Blood, guts, & corrosion surcharge
- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 04/27/2018 at 12:02 am by
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Wow, that’s an aspect of the business I had never considered before. I don’t have a sharpening business, but I think it would be totally fair to reserve the right to evaluate each blade on an individual basis for cost if it was clear that there were going to be special attention given to the job. Like you said, if the blade has a fair bit of corrosion and is obviously going to take additional time, effort, and materials to clean, then you should be charging accordingly. The only thing I can add is that the customer should know that you’re going to charge them extra for this stuff up front before you’ve done any work.
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I think you should always charge for time and supplies. You can choose whether you want to mark up supplies but keep in mind that when they pay you for supplies, it is part of your income and could be taxed, unless you’re also writing them off. Of course it sometimes makes sense to do some freebies or sweet deals to get people started with your service, so you might do the first knife free or something. You might want to consider not quoting on the knife until you see it so you can know if you need to add a cleaning/restoring surcharge. It’s a good idea to photo the knife before and after, and document any damage that you’ll be repairing.
-Clay
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Good stuff, Clay – thanks!
I spent some time thinking about this yesterday as I was going through the same customer’s bag-o-knives. I picked out a couple to work on for him next; and I thought that it would be a good idea to do before/after pics so that I could post them on my website and show people some of what I do. That certainly dovetails with Clay’s observation, above, about taking pics for documentation purposes.
The thing I came up with yesterday was implementing a “not to exceed” charge. The customer in question, for example, has some knives that really are not too bad in terms of dirt, etc, and the cleaning charge will be quite low. At the same time, there is an Old Timer which is pretty bad; for example, the gut hook is completely filled and clogged with guts, making it unuseable until some effort is put into place cleaning it. I don’t have any issue at all with using a garden hose and then a compressed air hose on a sub-$30 fixed blade prior to sharpening. This approach would result in me investing about 3 minutes into the knife.
However, a full custom knife with a gut hook that is filled and clogged with guts is a different story: since the handle is wood, finished to somebody’s spec, and the blade (think tang) will rust, I’m not comfortable blasting with water and potentially ruining the knife. I would want to clean such a knife by hand, which means a lot more time.
Then we can consider the blade material. Suppose that we have a non-stainless tool steel, like a D2; and that we’ve tossed the knife into a bag after the last day in the field when we’re back at base. The knife then gets moved to it’s travel bag, tossed into the plane, and then when we arrive home, it’s tossed into the back of the cabinet in the garage. After sitting there for 5 months, it’s suddenly remembered, and Bob is called to clean and sharpen.
We’re going to have a higher charge for this case.
I also think it’s pretty much impossible to estimate the cost up front; the customer might want the blade to be all shiny and new; if it’s something like S35V, that will happen pretty quickly. A non-stainless blade might take a lot more time, effort, and Simichrome. So rather than worry about quoting up front, I’m thinking that I should just do this on an hourly basis, and set the hourly rate high enough that my cost for supplies is covered to prevent the appearance of “nickel and diming” the customer.
The observation re: taxes is a good one; for now, I’d like to just take the easy way out and just write off the different polishes, etc., as company expenses. That’s a conversation to have with the accountant – oh be still, my beating heart!
Freebies: I thought that a good freebie would be a lanyard, and I tried that for this customer. The reasons I think it’s good: one, it’s useful (at least to some people) and it’s a physical object. As a physical object, users can see it, hold it, and be reminded that I made the lanyard for them as part of sharpening – so it’s a built-in reminder that I sharpened the knife. Ultimately – and this will take some time – I’d like to include a bead or a tag with the company name and contact info.
When I was first starting my technology consulting in ’93, somebody offered me this advice: always charge something for every piece of work you do. If you do not, customers will expect that work to be performed gratis in the future.
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The diamond stones have no problem sharpening D2. As for the cost in Atlanta for sharpening, I don’t know. Are you wanting a mirror edge, or a nice, sharp functional edge? Mirror edges take a lot of time and therefore are expensive.
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Mike Mac: The Mike with the Homer Simpson Doh! on the end of his username, speaks truth.
I can’t speak to the market prices in the ATL area, but all of the very limited quantity of skinners I’ve made have been of D2. After hardening and tempering, I’ve never noticed any indication of sharpening being more difficult than other blades. My skinners have between three and four-inch edges and they seem to take an exceptional edge in a very typical amount of time – maybe 40 to 45 minutes from very blunt to very sharp.
It’s possible that the WE diamond stones don’t seem to take much notice of the D2’s level of toughness. Hand-sharpening on Arkansas stones might be quite different. The knives that I made back when Hitler was corporal (that’s a supposed-to-be funny euphemism) were sharpened the old way and I simply don’t recall any difficulty.
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