On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 11:49:08 AM UTC-4, Nick Kennedy wrote:
I've always wondered if someone who wanted to create make a business refinishing gliders , here in the USA, make a go of it. It seems to me its a lot of semi skilled monotonous labor.
I've employed many Mexicans that are Really good with there hands and produce high quality work. And they want to work , show up everyday rain or snow or shine. These guys work for 15-17/hr here in Telluride.
I've told Craggy I can send him some help when he gets tired but so far he seems to keep moving forward on his own!

Hey Nick,

It's an excellent question - some of us who have done more than 1 refinish have had a lot of time to ponder this question in the middle of every 4 hour sanding session :-)

Quick back of the envelope would be something like this:

- Routine full refinish of a standard class glider for a shop with the right tools, process and skills is around 450 hours (just as a baseline - YMMV)
- Rough SWAG suggests 25% skilled 75% un/semi-skilled
- Figure you want to charge the skilled labor at $60/hr and the un/semi-skilled at $25/hr (note - assume the owner/operator is the skilled guy/gal and that there is some margin on the un-skilled rate that goes to him/her as well)
- At those ratios and rates the labor for a refinish would be about:
* $6750 for the high-skilled
* $8500 for the un/semi-skilled
* Total labor around $15K +/-
- Add in another $5000 for materials and consumables, shop charges, other fixed costs
- You're at a $20K refinish +/- a few percent.
- You can argue around the margins a bit (say bill the unskilled out at $18/hr), but it's not going to end up with a $10K number.

Kind of explains why the only people refinishing 1st and 2nd generation glass are either DIY owners or clubs.

P3