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Built a face frame inset cabinet last month with hand cut dovetails, shop owner says it's the slow way
Last month I finished a face frame cabinet for a client in Sacramento, all hand cut dovetails, took me 40 hours. My old shop owner dropped by and said I was wasting time, that a router jig would've done it in 3. But the client paid $2,800 without blinking and the drawers still slide smooth after daily use. So here is the debate: do you charge for the hours a hand cut joint takes, or do you price the job like a machine made it? Curious what everyone here does when a customer wants old school work at new school speed.
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gavina734d ago
One thing to keep straight here, a router jig won't get you to that 3 hour number either. You still have to mill the stock, set up the jig for each drawer depth, run both halves, and clean up the corners. On a full cabinet with multiple drawers you're probably looking at 10 to 12 hours, not 3.
The gap between hand cut and jig cut is real but it's not 40 vs 3, it's more like 40 vs 12. That matters when you're trying to figure out what to charge.
Around here people price the job, not the method. The client in Sacramento didn't pay $2,800 for slow dovetails, they paid for a cabinet that looks and works the way they wanted. If a guy can hit that with a jig and charge less, fine, that's his business.
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