How Much to Charge for Woodworking Projects: Hourly and Custom Pricing

October 23, 2026 · Selling products and running the numbers

How much to charge for a woodworking project comes down to one line: your hours at an hourly floor your own year needs, plus materials, machine wear and delivery, divided by (1 - your margin). In the illustrative example below, a custom walnut coffee table takes 37.4 priced hours at a $54.11 floor, costs $2,678.24 to make, and a 15% margin prices it at $3,150.88, with a 50% deposit of $1,575.44 up front.

Every figure here belongs to one made-up shop. None of it is a market price, a lumber price or a claim about how long a table takes. Swap in your own numbers and the method holds.

The woodworking pricing formula

hourly floor = (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + shop costs)
               / sellable shop hours a year
piece cost   = priced hours x hourly floor
               + materials + machine wear + delivery
price        = piece cost / (1 - margin)
deposit      = price x deposit share

Step 1: how much to charge per hour for woodworking

The example woodworker wants $40,000 a year kept after a 25% tax set-aside and carries $9,000 of shop costs. That needs $62,333.33 of revenue. They spend 30 hours a week in the shop for 48 weeks, but 20% of those hours go to sharpening, maintenance, jigs and cleanup that no customer pays for. That leaves 1,152 sellable hours, so the floor is $54.11 per sellable shop hour.

Divide the same revenue by every shop hour and you get $43.29, which looks reasonable and quietly leaves the unpaid hours unpaid. Count the 6 hours a week of quotes, photos and lumber runs as well, and the woodworker keeps $23.15 for each of the 1,728 hours worked a year: only 67% of working time is sellable. The freelance hourly rate calculator walks through the same split for any trade.

Step 2: materials from the cut list

Board feet are thickness x width x length in inches, divided by 144, at the rough size you buy, not the finished size. The table’s cut list:

At $14.00 a board foot, the 26 board feet cost $364.00. Spread over the wood that actually ends up in the table, that is $18.46 a board foot, more than the price on the rack. The 30% waste allowance is the example’s own; use the figure from your own offcut pile.

The shelf and drawer parts need 0.42 of a plywood sheet at the example’s 80% yield, so 1 sheet is bought: $95.00. The finish covers 38 sq ft at 3 coats, with 125 sq ft a quart from the label and 15% lost to rags and the can. That is 1.07 quarts, so 2 are bought for $52.00, while only $27.90 of it lands on the table.

Step 3: machine wear

Machines wear out, and a price that ignores them pays for the next saw out of your own pocket. Spread each machine’s price over its working life in machine hours, add a year of blades and sharpening over 900 machine hours a year, and charge the project for the hours it runs the machines:

Step 4: the woodwork estimate

Hours by stage, from the example’s own estimate: design and drawing 3, milling 6, joinery 10, glue-up and assembly 4, sanding 6, finishing 5. That is 34 hours, plus a 10% allowance for hours the estimate missed, for 37.4 hours priced.

The deposit covers materials and delivery before a board is cut. Your time is 64% of the price; materials are 19%. Price custom woodworking by marking up lumber and you price under a fifth of the job.

The insight: unsold hours and setup time are where the money goes

Two things decide whether a woodworker is paid, and neither shows up on a receipt. The first is the hours no customer pays for, already covered in step 1. The second is setup.

Take a cutting board. The example spends 2 hours on setup for any run (picking stock, machine setups, jigs), then 1.5 hours on one board made alone or 1 hour on each board in a batch, with $16.00 of materials a board. Made alone, one board carries the whole setup and costs $205.39 at the floor. In a batch of 10, each board carries 0.2 hours of setup and costs $80.93, less than half as much. At a 15% margin, that is $241.63 for a one-off against $95.21 for a batch board.

The board is the same. Only the way it was made changed the price that pays the floor. If a one-off price looks impossible to sell, the answer may be a batch rather than a lower rate. The markup vs margin chart shows why a 15% margin is not the same as a 15% markup.

Did the table pay?

Say the table sold at $3,100 and ran over: 41 shop hours instead of 37.4, $640.00 of materials, 16 machine hours, and a 3% card fee. After materials, delivery, the fee and wear at $2.9667 a machine hour ($47.47), it leaves $2,301.53, or $56.13 per shop hour, against the $54.11 floor. It clears the floor, but once those hours are paid at the floor only 2.7% of the price is left as margin, short of the 15% the quote was built on. The price that pays exactly the floor on those hours was $3,014.41. Log real hours by stage, and the next quote starts from what the last one took.

How these were calculated

The floor is income / (1 - tax set-aside) plus shop costs, over shop hours a week x (1 - unsold share) x weeks. Board feet are pieces x thickness x width x length / 144, with the waste allowance added and the total rounded up to a whole board foot; sheets are parts area over usable sheet area, rounded up; quarts are area x coats / coverage / (1 - loss), rounded up. Machine wear is each machine’s price over its working life, plus a year of blades over a year’s machine hours, times the project’s machine hours. The price is cost / (1 - margin). The floor, materials and wear are carried into the quote to the cent, as the spreadsheet shows them. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that adds the hours week by week and prices the wear machine by machine, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices, measured build times or safety or structural advice. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own year, cut list and receipts, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly floor to a check on whether a finished piece paid.