Question: What to Charge?

[Brant]

Nice work, great story.

 

[allan621]

The engraving is straight, easy to read and all the characters are the same size. That's pretty good when you're cutting a metal you haven't a lot of experience with.

Keep Going.

Allan

 

[gil rudolph]

Hello Gentleman, As I am still in my infancy of this art but strive to one day take on projects in my free time, I’m having trouble determining the value of this piece a co-worker requested. I believe to know the importance of getting some of my work out into the world and forming relationships with those who have an appreciation for such things. So my question is should one “starting out” price a piece to simply get it out there and judge it on appearance only “say 10$“ or factor in about four hours of work and call it 20$?
To clarify I currently ”Blank out“ pennies leaving a canvas on which to engrave as just a passion hobby. My co-worker asked if I could do a One dollar coin he intends on using as a golf ball marker and this is the result. Thanks for your time and any insights and/or critiques are very welcome. I hope everyone has a wonderful day.

I use a 3x5 card next to my work area and I write down the time when I start/stop/lunch/break/etc. I figure out a per hour wage that I would be happy with considering cost of tools etc. When using gold or other precious metals in a job...they get weighed on a scale for the trade.. and when finished , I again weigh the metals. I charge the cost of the metals plus 20% and add that to the job. So, by the time I'm finished I have a fairly accurate finished price for my work. I take a picture of the finished work, attache my time card and save these so that if I get another similar job I can give the customer an idea of what a similar job would cost. I didn't do this in the beginning of my engraving career, I just guessed at the end of a project what I should bill for a finished piece of engraving. After starting to use the card idea I realized how many projects that I probably just gave away. Hope this helps you.......gil rudolph

 

[Dave London]

T .G III
Nine to see another Master plumber here.Dave