Re: [HG-new] Affordable Hurdy Gurdy Construction

[Kazimierz Verkmastare]

This is a bit long, so pass it over if you want, but I hope it helps some of the folks understand a bit more of the economics of the instruments - we get a lot of questions about how to do it 'on the cheap' here but not a lot of indepth explanation of why that is not usually a feasible idea.  Maybe this will clear the air a bit.  At least maybe it will help folks understand what Mel and Alden and others have to go through to help us all make music and even learn some.   First, even with no experience, you can take your time, learn as you go, and build a working instrument from any level of raw materials down to harvested from trees in your area.  The skills of building from scratch are not that much different from building from a kit,  there are just more applications of different techniques.  While the skillset is bigger, it is not beyond the ability of a person who can build from a kit to learn to build from scratch.  And I personally suggest it, but not in the budget circumstances you are describing or with the final expectation you have.  I have seen a few gurdies that were the equivalent of a cheap Chinese violin, and none of them sounded good enough for me to part with money for (even my first gurdy, which after several major rebuilds and a bunch of money finally sounds good enough, but now looks unfortunately like a Frankenstein creation that I couldn't sell to a blind man for a dollar).  This is an instrument that you have to keep within rather high tolerances in materials and design, you can't cut corners.  And there is much more to it than just gluing a few pieces together - in my simple diatonic keybox there are more than 50 major components, more than 70 precision machining operations, and more than 50 specialized pieces of hardware.  Just for the keyslides and tangents INSIDE the box - I'm not counting fitting the key ends, the external brass slide stops, not counting any of those things.  Just the region inside the keybox. I am glad I didn't know how hard this machine is to build even badly - I would never have given myself the chance.  But man, it makes you feel great to finally build one that works well and looks good - made me feel better than any other instrument I have built.   I have had similar questions to yours in the past, and have found some truth in the breakdown of what I will give here as an example of how it works for me.   I gave up on the idea of even half of my hopeful sales price on any instrument being profit.  This after years of trying every way I can.  Once you count labor, not even my PVC flutes and whistles deliver that return regularly, and I can mass produce them.   I spend a lot of time (almost all of my time that I am not working my day job as an I.T. administrator) making one-of-a-kind or limited production run medieval instruments that I can't regularly sell no matter how beautiful they are or how good they sound - I live in Northwest Arkansas and I prefer to sell in person rather than on speculation, so my market for medieval instruments customers is not vast.  I have sources for all sorts of materials at ridiculously low prices, I have a fully outfitted shop for wood, metal, and natural materials productions (like skin, horn, antler), I have many friends who can provide technical information for free.  And I have yet to find in any of these instruments the magic formula you are speaking of.  I can say that even a simple instrument like a gourd banjo could be built for $60 materials and that level of instrument sold for $180, but that $60 doesn't count the time and shop resources needed to shape parts and fit parts (sandpaper, saw blades, tool maintenance, not labor costs) or finishing materials.  This is with the ability to do every operation in-house.  If I had to have an operation like resawing my neck stock done for me, I still couldn't charge more for the finished instrument but it would cost more just in materials and material prep, not counting my labor.   I have built a few gurdies, and while I loved the process and was able to do everything myself (bearings, wheel collars, adjustable tangents, wheel truing and runout setup, wood milling and the like) I could only do that because I have 1200 square feet of almost every tool you could think of, both power and hand, that I have collected over the past 28 years.  Vlad by now has probably heard some stories of my shop from a friend of his who stayed with me a few weeks ago, this is not the average home craftsman shop.   I can say that I spent less than $400 each for the materials for my gurdies - simple sinphone style instruments with a few modern features like a chein.  Not fully developed modern instruments, and without a lot of extra fanciness.  But I also will say that I couldn't sell these instruments regularly for more than about $1000, likely less.  Once you figure in tool and cutter maintenance for the lathe and mill, bandsaw blade replacement and maintenance on the saw, replacables like drill bits and sandpaper and the like, you are still at less than 50% profit without counting the time you put in.   Going back to the gourd banjo (banjer), My level of experience with building instruments allowed me to cut and fully finish the neck and spike in less than a day of labor, and to fit it and finish the instrument in less than a second day of labor (not 2 days, but less than 16 hours total).  Everyone who saw this was amazed at how quickly I was able to do this work - my speed is not average.  So assuming that I had 14 hours of actual labor time involved, and assume that I have $15 in finishing materials and replaceables cost, this works out to $115 for 14 hours of work or about $8.20 per hour for labor.  Add in 15-20 hours spent researching and learning and designing before I even cut wood, and you are down at less than $4 per hour for the first instrument.  IF I was going to build in production, the next instruments wouldn't ever take me significantly less than the 14 hour mark, and so the best I could hope for (even growing the gourds, drying them myself, growing the goats, processing the hides, finding sheep and making my own gut strings wouldn't lower the cost, in fact, only the gourd growing might prove beneficial to the bottom line) is about $8.25 per hour.  Below poverty level work.  So if I want to make a better living, I have to end up making fancier instruments for somewhere around the same amount of time, instruments I can sell for a lot more without putting a lot more into them materials and construction time.  But that still brings me to having to spend at least half of what I would sell a basic instrument for in parts alone, and this is where you run into your problem.   To build a gurdy that would reasonably sell to someone other than a single lucky find of a customer who wasn't studying the market, only your instrument, for more than $1200 in today's market would have to have features equal to Mel and Anne's base models, and that goes beyond what I built (and by the way, still haven't sold).  In order to acquire the materials and actually convert the parts into what Mel and Anne sell as a kit would cost me, with my amazing shop and years of experience (and I'm not as good as many who do this and barely make a living) I could only beat the kit cost by a couple or three hundred at best, and that would be leaning on my supplier friends pretty hard and not counting any of my labor.  Wouldn't want to do it that way more than once.  Without my shop there would be no way to come close to what you would get from the HGC kits for the same or likely twice the money.   I have sold very few instruments, given away many more, and I do this because I love it and I don't expect it to pay for itself or even come close.  I have a moraharp on the bench right now because I really love the instrument, and if someone were to buy it once finished I would be sad and have to build another to have to play with.  Same with my jouhikko, my crwth, all my various harps and citoles and rebecs and lyres and my couple of gurdies.   I would love to make a sustenance living on my craft, it brings me that much joy.  But because it brings me that much joy, I still do it even though it costs me.  And yes, if you have a handsaw, a good coping saw, some planes, scrapers and rasps, a good set of chisels, some good hand carving knives and a drill press and are willing to pay for a few parts in the wheel area, you could probably build a gurdy out of reclaimed materials and a soundboard from spruce carefully chosen from the local home store.  And it wouldn't cost you more than $200 in very raw materials.  If you are a craftsman with my abilities or higher, you could make it look professional, and with people who are willing to help you may make your first one from scratch sound pretty good (I did, but after all the mods and reworks, the first one doesn't look good anymore.  That is why it was my prototype).  But it is unlikely, if not impossible, to find a way to build for less than $500 and sell for more than $1200 unless you are fully set up to produce and already knowledgeable in the aspects of design and setup that make the instrument worth buying.  And once you are there, you have already sunk WAY more money than you are talking about into it (trust me, I know personally very well).   It has been done before, rarely, but for the most part this is not the kind of machine that an amateur can build successfully first time on the budget that a pro has to maintain in order to be profitable without all the special dedicated tooling and experience in designs and correcting issues on the fly that the pros have (and ask them, they still throw out way too many pieces and even the occasional completed instrument because it got away from them)   You can, as an amateur gurdy builder (not an amateur luthier, but specifically a gurdy maker) build a functional instrument, even a nice sounding one, first time out.  But be prepared to make most parts at least twice, spend money on things you didn't think you would need, spend dozens or hundreds of hours in frustration, travelling to examine and play with good sounding instruments, it is ultimately possible.  But only when the proper planets are aligned, the Gurdy elves are sitting in your shop correcting for free every night while you sleep your daily miscalculations, and the aliens have arrived to transfer the knowledge of the great gurdy building masters directly into your head could you do it on the budget you propose with the profit you desire.   This is one instrument that you build because you really have to build it, not because you have any hope of recouping your cost.  If you don't absolutely have to build it, you will be better off 99.9% of the time having someone with a LOT more experience build it for you, or at least do all the really hard work.  If you are only building it to see if you can, then expecting it to bring the kind of return a professionally built instrument may occasionally bring, then you should take a closer look at this particular project, because you are missing something.   Chris > Dear All: > > Per your advice, I have contacted Hurdy Gurdy Crafters and am quite > pleased with the responses from Mel and Ann there.  However, I > don't think I can tackle a Hurdy Gurdy from scratch and can't > really afford the kit.  Is there any middle ground out there > somewhere?  I need to make an HG that ultimately can be sold, so > quality has to be there, but I can't shell out $900 for a complete > kit and only sell the HG for $1200 or so (just guessing, but it's > unlikely I would get more unless I was a Pro at this).  Any chance > of getting material cost down to $500 or less??????  Any ideas > would be appreciated - maybe I should take this straight to Mel and > Ann though??? > > Mike -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hurdygurdy" group. 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