The main museum store where I do a lot of business let their manager go and hired a much more aggressive guy who has a great eye. Much as I liked the guy that is now gone, this guy I like much better! I went over to meet him and found out that he is letting a few of the artists go, mostly due to quality, and that may include his cutting board guy.
Never one to bash another craftsman, it was hard for me to say anything when he showed me two cutting boards with wood putty in them, but even to me I would not sell it and certainly not buy it if the chance of putty coming out was there.
So then he asked me if I wanted to take some of the cutting board business, and could I make a couple of samples?
I told him I could not do end grain boards since I don't own a drum sander and didn't want to bring in an end grain board that may have waves in it, as one of the boards on display did (which they wanted out of there).
So I told him I would make a couple of boards. The pictures above are of the first one, a cutting board that is 12" by 18", with a drip ring in it. It is made of cherry and kingwood, and finished with walnut oil. For the record, I like walnut oil and wish I had tried it earlier! I used Mahoney's.
The second board, which comes out of the clamps this morning and will probably get finished today, is a much thicker 1 1/2" thick chopping block for use on a countertop. It is 14" by 16". I don't plan on putting a drip ring in that, just a nice roundover edge, square bottom, with a couple coats of walnut oil!
So my question, and the reason I didn't post this in projects, is what do I charge?
I know the old adage, charge what they will pay, but I don't know really what a board of this type above is worth, less alone the thicker one that is 14" by 16" by 1 1/2" thick. The store is fairly upscale, and they take 35%.
It is very hard for me to price these, since all the wood for these actually came off my scrap rack, and the time I put into them is simply cutting the boards, edging them for glueup, gluing up into the clamps, planing it when dry, cutting in the ring, (and no, I didn't build a jig, figured out how to do it neatly in about ten minutes time with my router table once I got the bit in). But that's another story.
So what say you board guys? I find this skillset somewhere on another mountain than my guitars, which sometimes take weeks. These I can pump out about as fast as I get scrap wood off my rack, glue things up, etc…
One thing I noticed - my wifey comes down to the shop and takes a really good look at these, being about a four star cook. I think at least one will never make it to the store. She would not let me burn in my logo on the backside since she neatly pointed out that people would flip it over and use the back side for things like veggies, where they don't need the drip ring. Huh, Oh, OK…who knew??
Thanks in advance!