Market Research! Question regarding GOOD spatulas...

Sorry I had to post this, but I had to post this:

I take a good putty knife. Cut off the handle. I take a craftsman flat slot screw driver and heat the tip. I bend that to the desired angle.

I TIG the rig and off to the skillets.

In widths from 3" to 6"

My daughters all have complete sets.

My kids make their own.

A long handled craftsman screwdriver is probably scraping $20. A good spring steel putty knife is probably $12.

Call it $30. Add argon and other consumibles

I'd be looking for $110 minimum

Quote from Danneskjold

Doing them in a batch of 25 (min order for water jetting), I think I can get them down to $50-60. The question is would anyone buy that?

I'd want it. I've held and used good spatulas before.

I think you should check around with different suppliers. Check with a local fab shop that does a lot of structural fabrication. Generally they tend to do water jet, plasma tables, and laser cutting. You might find that you can do a one off and see how it does.

I have a local shop like that that I farm out the cutting of signs to. Works out great for me, keeps the costs greatly reduced.

Quote from Danneskjold

I've got 3 spatula's. All are as old as I am. 2 regular spatulas, 1 for the grill. All have GOOD springy steel. The 2 regular spatulas are starting to break, so for years I've bought new spatulas to replace them. Only to discover that they are the shittiest of chinesium. Shitbucket steel that doesn't even bend the slightest, much less spring.

My question is this: Would you pay ~$50 for a spatula of GOOD knife steel properly heat treated and tempered? It'd be better than anything you can get these days. Would your spouses / regular people be interested in this?

My steel distributor offers waterjet services. I can get these cut out for ~$5-10 each (I think), and put maybe an hour total into each spatula. But that's still expensive compared to the stuff off of Amazon these days.

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At that price I am almost certain that you would have to sell them direct instead of through a distributer. Get a direct contract with a place like" In & Out Burger" and you would sell a ton if you could convince them that yours are going to last longer thereby saving them money. There are some good ones on the market at around $25 (depends on what size of course as the bigger ones are more expensive). I have some like that which I have had for many years. I don't know if mine would hold up working a hamburger grill 16 hours a day 365 though. I would think yours would though.

Those spatulas I Frankenstein up are super springy. The thickness is about 3/64. Very very durable.

Quote from Danneskjold

That's a decent idea. But I'm not talking about just regular steel. My first batch would be aimed at 15N20, a high nickel saw blade steel. One of my favorites for kitchen knives.

Last night I eyed up getting a different steel, like maybe 4140, but a quick eyeball says the prices aren't much different. And then I'd have to deal with shipping the sheet metal, with a new waterjetting service... My current distributor would jet their own steel and then ship the much smaller pieces.

Check around, 100% of these places can order steel too.

Any useful tool that is superlative in quality will always sell.

I'd check with any short order cooks you might know. They'd know the value of one. Of course, you could also charge whatever the hell you want for them and hope you find people who know a $50 spatula is probably better than the $5 one they have at home even though they'll never really understand why as they don't use either.