For Vaughan McMillan

Messages
1,405
Location
Villa Park, CA
I was in Santa Cruz recently and stopped in a high end kitchen supply store. One thing that caught my eye was that they had rolling pins - probably hand made - for sale. I took some pictures with my cell phone so they're not very good.

Some were just solid wood - I don't remember all of them but let me say cherry, walnut, maple and maybe some others. Others were laminated so they were more decorative. But get this - they were asking $99 for the plain ones and $149 for the laminated ones. Imagine that! A piece of cherry turned in the shape of a large dowel for $100!!!

I didn't measure them but I'd guess they were 24" or less long and maybe 2.5" in diameter.

The first two pictures are of one rolling pin that was laminated. The third picture is of a bunch of them on a display stand.

You should make a few and offer them to some high end kitchen stores.

Mike

Rolling pin-1.jpgRolling pin-2.jpgRolling pin-3.jpg
 
Surprised they didn't have some french style pins with a taper towards each end.

I think the one with the inlay cut on the bias would be pretty cool with tapered ends.

I generally like the tapered pins. Makes it easier (at least for me) to roll things out.
 
You know? I like the idea, but when I looked into retail sales like this, they wanted shrink wrapping, labels, the bar code, etc. If it was a chain type store, the best deal you could get was 50% of retail with 90 to 120 day billing. And they wanted multiples drop shipped (my dime) with 7-10 days notice. And if they dropped the product, they would be returned, again my dime, and a 30 day credit was expected. We don't want to talk about damaged and spoiled product! Those guys wanted to work off my money. The problem with that was, I wanted to make money, not have someone work off mine! Just sayin.... Check carefully. Many pitfalls in these deals.
 
Thanks for the heads-up, Mike, but unfortunately I'm about 800 miles from my lathe these days. :bang: Also, Carol brings up good points about some of these smaller handmade things in the retail market, although some of the smaller non-chain shops are not quite as demanding of their vendors.
 
Top