Pricing your costs – that sounds a little odd – but is it?




You know what your costs are, surely – the difference between your incomings and what's left over for beer and ciggies – yes?





Well, yes of course.




If, however, you work from home or are running a business or are involved in a hobby then it might be of interest to work things out just a bit closer.

Not an exact costing, as that would take a team of bean counters a month of Sundays and as many invoices, but a bit closer.





This, then, is another notebook item from the days of contracting, that was brought out and adapted when contemplating a profit from woodturning.

How long do you spend in your workroom - in summer, in winter? Is it one 1kw heater, One 60w lamp, plus one 100w lamp? Or what?

What's the power consumption of your sewing machine? Your lathe? Your drill, your bandsaw, your computer?




About how long are they each in use per day, week, month?

That bit isn't so difficult - just add up the wattage, multiply by the hourage you've reckoned and look at your power bills.

How much did your sewing machine cost? Your lathe, drill, bandsaw, chisels etc? You'll need tool sharpening equipment, not to mention spare drill-bits, saw blades and so on to suit your machines...

A point here is that if, say, you're going to put up a shelf, then buying an electric drill (or that bench saw you lust after?) seems awfully expensive even though your time spent doing the job is reduced – unless there's another shelf to be put up, when the price of that tool for that next job is abruptly halved.

If you budget it into the first, expensive, job it becomes a cost and after that it's part of your armoury.

For your purposes perhaps needles and thread, ribbon, iron-on sticky sheets, fabric for patterns etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Don't forget stationery, including pencils. Considering, however, who's writing this article we'll look a little closer at ...erm… ah yes, of course, woodcraft – specifically turning.

There's the wood to be bought (or favours to be returned for 'free' wood. everything costs something, if only time spent turning a gift).

To prepare the wood will need some sawing and perhaps some drilling, thereby causing a degree of wear & tear on tools. Small yes, but it adds up.

When you can get around to actually doing some turning, there's wear & tear on those tools – and on your sharpening equipment.

There's the sanding – flexible cloth backed abrasives (usually in rolls), pads for mounting in the electric drill and abrasive discs to fit them.

Then there's finishing, usually one of two kinds of oil but occasionally varnish or plastic coating. Wax gets used quite often.

There's an awful lot of detail in that lot.

In business, there'll be invoices and receipts to be collated, so expenditure can be tied down with some precision. However if it's a hobby, you'll not want to spend that time away from it, though if you've kept your invoices it'll be a help.

Can it be simplified? Probably, yes – after some detail work.

In my case, (making some sales – rather few unfortunately), I did the reckonings up to this point, then looked at what kind of things I was doing and came to the conclusion that I could select a standard sized lump of wood and set a standard cost for working it (into something stunningly beautiful).

That standard piece of wood became 12 x 12 x 7 inches and had a volume of 1,000 cubic inches (actually of course, that should be 6.944 inches but my ruler doesn't show thousandths). In metric that'd be 300 x 300 x 178mm and some 16,000,000 cubic millimetres. Of course, inches were all the rage in those days – and 1,000 cubics of 'em was quite convenient when estimating current pieces.

So, here we have a volume of wood (1,000 cubic inches) that could be worked into a 10” (250mm) bowl – but what about things other than bowls? Not so difficult if you reckon that working a lump of wood one way is pretty much the same as working it another way (you're allowed to argue about that).




One bowl or umpteen spindles? It won't make a big difference to the combination of wear & tear and usage of consumables.




What's important is not the measuring of the finished item, but the guesstimated volume of the starting workpiece (one bowl blank or cut into multiple spindle squares).




You can add a little to your estimated volume if the current piece is particularly hard wood or difficult to cut.

Now we can measure (or at least guess at) the price of our costs for a day's work - in terms of that standard lump of wood.

• 
  
  We have assessed costs for heat & light and capital costs of equipment.
  
  
• 
  
  We have recognition that repairs and replacement will arise from time to time.
  
  
• 
  
  We know that wear & tear will occasionally mean new items.
  
  
• 
  
  We know the cost of the wood we acquire
  
  
• 
  
  We know the hourly rate we want to be paid - don't we?.
  
  

Easy (in my case it was, anyway): The price of one set of abrasive discs (for the large, 3” power-sanding pads) for each standard lump of wood covered all the known costs, of wear, tear and spares, allowed a little towards contingencies and kept pace with inflation (well, sort of).

What more could you ask of life?

Articles by Rod

15.11.10 Front Page

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