Home built bike stuff

i’m too busy to sell my time for cheap on the side. i also don’t make anything well enough to justify selling at a price that’s worth it to me. free market at work

Someone very successful, somewhere, said, if you don’t value your own time, nobody else will.
I struggle with this too. Usually cos I am doing favors on some level.

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$666 for 2

Could you try a Vickrey auction?

Someone else posted this months ago on some other thread, probably keyboard chat, explains it well:
https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/

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that’s brilliant though it makes me wonder if the availability of oem axles or full wheel sets at all confounds the result— there must be a pain point at which a buyer would choose to flip their wheel set instead of buying the rauce axle project

also could this theory work to finance a set run of wiggle forks?

also it astounds me that there at least ten people who have spent 1.6 bongs on a single keyboard, and at what point do you achieve market saturation with a niche like mechanical keyboards or specialty track axles?

Yeah I don’t know how many of these I could potentially sell. IMO the zipp 900 is an excellent wheel for track racing and really the only problem is that zipp made more wheels than track axles and never made more of the axles. Most people who bought them for tri/tt have moved on to the latest and greatest and you can find them pretty cheap. I’ve made 12 now and probably had at least another 5-6 people express interest and then flake on me. One dude who hit me up right after I sold out of the first run of 9 flaked when I told him I’d have to charge more to make just one axle because of the set up time for each operation not being spread out over multiple parts.

Anyways I’ve run through all the Miche nuts and lock nuts I bought and the 1” 303 bar stock I’ve been making them out of. Who knows if I’ll make more.

I suck at saying no to people in general. I’ve just been a bit grumpy lately because all my garage time the last two weeks has been going to these axles and a bunch of bikes I’ve been tuning up for a neighbour. My personal projects always tend to get put off to the side when some friend, acquaintance, neighbour or whatever needs their bike fixed or some welding or machining job.

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Hey if things cost a lot to make that’s how much they are. If you cheap out on an old wheel don’t expect to have everything right, the money will be spent regardless.

I have no problems telling people they’re being cheap and short sighted.

Would you rather have a wheel you don’t use or a wheel that is useful.

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this goes back to the value your time adage

Yeah it’s a good reminder. I mean if I’m doing O/T at work I’m at $40 or 55 an hour so that’s how I should value my spare time for side work.

Don’t forget the value of design time, interacting with customers, going to the post office, having the tools.
What hourly shop rate does your employer use to bill clients? It might feel like a stretch, but that’s the number you’re shooting for

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Those are good points too. I think it’s a stretch in my case… A job quoted by time/materials is something silly like $300+ hr because we do such specialized work. We have at least twice as many machine tools than we do tradesman and 40000 sq/ft of shop for 8 of us.

Damn that was interesting

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Where’s a good site for ordering nylon webbing and and various plastic adjustable buckles/etc, maybe some fabric too, that’s not amazon? I’m looking for webbing and webbing accessories in the 5/8" to 1" range to make something to cinch things down in my BIGANT crate.

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Oh yeah, got my evening browsing all lined up now.

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https://tarck.cc/t/it-s-a-stick-up-aka-the-mask-thread/23767/55?u=straws

I gave a run down of all my suppliers in the mask thread.

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Made some plugs for a segmented fork I built. Could do some Mtb bar plugs the same way maybe? First I need a mtb.

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dreamy work

Please drill a hole and put a knob or dial on one of them.

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please make one side into a tool kit and the other into a bowl or one hitter

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