Mat Cutting Requests

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Kirstie

Kirstie

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Jan 16, 2007
Posts
8,395
Loc
Berkeley, CA
We get this kind of request by email all the time. This customer wants this image cut out to house an 8 x 10 photo.

Can your mat cutter do this at this size? If so, what CMC are you using?

What would you charge for this work?

Would anyone like this job? I don't know the customer's location or anything about her budget.

matting1.jpg
 
I don't think that could be done with a bevel cutting cmc. I think that several could make the cut, but the board tends to delaminate when you get into some of those detailed areas. Maybe one of the old router type cmcs might be able to do it.
 
My sign/plaque guy has a laser engraver that'll cut paper. It's slightly "scorchy" around the cuts, but with the right color or texture of paper it could be incorporated into the design. It may be worth looking in your area for a similar service?
 
If you can provide a digital file of the image, it could be traced and cut without difficulty using most CMCs. The small circles and other shapes surrounding the main shape could also be cut by some machines, but those probably would look better if drawn on the mat. Our Valiani CMC would perform all of the cutting and drawing operations.

Last year we duplicated a double mat, which had multiple cutouts of stars, open V-grooves, and the Disney character "Merlin". Here's a segment of the scanned drawing. The actual cutout of stars ranged from less than 1/8" to about 1/4" across and Merlin was about 2-3/4" tall in the mat...

Disney Mat-drawing of Merlin_Stars.jpg
 
I'm asking the question not only to find out who can do this. Sarah at our shop might be able to as she has done complex CMC work in the past. But I also want to know what everyone else might charge for this type of work. We tend to get bogged down in matting projects of this type to the point where they are no longer profitable. We are seeing more and more from the web site. Most don't want frames. They just want the mat in a standard size so that they can buy a ready made frame locally.

Is anyone else shipping such matting work regularly?
 
FrameMakers said:
I think that several could make the cut, but the board tends to delaminate when you get into some of those detailed areas.
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Dave, maybe the mat has something to do with that. I use only the best Conservation-grade mats for such jobs, and not Museum-grade cotton mats, because the alpha cellulose fiber cuts cleaner. Even the smallest circles can be cut cleanly with bevels up, and a 1/8" diameter circle cut looks like a cone with a tiny hole at the bottom.

Sometimes shredding can occur around the bevels of very-small-radius cuts of odd shapes. For example, the fingers on a hand cut in about 3/8" size. My favorite solution is to cut such small, intricate shapes from the back of the mat, showing without bevels on the front. Another solution, when bevels are required, is to convert small arcs into straight-line cuts which, in small cutouts, still look like arcs. That is, the blade is extracted and then re-plunged several times in order to make a small-radius arc. And of course, occasionally one of those weird cuts will need a bit of touching up with the X-Acto knife.
 
Jim Miller said:
Last year we duplicated a double mat, which had multiple cutouts of stars, open V-grooves, and the Disney character "Merlin". Here's a segment of the scanned drawing. The actual cutout of Merlin was about 2-3/4" tall in the mat...

View attachment 18558
Click to expand...

Jim, I can't let this go. Being a Disneyophile that I am, that is Mickey Mouse playing the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia. The sorcerer in Fantasia was Yen Sid. (Disney spelled backwards)
 
Kirstie said:
...But I also want to know what everyone else might charge for this type of work. We tend to get bogged down in matting projects of this type to the point where they are no longer profitable.
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Yep, that can happen. But after a few losers, we learn to quote more realistic prices. That mat I described above took about two hours to design and another hour-or-so of fiddling with the machine to get the cuts right. I charged for 3 hours at our usual $60/ hour rate, plus the usual mat-cutting price, which totaled $321.97. The conservator was delighted, since she couldn't find anyone else to do the work satisfactorily.

For a project like the mermaid-with-bubbles you showed above, I would probably charge $100 for the design and one mat, then offer to credit back up to $50 toward additional mats or framing to go with it. Or, if the design is something we could sell repeatedly, I might create it as a stock mat shape and sell it as such.

In all cases, we have to be aware of copyright issues, and try to work with copyright-free or clipart images.

We are seeing more and more from the web site. Most don't want frames. They just want the mat in a standard size so that they can buy a ready made frame locally.
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Of course they do, which is why I charge enough to cover the cost going in, and look for ways to leverage that into additional business - whether from that customer or others.
 
Kirstie said:
...Most don't want frames. They just want the mat in a standard size so that they can buy a ready made frame locally.
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This conjures visions of grandma seeking something completely unique and under $25 for the 6-year-old granddaughter's birthday, but my suggestion of $100 minimum with an offer to credit $50 toward other stuff would still apply. If that (or whatever fair deal you devise) is unacceptable to grandma, there's always an alternative. For example, construction paper comes in a plethora of colors, and grandma could cut out the shape with her X-Acto knife; total under $5.

Sometimes we just can't fill the bill, but perhaps we can help future-potential-customers face that reality by suggesting alternatives that better fit their purposes.
 
Kristie
Sarah needs to practice the path trace.... I try to work a piece in path trace every week so I don't get rusty. It is not that hard once you master it.

However, if you do not do this often I would suggest you contact Dani at Wizard she can knock it out and it used to be a flat $50.00 charge don't know what it maybe now. Dani does not flaunt it but she is extremely good at path trace.....

What to charge?
I would cut out the mermaid and do the circles & twinklers with pen attachment.
I would charge:
$175.00 for one
$20.00 each for 10
$18.50 each for 15
$17.50 each for 25
$13.50 each for 100 or more
 
Gumby, how long would it take to run the 20 including programming on the 9000. Would you need to babysit the mat while it was cutting and inking the sparkles. I'm still using the 8000 so I'm wondering about the difference in performance.
 
I estimated 3-2.5 hours to from path trace to my first successful cut. But I am thinking more like 2 hours if it goes smooth. Then I would tile it 4 up. cutting and pen time est max 5 min.-6 min. a mat.

The 9000 cuts at a faster speed than the 8000. But you have to go slow so the cutter does not get ahead of your pens ink feed.

On cut art I would watch it to moke sure it is a smooth transition cut for the mermaid but the pen part you could walk away and do other things..
 
Jim Miller said:
This conjures visions of grandma seeking something completely unique and under $25 for the 6-year-old granddaughter's birthday, but my suggestion of $100 minimum with an offer to credit $50 toward other stuff would still apply. If that (or whatever fair deal you devise) is unacceptable to grandma, there's always an alternative. For example, construction paper comes in a plethora of colors, and grandma could cut out the shape with her X-Acto knife; total under $5.

Sometimes we just can't fill the bill, but perhaps we can help future-potential-customers face that reality by suggesting alternatives that better fit their purposes.
Click to expand...


Jim, that is one of the most politically correct, funniest things I have heard you say.
 
So, this is what Less has to look forward to when he buys a CMC.
 
GUMBY said:
Kristie
Sarah needs to practice the path trace.... I try to work a piece in path trace every week so I don't get rusty. It is not that hard once you master it.
Click to expand...


Sarah is a Path Trace expert. Still, we find that the time to respond to these requests, go back and forth on design with the customer, do a test mat, cut the mat, and finally mail out the mat can be time consuming. We quoted the price on the job in question similarly to what Jim would charge. At that price we may not get the job,in fact we probably won't, but so be it. We are learning not to underbid these little jobs.

Thanks also to Jim for your thoughts on this which are in line with mine. There is no way I am going to do this sort of work for just the price of a normal mat and a half hour's labor added on. We used to do this, and It always amounted to more time that we thought it would.
 
I agree. Especially when you aren't profiting from other elements of a complete frame job.
As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."
:cool: Rick
 
Kirstie said:
There is no way I am going to do this sort of work for just the price of a normal mat and a half hour's labor added on. We used to do this, and It always amounted to more time that we thought it would.
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Yes, the road to proficiency is a bumpy one, eh? After a while we come to realize the essential truth of that old axiom, "time is money". We also learn that customers will gleefully take every shred of profitability they can extract from us.

Most of us probably could get this job done with half an hour of design time if only the main shape were to be cut, and all the little shapes were omitted. The customer might go for that alternative if the 'bubbles' really do not matter, or if an artsy friend could add those embellishments with colored pencils, or such.
 
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