Verne
Member
Good going Curtis. Excellant finished product, however, none of us would expect anything else from you!
Vern
Vern
Very impressive production of very impressive pens. I have to ask -- in the process of turning 33 pens, did you have any failures (I hope not, but I expect I would have)?
-Barry
Fantastic job, Curtis!
Just out of curiosity (since you asked for input) what did you end up charging for the boxes, if you don't mind my asking?
Nice job Curtis! I thought you were going to say the bigger smile was when you got the check.
NOT NEARLY ENOUGH!!
I charged $200 per set for one pen and one box. That is $150 for the pen and $50 for the box. I will not do them that cheap again! They were fun but were also a real pain ...
Here where?Here is a link
I ended up turning the cactus off each tube and starting over completely! There goes $400 worth of cactus blanks! Talk about a valuable lesson learned...don't use cheap fingernail polish for the inside of a blank! I now use only Testors Model Masters Acryl. It is not cheap (relatively speaking) but it also does not fail!
John,
The boxes were the killer. There was a LITTLE economy of scale but not much. Each lid had to be hand tuned and fitted. The inside, which does not show up in the pic very well, is all flocked with black flocking. That means hand painting on the flocking glue and then applying the flocking. Then, talking about production, if you mess up, you mess up them all! Take the tube failure example. If I had been doing one pen at a time, I would have found the problem before I dilled, painted, glued, and rough turned 20 sets of tubes. That would have saved me $400 and a boatload of time! I have used nail polish MANY times in the past so I know it works fine, just not this particular brand.
I quizzed you guys on pricing for the box. That's how I came up with my overall pricing. I charge $150 for a cactus Jr. Statesman rollerball whether is it one or 33. I then used advice from here on the boxes. Some suggested $50-60 and many said said $15-20 each, max! I knew what goes into them somewhat so I went with $50 each for a total package of $200. The laser engraving cost me $8 each so that is a net of $42 for me. Not nearly enough for the amount of work I put into it.
In the future, the pens will be $150 and the boxes will be at least $75 for a total of $225 each PLUS laser engraving. Or, if you are a cheap box kind of person, the box is $25 and the pen is $200!