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Bow building classes
Eric Krewson:
No funny looking face or sour expression, I greet everyone with a warm and friendly smile, I am a never met never met a stranger kind of guy. She was an electrician and worked with another electrician longtime friend of mine, the best traditional hunter I have ever known who thinks I am an OK guy so she already had heard everything about me and my abilities, just not met me.
My guy friend's hunting abilities, all with a traditional bow, are beyond amazing, he killed 4 longbeards with his bow in one year, consistently kills a number of deer a year and can kill more hogs on the local Mgt area than all the gun hunters.
Why did you feel it was necessary to make such a comment bjrogg?
organic_archer:
I’ve got nothing but great things to say about the women who’ve attended our bow building workshops.
Some of our most proficient, eager to learn and hardworking attendants have been women.
A pre interview goes a long way. Make sure people understand how labor intensive bowmaking is. I’d say one of the number one comments we get after roughing out bow blanks on the first day is “wow, I knew it would be work, but I had no idea it was that much work”. We don’t allow anyone under the age of 15 for this reason, and anyone under 19 needs adult supervision in Nebraska.
I’d say most of the guys who are running classes for free are finding their issues in that factor alone. Free bows have no value, nor are free instructors typically valued by the masses. There’s nothing at stake for a dilly-dallier to walk away from something that wasn’t paid for, and that’s soon discovered to be difficult.
You should be charging at least a few hundred dollars a person for your time, wear on tools, and materials. That’s being very generous, and wouldn’t even cover the overhead of our 3-day classes (we do go a bit crazy with the meals, let everyone use quality/expensive hand tools, etc).
I bet the majority of everyone’s aforementioned problems would’ve stopped at “free”. There’s no shame in asking what you feel is appropriate for decades of study and expertise, multiple days of instructing, your workspace, tools, countless hours of stave splitting, careful storage/preparation of the bow wood, meals (if you feed everyone), a fun and immersive experience... on, and on… and a nice shooting bow at the end of it all.
Edited for grammar errors.
Eric Krewson:
You are right about "free". Back when I was completely smitten by archery and ran an indoor range in my spare time for the city, I realized that John Q Public had limited to no knowledge about matching arrows to bows or tuning. I loved helping people so I set up a table in the range on Tuesday night to tune bows, compounds and traditional, help match arrows (I had bucket full of various sizes) serve in peeps and set knocking points. I did this all for free, soon the line of people wanting bow work stretched out the door night after night, I was overwhelmed.
I decided to charge $2 for basic bow work, I never had to work on another bow after I listed a price list for work, the line of people evaporated.
bjrogg:
Eric I’m sorry if I was misunderstood. I certainly meant it as a compliment to both of you.
I think it’s fantastic that we can share our passion with such a wide variety of people.
I didn’t mean that your were making a nasty face.
I was thinking more surprised. Like I imagined in your description when you opened the door.
Sometimes opening doors can bring some new friends
Certainly hope we are good.
I have a lot of respect for you
Bjrogg
Eric Krewson:
We are good, thanks for the explanation, sometime typed messages don't come out as planned, I am guilty of the same sometimes.
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