Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterF
Like Printer2, I am also fairly unfamiliar with crowdfunding and how it works, but I'm assuming you know what you're doing and have no questions with that.
What I don't understand is where you are getting your figures from. $10000 for a mould?? I trained as a boatbuilder and am very familiar with fibreglass and carbon etc. Why don't you get some mdf parts cnc cut for a plug (about $100 maybe) cover the whole thing in body filler, fair it all over and make a fibreglass mould from that? Yes, it may only last for 100 guitars instead of 10000, but at that price it's easy and cheap to replace. You only need aluminium moulds if you're heat curing, and carbon does not need heat curing unless you're using pre-pregs, which would be way over the top for a guitar body.
I know you said you have no money, but if you had started with slightly smaller ambitions, you could have done the crowdfunding campaign for a much lower goal and had a lot more chance of reaching it. It sounds to me like you're less interested in making guitars as starting a big company. I really like what you are trying to do, and I think it's a shame that you seem to be focusing on the wrong things.
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A 10000 dollar mold is a real quote for an aluminium CNC milled block, the raw block is 2000 euro, the milling operation is 2000, the 3d guy to make my model digital is 2000, the heat blankets and controllers are 2000, transport and so on.
You dont need that for 100 units, that is true. A hand layed up gelcoat mold is in the 1500 range (with silicone heatblanket). My epoxy has a post cure of 15 hours at 80 degrees celcius, but i found gelcoat that can handle 120 degrees celcius, that should be safe. A sort of in between thing is to have an aluminium plug for 5000, then you can just keep taking molds from it, when a composite mold is worn out. The mold is only the beginning of the costs. I do want to make a company not a guitar, so the rent has to be factored int, a complete woodworking tooling setup. all the strings, the hardcases, tuners, material costs.
If this fails, i can still relaunch with a lot cheaper guitars, but there still wont be any marketing budget. I had hope to avoid another 10 years of struggling, but if i have to i will sell my PC and the rest, try to build a simple mold and build 2 guitar. Sell them for a very small ammount of profit, just to be able to continue. But i have to be honest, i expected it to go well. I believe these gutiars will be better then a 3000 euro A brand, and i believe 1400 is fair. The first prototype sounded richer then most 3000/4000 euro A brands in the music store.
You might be right about the fact, that my vision of a strong company is just to far from where i am today. Too big of a leap. The downside of a boutique rout (as a real company) is that you produce so little amount of units that you have to charge 4000 to survive ( its not uncommon if a wooden gutiar luthier only makes 1 per month).