I suspect there are a fair number of folks on this bulletin who have wondered whether or not you could make a business out of this. I know that when I do the "what would I do if I hit the lotttery" day dream, building high custom crafted boats seems like a fine way to occupy my time and fulfill the creative urges.

But then the reality sets in. The numbers below show the difficulty of trying to build a business where you need to build 20-30 boats a year to be viable and and every minute not building eats into your profits. That is sure to take all of the joy out of building and feels worse than the rat race I'm trying to leave behind.

From what I can tell the key to makeing a living as a craftsman is to diversify not to build a more efficient kayak factory. Below are some things that I see others doing that cut the number of boats you would have to build down.

1. Teach others how to build in community classes or schools like the wodden boat school. Sharing what you know can rewarding and the economics can be such that it offsets the need to be building every week

2. Sell designs in the form of plans - Once designed, built, and tested, you are selling intelectual capital. I have no idea what the cost of getting a design to market is (Nick - might share this with us) but each plan sold after the initial cost is recovered goes to the bottom line minus printing, shipping and handling. I suspect that most of the strip built designs out there today were created as labors of love for personal use and sold as plans afterwords.

3. Sell Kits and building supplies - In the gold rush days, the outfiting stores made more money thant the gold miners. I certainly was willing to pay a little more to get everything I needed in one place

Just some thoughts

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