This Business About Woodworking

Many times, I have heard people say how much they love woodworking. Some were thinking of starting a woodworking business so that they could make a living doing what they love.

There’s a saying that the customer is always right. We know this is not really the case. The customer is often wrong.

Can’t trust that day, the song says. We have all heard about how tough Monday can be. But I can tell you this, Monday morning is absolutely the best time for making or closing sales.

As makers and humans, we are all prone to making occasional mistakes. Some are not really a big deal like a piece that is cut too short. You just cut another and move on. Others are more of an issue and require calling in “the cleaner”.

Over the past couple of years, we have been on an economic roller coaster. The stock markets have been bouncing around like a lopsided super ball, record gains one day, record losses the next.

It’s an old saw for sure but it seems like it’s always relevant. But these days it feels like it should be “chicken one minute, feathers the next. The economic yo yo we are playing with is enough to drive anyone around the bend.

Woodworking is high on the list of industries that are experiencing a shortage of skilled employees. With unemployment rates at the lowest level in decades and wages at their highest, the lack of skilled people is becoming more and more obvious.

I have always preferred to order things I need and have them delivered rather than have to go shopping.

Every time I see a video or read a tutorial about how to do something, I think again about what it takes to really master a process. There are two parts to learning. One is the acquisition of knowledge. The other is the acquisition of skill.

Every woodworker has been inspired by something that steered us into this work.

Most of us work most efficiently in a well-organized environment. Things just go more smoothly when whatever is needed at the moment is easily accessed.

We all have protocols. Whether it’s a construction method or payment schedule, for example, these protocols are communicated to our customers in the hope that we will have a smooth, trouble free relationship through the course of a project.

I’m a big believer in buying woodworking machinery that provides support from the manufacturer.

Johnny Shines played the blues. He was good and he knew it. At one performance, he began a song with a causally played rif of great complexity, then paused, smiled at the audience and said “It’s easy, if ya know how.”

It wasn’t too long ago when it seemed like someone was coming into the shop looking for work about every day. These days, it’s a rare occurrence.

I have a lot of pieces of wood that are too good to throw away but too small to really be useful. We sometimes call pieces like this scrap, but I have always maintained that there is no such thing as scrap.

In my junior high shop class, the instructor insisted that we begin by planing the edge of a board. The edge had to be straight and square. I spent most of the semester trying to accomplish this.

I’ve been getting more and more frustrated in my attempts to find people who know how to work.

I have always tried to pay a living wage. The actual dollar amount is irrelevant because a living wage can vary dramatically depending on where your business is located.

It is often said that the customer is always right. Obviously, this is suggesting that the customer should always be accommodated in whatever he or she wants. And, to some extent this is a good policy. It can often lead to a very happy and satisfied customer. But not always.

It’s not unusual or unreasonable for people to want something unique. We are not all the same and that’s a good thing.

In a line in one of his early songs Bob Dylan wrote, “Don’t think twice, it’s alright”. Whatever he was referring to, it was not doing business in today’s climate.

My wife thinks I’m a genius. Well, not all the time, but particularly because I’m always figuring out how to fix things.

Technology has been creeping into how we do business for a long time now. Obviously, CNC machines have taken on an increasing role in cutting, milling, shaping, carving, etc. And hand-held tools like routers and sanders are a lot smarter than used to be.