david weaver
I agree - my comments in general on the first part were just musings about chinese tools that in some cases are very inexpensive (as you said with the aldi chisels, who gets paid when someone sells a set for $7? Really, probably nobody).

I don't think any of the boutique makers in the US are making much, and even with my comments about the blue spruce chisels on the other side - it's not an accusation of someone trying to line their pockets and get fat, I just don't like the methods employed. But, you simply cannot make much per hour on tools, and as soon as you get big enough to need employees, a whole new level of costs and compliance comes in.

I'd consider anyone with up to several hundred employees to be a boutique maker.

On the japanese side, the distributors and dealers appear to do far better than the makers (in some cases, not all), but that's true in a lot of industries.

I never thought much about trying to make my wooden planes well enough to sell them. I thought that perhaps I could get to the point where if I only counted the making and procurement time (for materials), I could turn them into $30 an hour before taxes. That's not horrible, but most people complaining in the open market about tools (not members here, but the discussions I've seen elsewhere) would never work for that because it would quickly become $15 an hour after allocation of overhead and then incurring time to actually try to find buyers.

And deal with complaints, provide support, etc.

I do agree with warren that in some cases, the makers seem to be vexed by using their own tools as well as the parts they've copied design from would allow, but they're serving a market that doesn't care that much about that. how do we know for sure? If the market cared, they'd know it.