Day 6 – HD Tray Tables

I’m a bit tardy in posting this update. Yesterday we completed the construction phase of this project by making the parts for the stand and assembling them. The second payment has been requested and Brenda has attempted to comply. But our web site was being a bit balky last night. I managed to track down the problem and get it to run a test transaction, so it should be working again. No one else complained about not being able to make a payment or purchase, so I don’t know for sure how long it has been broken. This was a fairly short day in the workshop, so I used the extra time to update the pricing on the HD Tray Tables on the web site using actual figures from building this set. See, in the past we’ve always estimated the amount of labor we put into things – kind of like an auto mechanic does, figuring what we think it should take based on other jobs. But recently we’ve been time clocking each project to determine exactly how much labor is actually being put into our projects, and where we might be able to streamline things with new equipment. For example, by purchasing a Performax Drum Sander for $1200 we could assemble the ribbon panels needed for this project all at one time and smooth them with the drum sander instead of the planer. This would eliminate chip-out – which is a problem in some species of wood – and reduce labor by at least an hour. Is a $25 savings to the customer worth a $1200 expense to us? It may be if these table sets continue to sell as briskly as they do. Recently we’ve had quite a few inquiries from people wanting to know if the posted price was for one table or the set. We thought that was pretty clear, but since these do generally sell in sets of four, we went ahead and re-did the listing for the HD Tables so they sell as a set of four tables with stand and are priced accordingly. I’ll do the same for the Classic Tables as soon as I have the spare time. The database that drives all the options offered on these things is extensive and it takes hours to make this sort of change to a listing. Full details of todays workshop activities are available in the journal for this project. Since we’re on hold this morning I think I'll go lay in some firewood. They're predicting a very cold winter this year, so I'd best get a head start on it. Doug (PS I've tried repeatedly to add a picture to this post for you, but Blogger is being balky this morning. It says the picture was uploaded and added, but it doesn't show up. It's time to get on to other things now.)