I am an aspiring furniture maker. I am in the military currently with a little less than 2 years left. I am a carpenter but have been doing fine woodworking for about 6 years in my spare time. I know that its my passion. I was wondering how to get starting heading in the direction of someday working full time as a furniture maker. is college or an apprenticeship needed. Is it a very hard field to get into. Any advice would help
Aaron
Replies
Aaron,
Knots is a great place to get answers from woodworkers. You have probably asked the hardest question ever posted here. It has been posted here many times before, and we never come to simple conclusions. I wish there were a simple easy answer. You could probably get a job in a production cabinet company now, but that may not be what you are interested in. It would be good if you gave us a few more ideas on what you'd really like to be doing in woodwork.
You can write to specific people on Knots. I recommend you write to Kaleo. He is now in a school of woodworking, and is very serious about the business. He can give you his inside scoop. Information from him will be valuable.
It would be good if you got some answers from folks who run businesses in woodworking. There are a number of them here on Knots. I'd recommend that you write to joinerswork. His real name is Ray Pine, and he has been a successful one-man shop turning out highest quality furniture. He calls them "reproductions" of period pieces. If you write to Ray, it would be good to give him more info about your particular interests for the future. Working as a one man shop is a lot different than working in a five person shop.
I could give you information, but since I am only a hobbyist, and have never tried to make a living as a woodworker, everything I said would be worthless. Of course, that is one of the problems when you write to a website. It is impossible to tell who is giving your advice. After a while here on Knots, you will get a feel for who is worth attending to. I believe the few pieces of advice that I gave you will be useful to you.
I wish you a lot of luck. Please stick around Knots, and Read, Read, Read. It is amazing what you will learn.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Thank you Mel, At this point any advice is an encouragement. I am so eager to start. I want a one man shop as well. I am artistic and wood is the only way I have found to express it. Is this a very hard business to excell in? Because I would imagine you would have to gather quite a clientele in order to make a decent living being that each peice would take such a long time to make. This was my first question and you were my first reply. Thank you Aaron
Aaron,
I will write to Kaleo, who is studying woodworking, and joinerswork (Ray Pine), a successful fine woodworker, and ask them to respond to your message. Of course, they may not be at home, etc. But let's give it a try. Meanwhile keep reading as much as you can on Knots.Ray apprenticed to about three other people, as I remember. Getting that kind of exposure to different ways of managing a shop, and of doing woodwork was great experience. MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
I'm just a hobbiest as well, so I can't give you the advice that the professional woodworkers can.
Looking out over the broad spectrum of small businesses/ sole proprietorships in the USA, however, you can see that the two things that make most small businesses go under in the first two years are: 1) Debt load; and 2) tax problems. I recommend: 1) Dave Ramsey's (Financial radio talk show guy with a web site and books) advice (cash-flow the business without borrowing money); and 2) taking a look at the pub on the IRS web site titled: "Starting a Business and Keeping Records" - Pub 583, I think. That advice will keep you out of the first two big sinkholes. Good luck, Ed
P.S. Do you have to have a college education to start a small business - heck no! Just ask my best friend from childhood who made nearly $100,000 from his landscaping business one year while holding down a full-time job as a firefighter. He never went to college,...'course he was willing to work about 90 hours a week until his doctor told him he was going to die if he continued that!
Aaron,
I've been "in the business" for a long time, and I've been trying off and on to write about it. It's slow going. Let me try to summarize in a few sentences the heart of the matter:
Starting a WW business is 90% like starting any other small business, and to make it work you're going to have to learn a lot of business skills besides woodworking. Marketing, finances, labor relations, etc. The natural tendency of all of us is to spend a lot of time and thought on WW techniques, machines, and so on. I can tell you that I've never seen a small shop fail because it couldn't solve the woodworking problems. They fail because of poor marketing, poor money management, and so on. So the first thing is to accept that you're signing on for a whole big package. Take courses in whatever you need to balance your deficiencies.
Second, you must fulfill at least ONE of the following conditions:
-You've got a sizeable nest egg to draw on
-Your spouse is bringing in a regular paycheck
-You've got no dependents and are willing to be poor for quite a while.
Third, you'll need to define as quickly as possible what your niche is. This takes some time but it's absolutely necessary in order to succeed in the long run. You didn't give any hint as to what you like to make. Your location and other factors will have a huge effect on your niche, and you need to be flexible enough to re-examine it. On the other hand you need to be true to your vision, and not run after every job that comes along. Finding the right balance between these two opposing forces is very very difficult.
Fourth, hang around here for a while and post some pics of your work. You'll probably get both encouragement and also some cold showers. Get used to it. As much as anything else you need the interaction with others facing the same difficulties.
best of luck,
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
Aaron,
The basic advice David Ring has given is very important. He realizes, but you may not, that there is much much more "between the lines" than he has been able to say in a few paragraphs here.
I don't make my living in making furniture, although I am a furniture maker. I have operated several small businesses and whether yours succeeds or fails will have very little to do with your woodworking ability. Unless you're simply terrible, which is probably not the case!
Whether or not you succeed or fail will have everything to do with your ability to run a business, or your ability to get someone to help you if you don't have those talents. Your ability to actually do the work is a given. You must be able to produce, period. If you can't, of course you can't succeed. But, after establishing that you actually have the woodworking abilities, that factor becomes the least important part of the equation, because the others are so surprisingly dominant.
Ninety percent of all small business startups fail in the first 18 months. That's an incredible statistic, but it is cold, hard fact. The single most important reason that small businesses fail is under capitalization. That simply means that you must have enough capital to completely support the business (including your salary) for at least 18 months of operation, and possibly twice that. If you don't, you will go under. That capital can be savings, support from your working spouse, or "other" funding such as an investor. But any investor is a lendor (or a co-owner) who expects payment, and like an equipment loan is a very severe drain on resourses. Any "investment" by other interested parties should be no more than 25% of capital and needs other very careful control on how the investor gets "re-imbursed." The actual hard cash savings part of the capital needs to be at least 75% of the total.
You must be able to purchase all the equipment you will need to use during the first several years of operation without depending at all on the income from the business. It is very tempting to tell yourself you can starve for a while and live on salad while you use revenue from jobs to pay off equipment you have bought on credit. It can't be done. Revenue has to pay for supplies, employees, rent, etc. And it won't meet those needs either for a while. The odds against a small business succeeding which thinks it can use revenue for start-up expenses are greater than winning the lottery.
I don't think anyone can make it in any small business without first working in that industry long enough to really get to know the lay of the land. That means, you probably should plan on working in a production shop for at least several years before striking out on your own. Keep your eyes and your ears open, ask lots of questions and make as many friends as you can. And when you come across co-workers who have come back into the workforce because their business didn't make it (you will), pump them for everything they did that they think was a mistake. And don't think you could do the very same thing with different results.
Can you succeed? Sure! You just need to do things right.
Rich
There is a current discussion under the name "What Sells?" here in Knots. Since you sound like you want to make a living at furniture making you should follow the discussion there.
Running a financially successful cabinet shop is more about your skills as a salesman and an entrepreneur than it is about your technical skills, and the technical skills are easier to learn.
John White, Shop Manager, Fine Woodworking Magazine
I would strongly urge that you look to see if there is a community college near where you are. Usually they have some very good basic business courses that would be very helpful to you. The one in my area covers such things as pricing, marketing, business law. I do not make a business of woodworking, but have done an apprenticeship with one. He was very bad when it came to the business aspects, especially how to price his work and value his time. Even as a hobbyist I could not waste my time diddling with the things he did.
You might also look at the Marc Adams school. He always has some courses on the business aspect of woodworking.
Good luck.
Just a thought......
If you're aren't dead set on a town or city for your business, then you might want to pick a location that is a bit of a 'mecca' for antiques. Many of the 'good quality' pieces in antique shops were repaired after being found in a barn or basement.
And there are woodworkers who are making a part of their living doing those repairs.
Not that I'm suggesting that you should deny your creativity -- just that there will be times when you'll need to pay the rent, and might not have any commissions.
Support our Troops. Bring them home. Now. And pray that at least some of the buildings in the green zone have flat roofs, with a stairway.
Thank you all for your advice and words of wisdom. Even though I have countless more questions to ask, that was a good start I am even more motivated now to really give this my all. I will start taking classes on business managment and saving for that nest egg. I'll be hanging around knots for a long time to come. thanks for the warm welcome. Aaron
I really liked what Sam Maloof said about woodworking schools in his book; to paraphrase, “forget them, spend the money on lumber, tools and machinery and teach yourself, build a portfolio and get it out there”. I would agree, especially given the proliferation of resources out there. When I started to make shavings all those years ago, FWW was about all there was, and I was able to teach myself a lot.
Also, I would agree with the advice to get some business education, it still comes down to cash flow.
Aaron-
I got a message from Mel this morning. ( At least it's morning over here n Australia) Anyways, I know exactly what you are feeling. I use to run my own business and dealt with furniture repair and antique restoration work. Although the work was good and pretty constant, I found myself wanting to design and build more than repair.
So some advice-
Know what you are getting into. I have been around wood my whole life, but decided that if I was going to try to make this dream happen I needed to be trained. That's why I decided to go to school for 2 years. One of the biggest things that I have found is how impportant speed is. You can have the best skills in the world, but if you can't produce something within a reasonable amount of time you can't make money. That's where the schooling has been effective.
Of course I have learned alot about traditional joinery and especially design. But having a dedicated amount of time to do nothing but pratice your making skills is the most important part.
Also I have found that as a student it has opened more doors for me faster than if I was trying on my own. Being part of a school has allowed my to show my work at school run exhibition. Which has also lead to having my work picked up by local galleries.
The other things is that I get to study under the hand of true mastercraftsmen. Men that are out there right now making a living on there work. It's almost like a true master apprentice relationship. I feel that I have been able to learn and do what would have taken me 10 years by myself to learn and did it in 2 years.
But like others have said, don't go into massive debut to start a shop. Start small, grow as you work grows. Look around and join a local guild, find your local galleries. I know that alot of guys here don't like the galleries, but they are a very nesessary evil. There is no way you are going to get your work out there with out them. Enter every exhibition/contest that you can find. Remember people want to see what you have and can do.
It's all about your resume. I was in "X" show and I won this competition. People like to see stuff like this.
And one of the biggest things is where you decide to set up shop. Depending on what market you are trying to target. BUt you need to be where the money is. And the money is mostly on the coasts. West or East coast, but in middle America you are not going to have as many high clients as you would in California or New York. So choose where you plan to set up shop carefully.
Good luck let me know if this helped and if you have any other questions.
http://www.kalafinefurniture.blogspot.com
Kaleo,
Thanks for writing to Aaron. You're a good guy. Aaron now has a lot of good advice. I wish him luck.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Cash on hand for startup is all important. When you have to pay a loan for the equipment you have to get for the business, you are basically behind the "8 ball". Go to your local Business or Technical college and take their business course for small business operations and get the needed information to start your business. Skills in woodworking are an important factor, but knowing how to run it and make it succeed is more so. In all ventures, the needs of the customer are first priority. Ask yourself if you can do the work in a certain time frame, and satisfy the customers needs.
Many businesses have started out of a small space at home, such as a garage or add on to the structure. As your work progresses and word of mouth of your abilities gets around, your client base expands. Even if you have to hold down a full time job and do the wood working after hours for customers, it will be time well spent. Local furniture stores are always looking for someone that can repair or finish something for their customers. Museums that have a restoration department are a good place to get a head start on this type of work. You may start out with nothing to gain, but the knowledge you get from it is invaluable in the future. The better prepared you are for the job on hand, with knowledge to do it, the better off you will be.
Nothing is impossible, it just takes longer.
Aaron,
I'' sorry to tell you that what you are trying to do is impossible and you should give up on it now before you invest too much time in to it.
Also, whatever tools you might already own are probably worthless and should be disposed of properly. Give me your email address and I will send an address to which you can send your worthless tools to. The shipping can get to be kind of spendy but you will finally be rid of them and able to get on to something else.
ChuckN and I have nothing of value to add to this discussion.
Alright...So I'm a coward and unable to keep a straight face!
Aaron,
I hope you know that I'm just kidding you.
But, hey. If not then go ahead and send me that address.
:>)
ChuckN and I have nothing of value to add to this discussion.
It really would depend on your level of expertise, complexity of designs you want to build and how much time you have. I have taken alot of classes that deal with specific disciplines that I wanted to get better at, but the only way to get really good is to make alot of prototypes. My advise is do some self evaluation on your skills. For instance arts and crafts, mission and shaker styles are not complex by design, however victorian, queen anne etc are. I myself prefer arts and crafts style and build alot of custom furniture for my customers. You may decide to open a store and host a variety of styles that you built, dont really know. If you enroll in a school it may only show you the basics, stuff you may already know.
lets review
1. evaluate and compare your ability to the style you wish to create if you are lacking then take a class first before plunking down the cash for full blown school.
2. once you decide make templates to easily reproduce your parts, thats one way to save time and money.
3. have fun, a hobby that becomes work can become not fun. You may enjoy it now, but it may become tedious, even boring if you arent carefull.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled