moorebuilder

Snobby or not, when someone tells me to look at their great piece of custom built furniture - I immediately pull out the drawer and check if it is dovetailed or not.

Other joints are just as strong and have their place, but nothing screams out "custom" and "well built" as much as a dovetail on a drawer box.

For the other 99% of people that wouldn't know or couldn't tell the difference, other joints are just as good, if not better. I guess we have to play to the audience and go from there.

This is a great article! Many of us hit that point when our "fanciful notion" of operating a business meets economic reality. It is a completely different animal when your passion and craft is paying the bills and supporting the family.

The only point I would like to add is that those of you considereing the switch from hobby to career, please keep in mind that your craft and passion will need to become a business in order for you to survive and thrive. Every moment of time dedicated to your shop must somehow be oriented to furthering your business, and needs to be accounted for. Small tools, large tool repairs, time spent sketching layouts and picking up supplies, repairs to your shop area - these all have to have a place when you estimate your projects. Overhead and Profit are far too often looked at as dirty words by craftspeople. Those dirty words will cause the demise of your business if you do not mind them with a near religious fervor. Each of us has to find the happy medium where craft meets business enterprise. But starting a business and working only for wages is simply not sustainable.

Best of luck!

My shop space is rather narrow (8') and long, with doors on both ends. I have made rolling stations for many of the tools so I can move them out onto the concrete patio to work. I have a floor model bandsaw that stays put and have built a work shelf that the drill press rests on permanently. Other than that, everything is portable. I would love a permanent, large shop space but that is not in the cards in the near future. What I do now works well.