>It's not the cost, it's the availability. I'm currently in the process of a home renovation. If you want a master craftsman to build you say, kitchen cabinets, you may have to wait years for them to be available.
Crown molding and things went out WAY before any of these supply chain issues you've brought up from the last 1-2 years.
The cost of trim wood is exponentially more than it was 50 years ago, and on top of that you cant find anyone who knows how to make custom ornamented trim.
> It's often more expensive to buy the wood stock materials than it is to buy the finished Ikea piece.
Well, yes, we're back to supply chains here; just as on digikey you might find that the unit price for 1x an item is twice the unit price for 100x or even 10x, the supply chain to bring you a tiny quantity of wood to enjoy the premium experience of being a craftsman is quite expensive compared to anything mass-produced. You are paying for the experience of making it yourself.
(And this is before we get into relative wood pricing between countries; it took me a long time to understand why America had all those wood-framed and paneled houses while they're virtually absent in the UK, and of course it's because the local old forests were depleted in previous centuries. To the point where there was a whole pre-20th century peasant architecture of stone houses with only a single piece of serious lumber in: the roof beam.)
>Where is this mentality that even the backside of a cabinet should be build well?
Pride in quality of work? Why does the backside have to be be NOT built well? I hate crappy pressed wood furniture, but the same piece of furniture built by real craftsman using real materials raises the price from ~$250 to over $1200. Admittedly, apples and oranges, but the point is valid.
> I think every carpenter wishes they could make furniture exclusively for the wealthy and famous.
Sure. It's a rather tiny market that can't support a lot of furniture makers. But it can support at least a couple, and I'll bet you that those ones aren't going cheap on materials.
> Everyone seems to forget that Apple was nearly bankrupt in the 90s
I certainly haven't forgotten, but that's orthogonal to my point. My point is that in many industries, there are high-quality, very expensive versions of the products. One of the things that makes them high quality and expensive is that they don't cut corners. In electronics, I've seen the same effect, where extra care and expense was placed into things that technically don't need it and are unlikely to ever be seen by the customer. That extra care and expense matters to that demographic, though.
I have to say it is hard to beat commercially available warehouse-grade shelving systems for this application. I'm not sure I'd consider a DIY solution unless I had nothing better to do with my time and the wood just happened to be laying around. You can go on eBay or Craig's list and find the kinds of shelving systems you see used by Home Depot for pennies on the dollar. Hardly worth the effort to build. Focus on your business.
I only see two scenarios under which building your own furniture makes sense:
1- You want something that simply isn't available off the shelf.
Example: a custom entertainment center.
2- You want to learn about woodworking.
I've done lots of #1 both for myself and as third party projects to earn money and fund other activities.
I find myself doing a lot of woodworking under the pretense of learning (or, more appropriately, teaching) these days because I am teaching my older kid how to build things. For example, a few months ago we built a custom wooden standup paddle-board. We started with cheap lumber purchased from Home Depot and ended-up with a beautiful fiberglassed wooden board that does pretty well at the lake. He learned a ton through that experience and we spent hugely valuable time together.
> A basic table saw is $200 on Amazon, a miter saw is $200, drill press is $200, a planer is $500 but there's hand tools for that, etc. Low end but they'll work. Biggest expense would be dust filtration system if you don't want to vacuum constantly. There's probably more people with garage wood shops in the US than makers.
There's people with little baby jigsaws and a circular saw. Folks with actual lathes, CNC routers that could handle hardwood, actual band saws or full sized table saws? Not so much.
> You keep assuming that you need industrial machines that can be used 24/7 to do these things when in reality you don't. You can use hand tools even but those take more time.
No, I don't. A school shop maybe runs the machines for a few hours every other day. It's still expensive.
> I'd call that a professional space since it's used most of the time rather than occasionally.
Okay, well I'd call "$200 on Amazon, a miter saw is $200, drill press is $200, a planer is $500" a professional budget to most people in America, so let's call it even?
> This misses a big point: highly skilled craftsmanship will never again be affordable on an architectural scale. So we'll have it again when it can all be done by machine.
That's not really the case. As with the internet and software, architecture was hijacked by building products corporations and tradespeople were duped into playing along, just like the employees of social media corporations one can see on this site who try to justify the evil activities of the companies they work for.
Background: when I quit software in the latter half of the 2000s I bought a house built in 1908 in the central US. It needed lots of things, so I basically lived in half of it and worked on the other half for about 10 years.
What I learned in the process of learning how to do all of that stuff by trial and error (including building custom windows and doors... wooden ones to replace the 'new' ones from previous owners that I threw away) is that prior to the 1980s there were lots of small machines built for the market of a small custom shop that might build things for local clientele. They have all been replaced by worse (in every respect) multi-function machines that only make boring things badly.
As a baseline, the most notorious of big box stores [1] says that new plastic windows cost 800 - 1000 dollars. That's highway robbery. There's about 30 board feet of rough sawn lumber in a 4' x 3' wooden double hung window. The material cost (assuming cypress in the southeast or douglas fir in the north/west) is gonna be around 5 dollars per board foot. Glass in smallish bulk quantities lets say 3 dollars per square foot, and hardware about 50 dollars per window, I'll give 10-20 dollars for paint and what not. So we're looking at a material cost of around $250.00 per window if someone wanted wooden windows in a common size.
The problem is not that it's impossible to compete with the plastic window on quality at a slight price markup, the problem is that there's no one to do it because everyone has been turned into a middle man, serving rent seekers. Outside of major cities with enough of a concentration of historic buildings to keep real craftsmen busy, there aren't going to be any such real craftsmen. They're all going to be glorified salesmen with a few hand tools from the local building supply retailer.
It didn't have to be this way. As an example, up until the late 1970s a company named Powermatic built a small single end tender (model # 2A) that is shown here [2] and here [3]. These were marketed to small shops, not giant industrial factories. These machines have appreciated in value on the used market in the past 10 years, because people are still using them! Ten years ago you could buy a serviceable 2A tenoner for $500-1000 dollars, now they're going for $2500 to 3k. I met people running window and door shops doing historic preservation work around Boston that were stockpiling every one they find for sale for parts. Powermatic the company on the other hand was sold and the brand "cashed in" on cheap import imitations of other tool companies' products long ago.
Another example would be the machine called a "sash trimmer" shown here [4] and here [5]. I use the term "machine" very loosely because it's not even motorized, you operate it with your foot like an old sewing machine. This machine could be replicated in a machine shop today using an old milling machine or mortiser as a base for probably $3000 dollars or so in custom parts. It's how you make fancy wooden windows like these [6]. It's virtually impossible to make such a wooden window without that machine, because modern machines can't replicate the required angled mortises. I looked for years and never found one for sale in the southeastern US. Despite the fact that thousands of historic homes in the southeastern US have such windows, that are all over 80 years old now and gradually rotting away.
You can extend this to any other item in the typical single family home in the US. For instance there's no reason for kitchen cabinets to have plywood in them. Plywood is another notorious "profit margin" item by the building products corporations that is basically scrap and glue with a picture of real wood on top of it. Why isn't there a set of jigs like the ones used 80+ years ago for sale by which a local cabinet maker can produce "stick built" cabinets without plywood shells? Why does the local cabinet maker pay obscene prices for fake lumber pressed into sheets, when by the square foot solid yellow pine is cheaper? Because the local cabinet shop sees himself as a building product middle man just like the corporate stores do, there is no other reason.
As if the entirety of American architecture being beholden to corporate producers of junk products isn't bad enough, general contractors are charging an additional 20-30% markup (at least) on top of the supplier's markup, to lead people to think that the junk they've bought is reasonably that expensive.
As the wise machine said in the movie from the cursed decade: "the only way to win, is to not play."
Read a few books, go to architectural salvage stores to look at things in person and see how they were built, go to your local woodworker's meetup group, go watch youtube videos about how to glaze windows and hang doors. You don't have to buy a shop full of antique machines and start with rough lumber if you don't want to, but if you know how to spec and order things from local craftsmen on your own without the aforementioned rent seeking middlemen charging you 20-30% to do it on your behalf, you can have a house just as nice as those from the late 19th and early 20th century, albeit with some quality of lumber compromises due to the lack of old growth supply.
> Have you ever tried to modify ikea furniture? It's a nightmare. And we are professional carpenters. Imagine the pain this must be for mere hobbyists.
> So I don't know what is missing from supplying the "builders" market.
It's an extremely small selection, compared to what it was in the early 90's (that I remember - and I remember older folks complaining about how far it had gone down hill even then).
There just is no store I can wander around these days (or series of stores) where I can visualize exactly what I need to build some project. For example I needed recently to put some electronics in a waterproof outdoor box, and cable it up nice with proper waterproof conduit.
For someone who has done that sort of thing 500 times for work, you know exactly what to order and what everything is called and how it will fit. For someone who never has I really miss just being able to go to a hobby/electronics store and actually see the components I'd need to put something together - usually modifying my plans in the process as I see what is available I never knew existed before.
This makes "making things" really hard for the beginner and removes a ton of spontaneous "lets just figure it out and get it done" type of projects - at least for me. There is no store to run back to to swap out that $1.50 component I bought the wrong part number of. Minutes/hours of latency to days at best.
>You can also construct with hardwoods in a way that prevents warping and cupping, like using rift sawn cuts and orthogonal grain joiniery.
No, you can't. Not if you're making IKEA furniture that customers assemble themselves.
>I think you mean plywood, not particle board. Very different things. Particle board is crap.
No, it's not, if you're making inexpensive furniture that customers self-assemble. Good plywood is very expensive.
>I’ve built a lot of my own furniture with hardwoods and none of it has warped in a decade.
Great, let's see you make something that way that ships in a flat box, and which some idiot can put together with pictogram instructions using no tools except a screwdriver for turning cam-lock fasteners.
I know where you're coming from with this. I've been refurbing my house myself and I doubt I've saved that much because the "saving" has meant that I've been able to buy tools and, of course, better quality materials (e.g., more expensive flooring). I've also often chosen to go the extra mile with improvements where I might have scaled back if I were paying someone. I suppose you could argue this is a saving in that I've got more value out of the money I've spent by treating my own time as "free labour", but have I spent less? I doubt it.
Still, I don't know if it's entirely true in all circumstances. Here, for example, TheGeekPub (The 8-Bit Guy's brother) manages to save himself a ton by building his own electronics station rather than buying one or paying a carpenter to do it for him:
But then, as becomes evident when you watch the video, he already owned all the tools he needed and just had to buy the materials, which were relatively inexpensive.
I think the results look great though, and it's clearly an extremely functional piece of furniture.
Like a lot of things in life, does it save you money? It really depends on your starting conditions (skill level, tools and facilities), and how much you want to invest in the project (both time and money).
> Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though?
If you consider the entire cost, yes. Every BOM item has a huge cost associated with it, and it's price only a small fraction.
Consider that for every item you need to:
* secure supply for the next 10 years or so
* organize purchasing and put it into the supply chain
* design assembly instructions, teach workers how to assemble it
* design and implement testing procedures
* design and implement diagnostics to figure out which specific component has failed
* maintain it and keep it available for your service network for the next 10-15 years
* deal with unexpected failure rates and be ready to re-design in case of problems
* also, every knob is actually not one component, because it needs to be connected to something, which implies wires and connectors (the most problematic components in electronics) and multiples all of the above several times.
Look at it this way and suddenly you really want to minimize the number of individual components and replace them all with a single touchscreen. Especially given that you can then deliver crappy software and the market will bear it, because we have been trained to expect and accept crappy software.
But I do agree that the marketing appeal is there, too, although I think some people are waking up.
> Have you thought about the consequences if everyone bought furniture like that? There's a reason why solid wood furniture is more expensive, it's a LOT more resource intensive and wasteful during manufacturing. Imagine if everyone started buying all solid wood furniture tomorrow?
The priority is reduce, reuse, recycle.
Buying lifetime furniture is working to 'reduce'.
Ikea is (only now) introducing 'recycle', the worst option of the three.
> This is really standard fare with professional carpentry. I don't understand why so many people here are in shock at the concept of blade servicing.
For me, I'm just surprised that the economics of it can work. I'd imagine such a specialist is not going to charge less than a $100/hr so I wouldn't have expected the cost of repair to make sense. But interesting that it does!
> Not really sure about its feasability, just incredibly dissapointed in the offerings that I was presented with in our free-enterprise system and perhaps a bit idealistic about locale-specific workshops that might serve consumers better.
This "free enterprise system" offered you the craftsman who - free of the shackles of guilds - would have given you a price that you didn't agree on, for the kind of work you would have liked to have performed.
I don't understand what you are disappointed about - that skilled craftsman get to charge well for their work? That cheaply produced products don't live up to the work of a skilled craftsman? Have you calculated the opportunity cost of doing it yourself?
Crown molding and things went out WAY before any of these supply chain issues you've brought up from the last 1-2 years.
The cost of trim wood is exponentially more than it was 50 years ago, and on top of that you cant find anyone who knows how to make custom ornamented trim.
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