Apprentice and Logistics

Willie71 said:
A couple things to consider from the psychology of working. The basic rules of people show that the rule of thirds applies. One third of people will do their best, and take pride in what they do. One third of people will try to meet expectations, and one third of people will see how much they can get away with before being fired. So, 66% of people are eliminated in your search off the bat, as we tend to be over the top in knifemaking in terms of striving to do our best.

The next important thing is recognizing that boys’ frontal lobes don’t fully mature until about 25 years of age. They may sound a bit like an adult, or look a bit like an adult from 15 on, but the part of the brain that regulates emotions, problem solves, and controls impulses is not the same as an adult. I can’t tell you how many managers I’ve worked with who had that “aha!” moment when they learned about this. People under 25, as a generalization, need supervision and structure to function. Self directed self management will not be a strong point in the vast majority of people under 25. Girls mature a few years earlier on average, but still not until the early 20s.
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I’d say it’s more like about 10% of the people do 90% of the work. Around 30-40% are wasting all of their energy trying to look like they are working and the rest fall somewhere in the middle!
 
Keep in mind you probably don't have to hire them as an employee but you could hire them as a contractor ... Then 1099 them at the end of the year. I imagine this would eliminate things like workman's comp since they are technically working for them
self, not you
 
That gets very dicey in production. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible but would require a bit of research first. The whole purpose of contractors is they bring their unique skill to the operation. Tough to say someone interested in an apprenticeship would be doing that.
 
kuraki said:
Less I sound cynical (I am), I should expound a little bit on my position of finding painful certain death a more rewarding proposition than to hire an employee. Completely aside from my personal motivation to even do this, which is to craft something by myself and divest myself of all the soul killing circumstance of my day job.

I manage roughly 110 employees in manufacturing. 7 supervisors over 3 shifts and 15 or 20 job titles. I just spent the last week bouncing around career fairs and visiting technical colleges trying to recruit more. My position in this case, is that you can't afford an employee. Knowing nothing about your business other than that you aren't full time, and that you live in Washington which I'm guessing is very similar to Oregon and California in it's labor laws, it's courts similar in their decision making, it's bureaucracies similar in their prejudices (meaning in any arbitration you'll be wrong unless overwhelmingly proven otherwise and possibly still then, just for having the gall to give someone a job).

First, are you insured? In WI it's common for insurance companies to provide an option for rural folks like me that cover small business and to some extent employees due to the commonality of small family farms. I don't know if that's the case in WA. What about workers comp? If you fly without, are you prepared to cover an injured employee out of your own pocket? Note it does not matter how stupid what he did was, how much it was his fault, or how many times you told him to quit putting his dick in the press, if he squeezes it off, someone (you) is going to pay.
I was brought up taught 90% of folks were good and 10% were bad. Now a days I think it's reversed. In fact I think it's less than 10% are good! Maybe 2% are good. Just my humble opinion!

I was brought up thinking 90% of the people are good and 10% are bad. Now a days I think it's reversed and I'm not sure 10% are good more like 2%

What will you pay this apprentice? As I said above I imagine WA state has something to say about that. Are you ready to give him a 7.2% raise right off the bat? Because that's your portion of his SS tax. So that's at minimum $12.34/hour out of your pocket for his labor. I don't know about you, but I don't make $12/hr on my knives in all but a few cases. I know for a fact my productivity will be hindered to some extent training someone. Let's say I do find someone who will show up when they say they will (they won't) and who will learn to do some of the more rudimentary tasks quickly (they can't) without screwing them up like a throw of the dice (they will).

How long is that guy going to be happy burning strips of bandsaw blade while you do all the "fun" stuff? How many hours of hand sanding will he endure before he suddenly forgets what a good clean finish is and begins to argue about what is "good enough?" Pretty soon he begins to lament even showing up more than half the time he's supposed to and begins devising ways with which to even the scales in his perception, because you were such an asshole to offer him a job in the first place (he could be playing call of duty right now). If he's a reasonable sort of fellow he'll just rob your copper and anything portable enough to fit into his car when you're at work. If he's too clever for his own good he'll fake an injury in your shop. If he's extremely nefarious he'll get hurt outside of work and then pretend to have gotten hurt at your place. (This is the point you begin looking for hobbies that don't involve employees)

I associate with or have associated with a lot of different groups of people, gun groups, gunsmith groups, machinist groups, political groups, product interest groups, various education groups, on and on. The knifemaker community has been without exception, the most generous, accepting, and easy to get along with group of people I've ever been part of. Even my experience on Forged in Fire was like that, drop me into a group of 4 people who were chosen by some New York casting company and hadn't ever even been aware of each other previously, and we got along like we'd known each other our whole lives. I've thought a lot about that since then, and it's something more than the fact that we all like to make knives. In fact, I don't think it has anything to do with knives.

I think it's because we all go out into the shop and spend our time and money trying to learn how to perfect a craft. We ALL know what abrasives cost. What tools and fuel cost. What waste costs. We ALL know how it feels to lose something we poured blood and sweat into, and when that happens, we turn it into a lesson to prevent it from happening again. We don't think the makers we look up to owe us anything and we're ecstatic and appreciative when they do share their own learned lessons with us, even in the occasions we didn't get the answer we hoped for like "keep sanding till all the scratches are gone" or "you just have to keep practicing because there's no magic method."

If you had any idea how rare the above is in the general populace, how incorrigibly stupid the majority are, how maniacally entitled most are, how many remain willfully ignorant of the simplest calculus: nothing in life is free - well, you'd be a cynic too.

Now, I'm not saying every employee is like this, or that every person. I guarantee there's a kid in your local high school that would be a perfect fit for you. He's honest and interested, and smart enough to want to learn. His parents didn't raise him by proxy through the television and he has some idea of what work means. He'll understand that the $11.50 an hour you're paying him comes with a bunch of knowledge and opportunity and he'll make the most out of it.

The problem is you may have better odds at the roulette table betting it all on black than finding him the first shot, unless you can rig the game through association. That's the essence of the idiom "It's not what you know, it's who you know." The idiom is wrong. It should be, "It's not what you know, it's what they know about you."

Just understand the risks involved (and how to mitigate them through LLC, personal property in trust, etc etc). The reward may not be worth it.
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I don't think I've ever seen a better reply on the internet since I've been here on since dial up. Having been in buis myself, not in knife building but electrical contracting, I could never have said it better!
 
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Rhinoknives1 said:
I’d say it’s more like about 10% of the people do 90% of the work. Around 30-40% are wasting all of their energy trying to look like they are working and the rest fall somewhere in the middle!
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Well, that may be true in general, but this comes from the professional world. Requiring post secondary education and licensing weeds out the dropouts and such. People who work hard enough to get into college/university tend to have a bit more motivation than the average cat. Legacy admissions open that population up a bit though.
 
I had a guy about 15-20 years older than me want to be an apprentice. This was about a month before the Blade Show, and with some trepidation I took him on, trying to make clear that nothing else would happen before the Blade Show than working on Blade Show inventory. Despite that, I ended up stopping and showing him my techniques as I worked so that he could learn for himself, and we did end up making a knife for him, because I'm a teacher. I mostly had him working on sheaths for me. He was quick on the uptake and was helping pretty well.

Two days before we were going to head out to Blade, he had a fit that we hadn't been spending enough time working on his stuff and that I was double checking his work on the sheaths (something I do on my own work because I have made too many mistakes to not double check everything). Things smooth over a bit, he goes to Blade Show with me and gets to see more of the show than I ever have. I found out later that he had complained to some other knifemakers I knew about how we hadn't worked on his own stuff enough. They informed him that he was lucky to have been taken on at all, especially that close to Blade.

He hasn't been back to the shop in a while.

If you do take on an apprentice, make absolutely clear what the parameters are, in written form. Drop them if they are not following the parameters or want to complain about them.
 
Willie71 said:
Well, that may be true in general, but this comes from the professional world. Requiring post secondary education and licensing weeds out the dropouts and such. People who work hard enough to get into college/university tend to have a bit more motivation than the average cat. Legacy admissions open that population up a bit though.
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LOL , They might of reached a little higher station, perhaps gotten tenure..Certainly think more of themselves... The halls of academia & Gov work are just as filled with those pretending to work/ do something to collect a check.. 10% do 90% of the work!
 
The 1099 thing is pretty sketchy. I have had a few people want me to do it and I have. One of the reasons I felt ok doing it was because I had a pretty good idea that if anything went wrong they would have a hard time proving that I wasn't a employee . What happens when someone cut a finger off or even gets metal in the eye? It's tough. I grew up with my dad's business and have a bit of a idea of what goes into it. I think that a small business with only one or 2 employees is a really hard thing to make work out. I am becoming very tempted to try doing some sort of side business and what I keep running into is that I will instantly have all the infrastructure of a business. I will have taxes, sales and marketing and most of the time web design and maintenance. I'm pretty good at building things but not great at the others. My hope is that I can find a nitch where I can supply something unique that I enjoy building to someone who can be the front man. You might see if there are ways to sub out as many task as possible and focus on the parts of the knife that define your work. Could you find a way to sub out hand sanding up to 220? Water jet cutting was mentioned . Do you have enough standardized patterns to make C&C a option . If you think it could work maybe that could be where you want to grow. You have a great area for your business in Colville just from the expenses standpoint. I never realized how low WA taxes were until I left. A really crazy idea that you would be in a good location for is a knife makers CO-OP. It's probably a crazy idea but they can work well. I once worked at a boat builders CO-OP and it was pretty cool.
 
I have followed you over the past and see a man that thinks and research before you act. I have enjoyed seeing the new shop , press and surface grinder belt conversion. You found a need for heat treating and learned more about that skill and made it part of your business.
Now you face a new challenge and are researching how to solve this lack of man power to meet the demand .
This is a real challenging time for you your wife and how to make it work.
Frist make a plan to see where you are going. Then see how you can make a living doing it. Price your products and labor to where you can quit your day job and do what you love full time. Then you may want to add some help as your business grows. A clear vision and business plan are very important. You may not want to make and heat treat knives as a business only as a filling in way to express you artful side.
There is no good answer until you know where you want to go.
 
What I'am reading into this is the desire to grow your business in lots of different directions with limited resources and capital...When your passion to make knives which is where you started becomes an obstacle because of all the extra added work and limited physical ability/time/capital to do all these "Add-Ons"(heat treating, steel sales, forge welding billets,. etc) you will have to draw a line and figure which are producing "Revenue" with least amount of Expenditures and run with that. When one of the "Side Line" operations is capable of sustaining itself with enough revenue to pay another body then the search is on.
 
Thanks for all the advise guys. Yeah there are lots of things pulling me in many directions. And I do realise that moving forward into a more “production” mode means putting other things on hold. We have been good so far at looking at where our time is sucked the most and trying to improve that area. I’m constantly adding to the shop and trying to make it more time efficient. It has been easy because I have a full time job that pays good. This Gives me alot of freedom with the money that comes in from the shop. We have plans to add a cnc plasma cutter to the shop I’m hoping next year. We also talked last night about the possibility of investing in a 3D printer. Would use it to make guards and pommels for investment casting.

I would love to do this full time. but as soon as you take a hard look at what your actualy making at a full time job it’s kinda shocking. Then do the math and figure out what you have to make to replace that. I was told once that the only way to make money making knives is in production. And as funny as it sounds that’s the way I would like to move. But I take the idea of production as batch manufacturing. Right now everything has been one offs. Don’t get me wrong I love doing the crazy stuff. But don’t do the math and calculate what your making per hr. Take for exzample a key hole bowie with Damascus guard and antler handle I have been working on for a customer. Talk about a timesink, it’s just crazy how much time has disappeared into this project. Then people see it, love it and ask , how much? Thy are shocked when thy hear the 1,XXX.00 price. It’s all time and time costs money. Don’t get me wrong I have loved every sec of this project. I Love pushing my self further then my comfort zone and learning new skills. But if I took all that invested time and used it to run a production run of my more popular blade styles I would quickly shoot right past that one blades price tag. Now that gives me a second problem to deal with and that’s distribution. But there are ways to navigate around that and grow organically.

Sorry for the long post, I was just kinda thinking out loud.
 
I think its important to remember, classic apprenticeships offered room and board along with a nearly assured entry to a profitable business. That is simply not the case anymore, so if you want someone to help do the unpleasant work you are going to need a reason for them.

I would reccomend either setting aside a specific amount of time to help them work on their project acting as an active teacher, or pay them.

No one wants to spend 3 hours hand sanding. If you arent offering room and board along with entry to a closed off guild system, dont expect young people to do the worst labor for free just because its a "learning opportunity"
 
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