I have a small shop in CA - 3 employees and a 2200 sq ft shop. Started the shop 12 years ago with a $10,000 loan from grandfather which I was nervous about but thought I could make it work. 5 years ago I purchased a CNC. I was pretty nervous about that too but it turned out to be one of the best buys I have ever made. I am now considering building my own wood doors, RTF doors, and drawer boxes. I've done lots of calculations and it looks like it's going to be a positive move. Of course, I will have to move shops as my shop now is already too small. At this point I'm just looking for feedback from those of you who have made a similar decision about not outsourcing or reducing your outsourcing. Was it profitable? Did you run into any unexpected problems? Any advice or comments are welcome and I'm happy to provide answers to any questions.

I have had a shop for over 30 years. I own all of the woodworking equipment needed to make doors and drawer boxes and yet on most jobs I order doors and boxes. Its hard to pay a good woodworker what you will have to pay them and compete with the door and drawer manufactures. But, that equipment still gets use, just not as much and on other projects.

I assume you are primarily doing case goods. Having woodworking equipment will open up a lot of opportunities. You can move from case goods to other areas in the home, like fireplace surrounds, bookcases, moldings and if you get good, stairs. Having woodworking equipment will take your shop to another level.

We make our own doors. We do it because no door maker can meet our very short lead time. We do not make money making doors.

I am entering my 20th year. If I were you I would concentrate on sales and efficiency. Good employees are hard to come by, you are setting yourself up to not build another kitchen (or whatever you make) and need more employees. Would you make more money building an extra kitchen a month or a week or making doors? I'll bet another kitchen is going to win that battle.

The Goal is profit. If that is not your goal ignore my advise.

A few numbers to add to your calculations.
1.) Yield 50% or worse. It will not be better than that.
2.) Dust/chip. You are going to generate a lot of chip. You need to collect it well so you are not re-cutting chip and handle it. What collector do you have and how do you empty it. How do you dispose of the chip.
3.) Tooling, insert carbide is the way to go. Quality tooling is very expensive.

I love new toys (I mean equipment) as much as the next guy but it is about profit and longevity. Feeding your family.

Good luck!

As a one man shop I have always made my own doors to be able to control the grain and color and matching. Competing with doors shops has little to do with things.
It's the quality that kept me busy matching door panels and drawer fronts and such.
I raised the price of my doors and drawers until they were profitable and I suggest you do the same. The doors are only a part of the total cost and when they want what they feel is the best work they can get cost becomes secondary. some charge more for installation some more for moldings and some my be high on finish or footage prices, me doors is where I draw the line i'm not practicing like a doctor this is for real. Good luck

From a macro point of view the economy is built on a division (specialization) of labor.

What you are talking about is the opposite of that. Generally not a good idea.

Ah, but Pat, this guy is a 3 man shop. I imagine he is small enough and smart enough to know he has it all over the guys buying everything. He can control timing, delivery, quality and more.

As D Brown mentions, he can control grain, appearances, book matching, etc. Those big door companies can't even begin to approach what the OP is able to address.

Small is, by definition, out of the mainstream, that macro thing, the big and common. It is flexible, capable and willing to de one thing on one job and something else on the next. Survival for small shops is predicated on being light and quick, nimble and smart.

Big is loud and bright and lumbering about, like Jabba, unable to move, but certainly is big. But big and low cost are only that - no redeeming value beyond that.

Small shops that are smart are able to differentiate themselves in the marketplace by their abilities, their craft. But only for buyers that appreciate that. The challenge is there - finding the buyers that appreciate the small shop.

Thank you all for your responses. It sounds like I should expect, at best, to reduce my lead times but turning extra profit sounds like it's been hard to come by on the wood doors.
I don't know much about building wood doors. The process will be fairly new to me and that is the part where I have the most doubt.
The RTF doors seem to be a slam dunk though. We do lots of apartments with RTF doors. I typically pay about $1000 for doors on a typical unit. Those same doors can be nested on 4 sheets of material. Add in the cost of glue, foil, and labor to get them from the CNC through the press and I believe I can get those same doors complete for about 1/2 the cost of outsourcing.

As I mentioned, we do lots of apartment units. Sometimes the units are leased before they become vacant and there is a very small window to do rehabs. If we can turn them around in less time, I believe the owners will consider rehabing a higher percentage of them.

What are your thoughts on drawer boxes? I pay about $45 on average for a box- prefinished 1/2" baltic birch with clear foil edges and 1/2" white bottoms. How many of you make your own drawers?

I build my doors just because I don't like the door manufacturers procedures for building doors.

Pinning a door while it's in the clamp and then removing it in less than 5 minutes produces a door that will show the joint.

Sanding the door within an hour of that procedure will show the glue line.

Not putting glue on the shoulders of the door makes the finish crack at the joint in about a year.

I make my doors. All contacting surfaces get glue, the top and bottom shoulders, the inside of the cope, the top bottom and end of the tenon. They are in the clamps for about an hour. They get a rough sanding to flatten it and then they are set aside for at least 3 days while the water in the glue migrates out. And then they get their final sanding before being finished.

This produces a dead flat door that shows no signs where the joint is and eventually after about 7 years the micro cracks start showing up at the joints from seasonal movement.

I have door manufacture reps come by occasionally and the first thing I ask is do you pin your doors in the clamps. The answer is almost always yes. I'm done with them at that point. If they say no, which usually means they use and RF dryer (good) then I ask about the gluing practice. Do they fully glue the cope or is it just the tenon. They always say just the tenon, and we're done.

I make all kinds of odd cabinets, you know - custom. And sometimes you can't even get the door you want made.

I've invested in carbide cutters all from the same maker and all I do is drop the cutter in and adjust the height, the fence depth is never touched.

As another poster said, charge until you make a profit.

TGC, sorry to say, that sounds like a pretty ugly looking drawer.

When we make doors we are in the Leo camp. Its a loser financially in that we could source them in. Waltz would be a source for a quality door, our market doesnt pay us for goofy grain matching (no offense). Of course you cant put a dark door next to a light door but there is zero market for laying out an entire elevation and artistically placing your panels.

My bigger issue is what Leo mentions, glue on every face of the cope and stick, and none to lock up the panel. Further in the rare instance where we do residential work our customers enjoy the fact that they are getting hardwood from trees cut, sawn, dried, and finished product, in-state. Any hardwood that comes through our shop was harvested, sawn, and dried, in-state. That means a little bit on price but not enough to do boutique grain matching and sorting though. We will cut a run of slab fronts out of a single board for fun but its rare as most of all fronts are 5 piece and matching is a waste of time.

I would agree with the other posts. Material sorting, processing, tooling, chips, and way more than anything reducing efforts in finishing, would be my red flags for you. If you do much solid wood 5 piece you will plainly know how hard it is to get ripping crisp copes consistently, how hard it is (and expensive) to maintain clean sharp end grain panel raises (inserts and swap them like toilet paper) that dont need lots of hand fussing. Its all expensive.

The notion of foiling your own doors is off the radar to me personally. Absorbing all that expense, inventory, and liability just doesnt seem wise but you may well be on a trajectory to build a shop where you spend more time in the caribbean than you do on the phone which is very smart.

Since we have moved to CNC the one huge move I see that I have found nauseating is the move to MDF raised panel doors. Its a mistake on my part as shops are crushing it shipping the crap that we all worked to move away from (particle board cabinets 20 years ago). Now? Euro cabs, MDF doors, all paint grade, its the trend but the paint grade trend was always poplar, hard or soft maple, and now we have come full circle because the consumer base has cycled and the HGTV crowd now is either too young to remember the crap disaster of particle board, or they are old enough to be willing to save the pennies knowing whoever has to deal with their cabs when they are dead is someone they dont care about.

The market has changed. We dont build residential cabinets because we are in a rural area where a customer will walk in and hand us a quote from the home center and we could easily meet it. BUT!.. the home center cabinets will start to fall apart in a year and they will tell everyone in the community that they knew they bought crap cabinets so they got what they paid for. OUR cabinets on the other hand, built to the same crap standard (customer completely informed), will start to fall apart in 3 years, and they will ride us down up and down the roads and to everyone they know that they knew they wanted cheap but not "THAT" cheap.

So we stay away.

I was thrilled when I outsourced all my doors. I was a two man shop, which really equates to 1 1/4 men in the shop most days. Days where I am bidding and working on marketing. So with outsourcing, doors became a fixed cost and show up on time. No lumber inventory, and no milling and glue up time. I controlled the minimum width boards I would allow in the panels on the order, and always ordered them slightly oversized so I could fit the inlaid doors to my specs. I didn't have a quality wide belt, so always appreciated the dead flat doors that I got. I'm surprised shops are not getting doors in a timely manner. In the early days of this service, you could get doors at the shop by the time the boxes were done. I've been retired for a while, I guess that has changed. Won't there be a pretty hefty machinery investment? Carousel clamp station for the panels, door clamp, wide belt if you don't have one, multiple shapers or door machine, and a lot more sanding time. When you are cramped for space and you might be short on labor, outsourcing is a real problem solver.

Setup and make your doors accurate and sanding with an RO takes little time. A wide belt is very nice, but not a deal breaker. If you are in the business and deal with solid wood you should have one anyway.

Gluing up all the panels was a big deal for my little shop. Making flat stock was the start, then all the hand clamps and panels leaning against walls to dry was a big deal for the little bit of equipment we had. I really didn't improve that process from when I stated in my basement. So just making a phone call to get flat doors made it so smooth. We really made a lot more one offs. Come to think of it, only did two kitchens in 8 years.

Im in Rich's camp on the sanding. Doing anything today where your work has to be within RO range of finished is really hard. Its like New Yankee Workshop style woodworking which in my short stint in this world is a go broke endeavor. The only way I can be profitable in a small shop with panels is to bring my material in 1/16 to 1/8 oversized, and straight lined. That way the mill deals with 95% of the chips. Chips are about my main motivator.

I can rip wide open with the feeder and go straight to glue up with never a worry about high/low. Sounds sick but I often do panel surfacing on the CNC now in big panels because its jointing, thicknessing, and getting to 120 grit, all while Im doing other work or cleaning the shop. When you do the math its WAY faster. Straight off the CNC to 150 or 180 and your done. Sanding completely sucks.

Ive moved all straight stock processing to 10K rpm spiral insert. Im still shaper/feeder and no moulder but the insert heads again mean mirka ceros swipe with 150 grit and done.

But when it comes to doors its a different game. It all slows down and another shop we cut for buys in and its a lot easier for them.

If I were paint grade in a market that was eating up MDF doors it'd be heaven.

MarkB- That's us. 80% (if not more) of our doors are paint grade shaker or white RTF. Not a whole lot of super high end stuff.

Sanding is the bane of my existence.

Dave

My point is that trade and comparative advantage literally has built the world economy.

Division of labor has been around since 1776 and Adam Smith. It has raised the standard of living of the world.

Comparative advantage