I hope you're keeping a photo-log (before and after) of all your CC jobs so that you can display your "portfolio" on-line to attract future business...
I'm sure Bill Davis has enough work to keep him busy for years...
Imagine that kind of job security in today's economy !
As far as I know, you now have a niche market with a fairly willing (...albeit small) clientele...
I hope you're keeping a photo-log (before and after) of all your CC jobs so that you can display your "portfolio" on-line to attract future business...
I'm sure Bill Davis has enough work to keep him busy for years...
Imagine that kind of job security in today's economy !
As far as I know, you now have a niche market with a fairly willing (...albeit small) clientele...
Keep up the good work !
Steph
Yup, I have everything, but like I said, I don't want to bore people with EVERY job I do, but I have gotten plenty of PMs requesting I post them.
I do have a website up which is still in construction, but I don't have much time to feed MacPhreak with some info to post on it, and I am VERY uncomfortable using MAACA as a business platform.
I will post some pics tonight about various projects.
I'm sure Bill Davis has enough work to keep him busy for years...
Imagine that kind of job security in today's economy !
Oh, I will not lie... it is nice. Gives me a bit of breathing space, but that will be later. I have yet to make a cent due to equipment costs. I am still in the red by at least a grand, but it will get there.
As far as I know, you now have a niche market with a fairly willing (...albeit small) clientele...
Well, I am aiming for a specific clientele. The guys with NOS playfields that don't want to pay shipping for nothing and wait over a year, and the guys with beat up older pins that would normaly never get done due to overall value of the machine and estimates given by others. Since my profit margin is much lower, I can cater to a different crowd, but I also give myself the right to turn away anyone. If someone brings me a beat-to-hell playfield and expects perfection for 300$, he gets denied. Once I get a few playfields under my belt and am fully equiped, then I may do more extensive jobs. But most so far have realistic expectations, so it is easy. I just do my best.
Oh, I will not lie... it is nice. Gives me a bit of breathing space, but that will be later. I have yet to make a cent due to equipment costs. I am still in the red by at least a grand, but it will get there.
Yah, I know exactly how you feel...
It took me awhile to get a selection of eprom programmers and build my stock of proms and eproms.
It took me one year to break-even on the hardware ( 5 burners, 2 UV erasers, etc...) and another 2 years to build my stock of chips.
Now I'm "finally" making a bit of money, ... only to see my wife pilfer my Paypal account !
I just hope Nortel doesn't go bankrupt because then I'll need to increase my eprom sales 100-fold to pay the bills !
OK... I have been evaluating time and material costs, and I am slowly getting a better grasp of what is needed to do specific jobs. Here is a summary:
Basic clearcoat: 150$ (This is for NIB or NOS playfields that have never seen any wax.
Excess cleaning: Can start at 25$ but can egt high if playfield is very dirty. At that point, touch-ups are needed anyways
Mylar removal: Starts at 25$ (slings or pop bumpers with little difficulty and very minor touch-ups) and can go to labor cost of 25$ an hour plus materials to remove a large patch. Some come off easy, some don't, and some involve touch-ups after. I am doing one right now that the mylar was cloudy, I removed it, and slowly (6 hours...) removed the glue, to see that the glue was hiding the fact that the playfield was dry-cracked a lot.) That one took 8 Magic Erasers, 2 bottles of rubbing alcohol, 5 cans of freeze spray, and 7 hours of touch-ups. You get the picture. I rather you remove the mylar yourself if it is a large patch. Slings and pop bumpers are usually not a problem.
THE BOX: this is for semi-populated playfields. If the playfield is bare up top, and I have less than 30 minutes of plugging light socket holes and moving switches out of the way from holes, I charge 50$, and this includes putting it in a box frame to protect all the mechanicals. Anything over 30 minutes falls in the 25$ an hour rule. And of course, I reassemble when done. So if you send me a completely populated playfield, it will be expensive...
Touch-ups: the sky is the limit, or when I say there is a limit! I will tell you when it is not worth it, or YOU give me a budget and I work around that. But if there is 20+ hours of work to be done, and your budget is 300$ in total, it won't be perfect, but I do my best with what you give me.
Insert leveling: Depends on how many and how bad it is, but I have a base charge of 50$ and usually takes about 1 hour or so. But this varies due to sometimes having the wood worn badly around the insert hole due to it having been sunk in for so long and the wood wears out. So when the insert is level with the playfield, I then have top touch up and then level it off with superglue and sand it down, an then touch up the surrounding areas. But for most playfields that aren't that bad, a 50$ leveling and a 50$ touch-up job (2 hours) around the inserts does the trick.
And of course, if a job proves to be way worse than anticipated (like the playfield with the crazy mylar) I will contact you and give you the choice to either compensate or "downscale" the job.
As a reference, the Jungle Queen job's cost to you would be around 275$, and about 300-325$ for Sinbad due to it being very dirty but with no box needed.
I have a quick project now so I thought I would just post it here as a reference...
AlienAgent gave me 2 NOS playfields to clearcoat... The Addams Family and Pinball Magic!!! Pinball Magic had a couple of tiny barely noticeable scuffs but was otherwise mint. TAF had a couple of little diamondplate flaws in it (little bumps here and there) which I corrected easily but veeeeeeery slowly. This is extremely nerve-wracking as these playfields are not so easily found and are most certainly quite pricey.
So both got wiped down good with naphtha, sanded with 600-grit to remove the gloss and then wiped again just to make sure that they will not have any contaminants on the surface.
And on top of that, I sanded down the factory clearcoat imperfections on TAF with the 600-grit. They are now nice and flat and the new clearcoat should do wonders.
Here is a pic of me sweating over TAF. I took 30 minutes to slowly sand down one bump which was right over an insert in the middle. I REALLY didn't want to remove any insert decal. It came out just fine in the end.
Steph's LOTR and Tim's Pinball Magic and Addams Family will be done this weekend. Also almost finished Makak's Future Spa cab and BZM's Black Pyramid playfield touch-ups and it will be clearcoated in a couple of weeks. I only clearcoat on weekends. Too messy otherwise.
Just made a huge investment... 700$ worth of Iwata airbrush supplies. I believe that I am pretty much set equipment-wise. I should be able to do large areas and backglasses better now.
Project lineup great so far... 5 playfield, 3 cabinets and a MAME.
Steph
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