You’d have to check in w/ @KevBarn14 or one of the folks who actually knows marketing or who actually sells stuff — while I’ve chimed in w/ an opinion on pricing here:
I’ve never sold anything I’ve made on any of my machines, but give them away to make room for further projects, or because it seemed more important for the recipient to have it than myself, i.e., this box:
was gifted to a co-worker when she was leaving our workplace — a similar box went to the person who had been running a local coffee shop where we make our daily coffee run because she was getting a new job in counseling.
How much money you make will depend on:
- the local market
- what you make to sell and the profit margin
- cost of raw materials
On that latter front, my suggestion would be to find a local sawmill — see if they will sell you their shorts/off-cuts (a place near my mother-in-law’s sells such by the truckload as firewood), but organization is key — have standard stock sizes which match what is easily sold, any scrap after cutting stock is evaluated to see if it can be cut down to one of those stock sizes and stored — anything which can’t goes into the compost bin or burn barrel. That said, if one of your stock sizes is small squares (say 1" x 1" and half that size) for making cutting boards, you should be able to keep this to a minimum.
A luthier I knew in Texas noted, “Mistakes go into the firewood pile — the shop has never been cold.”
Some potential markets:
- wedding planners — they want customized things for weddings and the father of the bride does not have control of the checkbook
- real estate agents — a customized memento is a pittance compared to the commission on a house
- stores which need custom fixtures
My suggestion would be to download Carbide Create:
watch the videos and follow along:
https://my.carbide3d.com/carbide-create-course/
If you don’t like videos see instead:
and
and try to work up a simple design, all the way through to getting a 3D preview — if you have problems, ask and we’ll do our best to assist.
I definitely agree that being able to make stuff such as:
(that’s the drawer front to my current project, a reproduction of a Thos. Jefferson Lap Desk)
can turn a bad day around.