Hi Darcy,
Good point, glad that you bought it up; let me address it;
Doing high quality work and making a decent living are not mutually exclusive; You can do better work and make more money if you are motivated and do your homework.
I spoke about doing more, more than is required, just to do a high standard quality job, just because. I said that it doesn't pay extra to do more, so it cost you money, money that you could have made.
I never said that you had to starve or not make a living.
If you are motivated you can, with a little research, find machinery that can do the finest work, and do it faster than any other way, which gives you a better product in a less time and you make more money. What is wrong with that.
I worked in a shop that did heritage building restoration, they had maybe 10 - 15 people in the shop, another 10 in the office, big government contracts. A large part of their work was building new windows; when I went there they had a $250 bench top hollow chisel mortiser no tenoner ????????????? seriously. I sold them a Maka, and told them to get a tenoner. they had never seen or heard of one even though Maka mortisers had been on the market for 50 years? Why is that? Why would you have a business that makes windows and not research what equipment could help you do a better job, faster and make you more money?
This stuff is not rocket science, its available to all, especially these days with internet access.
I have been to several shops that do bad quality work, and they do it the slowest hardest way, and am not talking about some retired guy that wants to whittle chairs with a pocket knife, I am talking about businesses with the owner in the office hoping to make money.
There is no reason why anyone can’t do good work efficiently. And I don’t understand the attitude of not doing it.
Good industrial machinery can be purchased used, pretty cheaply. Both you and I know that, you have to do a lot of work to fix it up and get it running, but once its running it works forever, in a small shop.
This me 30 odd years ago. using my Balestrini tenoner to do tenons on a set of back slats for 10 chairs, 80 tenons, about 15 minutes to set it up and do test cuts, and 10 minutes to cut them all of them! Super accurate, infinitely adjustable within the capabilities of the machine, independently adjustable length width, depth and radius, clean scibed shoulder, chamfered edged tenon, tenons adjustable from vertical to horizontal, adjustable table and fence for compound angles. You can even adjust it to cut dowels if you want. The mate to this is the twin table mortiser. There is incredible machinery available if you look.
With this equipment i could also subcontract work; I did all of the mortise and tenon joinery for 300 sets of hard Maple bunk-beds for a company, easy work for me, virtually impossible for them to do.
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The mortice
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