So far I have been doing the CNC stuff as a hobby (with the minor exception of selling my dovetail software) but I am kind of running out of ideas for things to keep or to give away for friends so I am wondering if some of the stuff I do is good enough to sell. Maybe not make a huge profit but pay for the materials and bits and some of my time. Having a full time day job won't leave me much of the latter, anyway.
I live in the San Gabriel Valley near L.A. with a very large Asian population and was wondering if I could do some targeted custom carving that I don't really see here. Not so much large outdoor signs but more decorative indoor stuff. Does that makes sense? Today I carved a kind of wooden business card (well, it is 12" x 24", see below) that I want to use as show-and tell sample for local sign shops that do the usual vinyl/acrylic signs. Maybe they can get me some work on commission.
Any opinion if that is promising? Or am I just wasting my time? To make any sense of it I would probably have to charge $150-200 for a sign like the sample below (45 minutes design, $20 material, about 1 hour unattended machine time, 30 min finish) and I have no idea if that is realistic.
Since there was another post lately about the carving properties of bamboo (one of my favorite materials) here a close-up. IMO there is not much better. The small ridges are less than 0.03" and there is no tear-out or fuzz. I used brown oil stain to highlight the carving and in spite of the watery viscosity of the stain, little bleeding. Some surface sanding with 220 grit removed the spilled stain traces.