Larger Production in a Small Shop
When I was working out of the 1200' industrial
unit in Oakville, I used to get some crazy requests and inquires coming
in from my yellow page ad. I found that 10% of them made sense, and 10% of
those turned into actual business.
One of the calls I got was from a distributor of
teak garden furniture who needed some Muskoka chairs made to close a huge deal
for Mount Tremblant. They were 6th in line subcontracted for outfitting the new
village, so that meant I was 7th, which meant it was hard to get a straight
answer from whatever designer or bean counter was actually making the
decisions.
When "they" first said that they wanted the
chairs coloured a bright yellow, red, blue and green, I mentioned that
you'd want a light wood for a dye to soak in and show well, so pine would be
one... or... maple is light and is more "ski boot proof" I added... "Maple it
is!" was the quick reply. OK... although maple isn't at all resistant to
decay like pine, it turned out they only expected 2 years of service out of the
chairs. OK, Geeze!
So 70 chairs and 35 round 24" tables to go with
them. All I had to do was give them a price, and I wish I had quoted much higher
it turns out, they would've taken it if it was over the moon; they had to
fulfill the order. Oh well, that's business; live 'n learn.
I hired 3 Sheridan students to help me for 3
weeks, and we got it done. The thing that really saved my bacon was that the
unit next to me became vacant at the perfect time and I was able to rent it for
one month to do assembly and store the final product.
The design was a mutation of 3 mail order plans I
got. I made adjustments for strength, machining, ease of assembly etc.
I've still got the jigs to make these, and as soon
as I can come across a cheap supply of exterior grade wood (like recycled teak
that can be left unfinished), I'll bang out a bunch for our
back deck. Unfortunately, it's not even on the "honey-do" list; I might have to
somehow bump it up. They're fun to make when you have all the patterns and jigs.
Lots of screws though!
