<HTML>In a message dated 7/18/01 5:15:59 AM Central Daylight Time, mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">All by yourself? Or do you have employees, or sub out most of the work? Please help me. I'm getting overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy right about now. Terry Farrell   </BLOCKQUOTE> It depends on what you call "all by your self." Tunings I do all by my self. My wife does tune, but at the most 3 pianos a week. Most weeks she only tunes one, and she'll go 2 or 3 weeks without a tuning. Now that I don't have a store any more, I set my own appointments (my business phone is forwarded to my cell phone during the day, so I have very few calls to make at home in the evening.). In the evening I do my own paper work. I guess it is the rebuilding that gets you. I don't do my own refinishing. I contract that out. I don't make my own bass strings, or bore my own hammers. But the rest I do myself. I schedule three or four days a week for tunings, then the other days in the shop. (sometimes I do a combination of shop and tunings, it just depends on who wants their piano tuned on what day). I do work 10 hour days, and most Saturdays. Now that I don't' have a store any more, I only work 2 Saturdays a month. I am known to be a very fast worker. My employees, (when I had them) and colleagues in the business, are amazed at how much I get done in a day. It generally takes me about 45 minutes to tune a piano. I can string a piano in about 6-8 hours. That's with the pin block in, and everything ready to go. But it does include tightening the coils, tapping the hitch pins and bridges, and one chip tuning. If I have time, and I'm up to it physically, I can even hang a set of dampers and give the piano a tuning before I quit for the day. I hope I didn't overwhelm you, but, yes, it is possible to bring in the kind of money I mentioned. But you have to work very hard to be able to do that. The other thing is, I love my job. Occasionally, as I am tuning a lousy spinet, I think about doing something else. But then when I get done, and the customer thanks me for making here piano sound beautiful, I get over that feeling, and happily go on to my next appointment. Wim </HTML>