Costs
How to Categorize Miniature Build Costs
Sort miniature project costs into fixed, variable and shared categories. A borrowed mailbox example shows break-even; no miniature prices are included.
What to take away
- This article sorts miniature project costs; it gives no miniature prices, which vary by region. What carries over is the sum, and the sum is the useful part.
- Break-even is the fixed costs divided by what each unit leaves after its variable costs.
- Leave your own hours out and the sum flatters you. Put them in and the answer changes.
- Shared costs need an allocation rule, or one project quietly carries the whole workshop.
The break-even method in four steps
Break-even is the number of units you must sell before a project stops losing money. It takes four steps, and every number in them can come from your own receipts and your own hours.
- List the fixed costswhat you pay whether or not you build anything.
- List the variable costs per unitwhat arrives with each build, your hours included.
- Subtract the variable cost from the price. The remainder is the contribution margin.
- Divide the fixed costs by the contribution margin. The answer is the break-even in units.
Step one is the cut to get right. University of Nebraska Extension's guide to pricing a product or service says the first cut is between fixed costs you pay whether or not you build anything and variable costs arriving with each unit.
Fixed vs Variable Costs
Fixed Costs
- Equipment
- Yes
- Rent
- Yes
- Raw materials
- No
- Direct labor
- No
- Shipping
- No
- Credit card fees
- No
Variable Costs
- Equipment
- No
- Rent
- No
- Raw materials
- Yes
- Direct labor
- Yes
- Shipping
- Yes
- Credit card fees
- Yes
It also flags the trap. The same category can land on either side depending on what the work is for. Labor used to make a product is variable. Labor spent running the operation is fixed. A maker who treats an hour at the bench as free has left a variable cost off the page.
The method on a borrowed example: mailboxes
The same guide follows a one-person handmade business making custom airbrushed mailboxes. Each mailbox takes 1.5 hours to paint. The owner wants ten dollars an hour. The first year should bring twenty units at seventy dollars each.
| Line | Amount | Type |
|---|---|---|
| License | 40 dollars | Fixed |
| Airbrush and parts | 150 dollars | Fixed |
| Class | 50 dollars | Fixed |
| Stencils | 10 dollars | Fixed |
| Photography | 100 dollars | Fixed |
| Fixed total | 350 dollars | |
| Mailbox | 20 dollars a unit | Variable |
| Paint | 5 dollars a unit | Variable |
| Labor | 15 dollars a unit | Variable |
| Shipping | 10 dollars a unit | Variable |
| Variable total | 50 dollars a unit |
The seventy dollar price less 50 dollars of variable cost leaves a contribution margin of 20 dollars. Divide 350 by 20 and the break-even lands at 17.5 units. Those are that document's numbers, not miniature numbers. What transfers is the shape of the answer.
What happens when your hours are left out
Take the 15 dollars of labor out and the contribution margin grows, so break-even falls. The business looks far safer, yet the owner is working for nothing. A maker who leaves their own hours out of the arithmetic will conclude they are profitable when they are not.
That is why hours belong in step two. How the number is built walks through materials, consumables, tool break-even and rework hours as one total.
Shared costs: the part a parts list misses
A parts list captures direct costs and misses everything shared. University of Florida Extension's primer on knowing your product costs separates direct costs, assigned straight to one product, from indirect costs, which it calls overhead.
Direct vs Indirect Costs
Direct Costs
- Assignment
- Straight to product
- Allocation
- Not needed
- Space
- Not allocated
- Equipment
- Not allocated
- Example
- Parts list
Indirect Costs (Overhead)
- Assignment
- Shared pool
- Allocation
- Cost driver
- Space
- By area occupied
- Equipment
- By hours used
- Example
- Resin printer time
Overhead is shared across products, gathered into a cost pool, then allocated using a cost driver. The driver is the measure that decides how much of the pool each project carries.
Its allocation examples translate cleanly to a bench. Space is allocated by area occupied. Equipment is allocated by hours used. So a resin printer running four hours on one project and twelve on another does not cost each of them the same. And a shelf holding stock for one build is not free because you already own the shelf.
Sorting a miniature build into the sum
A bottle already on the shelf is still a cost of the build that uses it. The table sorts the lines a parts list most often leaves out into the categories of the sum.
Line on a miniature build / Where it lands
- Glue, primer, masking tape, sandpaper
- Variable: used up by each build
- Craft-knife blades
- Variable: worn down by the build
- Wire, resistors, switch, battery holder or power supply, batteries
- Variable: the LEDs are usually listed, these often are not
- Basing scatter, varnish, display case or cover
- Variable: the finishing
- Resin lost to supports and failed prints, cleaning liquid, gloves
- Variable: printer consumables
- The resin printer
- Fixed, allocated to projects by hours used
- Bench space and the shelf holding stock
- Overhead, allocated by area occupied
- A specialist tool
- Fixed, spread over its life
Break-even math for tool purchases applies the same sum to the fixed lines. Blades and abrasives that a tool consumes stay variable.
Where the money still leaks
A complete sum still misses money that leaves through habits rather than purchases. Five leaks recur.
- Failed parts, paid for twice: once in material, once in the hour spent making them.
- Shipping and minimum orders on small purchases, which can exceed the item.
- Half-used consumables that pass their shelf life before the next build needs them, such as an opened bottle of resin, a tube of glue or a dried-out paint.
- Tools bought for a job that never recurred, such as a specialist cutter or a lighting kit for one scene.
- Time spent looking for things, which is invisible and is often the largest line.
Fixing the last one is mostly storage discipline. The per-build version of this arithmetic is worked through in pricing supplies for a build, and how solo makers keep track of it is in how makers handle project costs.
Common questions
Should a hobby be costed at all?
Once. Doing it once tells you whether the next idea is worth starting, then you can forget about it.
How do I value my own time?
Pick a number you would accept from someone else for the same work, and use it consistently.
Is a tool a fixed cost or a variable one?
Fixed, spread over its life. Blades and abrasives that it consumes are variable.
What is the most underestimated cost?
Rework. Nobody plans for the wall they build twice, and almost everyone builds one.
In this guide
- Break even math for beginner miniature tool purchases and cost per useHow to judge miniature tool purchases by break even math and cost per use, with real prices for knives, mats, brushes, resin printing, and beginner overspending.
- Choosing miniature materials: basswood, wood movement and cheap substitutions that failExplanation of basswood's strengths and weaknesses, how wood shrinks across and along the grain, which cheap substitutions fail, and why standard sizes reduce waste.
- Miniature project costs: how the number is builtA miniature project cost is materials, consumables, tool break-even and rework hours. Here is how each part is built and where the money leaks.
- 4 workbench realities for miniature projectsNot a miniature project costs comparison: four workbench realities for miniature projects, from sacrificial tops and posture to wood movement and priorities.
- Miniature project costs makers track as sole proprietorsA practical guide to miniature project costs makers track, the records to keep, sole-proprietor basics, state licensing checks, and federal tax forms.
