JohnBarton

Very very cool. I love to see material "repurposed". I also go to thrift shops and flea markets when I can looking for old suitcases and bags to get parts from. Those rings are pretty common on mass produced bags - you don't see them used on custom work very often. I find them to be one of the best hardware pieces for a bag. I often buy leather from brokers who specialize in buying up remnants from factories. In this way you can come across some very unique leather which otherwise wouldn't be possible to get because you couldn't afford to have it made. In addition to being often less expensive than buying from regular brokers it also somewhat insures the cases from being copied and keeps them unique. Good find - hope you can get more of the Levi's leather!

Yes, this is how it is supposed to look. Edge finishing is not about the color in my opinion. It's about having nicely finished edges where the leather won't peel, split or fray and degrade the piece. I often finish the edges with something light like spit or oil and clear wax so that they will not get very dark. I find that the super dark edges are not always preferable against light stained pieces. Personally I think that what you have done here give this piece a wonderful UNIQUE character and it matches the body perfectly to my eyes. I will often add in the right color of dye or even use a felt-tip marker when doing the edge-finishing to give the leather a slight tint that matches the body. I think that edge finishing is something that can pretty personal in the technique but when the end-result is a properly sealed and shape edge then it does not matter how you got there. For the record we use a piece of a maple pool cue that i cut and sanded all the finish off. I put it in the drill press and shaped it with a file so that it has two grooves and a tip. Then I oiled it up good with olive oil and then spun some gum traganth on it. Then I took a leather strap and burnished the wood. Now we use this manually, in a drill and in the drill press. I also use buffing wheels on the dremel. And I have put a piece of leather in an orbital sander as well. And tried canvas in the oribital sander. All these things work and the key is to find the combination that you like. Also what works is the chuck on the drill. Sometimes I will just use the chuck and let the metal go against the leather. At the end of the day it's all about pressure and friction. I play pool and when we put on leather tips we burnish the edges with a little spit and a piece of veg tan. I made a little tool with a piece of leather glued to it for this purpose and I can burnish a tip by hand in less than a minute and it has the most beautiful edge you could ever want.

I see it as a marketing opportunity. I would dye the stitching black on the back and tell the customer that this is so the normally white stitching won't get grimy looking from being held to the body. Might start a new trend and become your signature :-) While the above is halfway kidding, I tend to fall MOSTLY on the side of take it apart and do it again. Here is how I view this: I imagine myself having spent a lot of money on a case and sitting at home admiring it. I see myself going over it inch by inch to become very familiar with it. Almost a sexual experience....... I would be very disappointed to find any spot which screamed "carelessness" at me. I would hate to have anything that diminishes my pleasure of owning this case. I would hate to have to think to myself that it's perfect except for....... and I also hate to have to make excuses when I hand my wonderful case to a friend and he sees the flaw. Sure, most customers are willing to accept small issues. But that doesn't mean that they feel good about it. Why let something hang in the air if you can avoid it? Because you are screwed either way. If you don't tell the customer and he finds it then you have to backpedal. If you do tell the customer then you have either hope he says no problem or give him a discount. Either way it's never "perfect" and sticks in both of your minds. For me I'd make another one or repair this one and forget it. I have plenty of "oops" pieces in my shop. We recycle them as we can on other cases and often the result is a great piece. Win-Win-Win no one has something gnawing at them.

Not really weighing in one way or the other but I'd like to point out that to me there is a bit of a disconnect here when you are trying to connect the prices that leather workers receive for finished goods and the "morality tax" that some people are willing to pay for supposedly bio-ethical things. If any leather worker is not getting the amount of money that they feel that they deserve for their work then they should either quit, make better things or improve their marketing. The argument that leather work is grossly under priced has nothing to do with the type of leather used. We all know that some people get great money for their stuff and other people don't. That's just life and has to do with many many factors. No one is ENTITLED to a certain income JUST BECAUSE they spent x-amount of hours learning their craft or because they work so hard at it. People earn what they can according to their ability AND market forces. I agree that there IS a market for so-called "green" materials. Whether there SHOULD be a market where people are asked to pay more and willingly pay more for these items is another topic. In my mind what should happen is what is already happening and that is that companies are finding out that being environmentally friendly and bio-ethical saves them money and preserves profits. Thus, instead of having to market SOME materials as more ethical while implying that other materials are not, we can all benefit by knowing that industry as a whole is more ethical and humane. Personally I think that any leather worker who markets their products as being made from "free range" cows is painting themselves into a corner because then they have to pretty much NOT use any other type of leather. And let's say the price of material is double that of other leather. Why increase the price of the finished goods by 3-10x ??? Is that ethical and moral to take more money away from a person just because you can play on their emotions and sense of morality? This seems like the wrong way to increase one's income. I mean if we really care about these things and I am linking the vegan lifestyle with the green movement here, then one has to consider the carbon impact that making the 3 to 10x extra money to PAY for the "slaughter-free" leather goods has on the world. Life is really a viscous circle isn't it?

You can buy from OTB using your social security # as your tax id. I did it for years. You just have to satisfy their minimum purchasing requirements. Also you can register as a sole proprietor in most cities for about $10 or so. In which case you will still use your SSN but you will have a "license" to fax to suppliers if they require it. As for the clasp issue, this is my solution after I got very tired of buying off the shelf hardware that sucks. http://www.jbcases.com/lids-latches.html These closures hold 8-12lbs and don't release even with violent movement. Yet when you want them open they come open easily. I am a big big fan of in-house solutions and make extensive use of neodymium (rare-earth) magnets to solve my latch needs.

A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men." — Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135 http://www.jbcases.com/poorknight.html This case is part of a set that were made for two brothers. This is the gift from one brother to the other.

My customer ordered this one for himself and the Poor Knight as a gift to his brother. We worked on this design for quite a while. My customer was inspired by the leather work done by Skyhorse leather and wanted something with a similar feel to it. So this is what came out of that collaboration. The Portuguese Royal coat of arms is inlaid and hand painted. The silhouette of Portugal on the front is a custom embossed piece. As always we took longer than we thought to finish this case. However I suppose when you are getting something meant to be used for a lifetime and passed on to your children then it's worth the wait. You can see a video presentation of these two cases here; Notice the custom Puzzle Latch. You have to watch the video to see this one in action. We spent about a day working on this latch to make it perfect. All the tooling done by Zhen Hai Lee. Zhen Hai has left us to go back to his hometown and open his own studio. He will still be doing work for us but not as my in-house tooler any longer. His own work has taken off and he needs to devote more time to building his business. Thanks for looking at the Portugal case. - The Poor Knight to follow in another post.

It's amazing how you can look at the same thing and NOT have the same idea. A couple months ago I spent all morning walking around a machine market looking for a hand operated hydraulic press - essentially a jack welded into a frame. They sell them at Harbor Freight in the USA for around $100. Since they are made in China I thought no problem to find them here. No one ever even saw one in their life here. I looked at dozens of hydraulic jacks and thought a little about how I could use them and never once thought to weld one to a frame like you did. Thanks! Just today I had a conversation with a machine maker who made me up a special rivet press for my cue cases. He said he could make a custom die press for me - I wonder if his idea runs along the same lines.

Those all look great. I have one concern and that is the use of the metal buttons as closures on the front of the cases. My concern is that by creating a hard point the Ipad could get damaged if something hard were to hit the case on that button. I too have been considering making Iphone/Ipad cases and so I have been studying them a bit. I own an Ipod touch and my friend has an Ipad. I don't think that I would put any sort of metal closure on the case which could lead to damage. I honestly think that it creates a product liability headache that you don't want with $500 devices. I protect high end pool cues for a living so I am kind of sensitive to these things. Other than that awesome job on the looks and designs. I know that deciding on patterns and colors is often one of the harder tasks on things like this.

My wife Karen has decided that it's time we start making some money. So she has decided to use our shop to make something that has a broader appeal. Purses. So here is the first of many KB Originals.

Pretty cool. I am going to make a couple for our spare dremel. I made something similar a while back for the drill. I took a pool cue and cut it at about 10" from the joint pin down. Sanded off all the finish to get to raw wood and then waxed it up pretty good. Then I sanded in some grooves and brought the end to a point. This allows me to get into hard to reach places. The drill is variable speed so it works great. I have also used just the drill chuck and that works as well. I do find though that using the drill, drill press, and probably the same with the dremel, that it's easy to slip and gouge the product. You have to have a very steady hand and be very focused on what you are doing so as not to accidentally show your spinning tool onto a part of your project where it shouldn't go. Not that I have done this ;-) not me.........well the trick is then to add a bunch more burnish marks and make it part of the design...........

Hehe, good point. I will do that. They also have a project going to teach basic leather crafting to Mongolian horse people so that those people can maintain their gear and even build new gear. I am going to donate to that cause. I was under the wrong assumption that such leather working skills would be passed down to each generation there. But apparently not according to Loren and Lisa. http://www.skyhorse.com/sky/html/mongolian_leather_project.html Sent an email to Lisa and asked her to join us here.

http://www.skyhorse.com This isn't even the nicest one. Prepare to be blown away.

You can use the same endmills for wood and delrin. The smaller the better for detail work. Just watch the speed on the delrin so you don't melt it. Cuemakers routinely use the same mills for both materials. Easiest is just to throw some on the machine and see what happens. You can use Corel and save it to dxf for your cad program. Plenty of places on the net to help you with that but here is one woodworkers forum with an engraving section that surely will be able to answer every and any question related to CNC engraving. There are also free solutions out there like Inkscape which can save to DXF and PLT files. Most stamps are simple geometric shapes for which there are thousands of free examples to get you started. You want SVG files or any form of VECTOR art if you can get it. Once you learn the vector programs a little then it's pretty easy to do the simple stamps. www.sawmillcreek.org Since you do already do metal work then the essentially the smallest bits you can find for the detail work would be what you want for the metal stamps. This is where it gets complicated; For this stamp we probably did 10 versions before we figured it out. This stamp was made using something like delrin on a laser. Anyway, good luck. I wish I had a small CNC milling maching........ :-) Oh well, a new die press and long arm sewing machine are next on the list and then I can think about something else.

I can't tell who is on it. Is this a political area of the board now :-) Send me the file and let me see if I can clean it up for you and make one that is more recognizable. Can you make me one that indicates no health care? And no war would be cool too? No lies about WMDs would a good one? No assasinations would be a great one. I am personally against the launching of bombs from drones from a mile up to take out a whole house full of people to MAYBE kill one target - a target I might add who is an accused criminal who should be entitled to due process. So no assassinations would be a great one for me. I could dig a lot of these no-this and no-that stamps. How about no corporate sponsorship of the Tea Party? That would be a good one. They want to complain about big government and big corporations and yet they are funded by one of the wealthiest private companies in the USA. So I'd love to see a no hypocrisy stamp. How about a no crying stamp? I really need one of those for myself to remind myself that I am the one responsible for my destiny until someone shows up at my door with a gun to force me to do their bidding. Lastly how about a no-politics stamp for this area of the board? Let's just celebrate great leather work without worrying about the rest of the world's issues. Sincerely, John

I will say this. If I have a cool technique that I spent a lot of time on that really makes my product way better and it's not something that someone could learn by surface inspection of my product - in other words they would need to take my case apart then I am probably not going to share how to do it for a while. I just think that a few things ought to be earned. You can point someone in the right direction but if you tell them everything then what's the point of competing. I buy all the cases I can from competing brands. I tear them apart and study them and don't hesitate to take any good techniques I can find and I expect that others should do the same for me. I will also ask other case makers how they did something and if they tell me great and if not then no big deal. I give out a lot of information freely but from time to time I have told my colleagues I'd rather not divulge something. My tooler Zhen Hai went through this last year. We hired a graphic designer and like everyone else in the shop he took up an interest in leather work and asked Zhen Hai to teach him. Zhen Hai did and then this guy started up a website to compete with Zhen Hai WHILE he was still working for me. He copied all Zhen Hai's popular models and cut the price in half. He has since quit making leather goods but for a while it was kind of tense. As a result Zhen Hai is very reluctant to teach anyone else in my shop anything. I still am into Kate's views more than into taking a protectionist stance. But what I can say is ask for help and don't expect any. That way you can be grateful for whatever comes.

Thanks, that has turned out to be something I really like. I can't stand using latches that I have no control over. Most nice looking latches are made for purses and as such can't really hold up to the weight of a cue case. So I tried to figure out how to do it so that the lid can hold the weight and would stay closed. Lots of little neodymium magnets embedded inside do the trick. We do magnets on the body and flap instead of just one side. Here is a video of me trying to break my arm making it unlatch -

I am already past that point. I can't make a case similar to the embellishment that the other guy puts out there and charge more than $1000 for it. Not and look someone in the eye afterward. Now having said that I want to reiterate that I DON'T KNOW what the other guy is paying to have the tooling done. Honestly for all I know he is getting charged $1500 a case just for the tooling, I don't know. For example it's on my list to have Bobocat do the tooling on one of our cases. I am going to send him the pattern and when he is done he will send me the bill. Now, knowing his work and what he charges I may have to go to the bank for a small loan to pay off that invoice. But I am sure that the resulting art will be worth every penny AND I will charge what he charged me plus what I want to earn for my effort and risk. So for all I know that may end up being my first $3000 case. It's funny but my job title with Sterling (my day job) is "The Minister of Propaganda". Really, that's what's on my business card. And I am probably one of the most straight up tell-it-like-is damn-the-consequences type people around. I try not to "spin" things too much and a lot of times end up revealing more of the inner workings of how things are done than I should. So I am not the guy who can market through embellishment. I have to have a pretty solid foundation that anyone can stand on and test. I am prone to hyperbole, the most protective, easiest to use, durablest ;-) most durable, etc...but like I said I feel that I can compete against anyone else in a case teardown and come out on top. They say it's not bragging if you can do it. So in that sense I feel pretty confident in our product and I don't need to make it more than it is to sell it. If I did that then I'd feel pretty icky inside. And believe me, I know what icky feels like when you sell something that isn't all that great but you convinced the buy that it is. My obsession with quality comes from having sold substandard stuff and pretty much lying about the specs as well as having been on the the other side as a buyer too many times and believing the salesman only to find out I got taken for a ride. I have what I like to call the living room inspection approach. Back when I was younger whenever I'd get a new cue I would sit down in my living room and inspect it. I would fondle it and carress it and get to know it intimately. And if anything was out of place on that cue then I would know it. Not that I would mention it to anyone but I would know about it. Then I'd prepare a bunch of excuses in case someone noticed the defect, I'd make excuses for the maker, basically anything to not make me look stupid for having paid for a cue with a defect. So my attitude now is that I never want one of my customers to be sitting in their living room and doing the same thing with one of my cases and having that same feeling. I want them never to have regrets about buying one of my cases. And one way to do that is to simply price them fairly as to what I can feel good about. No doubt about it it does still hurt when someone get's x-amount more for less than what I build. But that's life and there is a reason that they are where they are. For me I will set my goals at getting to where I want to be without regard to where they are and what they are doing. Unless of course they cross me and then the gloves are off (or on actually as it's easier to dig in and fight with gloves on). And interjecting another random rambling thought - has anyone here ever really shown any appreciation for the leather work glove? Can you imagine the amount of things we humans have been able to accomplish while wearing good worn in leather work gloves. I swear when I put on mine I feel like I could lift or hang onto anything........ All right done. Distraction over. Later.

I am not concerned about it. I was obsessed by it with the attitude of "why can't they SEE the deficiencies????" Why God Why??? :-) But like I said I am way over it. I'd rather charge what I feel good about charging and make the wage I want to make for the work I am delivering. That way NO ONE feels shafted at any time. I am CERTAIN that at some point someone got one of those "overpriced" cases and wasn't too happy with it but kept quiet for various reasons. In fact I have the emails to prove that it has happened a few times. You make the same point that I did though. If I build a case with a $3500 price tag then it will be obvious WHY it's worth $3500. I mean clearly things like using real gator, elephant, zebra etc will drive up the price, I can inlay with exotic woods, I can get really detailed and crazy with the tooling, I could use 3oz leather and layer on the filigree to make shadowbox art in leather, etc..... And IF I did things like that then I would charge accordingly. I will always charge whatever I feel is a fair price. And I guess other people do the same. If the buyer feels like the price is good then it's all good. I refuse to be upset any more over this sort of comparison because in truth it never ends. If I charge $5000 for a case then someday someone will come along and make and sell a case for $6000. it's like Kate said, better to have a bigger heap. I'd rather have a market where there are more people willing to spend $3500 on a case than less. Why? Because that gives me and everyone else a much broader spectrum to work from. Imagine if the ceiling on leather cue cases was $500. There would be a lot less choice if people were only willing to spend $500 max on a cue case. The most I ever thought about charging was $2500 and so having a certain number of buyers willing to give me another $1000 on top of it does in fact give my imagination room to play. Ok getting back to Earth I have to go back to work and make some more $500 cases............

@ Kate - Thanks for a GREAT post. I like your views on competition and sharing rather than hoarding "secrets". You have opened my eyes a little more with your heap analogy and now I can better see what an abundance mentality should contain.

FREE - KOMPOZER - it's open source, easy to use and rocks! - Hosting - www.hostgator.com - really cheap, really really really super service 24hour ALWAYS AVAILABLE - no limit on websites, storage or bandwidth. Easily the most amazing webhost I have ever used in the past 15 years of having websites. You have instant control of all your email boxes, too much for me to list. Rarely do I reccomend something like this with so much enthusiasm. You can build your website easily using the tools that Hostgator provides. Hostgator also gives you two directories of opensource free software that you can install in seconds on your site directly from your hostgator control panel, like image galleries, a mailing list, blogs, it's so amazing that I can't describe it. I literally host something like ten sites for around $12 a month. FTP - File transfer protocol - FileZilla, again free and open source. - works awesome and supports drag and drop. That's right open a folder on your machine and drag it into the folder on the host machine and it flies right over. Image editing: IrfanView - this is a free image editor that is quick and easy and most importantly has BATCH processing. Batch processing is where you do the same thing to a lot of images at once. Say you took 30 great shots of your product and you would like to rename all the files AND resize them for your website. With IrfanView you can do that and leave the originals intact. It's such an amazing program that I use it constantly and hardly ever open PaintShopPro or Photoshop. For me these four things are all you need to do a competent website that gets the information out there. If you want to get a little fancier there are free or inexpensive tools out there which will make the dynamic drop down menus for you. The menu you see on www.jbcases.com is such a menu - it's contained in one file and the code sits on every webpage on my site so if I change the core file the menu automatically updates on all pages on my site at once. I didn't do this - I had a friend do it and gave him a case. I could do it if I wanted to though. Nothing against webmasters but in my experience for the small guy the do it yourself method is best because then you don't have to rely on someone else to get something changed. I'd rather have my site looking a little rough around the edges but have up to date information on it instead of being pretty and out-of-date. I use my website as a storage box for pictures and reference material. I use it in conversation with my customers on a daily basis. When taking an order I will be on the phone or on chat with my customer and telling them to go to this page or that page and look at this picture or that picture, you can link to your pictures in email, you can throw sketches up on the web for them to look at - which is sometimes faster than email and easier. There have been times when I have shot ten pictures, batch edited them in Irfanview and uploaded them to the web in less than five minutes where my mail program was struggling to send one email with ten attachments. Then on the sixth minute the customer has the link to the pictures that he can view in their browser and download at their leisure. So there you go. P.S. With most opensource software like WordPress and Gallery you have a huge amount of "plugins" that are also free with which you can customize your website to an infinite degree. And huge is way to small a word to describe the amount. PPS - go to Hostgator - chat with them - they rock!!!! (not paid by HG but if they do an IPO I am buying stock for sure). PPPS - shoot yourself in the head twice if you even think about going with GoDaddy - they are THE WORST. And if anyone says different then it's only because they don't know any better and have not had the pleasure of dealing with Hostgator.

I agree with Ray on both points. I find that most here are super friendly and willing to offer advice on how to do just about anything leather related. Of course a few of us have a few "secret" techniques that we'd like to keep to ourselves as long as we can just to protect our business edge as long as we can. But for the most part we share enough to get anyone headed in the right direction on most things. I can truthfully say that I OWE this community a lot more than I will ever be able to repay them. My products wouldn't be half as good as they are now without the generosity of the great people on this board. Also I don't think leathercrafting is dying out at all. I look around the web and find all sorts of people doing things with leather. On this board alone we have great people from all over the world. If anything this forum helps to spark people's interest in leather crafting by showing off all the things that can be made with leather. I firmly believe that with renewed interest in going "green" and getting back to nature that leather crafted goods and leather working in general is going to see an upswing in the coming years. And this forum and the people who make up this community will be leading the way.

PS. Regarding what goes into making things. It's true that most people don't know what goes into making things and equally true that most people don't much care to know either. They don't care if my shop of employees turned out the case in three hours or thirty hours. They don't care if one man made it all by himself or he imported all the components pre-made and just did light assembly. I say MOST people don't care. A few do but most don't. Some people THINK that they know what goes into making things and they are often wrong. I have had self-styled experts tell me how my cases are built. Seriously I had one guy telling me that my cases are cheap (as in the cheap in a bad way) because they are built in such and such manner and that such and such way is easy to do and easy to break. I asked him if he ever took one of my cases apart and he said no. I asked him to bet what he wanted that he was right and he wouldn't bet 10cts against a $1000. Those type of people are actually worse than the apathetic ones when it comes to showing appreciation for the effort. Most people don't care to know. They are just interested in what stands before them and their feeling at that moment. I know for a fact that I could put $2000 on a $1000 case and sell it when the right person comes along. Conversely I could put $500 on a $1000 case and sit on it all day if no one comes along who wants to spend $500 on a cue case. I tend to think that the more the average person knows about the nuts and bolts of making something the less value it has in their eyes. Now some people are aficionados and they delight in learning about the craft and explaining that the old man went up to mountain to carefully hunt the right goat to make that bag out of. And that while his family prepared the goat meat he tanned the hide and selected the best parts of the leather and made thread and and and.....those people are GREAT in my eyes because they do appreciate the craft and what goes into it. But for most people they don't care. I mean think about it for a moment, do most of us sit back and consider what goes into the things we buy? I'd say that we tend to do it more than average but I bet for anything other than crafty type stuff we don't really think about it too much. I do a lot but in more an abstract way. I look at a car and I think of how much human effort went into producing that car from the people who conceived it to the people who built it. I think of all the molds and how much effort it takes to make a thousand parts fit and work together. So to me it's always a dicey proposition to market the "effort". While I like the idea of educating my audience as to what we do I don't want to slip into the guilt trip method of selling. Which by the way is something I consider the whole "buy American" concept to be. (can of worms officially opened) Donning flame retardant leather suit now. :-)

It's not pricing that I have a problem with. I don't feel in the least that I am leaving money on the table when I get far less than my competitors do. I feel I am leaving money in my customer's pockets. Believe me I "market" the quality differences and performance (protection) differences plenty. I don't think that there are very many folks who are pool players that know my work who don't know where I stand on that aspect. I think in some ways that I actually overmarket a bit in that direction. I am fond of saying that it's not a beauty contest and that I build ueber-protective cases and then wrap pretty around them. I agree on the customer service part. I definitely have to work on that too. But that's not really the issue I was getting at here. The issue here was how it makes you feel to see your competition charging and getting super high prices for their work when it's not half as good as yours. And that's strictly speaking from a 1:1 apples to apples comparison and leaving out things like brand, prestige, reputation, etc.... I personally would feel guilty charging someone $3500 for a case unless there was a damn good reason. To me a damn good reason would be I send the leather to some really great and famous tooler and he or she charges me $3000 and my part of it being building the case is something I would charge $500 for with no tooling. Then the price of the case would be $3500. I just have this thing I have always done where I calculate the costs and slap on the percentage that I want to earn and that's the price. I do often give away extra work that I should charge for but I think that this is ok as I often get work from others that they should charge for. Don't get me wrong we aren't hurting for business in the least. My order book is full and the top collectors in this business already know about us and have cases on order, a lot of them anyway. I have also successful erased most of the "China" stigma from our products. The funny thing about that though is one of my competitors who is making his cases as "made in USA" imports his interiors ready made from China for $17 each. He does not mention that anywhere on his site or at his booths. But he has the gall to implore people to "buy American". THAT is a whole other topic that I will bring up one of these days and I know now that it will cause a heated discussion among us. :-) But if I can't discuss it with my peers then who else can I talk to about it. Nah, I am all good. I am over the jealousy/depression I had whenvever I see an overpriced leather bag, be it a Prada or some other brand of cue case competing with me. I have come to look at the overall economics and realized that it's impossible for everything to be priced "fairly" according to it's "quality". There are way too many factors involved and it's all those factors that drive all the commerce in the world.

Thanks Everyone!!!! After a lot of reflection I have come to the conclusion that "value" is also very very subjective. Just like beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that. I prize things like durability and function over beauty and fashion. Other people don't see it that way. They want to look good and will take less in performance to get the ego-boost of being "cool". Surprisingly it's taken me a long to time to figure this out. It's not any wonder then why "fashion brands" are so big and why they can thrive even in the face of massive copying and counterfeiting. It does pain me greatly to see Ron Ross do the tooling for a case panel and a lid - two easy parts and probably a tenth of the tooling that's on a saddle, and he probably gets a couple hundred for his part and then the guy who builds the case gets $3600 for it. But why does it pain me? Is it because I am overly concerned for Ron Ross (someone I have never even met)? Or am I jealous of Jack's ability to ask for and get $3600 for a case like this? Partially a little of both I'd say but mostly it's because I am imposing MY sense of value and what I would pay for something onto Jack's work. I wouldn't pay $3600 for this product if I were a millionaire because I don't buy for fashion. But who am I to say that other people shouldn't do so? Why should I care if they want to spend $3600 on a cue case? I mean at the end of the day if my "brand" ever becomes fashionable then those same customers will be my customers. I guess if I KNOW that I am delivering more case for the money then I am in the stronger position long term. And while it hurts inside to see someone drop twice as much on a case that I feel is only half as good I have to be content with the idea that the buyer doesn't feel that way. To them the $3600 case represents more than just how well it's built or how well it really protects the cues. It's owning something that there is only one of and will ever be only one of. It's a part of someone else's life and legacy. And it's vanity and showing off but isn't that what everything decorative is anyway. Getting down to it even if my case is $1700 and has way more tooling and clever and creative elements it's really not a necessary thing to have is it? A $10 tube with a little padding works just as well to transport the cue from place to place. So instead of wasting time obsessing over comparing the ingredients to the price I need to just stop the insane thinking about it. Yesterday we were in a "high end" beauty shop and they had some "sea salt" for about $50 a bottle. My wife commented that the GROCERY store down the street sells the same brand in the same bottle for $35 a bottle but her friends will not buy it at the grocery store because they believe it's inferior to the place which charges $50 a bottle. (nevermind that I think charging $35 or $50 for salt is a ripoff either way). So here is the kicker in all this which has made me come to this point. Looking at this from an economist's point of view it does not matter where the money is spent as long as it's the holder of the money who gets to decide what to do with it. So, give me $1500 for a cue case and I will spend that $1500 making more cue cases and buying essentials for my life. I will spread it around as I need and want to. Give someone else $3000 for a case and they will do the same. It doesn't matter if the $3000 case is a worse "value" for the consumer. That choice and decision is on the consumer AS LONG AS the consumer has FREE WILL to choose to buy what he or she wants to buy. I have come to the conclusion that MONEY is infinite. Yes our particular access to it is finite at any given time but there is no barrier preventing us from earning more of it. And so the proper way to think is that the person who is willing to spend $3600 on a cue case is probably just as willing and able to buy some $1500 cases from me. It's not an either or situation. I have long held a belief in an abundance economy which says that their is enough business for everyone. Now obviously that cannot completely true as nature shows us when the population of animals becomes too great for a given food source. But by and large for small businesses at least I think it's true that there are enough customers for everyone, especially since those customers tend to overlap and buy from different sources. So with all that in mind I come back to the original question of effort vs. reward. The jealousy part of this comes in when I see another case maker delivering a product that is way easier to make and getting paid much better than me. Whose fault is that? It's mine. There is nothing preventing me from asking for more money if that's what I want. But then maybe I don't feel that my work is "worth" that much. However I am putting forth a lot more effort and getting less (financial) reward. At the end of the day I have to look inward and ask myself these questions, am I happy with what I am doing? Am I confident in the product I am delivering? Am I making what I want to make with no guilty feelings? Is my customer happy with the product they get from me? If I can answer yes to all of those questions then the reward, in both pride and money, is well worth the effort.