Piece work?

Does anyone know a good place or method for seeking out some simple piece work? I'd like to find something to run in my home shop to make some spare cash, I advertise on Craigslist and occasionally get a nice little job, but I really need something more, ideally a large quantity of something that I could produce on my lathes, but I'm not sure where to begin, I looked at some government contracts for seemingly simple parts, can these be bid on/awarded to a citizen or must I become a business? Am I barking up the wrong tree? There were a number of contracts for things like shoulder bolts and flat washers that seemed like I could earn a good profit on. Is there anyone here in the Southern California area that needs some simple part run in quantity at peice rate?

As a guy with a lathe and a mill in his garage, all I can say is if were that easy, everybody would be doing it.

CL ads, word-of-mouth, and personal connections with people/businesses who can generate those kinds of jobs are maybe your best bet. I know nothing about government bids or contracts, but strongly suspect you'll have to be bonded, insured, or in some other way able to cover the government's x-large backside in the event that any part you produce ends up connected in any way to someones injury, death, or to Russia.

rusty old tools said:

I looked at some government contracts for seemingly simple parts, can these be bid on/awarded to a citizen or must I become a business? Am I barking up the wrong tree? There were a number of contracts for things like shoulder bolts and flat washers that seemed like I could earn a good profit on.

Click to expand...

Have fun with that.. On a lot of those "simple" jobs, the parts make up only a small bit of the cost.. You
don't get to just toss them in a box and write an invoice, there is 6 tons of bullshit involved.

Here is a little story from a place I used to work.. We had a really "smart" guy bid a job, 10,000 or
so giant o-rings.. He was all proud of himself, buy 10,000 o-rings for 95 cents and sell them for a
buck and change, quick $500 for the company....

The reality of it was the packaging was almost $4k, and it took 3 people in packaging almost
6 weeks to package it, and that included taking work home at nights and on weekends. That quick
$500 profit turned into greater than a $15k loss.

You couldn't pay me enough to go back down the direct government route...

Start knocking on doors. Meet people.. Develop a product or 3..

This comes up a lot, go check out the shop management/owner part of this site.

Here is one from last week.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/shop-management-and-owner-issues/machine-shop-owner-332956/

Like JLarsson said, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.. Put your good pair of boots
on and hit the pavement.

Have go through the hoops to get government jobs..not likely a garage shop would qualify..long runs often go to he guy who can compete big runs..imagine making 1/4 " screws for 25 cents each on a manual lathe. one ups to a few hundred possible and finding that job possible even off craigskist

On the little pieces your talking about making, people don't shop local
so much (more so when the qty goes above 50 pc's or so.)

This is the age of the internet, customers will shop nationwide, if not worldwide
as the simple, small parts ship quickly and very cheaply.

The thread linked to by bobw was quite good, lots of sound advice, I thought the government contract rout seemed too good to be true, I won't go any farther down that rabbit hole. It seems advertising on Craigslist was a good decision and I will continue to do so, while it hasn't gotten me a lot of work it does trickle in and most of the jobs have been reasonably simple and profitable for me, recently did one, a short run of 8 parts, very simple, threading 10-32 on to some 3/16 rods, customer provided the stock, 12L14 as suggested, set up the machine and had them done in short order, customer was happy, picked them up and paid me, even threw in a 6 pack of some good beer! He will be delivering more stock in the next week or two for another larger run. My capabilities at home are right now limited to mostly lathe work. I recently picked up a small mill, which needs some fixing up and a bit more tooling before it can be used for anything. Part of the reason I'd like to get my machines making money is to fund the acquisition of some other machines to round the place out, I'm not looking to get rich from it, nor do I think I will, but I like it when a tool pays for its self at least.

rusty old tools said:

I looked at some government contracts for seemingly simple parts, can these be bid on/awarded to a citizen or must I become a business?

Click to expand...

You think the government is going to pay you under-the-table?

rusty old tools said:

There were a number of contracts for things like shoulder bolts and flat washers that seemed like I could earn a good profit on. Is there anyone here in the Southern California area that needs some simple part run in quantity at peice rate?

Click to expand...

You better have some fast machines if you're going to be competitive making washers and bolts!

The gov. definitely has regulations and procedures about who they can hire, and any business owner wanting to do business with the gov. needs to meet certain criteria. You need to do some research on what is required to become a vendor/contractor to the gov. if you're really interested. Don't even waste your time applying unless you meet their requirements.

I'll take what you can't handle.

Best advice I can give is the flip side of the advice I got for finding welding/fab work:

Contact welding outfits and see if they need any work outsourced.

The welding/fab route is to show up/send a letter with some razor blades TIG welded together. Shows you can at least run a torch, and when they need some weldments or have a "we-needed-it-done-yesterday" emergency repair on a part they're $10k deep in labor and machine time on, you won't fux anything up.

My solution was to (largely) ignore job shop work, the margins on making your own products are much higher, and more suited to my capabilities regarding milling/turning. Plus I get to be the engineer . I've got a couple clients that keep me busy enough. Remember, if you're just one person, a single client has the potential to keep you busier than you can reasonably handle.

I am a registered federal contractor, needed to in order to restore clocks at Independence Hall. The process wasn't too complicated the SAM website takes you through all the steps. The only trouble I had was my Dunn & Bradstreet info was out of date so I had to update that first. Of course, it still takes them over two months to pay & and they will keep part of it if Treasury thinks you owe any back taxes....