There are many ways to hold a small part for routing if you're uncomfortable using your hands. For example, you can mount the small part on a piece of clear acrylic with double-sided tape or build a jig with some toggle clamps to hold the part if it isn't too small. I don't use my Dremel for rounding over small parts often because I can do it with a Japanese finger file or a coarse fingernail file faster than I can set up the router and I almost always need to sand after routing.

That was almost exactly my first thought.

I'm 100% with you on this. I don't participate in sales or any of their other crazy ideas.

I have a Veritas plunge base for my Dremel that I mount upside down in my vise when I want to use my 1/8-inch round-over bit. It would be simple to mount this to a piece of acrylic that you could clamp to your bench. When using 1/4-shank bits, I also mount my small router upside down in my vice. I have a shaper and a Shopsmith if I want to do anything large that needs support.

They messed up the import of my Etsy shop. They imported it multiple times, and there is no provision for multiple deletes. I tried the one-at-a-time thing, and it was far too slow so I submitted a request to delete all of my inactive listings. I have posted a few listings now. For me, posting everything by hand is easier. I have to change every imported field, so there is no advantage. Manual importing lets me keep track of which ones are done. There is no way to do bulk changes to listings.

GoImagine connects with Shippo. I understand that orders are passed to Shippo, and you print your labels there. I have no personal experience with label printing there. Same here. I think they (all of them) are trying to make everything look similar to a smartphone app. I have done this, and I don't recall having any issues.

A very good idea. It would also protect the reindeer. I am always concerned about these getting broken when I ship them.

My first listing is finally up. I thought I had it done, but I discovered there was much more to it than I had thought. Many more options are available than Etsy listings, and some of their documentation is a bit outdated. There is no mention of "Custom H1 tags" in the docs or videos. I had my Etsy shop imported. In hind site, this was a waste of time. The goimagine settings are so different, and you need to edit so much that it would have been easier for me to copy, paste and drag and drop. Support is responsive. Usually, they get back to me within a couple of hours. Compared to emailing support at Etsy, which seldom gets a response. I can have as many product photos as I want. There is also a section to add photos and descriptions of the build process. Etsy tags are imported with underscores. If I remove the underscores, it complains that I have too many keywords, and they only allow 30. I have not figured this out yet.

I have cut about 60 birdhouse ornaments to date using the Pegas MGT blades. I have used both #3 and #5. Pattern placement is critical. I like to use a utility knife and a straight edge to lightly cut partially through the pattern on the dashed line. If the blade is sharp, you can do this with the only pressure being the knife's weight. The pattern will fold right on the cut. I fold the pattern to nearly 90 degrees, spray with 3m77, and apply the pattern dead on the corner first and then the sides. Close is not good enough. Everything must be square. Forcing the cut or using a dull blade will also cause problems.

This truck was a custom order. The customer wanted a clear shellac finish, where I usually sell these unfinished. I started making different trailers for these after making one of the original style trailers for my grandson and having him bring it back and tell me it was broken because when he tried to haul a car, the car would roll off. The truck is made from construction-grade pine and finished with three coats of clear dewaxed shellac. The wheels are amber shellac. I added a bit of paste wax and buffed it with a cotton cloth. It feels butter smooth.

I will run with 1-2 weeks for now and see what happens. What concerns me the most is setting the processing time too short and getting a bunch of orders simultaneously. I'm working on my goimagine shop. That took most of the day just to get to the point where I could start listing things. It's not as easy as Etsy to set up. Having two shops is going to present some inventory issues. I'm unsure how I will handle it, but made-to-order is a good solution.

@kmmcrafts I have a shipping profile for 1-2 weeks processing time. It did not occur to me to have different profiles. That is a good idea. Many of my items take several days to make. I need to cut, sand, and dry-fit all the parts. I wait 12-24 hours for the wood glue to cure, while paint needs 24-48 hours between coats. Shellac is faster. Oil and wax are fast too. I use a little polyurethane that takes several days to cure well enough to ship. I have the full range from unfinished that I can do in a day to items that will take at least a week.

I have a serious storage problem for the items I make and sell in my shop. I am considering going strictly made-to-order except for new items. I would make one, list it, and switch to made-to-order once it sells. I would only keep in stock best sellers and new items. Do you see any issues with having a primarily made-to-order shop?

There is no such thing as free shipping.

I buy Pegas blades from Denny at Art Crafters. I started with Olson, then Flying Dutchman, and then tried Pegas blades. I still have a few Olson blades and many Flying Dutchman blades that I occasionally use. Switching back to the older blades occasionally to try and use them up. It is possible that the way a particular blade performs for me is connected with what I am doing with them. For me, the Pegas blades are the best.

I got logged in and did a bit of looking around. They don't handle payments for you. You must have a stripe account that costs 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. The stripe account is required to accept payments. The more I read and watched videos, the less I liked what I saw. It looks like way too much work. I don't think I'm going to stick with it.

I have been approved. There is a bit of a vetting process. I'm going to start adding things and see what happens.

Yes, parts availability is a big deal. Something that just popped into my head. If you are looking at used saws, Carter Bandsaw Guides is a good place for a list of saws. If Carter makes replacement guides, it is a sure bet you can get parts for them. If you are bandsaw savvy, you will notice that some of the saws on this page are old, and there isn't a benchtop saw on the list.

True for any type of saw.

No, I'm in Tallahassee, Florida. However, we have had similar issues with fires in the past. Mostly I was referring to pollen. We have something blooming year-round. The pollen index is almost always high, and there is lots of dust from other sources.