The final shipment

Dear readers, thank you for your forbearance as Don and I coped with finishing up a massive production run of tankards after Older Daughter's shop accident on New Year's Eve.

Here's some of the things we've been doing over the last three weeks. The production run was split into two parts: A huge first part of about 270 pieces, and a smaller second part of about 75.

We had tankards everywhere in the house, on virtually every flat surface.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the biggest production runs we've done over the span of the last 33 years.

Here we're testing tankards, where we fill them with water to see if any leak. We had to do this in stages, since there were so many.

The house was in absolute flippin' chaos during this time. Tankards in various stages of completion, boxes for packing, bubble wrap, newspapers, guarantee cards ... what a mess.

In the photo below, for example, Older Daughter and I are working at the kitchen table getting tankards ready to pack, while Don is in the background gluing up the next batch on a card table. Chaos chaos chaos.

Here's the newspaper station. I'm spreading out full sheets of newspaper from the pile on the right, while discarding half-sheets on the floor to the left (we'll use them for fire starters). We need full-size sheets of newspapers for wrapping tankards for packing.

Here we're prepping boxes. BIG boxes.

Packing boxes. Three boxes are stacked to the left, two to the right, and the one we just finished filling is in the center. We roll each tankard in newspaper before packing.

Six huge boxes ready to ship. I'm fairly certain this is the largest number of boxes we've ever shipped at one time. Even the UPS guy said it could have made its own stand-alone pickup.

With the bulk of the production run out the door, we were able to concentrate on the smaller 75-piece portion. Here's we're coating the insides of the tankards.

And here are the final two boxes, packed and ready to tape shut and address.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the final shipment.

No, really, I mean it. This is the final shipment of tankards. After 33 years in business, 29 by Don and myself and the last four years by Older Daughter, we're closing down. Older Daughter has already notified her wholesale customers.

It's bittersweet, of course, but the painful reality is it's no longer cost-effective for making a living. Sure it was insane hours, erratic income, and  the occasional injury, but over the three decades Don and I ran it, we were able to support a family, pay a mortgage, raise our children, and always be home with them.

But things have changed. Prices for all the components (wood, glue, varnish, sanding belts, saw blades, spray guns, bubble wrap, boxes, shipping) have skyrocketed, but the tankard prices couldn't be raised enough to compensate and provide a livable wage. In other words, it was becoming less and less profitable. While Older Daughter's injury was the deciding factor, there's no doubt the increasing cost of doing business convinced her it was better to let it go.

However Older Daughter has some exciting new plans for her future. I'm not at liberty to discuss what they are at the moment, but she has some wonderful opportunities opening up.

While this final shipment is officially the end of an era, Don and I know better than to claim we'll never make another tankard. As the saying goes, never say never. Economic reality might necessitate a change of plans. We're thoroughly enjoying our new careers as full-time freelance writers, but it's good to know we have a backup source of income should we need it.

But for now ... this is the final shipment.