How Much MONEY I Make Building EXTREMELY Custom Cutting Boards

hey my name is Ryan and I spent two months building two dozen very custom end grain cutting boards sold them all for a decent chunk of change and today I'm going to share with you how I built all of them how much of that money went into my pocket at the end of the day Lessons Learned and so much more I'm gonna hit you with a ton of info so if that all sounds good stay tuned so the way I've structured this video goes like this the first part is intro number two which is exactly what we're going through right now I'm just outlining everything that you can expect to see in this video I'll let you know I've got detailed time stamps in the description below I think this is a rather long video and I want to make it as easy as possible for you if you want to jump around you are more than welcome to do so it's all about your viewing pleasure credit I want to give a quick shout out to a woodworker that without him and his guidance none of this would be possible none of this would be happening right now then we're going to talk a couple definitions some terminology what is a board foot what is a finished board foot it's so important that we are completely aligned with what those two things mean because you're going to hear me say them so many times throughout this video and then heads up I'm going to ask you to subscribe and hit that thanks button then we're going to get into the bulk the meat of the video I'm going to walk you through all 25 boards there's six different patterns I'm going to give you a very condensed step-by-step process for the sake of time but enough to show you just how much work how much labor goes into these boards think that's really important to see and then once we get to the end of that for each set of boards I'm going to recap the whole process and let you know how many hours each step of the process took give me total hours and let you know how many boards in each pattern I built how much they all sold for total sales all those fun numbers once we have those we're going to get into my materials how much did I use on each set of boards and how much did it all cost me and once we have that we'll know how much money I made and then we'll be able to figure out some fun numbers so hours per finish board foot cost per finish board foot and those two together will give me total dollars per finished board foot and a fun fact if you take a shot every time I say finish board foot in this video you're going to be very drunk at the end all right and once that's all done once we're through the bulk we're gonna go over the entire build and we're going to look at overall numbers I want to know how much of that 14 Grand actually went into my pocket at the end of the day I'm going to highlight some other expenses things I couldn't really attribute to just one pattern both in time and money I call them capitalist expenses they're going to be just applied to the overall project total we're going to talk return on investment Roi both immediate AKA how much money did I make from the boards and potential long term how much money I might make from this video then we're going to start wrapping things up with Lessons Learned of which there were many and areas of opportunity of which there were also many not just over these last eight weeks but these last three years I've been building boards I'm going to share all the big lessons I've learned and the areas of opportunity I still see within my shop and then final thoughts we're going to ask the big question and hopefully answer it was it all worth it was all that time all that Labor All That hustle all that grind is it worth it to build boards and can you make a living as a woodworker building cutting boards but before we go any further a word from our sponsor no I'm just kidding I don't have any sponsors but I do want to give credit to that woodworker I mentioned and his name is Andre over at MTM wood three years ago when I started building boards I went on YouTube I found his videos right away I purchased plans from his website and it's because of his designs his ideas his willingness to share and teach all of his Concepts I it's probably the reason I'm standing here today I wouldn't have made it this far without just building upon what he taught so Andre if you're watching this I thank you on behalf of myself and of all the other Woodworkers you have inspired out there in the world now if you're here for the very first time I'll ask you to please consider hitting that subscribe button because there is nothing but more of this more woodworking content ahead and I'd love to have you along for the journey so at any time you can go ahead and do that by hitting that little symbol in the right hand corner and at any time if this video is of value to you please take a minute to exit out of the viewing window hit that thanks button and show your support to the channel I don't smoke I don't drink I don't gamble I'm a very boring person I spend all my time either work working or with my family and I assure you your donation just goes directly back into funding this business and continuing to produce more content like this so thank you for considering hitting that thanks button now why don't we talk some board feet board foot what is a board foot it's different than square foot and we're not even going to talk about square foot in this video pretend I never said that board foot is it's intimidating at first but it's actually so super simple a board foot is a unit of measurement for volume of Lumber One board foot equals 144 cubic inches and one board foot is basically a piece of wood that is one inch thick by 12 inches wide by 12 inches long and I've actually got a piece of wood right here that I can show you and this little piece of plywood is exactly that 12 inches long 12 inches wide and we're going to pretend that it's one inch thick but this right here is for all intents and purposes one board foot okay so here's the magic equation right here if you just remember this and you walk into any hardwood store any piece of wood and you have a tape measure just pull out this equation and you can figure out exactly how much board feet you're looking at it's simple board foot equals length times width times thickness divided by that 144. so we'll flip this over whoop a little too hard there and we can actually test out this theory on that little piece of plywood that I just had so 12 inches by 12 inches by one inch divided by 144 it's pretty simple 144 divided by 144 equals one board foot so just like that we know the equation works now I've got a couple other numbers on the board here so the first one here I've got a piece of cherry on the bench and it measures 28 inches by we're going to call it eight inches wide just for the sake of doing Simple Math here so 28 by 8 inches by one inch thick you put that into the equation divide that by 144 and just like that we know that piece of cherry is about one and a half 1.56 board feet to be exact so if I'm at the lumber store I know exactly how much board feet I'm taking up to the till and roughly how much it's going to impact my bank account now I'll give you one more example here I've got a two inch piece of yellow cedar sitting on the bench now this one here measures we'll call it 22 inches by we'll call it 12 inches by two inches thick so playing with the thickness now but again we just punch that into the equation so board feet is going to equal 22 by 12 by 2 divide by 144 punch that into a calculator we get 3.67 board feet so I know that piece of Cedar is 3.67 board feet so that's board foot now we're going to talk about finished board foot which is the exact same as board foot just with the word finished in front of it and what I mean by finished board foot is how many board feet is a finished cutting board because if you take five board feet of regular Lumber and turn it into an end grain cutting board the finished product is not going to be anywhere near five board feet so it's not how many board feet of lumber used to build the board but instead how many board feet the finished cutting board ends up being and I've got an example on my bench here one of the first cutting boards I ever made our length is 15 and a quarter call it 15 again for the sake of simple math so 15 long by 12 inches wide and if I'm not mistaken it's an inch and three quarter thick so 15 by 12 by an inch and three quarter and we just punch that into our equation again equations the exact same as the board foot I just put an F in front of it so I know I'm talking about a finished cutting board so we go 15 times 12 times 1.75 divide all that by 144 and we get 2.19 finished board feet so I now know that that cutting board is 2.19 finished board feet and I can use that for all sorts of things the reason I came up with this was because early on when I started building cutting boards I was wasting so much time handing out quotes to people that were requesting different sizes made of different wood species I would literally spend hours figuring out how much a board is going to cost me to make and how much I should charge for it and so I was like I need a better way to give out a quick quote so I finally started recording how long a board a specific pattern would take me to make what my materials were and all my costs that went into it and I take all that information and I dial it down to a total dollars per board foot so in the event that someone wanted a brick pattern board at a different size I could just figure out what my total dollars per board foot is based off of the info that I had gathered on the brick board and we're going to see lots of examples of this throughout the video so if it doesn't quite make sense yet that's totally okay it will make sense here shortly but for now let's get into our first set of boards the brick boards so the idea to build a bunch of these and how this whole entire build launched was from a previous build I did where I put together a couple boards out of whiskey barrel staves and walnut they turned out great they both sold fast and I had requests for more but I didn't have any more Barrel wood ready to go at that same time I came across nearly 200 square feet of White Oak hardwood flooring on Marketplace for a very good price and I thought I could make a ton of Boards out of that so I put the brick pattern available through special order and within a couple weeks I had a handful of orders to fulfill so I hold everything over to the table saw where I ran each piece through to slice off the sides with the nails after this I had to strip the finish off each one and I tried a variety of methods to do this I tried ripping it off at the bandsaw and I quickly snapped one blade and then dulled another so then I tried ripping it off at the table saw and I quickly wore the teeth on that blade down as well I decided sandpaper was a lot cheaper than blades so I settled on using the belt sander for the rest of this process before I went further with that I chopped up some Walnut at the miter saw jointed one Edge on each piece around the other Edge through the table saw and proceeded to glue them together this would eventually be used to create the end grain mortar strips I'd need later on and while the glue was drying on that I ran both sides of each oak board through the planer to clean up all the saw marks on the top and remove the grooves on the bottom and then I took it all back to the table saw to create some nice clean glue line edges on each one after that I sorted everything by length and organized it into panels wide enough to create the sizes of boards I needed to build and with that the oak was ready for glue but I still needed to make the thin Walnut Edge grain strips that act as the mortar in between the oak bricks so I chopped up a couple more Boards of walnuts the same lengths as the oak panels and ran it through the exact same Milling process as before after a set of strips for a set of Oak panels was cut I'd tape it up and label which panel it went with this was an added complicated variable but I wanted to minimize waste on the Walnut at the same time making the most of the Oak and once that was all done I headed over to my glue up area and since my current planer can only handle 12 and a half inches and all of these panels were well over that I glued each one up and two back-to-back halves this allows me to make the most efficient use of the clamps I have at the same time keeping that final joint I would have to glue in the middle as tight as possible and this will be a recurring theme throughout this video the next day once the glue was dry I sent both halves to the planer and then joined them together into the final panel this would leave me with just one glue seam to Belt sand which I did the following day and the last thing I needed to do was flush up the ends of each one I do this at the table saw when I can but when the panels are too large I take them over to the bandsaw and these were now ready for cross cutting into end grain strips but I first went back to the Walnut panels I had initially glued up and I belt sanded the glue seam on each one of those flushed up the ends using the bandsaw and then everything was ready to cross cut at the table saw I ran all of the panels through and then ran all the Walnut panels through and this gave me a ton of end grain strips the next thing I needed to do was create a lot of thinner strips and I did that by cutting down the majority of the Walnut strips into three pieces each I've done this in the past that the band saw but decided I'd do this at the table saw instead I set the blade at half the height of the strip fed it through flipped it around and fed it through again this left a cleaner finish than the band saw but still some sanding was required to clean things up and after everything was cut I flipped some strips around to create the brick pattern separated them into their respective board sizes divided up the Walnut for the edging on each one and then it was back to the glue up corner for all the final glue UPS the next day I stripped the clamps off and scraped off what excess glue I could and then I let the board sit and breathe for another 48 hours before each one takes its turn getting flattened in the router sled after flattening each Board needs a good hard sanding to clean up the marks left behind by the router bit and I do this using 60 grit in the belt sander and once that's done I square and trim up all the edges typically using the bandsaw simply because it's a bit much for my table saw then I cleaned up the bandsaw blade marks by taking very light passes at the jointer and then I head back to do the initial Rotex sanding with 60 grit it's after this first orbital sanding that I carve in all the juice grooves and then all the boards get a pair of finger holds on the underside then all that's left to do is the sanding the Grits I worked through on all of the boards in this video were 80 120 150 180 220 320 and I finished with 400 and between each grit I raise the grain with water which causes the end grain fibers to lift up and consequently get knocked back down with the Sandpaper resulting in an overall much smoother finished board the other thing I do in between grits and after the water has dried is scribble on a pencil line and as that pencil line disappears with the sanding this shows me where I Have and Have Not sanded and ultimately ensures the entire surface has been consistently sanded to that grit I also paused between 180 and 220 to ease all the edges and Corners by hand after the final sand at 400 I apply mineral oil to each board and then wait at least 24 hours before sealing the board with a coat of beeswax and installing the rubber feet underneath this is typically the point of the project where I take finished pictures of the boards and then I wrap things up place them in a box and send them on their way to their new homes so let's recap on how long all of that actually tip picking up the oak bring it back back to the shop and organizing it took two hours slicing the nails off took an hour stripping the finish off the portion of Oak for just this pattern took six hours prepping the Walnut for the end grain strips took three hours planting all the oak boards took three and a half hours creating the glue line edges that the table saw took two hours sorting the oak by length and into panels took an hour prepping the Walnut for the edge grain strips took two hours gluing up the initial panels took three hours stripping clamps off the initial glue UPS took half an hour planing the panel halves and gluing up again three hours stripping clamps again half an hour belt sanding the panels three and a half hours of belt sanding flushing up the ends of the panels took an hour cross cutting the oak and walnut panels took three hours ripping all the thin end grain strips took three hours assembling and organizing everything into the final boards took an hour and a half the final glue UPS took three and a half hours stripping clamps scraping excess glue two hours flattening everything three hours belt sanding with 60 grit two and a half hours squaring up trimming jointing the edges an hour and a half rotech sanding with 60 grit two and a half hours juice grooves took two hours total finger holds took just one hour total orbital sanding took seven hours total hand sanding took three hours oiling all the boards took two and a half hours waxing took two hours putting the little feed on took an hour and taking the finished pictures listing the ones I still needed to sell on the website uploading those to my Instagram shop and talking with various customers takes about four hours and finally wrapping them up boxing them up printing the thank you cards the shipping labels uploading the tracking info takes about an hour per board so seven hours total for that brings us to a total build time of 84 hours for those seven boards and you might be asking yourself what is a fiddle around factor and what I mean by that is I am not a robot I don't just move from machine to machine with zero downtime in between sometimes I gotta mess with a tool sometimes I'm playing around with a glue roller checking my phone snacking whatever it is the list is endless and those 15 to 20 minutes down time here and there in between stages of the process really add up so for all the sets of boards in this video I'm going to add in a 10 fiddle around Factor so 10 of 84 is about 8.5 so I add that on and the other thing I need to add on for this set of boards is I can't count when it comes to Walnut it took me three trips to the wood store to get the right amount of Walnut to make all the mortar strips so all of that adds up to 95 and a half total build hours for Seven brick pattern cutting boards and they are as follows I got an 18 by 24 out of there for 720 bucks I sold that for I got four at 16 by 20 I sold each one of those for 480 netted me almost two thousand dollars 14 by 20 for 420 and a 12 by 18 for 360. bringing total board sales to three thousand four hundred and twenty dollars and a total finished board footage of thirty five point three and if you do the math on that you might be like that doesn't really add up there Ryan and I'll let you know yes you're right it doesn't because when I figure out finished board feed I actually add a quarter inch on to the thickness so for example if I got a 16 by 20 by a two inch board I'll go 16 by 20 by two and a quarter because that quarter inch that comes off during flattening really adds up so that'll be standard for all the boards in this video so in case you're wondering that's why the math doesn't add up okay let's go over materials and costs so Walnut 32 board feet of walnut cost me 490 bucks table saw blade cost me 40 bucks I'm calling it half a table saw blade because it was already half done for by the time I threw all that Oak at it so half a table saw blade is 40 bucks two bandsaw blades sixty dollars the 30 bucks a piece so 30 times 2 is 60. 12 sanding belts I cruise through these belts because as soon as one wore down I just jumped into the next one because it was already so grueling I didn't want to drag it out any longer so 40 bucks for 12 of those gas for those three trips to the wood store gasoline as cheap as it once was so 35 bucks for gas rubber feet works out to about a dollar per board so seven dollars for seven boards and then the packing and office supplies that includes boxes tape packing peanuts paper printer ink all that kind of behind the scenes stuff works out to about 25 bucks a board so 175 dollars total and then oak now I didn't get the oak for free the oak cost me a little bit it cost me 150 bucks and so I'll show you how I figured out how much the oak costed me for just the brick boards and to do that I had to figure out how much 200 square feet of Oak is in board feet and so I thought back to that piece of plywood that was perfectly Square 12 inches by 12 inches I pictured a room of hardwood flooring by that what would those Dimensions have to be for 200 square feet and so I just took the route of 200 feet and it worked out to about 14 feet again I'm rounding up or down here for the sake of very Sim simple math and so I got a room that is 14 feet long by 14 feet wide and that Oak ended up being half an inch thick after I was all done Milling it so I had to change everything into inches due to that half an inch so 14 feet times 12 inches in a foot gave me 168 inches I punched that into our board foot equation and that gave me a number of 98 board feet and so knowing that I was able to divide 98 board feet into a hundred and fifty dollars and that gave me a cost of a dollar 53 per board foot yeah there we go so for 64 board feet in the brick boards that's about how much I used for the brick boards that costed me 98 dollars and when we get to the cube boards in that Lone Oak board I'll give you the cost on those as well so we can take that 98 dollars punch it back in beside our Oak and that will give us our total material costs of 945 dollars now we can take that and we can subtract it off our total sales and that'll give us 2 475 dollars total profits so far and that brings my hourly wage down to 25 and 92 cents but we ain't done yet we need to take a look at some of my overhead costs so let's take a second and figure that out these are the items that I either couldn't or didn't keep track of per specific board for example the first item on the list glue I didn't exactly pour out the exact amount of glue I needed to glue up one board stick it on a scale figure out how much it weighed and times it by a dollar figure I just I didn't keep track of things that close I these are the items that I just kept track of over the entire build all 25 boards so let's go through the list number one the glue seven and a half gallons around me 450 bucks number two is the additional wear and tear on my blades and on my machines on top of what I put into Milling that Oak down I figured that came in around 100 bucks four sets of planar knives at 100 bucks a piece around me 400 bucks one gallon of mineral oil 50 bucks 32 ounce tub of beeswax 40 bucks and I pretty much blew through all of that so I'm just gonna put the full price down for those router bits I purchased two new bits for this build one to flatten the boards and one to do the juice grooves and and the two of them together were 180 bucks sandpaper again similar to the glue I didn't keep track of every little tiny sheet of sandpaper I used I just lumped it all together and at the end of the day figured out what I had and put a dollar amount to it and that dollar amount is 150 bucks I've used yard waste bags to empty my dust collector in and when I have a whole bunch of them I take them to the dump it's been suggested to me that I can use those wood shavings to mulch into a garden or something but I feel really weird about that because most of it has glue mixed into it and it just feels wrong so I just put them in yard waste bags haul them off to the dump the second the second the ninth thing is hot glue sticks for securing my boards down to the bench while I'm flattening it's not the a perfect method but it works for me and it's cheap so 10 bucks for all of that and then speaking of yard waste bags landfill fees and gas cost me 45 bucks to get rid of all the waste from this build plus the ten dollars in gas to get there totaling 55 dollars for that and then the big one the big overhead so shop rent power insurance and liability I figure works out to about 32 bucks a day this bill took me 43 days came in at just under fourteen hundred dollars so all of that adds up to 2831 dollars for 25 boards at 140.6 finished board feet for all 25 that breaks down to 20 dollars and 14 cents per finished board foot and we're going to call it just twenty dollars we'll round down to twenty dollars for the sake of simple calculation so now that we have that number we can flip this back over and finish our analysis on the brick boards so if you remember total sales was 34.20 total hours 95 and a half and my material cost was 9.45 so all that worked out to almost 36 dollars an hour which is a pretty decent wage but of course that's not at all take home so we take the material cost took it off total sales we arrived at 24.75 brought me down to about 26 dollars an hour and then we got into figuring out the overhead cost so for the brick boards I had 35.3 finished board feet for all seven of them times 20 finished board feet gave me an additional 706 dollars that I need to subtract off my profit margin which I did and that brought me down to ready for it 1769 peer profit oh I'll do it both here and what that works out too in terms of an hourly wage is are you ready for this one here we go eighteen dollars and 52 cents an hour and keep in mind I still have to pay tax on that so even that's not entirely take home but I'm not going to go into the tax thing in this video I don't want to get into the weeds with that but picture what you pay in tax on your paycheck and apply it to that and then you have that final number of how much actually goes in my pocket at the end of the day but anyways here we are we're going to talk about those three numbers I mentioned earlier hours per finish board foot cost per finish board foot and total dollars per finish board foot take three shots right now hours per finish board foot is simply calculated by taking the total amount of hours and dividing it by the total amount of finished board feet and why that is important to me is because it's good to know how long a board is going to take to make cost per finish board foot equals materials plus overhead divided by the total amount of finished board feet and why that one's important is because it's important to know how much a board is going to cost you to make and then I said earlier these two kind of work together to give me that one I was kind of lying this number just kind of stands alone on its own but it's important to know total dollars per finish board foot which is the profit plus the total cost divided by the total amount of finished board foot it's important to know that one because that gives me an overall picture of what a board is going to take me to produce in terms of time and in terms of cost and what I should be charging per finish board foot depending on how much money I want to make so with all that being said let's apply those numbers to the brick board so hours per finish board foot I know it took me 95 and a half hours to build all of them 35.3 finished board feet amongst the seven of them gives me almost three hours per finish board foot to produce one finished board foot of the brick pattern cutting board and if we apply that to a 16 by 20 by a two inch board which works out to a nice even five finished board feet it's going to take me we'll call it 15 hours to build that board cost per finish board foot I simply add up my material cost and my overhead cost divide that by finished board feet works out to almost 47 dollars just cost on producing one finished board foot of a brick pattern cutting board and if we apply that to the 16 by 20 that board alone cost me just cost me 234 dollars to make and our last number our total dollars per finish board foot it's a simple matter of taking my overall profit adding in My overall cost on the project and dividing that by 35.3 finished board feet which gives me ninety seven dollars per finished board foot which is what I should keep charging if I want to keep making 18 an hour and then I just double check my math on it and using that number I came to 485 for a 16 by 20 which is pretty accurate because I charge 480 for a 16 by 20. anyways let's say I want to make a little bit more than eighteen dollars an hour I can flip this over and I can basically reverse engineer that equation for any dollar amount I want so let's say I want to make forty dollars an hour we got our equation it's just a simple matter of plugging in the numbers and doing the math now which I do and it works out to 155 dollars per finished board foot so for a 16 by 20 by two if I want to make forty dollars on that guy I just simply need to charge sorry do the math 155 dollars times five board feet gives me a figure of 775 dollars plus shipping and if you remember I charged 480 dollars so a little bit of a discrepancy there if I want to make what I want to make versus what I've actually been making so essentially what you could do with all that data is plug it into a nice neat little spreadsheet and then when one of those factors changes such as material costs such as your overhead if you want to give yourself a pay increase you can just go in you can swap out that one variable and it'll just keep spitting you out a new finished board foot price that you should be charging depending on your size pattern style of board and now I know this was a lot of info I went a little deep on the detail on this first set of boards just to get some of the fundamentals nailed down for all the rest of the set of boards I'm just going to hit you with the numbers we're not going to do a lot of equations now that you have a good understanding of it so without further Ado let's get right into the 3D cube pattern boards so because you already saw the Milling process for all the oak will gloss over that and Skip right to the part where I start gluing up panels that are three flooring boards wide I glued these up in sets of three back to back to back and I let them sit until the next day where I strip the clamps off everything and then I start cutting up some Maple and Cherry since the oak panels are just over seven inches wide in the Maple and Cherry is not quite that wide I had to double up on some of the Maple and Cherry were needed once I got everything Loosely organized everything goes through the planer and then I make one edge of each board flat on the jointer and lastly I clean up the other Edge by running everything through the table saw the following day I arrive and strip the clamps off the Maple and the Cherry that I had to double up and glue together and then I send everything through the planer to clean up the glue seams now everything is ready to glue up into what I call sandwiches and once that's all done I let them sit until the next day where I proceed to strip the clamps off and once again send everything through the planer joint one Edge flat on each one flush up all the ends of the miter saw and then I rip a 30 degree bevel on each panel at the table saw once each one has that bevel I locked the fence in and I feed each panel through over and over ripping them all into strips and once those strips are cut I feed them through two more times each to Square Off both edges and after all of that I'm able to assemble all the sticks of wood into the patterns required for the next round of glue ups and I do that thing again where I have to glue them up in halves let them dry overnight plane them down the next day and then glue them up into the full size panels the following day I give things a scrape to ease the burden on my sandpaper and then I hit each panel with the belt sander until I can no longer feel that glue seam once that's done I flush up the ends of each panel and begin cross cutting everything into the end grain strips and after everything has been chopped up I adjust the strips to create the cube pattern separate everything into the three different size boards and head back over to the glue up table where I proceed on the three final glue ups for these boards as usual I let things sit until the following day where I take off the clamps scrape off any excess dried glue and then let them sit for at least 48 hours to fully air out before flattening and a few days later each one finds its way into the router sled for flattening and then the initial belt sanding with 60 grit makes quick work of the marks left behind by the router bit I use a long t-square to draw some Square lines on each one and head over to the band saw to trim up the edges and swing by the jointer to clean them up further the rest of the finishing process is the same as the brick boards I do the initial orbital sanding with 60 grit and Rotex mode then I pause to carve in the juice grooves and finger holds I raise the Grain in between all the grits and work my way up to 180 where I take a break to do all the hand sanding once all the sharp edges have been dulled I worked my way up through the final grits finishing once again with 400 and just like that these boards come to life and they did not not disappoint I gave them a couple days before applying a coat of beeswax and installing four little feet on the underside of each one a final coat of wax on the tops and these were ready to bundle up box up and ship out so let's run through how long the last few minutes actually took Milling a portion of Oak for this pattern that I skipped over in the beginning took five hours gluing up the initial Oak panels took two hours slicing up and gluing all the Maple and Cherry took four hours planing everything afterwards took an hour and a half gluing up the sandwiches took an hour and a half planing jointing and flushing up the ends took two hours all the table saw worked for creating the strips took three hours assembling the pattern took an hour gluing everything up stripping things to scrape clamping it all up again took three more hours planing the panel halves and gluing up into the final panels took an hour and a half belt sanding the panels took an hour flushing up the ends took half an hour cross cutting all the end grain strips took one hour assembling the final patterns took one hour and the final glue UPS took an hour and a half flattening took one and a half hours the initial belt sanding took one and a half hours trimming and cleaning up the edges took one hour hour the initial six degree with the Rotex sander took an hour two screws and finger holds took an hour and a half the remainder of the orbital sanding took five hours hand sanding took one hour applying the oil took one hour applying the wax took an hour installing the feet took half an hour and then the usual taking the finished pictures listing on the website Instagram shop and talking with customers took about three hours and the final wrapping up boxing up printing thank you card shipping labels uploading tracking info took three hours and that all adds up to 50.5 hours adding in our 10 fiddle Factor puts us in another five hours gives us a total of 56 hours for the three boards and those three boards are as follows the extra large board was an 18 by 24 I sold for 860 16 by 20 for 560 and then the smallest of the three was 380 for a total amount of sales of eighteen hundred oh it's kind of ugly how I wrote that but that's okay total finished board feet on the three of them is 17.1 and if we take a look look at our materials and overheads so I used 24 board feet of that reclaimed Oak and if you remember it was a dollar 53 per board foot works out to just under 40 bucks for all the Oak and these three boards 15 board feet of Maple and 15 board feet of cherry I'll be honest I only used about a dozen board feet of each of those in this build and the rest got used up later on but will account for it all here and then we'll forget about it later on so 125 and 147 there wear and tear the additional wear and tear on my blades and machines due to that Oak I figured was about 35 bucks for these three boards the rubber feet a whopping three dollars for all three and then the packing office supplies 75 dollars and then of course my additional overhead which if you remember is about twenty dollars per finished board foot puts me at about 340 bucks there and my total cost adds up to 764 dollars for three Cube boards my total profit if you subtract that from my total sales works out two one thousand thirty six dollars which pins my hourly wage at any guesses here we go eighteen dollars and 50 cents an hour so a couple pennies worse than the brick boards anyways now we got some uh info that we can use to calculate those other numbers so hours per finished board foot worked out to about 3.3 hours per finished board foot it takes me to produce one finished board foot of the cube pattern cutting board cost per finish board foot works out to almost 45 dollars and then my total dollars per finish board foot take another shot works out to about a hundred and five dollars now that number there if I want to keep making 18 an hour is what I should charge but I don't I'd love to make forty dollars an hour so what do I need to do to do that well it's just again a simple matter of plugging in the numbers to the equation and 170 basically 176 dollars is what I should charge per finish drop my marker per finished board foot on the cube pattern board let me pick up my marker so if I charge that and I have a board that is five finished board feet what I need to charge on that board to make forty dollars an hour is 878 dollars so there we have it let's get right into the next one so this will be a quick one and this is the last of the boards using the oak flooring and to be honest I almost didn't build this one I was just going to toss all these short little pieces of oak into the scrap bin and move on with life but then I figured ah why not let's see what we can get out of this so after getting everything sorted by length I glued those two panels up in halves and then when I went to plane down those halves to join into the final panels it was here that I discovered I had made a mistake and failed to leave the glue out of the middle joint of one of these and I had to cut it in half at the bandsaw so after that I quickly hit things with the belt sander to knock down the excess glue and after I was done there I ran the edges that I was going to glue back together across the jointer and then I glued them back together and let them sit overnight the next day I hit the last glue scene with the belt sander and then I drew a square line on each panel and flushed up one edge of each one before cross cutting everything into end grain strips at the table saw I mixed up the strips in a random Manner and glued them together and because I wanted to achieve a more random look I cut things up again plain them mixed them up glued them up and then because I wanted things to look even more random I cut them up plane them up mix them up and glue them up up one more time I gave this board a few days to dry out before doing the flattening thing with the router and from here I did the initial belt sanding trimming and cleaning up of the edges it was here that I got the idea to add a walnut border on all four sides with some leftovers from the brick board so I glued two strips on the longer side first and once dry I knocked them down with the belt sander and then I used the table saw to flush up the edges and then I attached the final two strips once things had set up I hit everything again with the belt sander and then carved in the juice groove on the underside I carved in a pair of finger holds and away I went with the sanding process pausing along the way to ease all the edges and then Spritz scribble sand all the way up to 400 and just like that it was oil time and because I either forgot to record or lost the footage where I apply the wax attach the feet and package it up for shipment here's some pictures of the final product okay here's how long everything took so organizing and sorting all the pieces by length took an hour the first glue up took an hour fixing my mistake took half an hour squaring trimming and cross cutting took half an hour the first end grain glue up took 20 minutes then cutting planing and mixing things up again took half an hour the second glue up took 15 minutes stripping the clamps and scraping took 15 minutes 15 more minutes to cut plane and mix things up a third time the third and final glue up another 15 minutes flattening took half an hour the initial belt sanding took 20 minutes trimming and cleaning up the edges took 20 minutes and then gluing on the first pair of Walnut strips took 15 minutes belt sanding and trimming things up after that took 20 minutes and gluing on the second pair of Walnut strips to 15 minutes belt sanding and trimming things up again took 20 minutes and the initial sanding with the Rotex took 15 minutes juice Groove and finger holds took half an hour sanding took just one hour on this guy hand sanding took 20 minutes oil half an hour wax half an hour feet 15 minutes and then the final picture is listing on the website Instagram shop business took an hour and then wrapping it up boxing it up thank you card shipping label uploading tracking info took another hour so that puts us at a total of 12 and a half hours plus that 10 fiddle around Factor puts us at a total of 14 hours for a 15 by 22 inch oak and walnut board which I sold for 420 dollars now my cost on at the last of that Oak the last 10 board feet I figure cost about 15 bucks you can't really go to the store and buy 1.16 board feet of Walnut but in the event that you were able to do that it would cost you cost me about 17 Milling all that Oak that additional wear and tear on the blades and machines is about 15 bucks rubber feet was a dollar and then the package up and ship that board out costed me 25 bucks and then my overhead cost you know the shop rent that whole thing costed me 104 bucks for a grand total of 177 dollars cost just to make that one board so total profit on this one board was a whopping 243 dollars bring in my hourly wage too you're gonna like this one you're really gonna like this one it just keeps getting better so probably should have just put those pieces of flooring in the scrap bin like I was going to do in the beginning but anyways now we know so let's uh take a look at those other numbers so my hours per finish board foot on this one worked out to 2.7 my cost per finish board foot was about 34 dollars and then my final dollars per finish board foot worked out to 81 dollars if I want to keep making 17 an hour but I don't and if I had to recreate this exact board and I wanted to make forty dollars an hour this is what I would have to charge to do that and so that would pin this board at 737 dollars plus shipping you might be asking yourself who's going to pay that for that board and do you really think you should make forty dollars per hour building cutting boards and those are all good questions that maybe we'll talk about later but for now let's get into the next set of boards all right this is my absolute favorite pattern to build it's the one that I have built the most of and it's super labor intensive so this is going to be an extra condensed step-by-step process but if you're curious to see a more expanded version I have a whole nother video on this build but for now let's get going here so these all Begin by me slicing up a whole bunch of Walnut and Cherry and then sending just one face of each board through the planer and then I pair up the boards based on their width and I glue one piece of Walnut to one piece of cherry and I do as many of these back to back as I can to make the best use of my clamps and then come the next day I stripped the clamps off and I send both sides of each pair through the planer once I'm done at the planer I clean up one Edge on each set at the jointer and then I pop by the miter saw to flush up the ends and this just makes it a little easier to push through the table saw which is exactly what I do next then I cut a 45 degree bevel on each one and then similar to what I did with the cube boards I set the fence one and I feed everything through to create thin strips after slicing all those up I set the blade back to zero degrees and I run each strip through again to square up just one Edge and before squaring up the second Edge I actually set these strips aside and I turn my intention to a stack of Maple and Cherry I chop all the Maple and Cherry up to the same length as the strips I just finished with and then I plant each face of each board before cleaning up one edge of each one at the jointer at the table saw I clean up the other side of each board and then these are ready to rip into strips where I turn my attention back to the beveled rips and I set the fence accordingly to square up the other edge of each one of those without touching the fence I also send the Maple and Cherry through creating strips that are exactly the same width as the squared off Walnut and Cherry strips the next step after I have all these sliced up is to further cut down the pieces of Maple and Cherry and I need each piece of maple to turn into two and I need each piece of cherry to turn into three and I need to rip them down lengthwise so after a long time behind the table saw that mission is accomplished and I have all the pieces I need to do the second of five total glue ups and again I either forgot to film or misplace the footage to for this part so here's a clip from that other video I mentioned to give you an idea of how these all go together at this stage on this particular pattern I find it's really important to scrape the excess glue a couple hours after clamping that way in case any glue got into where it shouldn't have I can still break sticks apart and also removing this excess glue is a huge help in the next stage of planing it was also here that I discovered I had actually glued two things together that I shouldn't have so I was able to correct that at this point in time after scraping the excess everything goes back into the clamps for the night and the next day I come back strip everything off and send all four sides of every stick of lumber through the planer until everything is the exact same Dimension to make the pattern assembly a little easier on the brain I flush up all the ends at the miter saw and then I assemble the patterns for the next round of glue UPS I know by this point in the video I probably don't need to mention why I'm leaving the middle joint void of glue but just in case you missed it on all the other ones it's because my planer can only handle 12 inches at once and so I glue the full panels up in halves let them cure until the next day strip the clamps label the ends so I don't mix things up send them all to the planer and then glue everything up into the final panel where I once again let them dry until the following day where I come back to find out I had made another mistake even though I labeled everything I apparently didn't pay close enough attention to matching things back up and I actually glued up one panel the wrong way so another quick little surgery procedure at the bandsaw and this was corrected a little bit more glue some clamps and it was like it had never happened then it was time to take care of that single glue seam on each panel and just like all the other times before I did this with my belt sander once each one had received the treatment it needed it was time to flush up the ends on each one and I did so at the table saw with each end squared up it was time to cross cut everything into a very large amount of end grain strips the way this pattern comes together is to have two panels that are offset from each other by one pattern segment so it was important to keep the strips organized and together as they came out of the back of the blade after all of that was done it was time to assemble the final pattern and organize everything into all the sizes of boards I needed to build and with everything ready for the last glue UPS I headed over to my corner and I got going on the fifth and final glue sessions for this board after everything had been in the clamps for a couple hours I stripped each board one at a time scrape off the excess glue then stick the clamps back on until the following day where I come back and remove the clamps and as I typically do let the boards fully dry out for at least 48 Hours a couple days later each one gets its turn on the bench underneath the router bit and after a ton of belt sanding with 60 grit I Square Off trim and clean up all four edges of each one and bring them back to the bench to go over everything with the Rotex after 60 grit is complete I carve all the grooves into the ones that get grooves and I flip them all over and carve in a set of finger holds to each one after that a ton of sanding takes place each one goes through the same grip progression as all the other boards and I pause along the way to ease all the edges and corners of each one after a lot of sandpaper and a few tender fingers later everything was ready for oil and as usual I saturate the entire surface and oil and keep saturating it until the board stops soaking it up 20 minutes after that I wipe off the excess and I let these ones fully dry for a couple days before rubbing on a coat of beeswax and installing all the feet on them and since all but two of these were to fulfill customer orders most of them got packaged up and shipped out right away so here's how long all of that actually took selecting buying transporting all the wood took four hours cutting planing gluing all the cherry and walnut took five hours stripping all the clamps took half an hour planing jointing and flushing up the ends of panels after glue up took two hours ripping everything into beveled strips took four hours cutting up planing jointing and table sawing all the Maple and Cherry took three hours and getting all the wood ready for the second glue up took six hours the second glue up stage itself took four hours and then stripping the clamps and scraping took two hours and then stripping the clamps again took half an hour planing all the glued up sticks of wood took four hours another hour to flush up all the ends assembling the patterns for the next glue up took an hour and a half that next glue up took an hour and a half stripping the clamps and scraping that glue up took an hour and then planting the panel halves took two hours gluing the halves together took two hours stripping the clamps took half an hour fixing yet another mistake took half an hour belt sanding took three hours flushing up all the ends took half an hour cross cutting all the end grain strips two and a half hours assembling the final patterns an hour and a half the final glue UPS all together took three hours stripping scraping reclamping one hour all the flattening took four hours all the initial belt sanding three and a half hours squaring trimming and jointing all the edges took two hours the initial 60 grit with my Rotex sander took four hours the juice grooves took two hours the handles underneath took an hour and a half and are you ready for it all the sanding took 10 hours all the hand sanding took three hours oiling three hours waxing two and a half hours feed install hour and a half and then the final picture is the website and the Instagram shop business for the remaining two boards took two hours and then packing everything up and shipping everything out took eight hours giving us a total of 105 hours factoring the ten percent fiddle Factor puts us at 115 and a half hours for a total of eight zigzag pattern cutting boards and they are as follows I'm not going to read all that to you I'll let that I'll let you read that on your own time we'll just go over the numbers for now so total sales six thousand six hundred and thirty dollars on those eight boards and those eight boards were a total of fifty two point eight finished board feet and if we go over the materials here Walnut 76 board feet almost twelve hundred dollars cherry and maple well you can read it there for a total of 2500 and nine dollars on my wood there's no cheap reclaimed Oak here it's all expensive hardwood from the wood store so 2500 bucks on the wood two trips to go get that wood was twenty dollars rubber feet for all the boards eight dollars at twenty five dollars a board to package it and ship it out 200 bucks total and then my overhead cost that's a big number 1056 bucks for my overhead cost and that puts my total profit oh sorry I'm ahead of myself here my total cost is 37 93. now if we take that number subtract it from our total sales we get a total profit on these eight Boards of 2837 dollars and my hourly wage what do you think did it go up or down compared to all the other ones well I'll tell you what I got some good news it went up a little bit we made 24.46 an hour building these boards which is still a little lower than I would like but it's a step in the right direction so let's take a look at the rest of the numbers now so on the zigzag boards my hours per finish board foot works out to 2.2 hours per finish board foot which you might be like aren't these more labor intensive and yes they are but I have built so many of these that is just like clockwork I can move through these fast especially when I'm building a lot of them so yeah not to brag but I'm quite fast at these boards and then the cost per finish board foot works out to 72 dollars a finished board foot just my cost alone and then total dollars per board foot on this exact build was 126 dollars per finish board foot and again that's if I want to make 25 an hour of course I'd like to make a little bit more so we plug in that forty dollar an hour and that gives me a 160 dollars per finish board foot that I should charge if I want to make a little bit more money and what that works out too on a 16 by 20 is uh oh where's my number here we go it's 800 dollars and so I was charging 620 for a 16 by 20 so closing the Gap a little bit there yeah that's the zigzag boards let's move into the second final set of boards so I guess I decided that I wasn't busy enough building all the other boards that I was going to throw these into the mix and what these are are a couple very large boards built entirely Auto reclaimed whiskey barrel Oak and a quick backstory on why I had all these thin pieces of barrel staves kicking around was for the past year I was brought expired whiskey barrels by a local salt harvesting company and I would dismantle them and I'd shave down the whiskey infused Char on the inside and deliver it back in the form of sawdust which they would then use to create a whiskey infused smoked salt and I would be left with all these thin pieces of oak so here we go I hauled everything over to the planer to clean up the side that hadn't already been planed and then over at the table saw I trimmed one edge of every piece then I ran everything through again to make all the pieces the same width after picking up everything I trimmed both ends of each piece at the miter saw and sorted nearly 500 small pieces of oak by length and further divided them up into 24 inch panels which I then glued up the usual way so that they were appropriately sized for the planer once the halves of each panel were planed each pair got glued up into of their final panels and left for the next day where I then hit each one as needed with the belt sander after squaring up the ends and trimming the edges of the panels flush I cross cut everything at the table saw into the first set of end grain strips what ensued from here was mixing things up randomly cleaning up the glue edges at the planer doing some awkward diagonal style type glue UPS to achieve a certain look then stripping the clamps off after a couple hours to scrape and then putting the clamps back on until the next day where I proceeded to strip them cut them plain them and organize and separate everything into two large final boards and then glue things up for a final time over at the glue up station I put these ones on the back burner for a couple weeks before I hit them with the router so they were nice and dry and once flattened it was the exact same protocol as the rest 60 grit with the belt sander then Square trim clean up all the edges 60 grit with the Rotex then juice grooves on the tops finger holds on the bottoms and I spritzed and scribbled and sanded my way through a few grits before easing all the edges and then polish the end grain all the way up to 400. these two boards were especially rewarding to watch come to life and a few days later I waxed them up installed the feet snapped some finished pictures and listed one of them for sale and here's how long it took to turn a bunch of barrel pieces into cutting boards so all the planting and table sawing took eight hours sorting by length for the first glue up took an hour and a half the first glue UPS took three hours stripping the clamps and scraping and putting the clamps on after that first glue up took an hour and a half planing the panel halves took an hour gluing into the final panels took an hour and a half belt sanding everything took an hour it took half an hour to square and trim up the ends and it took another hour and a half to cross cut into end grain strips and then I planed the edges of those strips which took an hour I mixed everything up it took half an hour those weird diagonal glue UPS took an hour and a half cutting them up again took an hour and a half mixing them up took a half an hour gluing them up took an hour stripping and scraping took half an hour flattening took an hour belt sanding took an hour trimming edges took an hour the initial Rotex sanding took an hour an hour for the grooves and finger holds all the sanding took three hours one more hour for the hand sanding half an hour for the oiling half an hour for the waxing and then 15 minutes for the feed install but we'll round that up to half an hour and since I was selling just one of these I just had to take pictures of that one and put that one up on my website and my Instagram shop that took an hour and then I wrapped them both up and I boxed them both off the same so that took two hours for that bringing the grand total for these two boards to 38 and a half hours plus that 10 fiddle factor which I round up to four hours total 42 and a half hours to build these two boards sized at 18 by 24 inches for a total of 13 and a half finished board feet total sales well because I sold just one of them I sold it for eight hundred and twenty dollars and I actually gifted the other one to a friend for a birthday gift so 42 and a half hours 820 in sales you can start doing the numbers on my hourly wage on this little project anyways materials and overhead so the wood was free it came to me free and I was compensated for the work that I did on it so I was just left with some free Wood Packing and office supplies I did pack them up both in a similar fashion so it costed me the same so 25 a board times two gives me fifty dollars my overhead really cut into my profit margin on this one 320 bucks bringing my overall cost to 370 and if I subtract 370 off my total sales leaves me with 400 and 50 profit and you're really going to like the hourly wage on this one this one's a doozy here we go ten dollars and fifty nine cents it's just that's just funny right okay let's uh let's take a look at the other numbers so hours cost total dollars per board foot I'm not going to read these out to you this time I'll let you take a gander at that while I keep yakking about how I'd like to make forty dollars an hour and if I were to ever recreate these boards which I have zero plans to but if I did and I wanted to make 40 bucks an hour this is what I'd be looking at so to figure it out I just times forty dollars by my total hours I put into this build add on my cost divide that by finished board feed gives me a hundred and fifty dollars per finished board foot times that by the finished board footage of just one board which is 6.75 gives me a cost of a thousand and twelve dollars is what I would need to charge for just one of those boards which is getting up there for a cutting board not a lot of people are going to pay that but that's okay because I'm not going to make these anymore so let's get right into the next set of boards the final set of boards so these ones were a lot of fun to make because there's zero stress about lining things up perfectly and there's zero expectation for how they're going to turn out they just turn out the way they turn out they are what they are they're chaos boards so here we go throughout building all the other boards every time I had some cutoffs I'd pile them here on this table and with all the other boards being done and no more cutoffs being created the time had come to deal with all this so the first thing I did was organize everything in the best manner possible I separated all the end grain cutoffs from The Edge grain strips I made the call to scrap a bunch of it and then I further organized and separated what was left by length and by size until I had some panels that were ready for a glue up I glued everything up the usual way and then I planed everything down the usual way before gluing the final panels up the following day I did the usual thing to the single glue seams left with the belt sander and then squared off and flushed up the ends before cross cutting everything into end green strips at the table saw from here I randomly mixed up the strips and headed over to the glue up corner to stick everything together in a couple different panels at this point I decided to use up some Walnut I had left over to put borders around the two boards that I was going to get out of all this so I glued that up sanded it and cut it up alongside this build once the panels had dried I cut them up again mixed them up again glued them up again this time adding in two of the Walnut borders and I let them dry until the next day where I trimmed up the sides slapped on the last two pieces and I let them sit until the next day where I stripped the clamps a few days later I stuck each one in the router sled to carve off that outer crust and reveal the craziness below and then I hit them with the belt sander before cleaning up the edges at the jointer then it was the usual 60 grit in the Rotex each one got a juice Groove and a set of finger holes and from there it was the usual Spritz scribble sand repeat pausing along the way to do all the hand sanding and then Spritz scribble sand repeat all the way up to 400 a little bit of oil a little bit of wax and four feet on each one some finished pictures later these boards were ready to be listed on the website and they didn't last long both were scooped up within a week or so of being listed so here's how long that process took organizing and sorting everything took a couple hours gluing up the panel halves took an hour planing has gluing up again took an hour belt sanding took half an hour flushing up Anne's cross cutting and mixing up took two hours another glue up took half an hour cutting up and planing after that took an hour mixing up and gluing up took an hour gluing on the final Walnut edging took half an hour flattening took an hour belt sanding took half an hour cleaning up the edges took half an hour the initial 60 grit in the Rotex took half an hour the juice grooves and the finger holds took an hour all the orbital sanding took three hours oiling everything took half an hour waxing half an hour installing the feet half an hour and then taking the finished pictures putting them on the website the Instagram shop wrapping them up boxing them up all that took four hours for a total of 21 and a half hours let's not forget our 10 F around Factor because let's face it when I say fiddle there's another word that goes through your head admit it there is puts a set a grand total of 24 hours for two boards sized at 16 by 20 sold each of them for 420 bucks so 840 is total sales on those two boards 10 finished board feet total and not a lot going on for materials and overhead I'm calling the wood free technically it wasn't free I paid for it but it was accounted for in all the other boards so we're gonna call it free just for the sake of having some fun here packing in office supplies 25 per board puts us at fifty dollars total for that and then my overhead as usual cut way into my profit margin I'm gonna have to move back into my little one car garage got a I gotta increase that profit margin anyways 250 dollars total cost on these boards so subtract 250 off 840 puts my total profit at 590 and then my hourly wage because this is all free wood I was hoping for a little bit higher hourly wage but I came in at basically 25 an hour so now I'll never recreate these boards again and I wasn't going to do the 40 an hour thing but just to keep in step with the rest of the video I did anyways so if you want to take a look at those numbers well again I keep yakking about making forty dollars an hour this is what I would have to do so forty dollars times the 24 hours it took me to build these two boards plus my cost divide by the finished board foot puts me at 121 dollars per finish board foot times five finish board foot per board I would have to charge 605 dollars for one of those boards to make the hourly wage I'd like to make so that brings us to the end of all six boards and I got a little bonus for you do you like what you see on your screen it's okay if you don't they are definitely not for everybody and I hadn't planned on building these but I had just enough pieces left over that I thought ah why not so in case you're keeping close track there and you're like hey that was only 23 boards well these are the two that bring it up to 25 and I didn't record any of this process I didn't really keep track of anything I just put them together at the last minute idea but we can use some of our formulas to figure out some numbers on them just for fun so I got an 11 by 14 by an inch and a half I sold it for 220 and I got a little bit larger one and I sold that for 240. so my total sales for those two Picasso like boards were 460 dollars and a total finished board feet of 4.7 so I can use my hours per finish board foot from my chaos boards that I just showed you and that is 2.4 hours so if I take that and I times that by my finished board foot for those last two boards gives me 11.2 hours plus that 10 fiddle Factor basically puts me at 13 hours it took to put those two boards together and I know it cost me twenty dollars per finish board foot basically overall cost that's my glue sandpaper all that fun stuff I get 94 dollars that's what it costed me to put those two boards together and if I subtract 94 off my total sales gives me a profit margin of 366 dollars divide by 13 hours my hourly wage was 28 dollars to whip those two boards together now overall numbers so we know total sales was fourteen thousand three hundred and ninety dollars for a total of 348 hours worked over a total of 43 days total boards I made was 25 finished board feet is that my total material cost is just under five thousand dollars total overhead was just under three thousand dollars and my total cost of project to build these 25 boards was just under eight thousand dollars my total profit was about sixty six hundred bucks so sixty six hundred dollars divide by 348 hours any idea what my hourly wage is if you guessed forty dollars an hour you clearly have not been paying attention or you really haven't taken a shot every time I say finish board foot but if you guessed nineteen dollars an hour you are absolutely spot on the money so good job to you if you have been crunching the numbers on your own piece of paper at home but wait there is more if that doesn't sting the ego enough I'm gonna keep finding ways to decrease my hourly wage so let's get into some of those Capital expenses I talked about earlier on so I made at least six additional trips to the various stores for supplies throughout the entire build an hour a trip let's call it ten dollars a trip so six more hours and sixty dollars my Festival vacuum decided to stop working properly and I had to send it away for warranty during this build the process it took about four hours total of my time and for two weeks the sanding I had to do was slightly awkward I had to rig out my belt and orbital sander to my shop vac and my best guess on how long this added to the project was a couple more hours and at least thirty dollars in plumbing parts and driving around my table saw is on its last leg and has been for some time and it was giving me a lot of grief on this project and I spent a good part of a day messing around taking the motor out and fixing it up so we'll call that six hours and when I got my Festool vacuum back I stupidly forgot to put the bag back in So After figuring out what was going on it took me about an hour to deal and clean up with the mess that had made and speaking of cleanup it took me about three full days to do a deep clean in my shop now granted that wasn't just from this board build and the cleanup was long overdue from projects before this board bill but let's call it a solid eight hours of cleanup due to these 25 boards and then loading up all the waste and taking it to the landfill took a couple hours and lastly I misplaced one of my SD cards I literally had it in my hand one second and it was gone the next and I didn't even find it during the deep clean and since it happened on this build I'm gonna attribute it to this build so all of that adds up to another 30 hours and 490 dollars so let's adjust those numbers total hours on Project is now 378 total project cost is now over eight thousand dollars and my profit has gone down to 61.24 which takes my hourly wage down as well to sixteen dollars per hour before tax and now some fun facts some fun facts with the numbers so at 378 hours over 43 days works out to about nine hours per day 43 days and 6124 in profit works out to about 142 dollars for a nine hour day which I'd like to work a little less and make a little bit more hours per finish board foot works out to 2.6 for the entire build cost per finish board foot worked out to just under 54 dollars for everything and then total dollars per finish board foot worked out to just under a hundred dollars on all of the boards in this video so that concludes the board building portion of this video and I think that satisfies the Curiosity around the immediate return on investment you know my sales you know my profit you now know my hourly wage sixteen dollars an hour and the boards are done they're shipped out they're gone they're not going to make me any more money cases close so now it's time to talk about the potential long-term return on investment aka the YouTube portion of my business and I'm going to flip the board around here and talk a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes so I move cameras around a lot I have two cameras the one I'm looking in now and my iPhone is usually off to the side and I'm always setting them up to get different angles of everything and I don't exactly have a stopwatch that I hit start and then hit stop when I'm starting to set something up and stop setting it up to keep exact track of how long things take me but a good gut guess is probably a third to half the time on top of a project is time spent moving stuff around behind the scenes so I'm going to call it 40 and 40 of 378 hours is an additional 150 hours on this project which seems like a lot but it feels right because I do spend a lot of time fiddling around with cameras so and I'm going to include 80 hours for the actual editing of this video because let's face it this was a long one this thing was a beast and I don't have the fastest computer at home but I'm working on that so all together that adds up 230 hours on top of the initial 378 which brings the project total to just over 6 hundred hours and then if I take 528 hours in the shop just for curiosity's sake at 43 days in the shop works out to more like a 12 hour day in the shop and when I said a nine hour day feels right I was kind of lying because I knew that was coming up and that feels a lot more right so I work some long days yeah hourly wage any guesses what 608 hours brings my hourly wage down to and keep in mind that this is if I make zero dollars on the video ever this would be what I would make on all the work that I put into this project so far so here we go it is ten dollars and seven cents an hour which is just laughable and I think that answers this person's question okay let's play imagination time here for just a minute let's say I want to make forty dollars an hour for all 608 hours of work on this project what do I need to do to achieve that well let's take forty dollars an hour times it by 608 gets us a really big number of 24 320. I know I've made just over six thousand dollars profit so far so I have just over eighteen thousand dollars left to make up I need this video to make me eighteen thousand dollars so that I can make forty dollars an hour on all the boards I built all the camera work and it would certainly help me forget that broken camera lens a little easier so what do I need to do on YouTube to do that well I've seen anywhere from three dollars to sixteen dollars per thousand views let's just call it ten dollars per thousand views that's a nice even number that's a nice average so ten dollars into eighteen thousand dollars that works out too 1.8 million views is that doable I don't know that's a lot of people watching a video about a guy talking about how much money he makes building cutting boards but crazier things have happened and this thing might catch a wave on the YouTube algorithm and go for a wicked ride and could rack that up in no time at all this video might also be a complete dud and I'm stuck making ten dollars an hour and it could do anything in between it's really in the hands of YouTube right now and in your hands if you want to share this with somebody that you think might get a kick out of it I would certainly appreciate that so let's start wrapping this thing up let's get into some of those Lessons Learned so I could have filled this entire board with Lessons Learned but I thought I'd just focus on the four main ones and these are recurring lessons because I'm a stupid man and it takes me more than one time to learn a lesson so the first of which is be careful how much you bite off don't bite off more than you can chew and I certainly did that in this build you know I started out with just a few customer orders and I had some more come in so I was like I'll just build everything at once and then I'll just take on some additional boards at the same time next thing you know I just was struggling to keep it all together and I ended up being really scatterbrained and making a lot of silly mistakes along the way both inside and outside of the shop you can just ask my wife on that so at times I felt overwhelmed and you know at the beginning I it's just so much fun it's like I'm gonna build all these boards but then you get into the thick of it and it's like oh why did I do this to myself this sucks I just want to drop everything and get out of here and you really gotta dig deep to keep going and well that's exactly what I had to do I dug deep I grinded through and here we are at the end of it and I will be very cautious before I take on that amount of boards again especially because I found out in this video just exactly how much money I'm making and it's like there are definitely ways to make a lot more money with a lot less effort so that's my first lesson lesson number two reclaimed wood doesn't always mean larger profits in fact it seems to be the opposite is true and I found that out on this build as well you know these are things that I feel like I should have learned a lot earlier on in my woodworking career that you know these are things I should know by now but you know that's another lesson too is you just woodworking will always continue to Humble the person so I got all that oak flooring and those oak staves and I was like I'm gonna make a killing with this turns out it just beat up my machines and it beat up me mentally so reclaimed wood doesn't always mean larger profits this one is the biggest lesson of my lifetime for three years I've been attaching timelines to boards and for three years I've been coming up late on most of them I just I like to think that my time management is pretty awesome and that I get a lot done and maybe I do get a lot done but not in the time that I think I can get it done and on this build I'll be honest I ended up emailing a couple customers saying hey you know I just got in over my head and your board is going to be a little bit late and that is never a fun position to put yourself in and at the same time I'm like why do I even attach timelines to things like it just stifles creativity but at the same time it's like well when somebody orders a product you kind of want to let them know how long it's going to be you know when I order something say off Amazon I like to know when it's getting to my house and so I just it's like a form of self-sabotage just saying I'm gonna have this done in this time and then always coming up short it's just yeah be very careful with timelines and then of course protecting your margins obviously I didn't make as much money as I would have liked to on this build and you know I struggle with this and I'm like yes protect your margins but if you put them too high you might not sell any boards and so I'd rather make a little less money building more boards and keeping the cash flow coming so I can continue to build up the YouTube portion of my business then not sell any boards at all and have to go pound the pavement looking for a day job you know at the end of the day I'd rather make a little less money doing something I love than make a little bit more money doing something I hate obviously the goal is to make more money working less time doing something you love so those are kind of the four main lessons let's get into the areas of opportunity and one thing I'll say you've probably extracted some lessons out of this video so please feel free to drop those in the comments again this is all learning the more we can learn from this experience of mine the better so feel free to share so I call these areas of opportunity because they're just that they're parts of the job that I identify where there is some opportunity to save time and money the first of which is having a bigger planer you saw how much I had to glue things up accordingly and then join them back up the next day into halves and all the belt sanding and all the extra clamping that comes along with it if I had a 24 25 inch planer I would have been able to glue everything up at once send it through and just move on with life and I bet if I had a bigger planer I would have saved about 30 hours on this project plus about eight nights just waiting for that glue to dry until the next day when I could you know carry on clamps the old cliche is true a woodworker can never have too many clamps and I have a fair amount of clamps I've got about 40 bar clamps in the same in hand clamps but it was still not anywhere near enough to cruise through this project like I wanted to if I add about three times the amount of clamps I would have saved myself about 15 to 20 hours and five nights of waiting for glue to dry and I just would have removed a completely clunky component from the build because when I run out of clamps and I still have things to glue next thing you know I'm running over to the things I glued up like an hour ago and I'm trying to rob what clamps I can off that to attach to this and it's just like I said it's clunky belt sanding I spent about 25 hours behind a belt sander on this job just picture that just a whole day 25 hours behind a belt sander if I had a drum sander I would pretty much well I would eliminate the need for a belt sander because even with a drum sander and a 12 inch planer I could send those panels through the jump sander and then after I flattened the boards I wouldn't need to pull out the belt sander I could just send those to the drum sander as well so that would save me probably 12 hours if I didn't upgrade in the sanding Department speaking of sanding orbital sanding is another big area of opportunity and I might I love my Rotex it's probably the best sander out there it's the Sandpaper that I should invest in I've used a little bit of the 3M cubatron the ceramic abrasive stuff and it is marvelous stuff I just didn't use it as much as I should have on this build I went with a classic aluminum oxide and the 3M stuff speeds things up by about 50 so had I used it through the entire build I would have shaved 20 hours off sanding which is significant I I do a lot of a lot of sanding it's ridiculous and then one thing I thought of when I was doing all those glue ups with my little four inch roller is why don't I get a wider roller if I went to like a six or an eight inch I could easily cut my glue time in half so I did a lot of gluing and I would probably have saved myself six to eight hours if I had just went out and got a six dollar bigger roller so all of that adds up to about 83 to 90 hours and two weeks of nights that had a AI The Ideal tool set I could have saved on this project and at 16 an hour that's what I would have saved and if I was making forty dollars an hour and to be honest if I saved that much time on this project I'd be a lot closer to that forty dollars an hour but there is the number on that if I was making my ideal wage so let's wrap this thing up with some final thoughts so was it all worth it financially kind of not really you and I both found out that I'm not making near as much money as I'd like to building cutting boards at the same time the experience was priceless some of those lessons I had up on the board I've been trying to learn those for a long time especially that one around timelines I think I finally drilled that into my thick skull once and for all I don't want to speak too soon but I think I finally nailed that one down and that alone was worth it and then I look back on the last eight weeks even the last three years building all those boards and how small a margin I made on those and I'm like man should I have done this exercise like a couple years ago and jacked up my prices then but my gut tells me no because if I had done that I probably wouldn't have sold the boards on needed to create the cash flow needed to get me to where I am today and where I am today I'm so super happy with and I'm so excited about the future so everything that has happened up into this point I believe has absolutely been meant to happen and I have absolutely no regrets about anything that has taken place before this moment after all it was so many cutting boards that finally gave me the confidence to jump into the YouTube thing and then once I was on YouTube it was videos on how to make cutting boards that brought in enough watch hours and enough of a subscriber base to allow me to monetize the channel and monetizing the Channel created a secondary income which has freed up the time and allowed me to make a video such as this one so I've really kind of come full circle with cutting boards and at the root of all that are my customers if somebody didn't want to buy a board from me I wouldn't have had a project to make I wouldn't have had a project to film and I wouldn't be standing here in front of you today so if you happen to be one of my customers and you have a board in your home I thank you so much you have played a vital role in making all of this possible and if you haven't purchased a board for me I still consider you're one of my customers because you just watched an hour-long video about me talking about how much money I make building cutting boards so thank you so much for your time and can you make a living building cutting boards absolutely you can you can do anything you want in today's world that's the beauty of being alive in 2022 you can do anything you can sell pictures on the internet for hundreds of thousands of dollars if somebody can do that you can absolutely make a living selling thousand dollar cutting boards all day long you just gotta find the right marketing strategy you got to find the right clientele and then the most important thing is you just got to go out there and get after it so the answers to these questions are yes and yes and I'm going to leave you with one final ask if you've made it this far in this video this must be of some value to you so I'll ask you kindly to get out of the viewing window and hit that thanks button and pick at least the two dollar option as you know I could really use a bigger planer and a drum sander and a new table saw and if 20 000 people make it this far and they hit that button that will will allow me to take a massive step forward in my business and what I'm able to create for future projects and for future videos so please consider it and if you want to tell me to take that thanks button and shove it where the sun don't shine do it kindly in the comments okay that's it for this one I'm gonna wrap this marathon of a video up here's a couple other videos of things I've actually built that are not cutting boards please go and check those out and that is it I'm going to catch you on the next one bye for now

Channel: Ryan Hawkins

Views: 302,176

Keywords: cutting boards, how to make money, how much money I make, money, finance, how to make cutting boards, end grain cutting boards, custom cutting boards, wood cutting board, charcuterie, charcuterie board, serving board, 3D cutting board, patterned cutting board, profit, sales

Id: Rt0DaUbhIm0

Length: 77min 12sec (4632 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022