Skie_M
Member
Just sitting here thinking about it ....
If he provides the CA, blanks, tubes, and sandpaper (I would suggest abranet), and one sets up an assembly line approach to turn multiple blanks in a stretch of 2 or 3 hours a day to do 2 to 4 pen barrels an hour for 4 to 12 blanks a day (dependent on how quick you are at turning and such) and you have an alternate setup for the finishing operation (slow spinning rack mount for the CA to finish curing) on the side so it doesn't take up your lathe ....
I could see 5 dollars per pen barrel as an acceptable offer, as someone could generally be making 10 dollars or more per hour at the cost of wear and tear on their lathe, electricity, and time.
Now, to do 50 a month would be a trivial matter, as someone who has a weekend to dedicate to a project like this could knock out 50 barrels in 2 days if they're on the speedy end of the scale... 3 or 4 hours to square, drill, and glue all the blanks ... 12 hours or so to turn them all and apply CA ... Then you box em up and mail them off. That's 250 dollars for 16 hours of work - over 15.5 dollars an hour!
If you're on the slower end of the scale, I'd assume you were working at half that speed, doing about 2 blanks per hour, it would take you 25 hours of turning and perhaps 6 - 8 hours of prep, so 4 - 5 working days to get it all done ... still 250 bucks for a week's worth of work. You'ld still make around 7.50 an hour for your efforts, and as a beginning woodturner, you'ld be paid to get in a LOT OF PRACTICE.
The problem I see in all of this is .... if you're on the quicker end of the scale, you're someone who expects to get paid a lot more than 15 dollars per hour of work. Most master craftsmen expect 20 - 50 dollars an hour for the time invested in a project. As the OP originally stated .... he's looking for a beginner woodturner who's basically interested in getting paid to practice the craft.
(side tip to anybody who ends up doing these pen barrels - Whiskey Barrel Oak is the same as any other oak ... it's an open grained wood that likes to trap sawdust, so you may be best off practicing the skew for the cleanest cut possible and getting very close to finished dimensions, and then sealing the pen barrel with thin CA followed by medium CA (keeps the sanding dust out of the pores) and then sand down to final dimensions before applying several coats of thin CA.)
If he provides the CA, blanks, tubes, and sandpaper (I would suggest abranet), and one sets up an assembly line approach to turn multiple blanks in a stretch of 2 or 3 hours a day to do 2 to 4 pen barrels an hour for 4 to 12 blanks a day (dependent on how quick you are at turning and such) and you have an alternate setup for the finishing operation (slow spinning rack mount for the CA to finish curing) on the side so it doesn't take up your lathe ....
I could see 5 dollars per pen barrel as an acceptable offer, as someone could generally be making 10 dollars or more per hour at the cost of wear and tear on their lathe, electricity, and time.
Now, to do 50 a month would be a trivial matter, as someone who has a weekend to dedicate to a project like this could knock out 50 barrels in 2 days if they're on the speedy end of the scale... 3 or 4 hours to square, drill, and glue all the blanks ... 12 hours or so to turn them all and apply CA ... Then you box em up and mail them off. That's 250 dollars for 16 hours of work - over 15.5 dollars an hour!
If you're on the slower end of the scale, I'd assume you were working at half that speed, doing about 2 blanks per hour, it would take you 25 hours of turning and perhaps 6 - 8 hours of prep, so 4 - 5 working days to get it all done ... still 250 bucks for a week's worth of work. You'ld still make around 7.50 an hour for your efforts, and as a beginning woodturner, you'ld be paid to get in a LOT OF PRACTICE.
The problem I see in all of this is .... if you're on the quicker end of the scale, you're someone who expects to get paid a lot more than 15 dollars per hour of work. Most master craftsmen expect 20 - 50 dollars an hour for the time invested in a project. As the OP originally stated .... he's looking for a beginner woodturner who's basically interested in getting paid to practice the craft.
(side tip to anybody who ends up doing these pen barrels - Whiskey Barrel Oak is the same as any other oak ... it's an open grained wood that likes to trap sawdust, so you may be best off practicing the skew for the cleanest cut possible and getting very close to finished dimensions, and then sealing the pen barrel with thin CA followed by medium CA (keeps the sanding dust out of the pores) and then sand down to final dimensions before applying several coats of thin CA.)
