Alphabet stamping on a Firefighter Shield

[Joseph1836]

8 minutes ago, chriscraft said:

  This was a side job I did for another company. They charged the customer $1,350 for 9 shields. Ouch!!!

Not only did I provided the design layout and the build specs to be made out of quality HO leather but I also built the first sample shield at no charge. This ended up landing me this small order but it was a gamble on my part. 

  If you're building one shield for a close friend, then pricing gets difficult. Im not sure if charging for your time is possible but you will gain knowledge out of the build experience.  

Billing friends for just materials will at least pay for the hobby. As always, try to use the best materials your friends can afford. This makes life easier on you. 

Thanks for the help. This is a hobby for me, but I would like to make money at it one day 

[chriscraft]

Joseph, I Defiantly would love to make a living doing this myself. It all takes time, materials,  equipment and of course... Skill. 

       I've decided to keep this craft in the hobby stage for a long while. Will slowly aquire more tools and equipment as I tinker around honing my craft. 

 Good luck and keep us posted if you decide to build one..

[Jason046]

We decided to actually start fire leather as a business about a year ago. We started cheap to get our name out there. Since we started a year ago we have yet to get caught up so the business is there but as we all know this stuff takes time. We have been improving our time and have purchased the equipment and setting up to cut our time to make a profit. We only charge 70$ for a standard shield, 75$ shield with flag behind number and 80$ for custom logo behind number. I feel once we move up to the 100$ Mark we will be making a decent profit. Right now we work quick enough to make a profit but not as much as we would like. The toughest thing is charging friends. You can check out some of our stuff on gettin it custom leather on fb and Gettinitcustom.com if you would like to get some ideas. This place is great to find new tricks from seasoned leather workers. I' always trying to find a better way to do thing. Lol

[Kulafarmer]

Way cool

[chriscraft]

I don’t use my stamps that often. Using my same card stock method... I made an error and didn’t adjust the placement of the letter “N”. Not all of these letters in this set are centered on each stamp. I’ll need to tune these up by grinding off material allowing me to center the letter on the remaining stamp. That way next time,  this grounded down stamp will be easier to position.  

Just wanted to let everyone know to check these stamps for letter placement as some may be off. 

[chriscraft]

It wasn’t too much of a bummer as I’m not selling anything. The end result is still the same, it’s hand made and will have small imperfections. 

  This tooled project went on this walnut valet tray.

[JerseyFirefighter]

On 5/3/2018 at 7:55 PM, Jason046 said:

We decided to actually start fire leather as a business about a year ago. We started cheap to get our name out there. Since we started a year ago we have yet to get caught up so the business is there but as we all know this stuff takes time. We have been improving our time and have purchased the equipment and setting up to cut our time to make a profit. We only charge 70$ for a standard shield, 75$ shield with flag behind number and 80$ for custom logo behind number. I feel once we move up to the 100$ Mark we will be making a decent profit. Right now we work quick enough to make a profit but not as much as we would like. The toughest thing is charging friends. You can check out some of our stuff on gettin it custom leather on fb and Gettinitcustom.com if you would like to get some ideas. This place is great to find new tricks from seasoned leather workers. I' always trying to find a better way to do thing. Lol

Don't be afraid to charge more for your work. Your shields look great. Charging friends or coworkers was really hard at first. I had started charging material cost as a hobbyist because I just wanted to work with leather and get more practice in. There will come a time where you realize it's not just your friends, it becomes your friend's friends, and so on. At what point do you draw the line? I take care of my buds and coworkers, but I also no longer do it for free. Keep cranking them out. The more you do the more your skill improves.