Rapid Turn-arounds

These are the two orders that were finalized while we were overseas and they both had a deadline of next week.  Mostly I'd given myself some wiggle room since I wasn't sure how many orders might come in or what other funny business would pop up.  Though as it happens both orders are already finished and I'm shipping them out this morning.  The Klingon Pouch'll be going to a fellow back in the UK (oh don't we wish I could've shipped that one while we were in Oxford >_<) and the shoulder strap (with a custom spec up to 72" long) is heading down to the US.

And we're back!

After gallivanting across much of western Europe we've made it back home safe and sound.  I'm resuming work as normal on Monday with a few orders that came in while we were overseas.  In the meantime though, I've been compiling our trip into a series of annotated slideshows to share with folks overseas.  They're public though and anyone who'd like to go through the playlist can get their start here.  I've also put all the pictures of museum exhibits (and there's quite a few) into their own public gallery and those can be browsed here.

It was a pretty excellent trip and we were fortunate enough to enjoy the hospitality of some interesting people.

Gilgal Country Round

I do enjoy some pyrography from time to time and it's been ages since I last picked up my "burny pen".  Almost a year even, since I made the Derpy Dragon.  In a couple of days my wife and I are flying to Europe for a big vacation.  We'll be visiting some family friends in Britain, Wales, and the Netherlands before swinging through my old stomping grounds in Germany.  It's going to be a whirlwind of a trip and we've been looking forward to it.  One of the places we'll be visiting is a tiny church in Wales where some of her ancestors are buried.  It's in a remote location and there's a whole story about how it'd been lost until her Grandmother found it some decades ago and now it's been renovated and repaired as a family center. 

They hold a tea party there every summer now and it's a big shindig.  I figured the least I could do was contribute a little country round of the place.  My mother-in-law was nice enough to provide a good photo that I was able to transfer onto the linden and bingo-bango.  The tung oil finish should finish curing just as we're packing so we should be good to go!

Production Model of the Easy Rider

Between developing the prototype and this production model it feels like I spent the entire month of April on this pattern.  Even if I only produced two units of much note it still feels like it's been pretty productive month.  This pattern was pretty tricky to engineer there's enough going on that it took more than one unit to figure out the best ways of going about it.

The biggest change for the production model was switching the lining material.  I went from a polyester fabric with a plastic backing (very useful for gluing) to a poly-cotton blend with no interfacing.  The blend works much better as a lining and edging but the lack of an interfacing means it won't stay glued down.  I normally avoid putting glue directly onto a fabric (it tends to seep through) though this time I used a spray-on cement.  It stuck for awhile but by the time the stitching was done it'd pretty much come loose from the leather.  Fortunately all that stitching holds it in place pretty well so it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

I also have some concerns for how the stitching looks with the fabric.  In the future I'll probably use a thread that matches the color of the fabric.  I might also go back to the usual single seam rather than doubling them up.  I like the look and security of a double seam but it's almost certainly overkill.

In either case, the Easy Rider is now, finally, available in the shop.  Whew!