Kit Costs

[jttheclockman]

Just a simple question and is not political so please do not turn this into one. With the price of everything going up and looks like this trend will continue, (various reasons) it seems the price of kits are on this list also. Some by quite a sum of $$ too. My question is has this had an impact on your spending allowance for kits? Have you made any adjustments as to what kits you offer? Have you made adjustments to selling prices? This probably affects the people selling more pens but could trickle down. Also the availability to get Titanium kits is tough if at all possible, so are you just going to gunmetal kits as replacements or are there other alternatives.? Are you finding certain kits getting to be or are already impossible to find? Are you making adjustments in your pen turning habits in general???

 

[RGVPens]

Watching closely.

There are several kits I would like to try, but they are too pricy. My wood costs have jumped up as well as shipping for exotic woods. I've kept the same sales prices at the shows but if it continues, I'll have to go up next season.

By time I buy a kit, a blank, shop supplies, and something for my labor the sales price climbs up. Most of my shows are 55+ park craft shows. Most don't want to spend a lot. I'm going to find some other markets to show at.

 

[maxwell_smart007]

I think short-term, everyone's going to be feeling the pinch from price increases. I hope that things stabilize soon, but it's looking like things are going up across the board.

 

[sorcerertd]

I think short-term, everyone's going to be feeling the pinch from price increases. I hope that things stabilize soon, but it's looking like things are going up across the board.

I agree with all of this. The fuel prices drive cost up both from the manufacturer to the vendor and from the vendor to us. It's probably driving up mining costs for the precious metals, too? I'd bet that people are less likely to buy luxuries like a nice pen when they are paying so much more for basic necessities, but once folks get more used to that, things will normalize a bit.

As for me, I have a decent stock for now, so haven't purchased much recently. I have added a couple bucks here and there on to my prices to cover cost of restocking when I do order more. This helps with my policy (which I do break now and then) of not buying stuff unless I have already made enough money in sales to cover the cost. We all know this is an expensive hobby and, in my case, it needs to be self supporting.

 

[Amanap]

No change for me and I think it will depend on what type of seller you are. For the high quantity, low pen price sellers this will have a big impact. For the low quantity, higher pen priced sellers it won't mean as much.

 

[egnald]

I used to follow the precious metals market quite closely back when I had a paying job, especially gold, palladium, and the platinum family as many of the components that we manufactured used some form of precious metal.

It is no wonder that Rhodium plated kits have jumped in cost as Rhodium has skyrocketed/ The primary source of Rhodium comes from South Africa and there has been a market deficit for several years now. Up until 2019 it was sub $2,500 per ounce. Since then it has skyrocketed to about $15,000 per ounce, which is still down from the peak last year of $27,000, so about a 10x increase.

As a comparison, Gold, pre 2019 was running about $1,200 per ounce (about half the price of Rhodium). It too has had significant growth since then upwards to around $1,900 per ounce. A pretty significant increase, but nothing like Rhodium.

For now, I will just have to settle for the Rhodium kits I already have in my stash and be thankful that I have a few. - Dave

 

[Displaced Canadian]

I don't sell pens, but the cost of kits was a good part of the reason I started making pens without kits. For me the enjoyment per dollar spent wasn't there with using kits.

 

[jrista]

There are many kits I would like to try as well. In fact, I managed to buy some on sales late last year, like the Majestics. They were normally listing for ~$60 or thereabouts, but on sale I picked some up for ~$40. There are many of the Diacom kits that I would love to try, but some of those are $100 or more. I may eventually try to make one once they go on sale, just to get something on my storefront so people know they exist, but maybe make it more of an "on demand" kind of thing.

Pen blanks have also been going up. I bought a Jet 14-SFX bandsaw during black friday last year. I wanted something to help me cut wood and blanks, and my basic miter saw just wasn't doing what I wanted (not to mention, its a hell of a lot of power just to do a bit of cutting!) The bandsaw has opened up so many doors for me. I recently started buying boards, usually 3/4 or 7/8 thick, and am starting to cut up my own pen blanks. I recently picked up some really nice 4" wide Ipe with some beautiful grain and either yellow or white fibers, for $11 a board, and those will make a bunch of blanks (probably around 90-100 per board). Picked up several 6" wide Paduke boards for $13 each, which will make even more blanks. Also picked up a beautiful Peruvian Walnut board, 12' long, for $50, which will make a whole bunch of things like some walnut and paduke clocks (idea I've been playing with), as well a bunch of large 1" pen blanks, and probably much more. Love the Peruvian Walnut...with Pens Plus it darkens to a shade above ebony, and has this warmth to it that is just amazing. Picked up some other boards as well, 4" wide mostly, for around $9-15 each. Turned just into blanks, the cost per blank is usually below a dollar, for some woods well below a dollar. Even compared to say the Rockler "cheap" pen blank bins, which are now $1.49 per blank (they used to be $0.99 per blank a year ago), the cost of making your own pen blanks from boards usually turns out to be much, much cheaper. The bigger the board, the cheaper it tends to be as well. So, for wood blanks, this is generally where I'm going now... Spending $3+ per pre-cut wood blank is getting too expensive. The only other truly cost effective way I've found to get pen blanks is some of Woodcraft's grab bags. On sale those are usually $39, and you get a ton of blanks.

Also started finding TruStone in larger "bulk" sizes, and just today I cut up maybe seven 3/4"x1.5"x6.5" or 7/8"x1.75x6.5" blocks and three 1.5"x1.5"x6.5" blocks. Buying TruStone at those sizes ends up being cheaper than buying ready-cut pen blanks out of it, which is usually $27-35 a blank depending on 3/4 or 7/8. I get two to four 3/4" or 7/8" blanks that are 6.5" long, for ~$40 per slab or ~$80 per block. Which comes out to about $18-20 per long blank in the end.