The long grind and a light at the end of the tunnel!
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 03:32:27 AM

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing great! Apologies once again for the slow updates on here, the majority of our focus has been in working through the project so coming away from that to make time for videos and such felt criminal, but at the same time it's tough to look like progress is being made if there's no signs of it!

CNC time lapse:

View Video

All in all things have been going well. We've had a little bit of down time thanks to some broken belts, but nothing too major.

The main purpose of this update was to show that things have actually been happening behind the scenes. I've been grabbing snippets of footage whenever it occurred to do so, and have finally gotten all of that transferred, converted and edited. Fun times, especially when apple and windows devices really don't want to play together :)

The making process:

View Video

We're currently looking at shipping our first items within the next 2 weeks. We're sending out the smaller single sets first so that we can test the shipping process post Brexit. We were advised by a post office worker than until recently, even shipping packages within the UK was a nightmare, but it sounds like the dust is finally settling. These will be heading to locations in and out of the UK so it's a good chance to test the waters. Once we know those are landing then the double dice sets will be going out. All being well, we'll then be scheduling the larger boxes. We're only doing it this way as if things start going missing then it's less of a hit for us to fix, so we're sorry to you guys at the back!

Between now and then it'll be more of the same so we'll update again when those units head out the door and hopefully it'll then be smooth sailing until fulfilment is done! On that note, please make sure you've finalised everything including your delivery address as we still do have a few buyers missing info!

Thanks everyone, we'll speak soon!

-Dan

Just a quick one!
about 5 years ago – Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 10:11:02 AM

Hi everyone! hope all are well!

I have completely flown by unaware of a whole bunch of messages on here having not logged on for a while so I’ll be catching up on those this week!

Heads have been stuck down in the job, the cnc chewing away still - I’m actually waiting on new belts as we’ve managed to chew through these particularly tough and industrail belts it seems.

I’ve been capturing some video of the whole process to get on here but without giving up too much productivity time so that’s also coming around slower than planned, but will hopefully land this week.

the big question of ’how long’ is coming to a close soon. I’m still not overly confident of locking dates in with a promise but we’re planning the stages of things shipping out right now.

Unexpected twists - packaging. with everything going on in the world this one has been a head banger, eapecially with the XL boxes as it seems as though we chose to size that thing ever so slightly over A4, which would’ve been 100x easier! Still wrangling these last few bits down but once sorted that should give us the go ahead to start moving out.

Will update again later this week all going to plan, and from my laptop instead of my phone - so if the formatting here is awful then I apologise!

Speak soon! - Dan

Hello 2021!
about 5 years ago – Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 08:47:12 PM

Hey everyone! We hope you've had an amazing and healthy Christmas and New Year. It certainly looks like this year intends to go on as 2020 intended, so hopefully we can turn it around somehow!

Personally I would like to apologise for the super slow update on here. Apparently I'm terrible in moments of rushing and somehow managed to fail publishing my previous update post. To glance over that quickly here, it was basically about the collective mess of lockdown/stock/postage/brexit, and that we decided to hold off pushing out deliveries against my preference of hitting Christmas. It might not have been to best decision to make in terms of doing our company many favours, but we'd rather these boxes make it to their homes the first time round, and the UK has been in a state recently! That said, things seem to be looking better, even if we did go into national lockdown 3.0.

So as we kick things off again into the new year, the majority of work ahead lies with the finishing. This is something I'm really glad we held off for as we've upgraded our finishing to using osmo oil throughout all of our products, using their oak and walnut colour options with the tulip boxes to apply the same colouring effects. The shade of colour will be slightly different, but the finish and protection boost gives these boxes much more longevity. Sure, it's costing us more but it's worth it for everyone in the long run. Again, this finish goes on like an oil, so gets in all the hard to reach nooks and crannies, and finishes as a hardwax finish, so had a nice smoothness to it and a longer lasting sheen that's easy to buff back to life.

We've had a few requests for some footage of the process, especially on the CNC and this has been something I've been trying to squeeze in for a long time! I'm a sucker for these 'oddly satisfying' videos myself so I'm right there with you. I'll get that and some more photos online soon, and the plan is to be rolling things out towards the end of this month.

As always we greatly appreciate your patience with us. I won't fully blame the state of the world for the delay as I made decisions myself the affected the timeline, and the last thing I wanted was to be another notch on the stats of late Kickstarters! We'll have another update here soon though so will speak then!

All the best!

Dan

Update!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Dec 03, 2020 at 09:37:17 AM

Hey everyone!

We've had a few requests for an update so here goes! You've beat me to the punch as I have a few things on the agenda to drop here, so consider this a pre update update!

In terms of the boxes its a little boring this time round as we're pretty much just running the cuts on cnc and building up the stock. The biggest news here is that we added a second (bigger and better) cnc machine to the arsenal to help us catch up a little! We'll be working on finishing the first batch very soon so pics will start finding their way here shortly.

Unfortunately just to add a dash of hmmf we've admittedly been hit in the backlash of lockdowns and illness. We're all fine here but alot of suppliers have had staffing issues which has crossed over. We're hoping to make ground up with help of the second cnc but time will be our enemy this month as it tends to fly by!

Will post again soon with a better update for yiu all (hopefully), but things are still ticking away. Hopefully you're all good and well, maybe even prepped for Xmas? No? Me neither 🙈

Cheers!

Dan

Stretch Goal Pictures!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 10:55:21 AM

Hey everyone!

We hope everyone is well! It's a bit of a weird one here in the UK as we're heading into another national lockdown against Covid-19. The good news on our part though is that we'll be working as usual so hopefully won't suffer much in terms of delays. We'll make sure to keep the updates flowing though as we make progress.

Pledge Manager

Everything seems to be going well in pledge manager but we have been notified that the email giving access might've gone awol for one or two of you. We'll see if we can resend this shortly, but if anyone else has had this issue then just let us know.

Stretch Goal Wood Options

As promised (although a day or 2 behind!) here's some imagery of the extra wood options. Sorry it's a long wall of photos - I wish we had a gallery option in here! Just to note that all of these photos are of the Quad-XL variant.

We'll leave you with these and catch up with more updates soon. Stay safe for now folks! Dan.

Walnut