How many hours a week do you get to spend in your shop?

T

TheEdge01

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Apr 3, 2015
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Between work, family, and other priorities I don’t get to spend as much time as I would like to in my shop. I usually get a few hours on my days off and occasionally I find some time in the evenings after work. On average, I probably spend about 10 -12 hours a week making knives. How much time do you guys get?
 
Full time. 70 hours. Every day
Unless I’m going to play golf which will be this afternoon

I put about 5-6 hours in the morning and then I take a couple hours for lunch and a nap and then I put in another four hours before evening. There’s usually an hour for social media marketing answering emails shipping etc.

working a lot right now because I plan to be in France for 2 to 3 months in the summer once countries and flights open up
 
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Usually I will come back from work around 7 PM and before I eat, change and all is too late for the shop. So between Friday and Monday I will usually find about 8h in the shop which is next to nothing. Home office was nice because I could go to the shop in the evening. With this rate I will be finishing less then 10 knifes a year :( Now ask me how much time I spend on Bladeforum and YT watching knives and it's a different story, hahhaha
 
For me it depends on time of year but on average I would say ~8 hours. As my tools and skill set improve I get more and more out of that 8 hours.
 
I wish I could spend ANY time grinding!
Just moved all my stuff into a shop with ZERO electricity that isn't provided by an extension cord and I am not a happy camper.
 
Between my full time gig, golf, fishing, and family, I usually get maybe 2-6hrs a weekend to work on knives. Not nearly as much as I would like to be doing, but such is life. I could do a lot more during the week if I were to skimp on my sleep....
 
I work a shift rotation at my work.... 2 days, 2 nights, 2 off...2 days, 2 nights, 6 off. So on my 6 days off, sometimes I spend every day working on knives and sometimes only a few days or hours. It is really nice having that 6 days off for every 8 days of work. Perfect for me. It's like having a 6 day holiday every 10 days. I don't usually do a lot on my 2 off. Don't think I could ever go back to a Monday to Friday type job. But it is really easy to procrastinate and squander those days off too. If I want to take vacation days I'll take a set of 4 off and get 12 days off or almost twice that if I take 2 sets of 4 off in a row. That's like 22 days off in a row. Lots of time to work on knives.
 
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Pre coved, I was struggling to get 5h/week last year, but now I’m getting 25-30 hours in. Not just knifemaking though. Probably 20h on knifemaking lately.
 
I was in oil and gas so I just made the switch from 10 to 12 hours a week to full time. I expect to be full time for at least the rest of the year. Still can't get enough done in a day.
 
Retired, so it varies but probably it's in the neighborhood of 20-25 hours a week now. With the lock-down here in New Mexico, I seem to have more shop time available.
 
Varies with the demands of my full-time job, but usually 6-12 hours per week. With Covid I have been at 25-30 but that will end next week. I've found that my mindset and planning changes as I spend more time in the shop to increase my efficiency.
 
Full time work, wife, 3 kids, hobbyists knife maker. Hmm I'd say 4-7 hrs a week depending on what's going on. A knife a month is my ambition.
 
I don’t get much time in the winter, need a better heater in my shop, takes a long time to warm it up from -30. Like most of us here, I have a full time job and family so 8-12 hours is all I can get in.
 
kdnolin said:
I don’t get much time in the winter, need a better heater in my shop, takes a long time to warm it up from -30. Like most of us here, I have a full time job and family so 8-12 hours is all I can get in.
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Dang!!! -30!!! If you use stainless steel very often, you won’t need to cryo, you can just take your blades outside and leave them for a while. We wouldn’t know how to act here in Ky if temps dropped that low.
 
Currently, in lockdown, I spend between 40 and 60 hours a week in the shop (full time), before lockdown it was closer to 40, due to some side work. I spend an additional hour or two every day for knifemaking, but in the house, packaging, advertising, ordering materials, researching stuff ...
 
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