Occupational hazard

[Ryder]

I got served with a clean up order from the county sanitarian. $200.00 a day fine and lien against my property if I didn't clean up my property in one month.
My one acre was getting a little thick with "neat stuff" but I find it hard to pass up metal that is being thrown away or recycled. Occasionally people just drop off metal that they think I might use.
I got busy cleaning and toting and finally got a scrapper that was only to happy to come haul off loads of bits and pieces of metal.
Unfortunately this came right before christmas which is normally a great time for construction and sales of my artwork.
What did I learn? Either have a good fence, remote property or limit the amount of raw materials floatinig around your place.

[GarryRicketson]

This is one of the main reasons I prefer living in Mexico, they don't have all that kind of stuff going on. When I got my "lot" and built my house, I didn't even have to get any kind of
building permit.

[Andrew Werby]

While we Americans like to think of our country as the Land of the Free, we're increasingly being subjected to this sort of petty tyranny. Our homes are our castles, unless we have something in the yard that isn't grass. Then the forces of Lawn Order come down hard. Here's a story about some folks in Orlando FL who just wanted to grow some organic veggies, which the City deemed illegal:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organ...#axzz2onlTWpCS But don't worry - shooting unarmed people to death is still okay there...

Andrew Werby
Juxtamorph.com

[raspero]

When I got my "lot" and built my house, I didn't even have to get any kind of
building permit.

I've been living here so long I had forgotten about building permits. If I remember correctly, they are documents that the Nazis who control local governments in the USA make you buy when you want to spend your money to build something on your own land. The document states that you must build what they want you to build, not what you want to build. This is a multi purpose document; it is not only to squeeze money from small land owners, but, more importantly, to maintain at the highest possible level the market value of the Nazi's own property which tends to be considerable, as it is the big property owners who usually control local governments.

The Unified building code, which all states were forced to accept by the Feds, was written by a committee, invited by congress, consisting of the various building supply manufacturers, such as Georgia-Pacific. As a result American houses are way, way overbuilt with increasingly scarce and expensive materials, sold by whom? Why the same nice people who wrote your building codes. What a beautiful racket.

Richard

[Art-Deco]

A friend of mine years ago bought a 300 acre ranch in Oregon, he was planning to put a doube wide moble home in and had an outhouse while they were doing the work, one day the outhouse door had a STOP WORK order sign on it, turned out the county wanted this silly temporary outhouse to have a concrete floor, power vent system and on and on. My friend asked the county guy if bending his behind over a log and doing it in the woods was ok, that WAS, but you couldn't have an outhouse structure without the concrete floor and vent...

Later he was doing some smoothing out work of some kind with his bulldozer around his road, and this county guy comes again and was all upset about it, claimed my friend was changing the LAND!!!!! ya think??? bulldozer= changing the land contours, forget that this was a 300 acre ranch not some 25 x 50 foot LOT in town with neighbor's houses 2 feet away.
As I remember my friend basically ran the jerk off the property.

I won't even go into the hassle he had getting his septic system installed and inspected/approved by a real jerk of an inspector who went out of his way to make everything difficult.

[arcdawg]

Originally Posted by Ryder

I got served with a clean up order from the county sanitarian. $200.00 a day fine and lien against my property if I didn't clean up my property in one month.
My one acre was getting a little thick with "neat stuff" but I find it hard to pass up metal that is being thrown away or recycled. Occasionally people just drop off metal that they think I might use.
I got busy cleaning and toting and finally got a scrapper that was only to happy to come haul off loads of bits and pieces of metal.
Unfortunately this came right before christmas which is normally a great time for construction and sales of my artwork.
What did I learn? Either have a good fence, remote property or limit the amount of raw materials floatinig around your place.

Build a 8ft fence and donate some work to the town that you reside in. NEVER GET RID OF YOUR SCRAP METAL DUDE!

[Duck]

Originally Posted by raspero

I've been living here so long I had forgotten about building permits. If I remember correctly, they are documents that the Nazis who control local governments in the USA make you buy when you want to spend your money to build something on your own land. The document states that you must build what they want you to build, not what you want to build. This is a multi purpose document; it is not only to squeeze money from small land owners, but, more importantly, to maintain at the highest possible level the market value of the Nazi's own property which tends to be considerable, as it is the big property owners who usually control local governments.

The Unified building code, which all states were forced to accept by the Feds, was written by a committee, invited by congress, consisting of the various building supply manufacturers, such as Georgia-Pacific. As a result American houses are way, way overbuilt with increasingly scarce and expensive materials, sold by whom? Why the same nice people who wrote your building codes. What a beautiful racket.

Richard

We're on the last leg of building a new house on a property I built my studio on in 2010. We had to pay a $1,700 impact fee in addition to all the other permit fees. What makes this so silly is my studio was the last time this little town issued a building permit almost 3 years ago…apparently annexing the property and building the house has impacted the town infrastructure...

http://www.emperorsglass.com

[Robson Valley]

Very accomplished chainsaw carver aquaintance of mine. Needs logs and other big pieces. Sales for big pieces of change, too.

Seems a neighbor found a "firewood" bylaw. _ALL_ round wood must be split and stacked in cords. No exceptions. "Nope. We don't care what you claim it's for." Now totally covered with a cheap blue tarp, he claims that the pile really is the camper off the back of his truck. No peeking.

I think the lesson is that there's one (or more) in every community, reading the bylaws from dawn until dark. Anonymous, lurking behind the lace curtain.

[Art-Deco]

"Seems a neighbor found a "firewood" bylaw."

Sounds to me like the neighbor got sick and tired of hearing 80db of
BbbbrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRPPPPPTTTTRRRRTTTTTRRRRRR RRRRttttTTTTrrrrrIuuuuuPppppppBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrr rRRRRRRRRUUUUUUPPPPT for hours at a time spring, summer, winter, fall, Saturday, Sunday, Monday... and decided to find a way to get rid of the problem.

I can't think of anything more ANNOYING than listening to a damn chainsaw for hours at a time running thru it's power and idle cycles up and down and up and down, and it carries for long distances like nothing else! it would be enough to drive neighbors crazy.

[arcdawg]

Last year my town tried to draft up a blight ordinance due to some deadbeat property owners. The majority of this town is nicely kept but with any place there is always some blight issues if not enforced. A big issue for me is out of date tag sale signs and vinyl signs that local companies put up every where. So I drove around town and collected these out of date signs and marched right into the meeting to a roaring welcome and said no blight ordinance unless signage was included. I had the support from the public but not the town officials....go fig.

Here's the kicker, a town official walked up to me at the end of the meeting and said that I best keep my mouth shut or my sculpture (which is very well organized and my junk pile cannot be seen by the road or by neighbors) could be deemed "Blight" as well. I told them bring it on as I always wanted a story featuring my work in the New York Times......they backed right off after I mentioned that....kind of makes me want to go and get a tri axle dump truck full of scrap and place it in my front field, paint it some crazy color, sit and wait!

There should be a balance but we gotta do our part too!

[Art-Deco]

Originally Posted by arcdawg

Here's the kicker, a town official walked up to me at the end of the meeting and said that I best keep my mouth shut or my sculpture (which is very well organized and my junk pile cannot be seen by the road or by neighbors) could be deemed "Blight" as well. I told them bring it on as I always wanted a story featuring my work in the New York Times......they backed right off after I mentioned that...

Yeah man tell those overpaid do-nothing officials BRING IT ON BABY I could use the global publicity AND I can use the money from the lawsuit I'll file and win!
Most of these town officials, board members are nobodies who managed to get their position because no one else wanted it and they ran virtually unopposed.
Only about 125 residents in a town of 1900 people even bothered to vote in the last mayoral election here, that tells you a lot.

[Ryder]

Further update on my county ordered cleanup of my place. Got it picked up enough to satisfy the county inspector and got the OK in writing (which I will keep on file). I also got laid off my hourly job and have been hitting the metal sculpture business harder. So with a few cheap adds and some word of mouth I am starting to get a lot of inquires for art work. Art work that I could have used a lot of that metal that just got hauled off!!!!
Here are a few photos of some small pieces that I made from my junk.........before I hauled it off. http://www.ryderhorses.com/trophies.html

[Art-Deco]

Originally Posted by Ryder

I also got laid off my hourly job and have been hitting the metal sculpture business harder. So with a few cheap adds and some word of mouth I am starting to get a lot of inquires for art work. Art work that I could have used a lot of that metal that just got hauled off!!!!
Here are a few photos of some small pieces that I made from my junk.........before I hauled it off. http://www.ryderhorses.com/trophies.html

Yeah, same here- but it was reduced hours down to 20 from 40 from last June untill two weeks ago when I went back full time, but unemployment made up about 75% of the loss over those six months and I knew I was going back to 40 hours so it wasn't too bad.
Oddly enough I've been busy with a number of decent sized orders, one woman bought half a dozen large pieces, an older couple drove out here from 5 hours away, stayed at a hotel overnight with their dog, and returned home with three large panels they wanted for a birthday present for their son!

We need to broaden our base of support to include interior decorators, architects and others, I'm not sure how to effectively go about reaching them or our respective target audiences inexpensively, used to be in the old days before the internet your choice was basically direct mailings and expensive magazine ads.
I placed a $700 1/12th page ad in a magazine at random in 1980 called Apartment Life (Metropolitan home now) and it brought 700 inquiries, of whom 100 ordered something, but today that magazine's ad costs something like $21,000 for that size ad!

Direct mail with postage now means that to mail off a letter or brochure, and a photo is going to cost $1 each and I'm not sure that's even an effective means any more.

I have a number of models I haven't made molds of untill I have an actual sale for a cast.
With art, it seems a lot of clients are one-off purchases, they want one nice item for a wall or table and they buy the one item, so it's always a case of needing to find new clients for each sale.

Your pieces are real cool, very creative!

[Ryder]

The way to make a small fortune; start with a large fortune and do a lot of advertising.

I am looking to grow my sculpture business this next year so I am signing up for some horse shows and home and garden shows. My horses are at a good price point and horse lovers tend to spend money. I also have been advertising in craigslist under the business and also the farm and garden sections. It seems even people with considerable disposable income look at craigslist.

Here in montana we get hit with some good tourist traffic for a few months in the summer and I have had good luck selling direct to my customers at farmers markets and such.

I have had several folks approach me about wholesaling them items to sell but so far I just haven't seen the profit in it.....plus I would go crazy punching out 50 of the same item.

[raspero]

Hey Ryder, That stuff on your web site is totally great.

Richard

[Art-Deco]

Originally Posted by Ryder

I have had several folks approach me about wholesaling them items to sell but so far I just haven't seen the profit in it.....plus I would go crazy punching out 50 of the same item.

I made the mistake of accepting wholesale orders from a handfull of stores over the years and regretted having accepted every one of them, every one of them wound up costing me more money and aggravation than I made on the orders.

Let me think... one was a store in California, SF or San Diego or Los Angeles, I forget now, hardly a backwoods dump if you know what I mean, they ordered about $125 worth of small items @ 50% wholesale plus shipping, I gave them the standard 2% 10/n30 invoice.
In the end after repeatedly invoicing them via email and via mail with no payment forthcoming I finally started adding interest on, even then it took SIX months for them to finally cut me a lousy $140 check or whatever it was.

Some time later they had the gal to email asking to buy more! I flat out told them NO and why. They tried a few years later, again I said NO WAY.

Another store, also in a real nice high fashion area purchased a dozen items wholesale, but they griped about the shipping costs, saying they NEVER ever before paid more than (something like 30% of the invoice) for shipping and that my shipping charges were close to 50% of the invoice, forget explaining that these were large cast STONE pieces they ordered, weighing 20-60 pounds each, and that they were in California- basically zone 8 the most expensive and I showed them the UPS chart showing the cost of the shipping.
They still griped, so I said I would try to pack a couple of smalelr items in one box to shave a little off the shipping.

The boxes all arrived at the store, I got my money, then I get an email when they opened the boxes, turned out SEVERAL of the sculptures were damaged in transit, 2 or 3 of them they said they could touch up, 2 -3 of the others were total losses, and they sent me photos of the whole mess. I would up biting that one replacing those damaged sculptures and shipping them.
I don't know if they really got damage din shipping, or one of their goons in the receiving dept just got careless handling them.

There were other similar stories and that was when I decided no more wholesale orders- period, if they don't gripe about shipping cost or take months to pay then you risk their employees who don't care in the first place- damaging the items when unpacking them, dropping one maybe and claiming to their boss that it came damaged that way.