shop work

[Fenton Murray]

I go right along with Ed, here. I have one part time helper in the shop when 
I have too many jobs at once. One belly job completely swamps me between 
tunings and over the line action work that comes in, I just have a small 
shop at home so overhead is low, what a life! What a life! I enjoy having 
someone that knows my shop and tools and how I like to use them, it's a big 
plus to be able to call him in.
Fenton
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <A440A at aol.com>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: shop work


> Ric writes:
>
> << I currently service about 20+ residential and institutional accounts 
> per
> week, all year long.
> First appointment @ 10am ,last @ 4 roughly. (9+ hours a day, with travel)
>
> How do you all factor shop work into your scheduales? Right now ,I work in
> some time on Sun> (my day off !) >>
>
> Greetings,
>  First thing is to raise your tuning price by 20%. This should free up 
> some
> time in your schedule to pursue other work. You are presently working 45 
> hour
> weeks, and if you don't schedule a regular day off, you will not last as 
> long.
>
>   I really like having a non-deadline job in the shop at all times.  This
> allows me to carry on with my tuning schedule (which is where most of the
> rebuilding and regulating work comes from), and never have to worry about 
> an "off"
> day where nobody calls. As long as I have an action on the bench, there is
> highly profitable work right here at home that can be done in whatever 
> time
> increments fit the holes in tuning calls.  I can even schedule several 
> days in the
> shop as a sort of "vacation" from the tuning, and make more than I can 
> with the
> tuning hammer.  This makes it easy to stop worrying about having nothing 
> to
> do, and the funny thing is, the increase in tuning prices didn't really 
> change
> the number of calls I get, it just raised my income.
>
>
>
> Ed Foote RPT
> http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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