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.

Drowning in tankards

Sorry for the silence, dear readers. Don and I have been drowning in tankards for the last few days.

To update our disastrous New Year's Eve and New Year's Day incidents: My mother continues to remain stable after rallying from what we all thought were her final moments. She's back at the nursing home, though she's in isolation (doubtless because of the pneumonia) and my dad is required to suit up in PPE before visiting her. The consensus is if her bouts of abrupt pneumonia continue, the family will turn to hospice.

Older Daughter's finger is on the mend, but she's severely limited in what she can do ... and that includes completing a massive 350+ piece order of tankards that must reach their destination within two weeks. Therefore Don and I have taken over the production run.

Don has been spending hours in the shop on the power tools. At various stages in the assembly process, he brings batches to the house, where I take over assembly. Right now the house is overrun with mugs.

Nearly every surface is covered in various style tankards in various stages of completion.

As an example, yesterday evening Older Daughter and I sat at the kitchen table to work on the smallest-size tankards in the repertoire, the coffee-sized mugs. These have solid, rather than multi-colored, sides. Older Daughter assembled the side pieces into groups of six, which I then taped and stacked for gluing.

These are the groups of six sides which will get taped.

Stacks of taped tankards. Altogether there were about 90 tankards to glue in this particular batch.

While I glued, Older Daughter sat opposite and entertained me by reading out loud various dramas posted on Reddit.

By the time of evening chores, I had worked my way through a bit over half of the three stacks.

The freshly glued tankards were left to dry for several hours (overnight, in this case).

Today Don will be working on another batch of the production run in the shop, which he'll then bring into the house for me to glue up.

Older Daughter is antsy and bored and apologetic for the need for us to finish the production run, but such is life. We're just very grateful her injury wasn't worse.

Anyway, that accounts for my blog silence over the last few days. Our deepest thanks for all of your prayers during our difficulties.

Stop the presses!

The nearest town puts out a once-a-week newspaper covering regional stories and issues: Businesses, sports, schools, special events. We'll go in every few months and purchase bundles of older papers for $2 each for fire-starters or packing tankards.

I was helping Older Daughter pack some tankards for shipment this week...

...when the headline of a large and prominent article caught her eye: "[Name of grocery store] makes improvements."

Yes, it seems a local grocery store was undergoing renovations, including improved organization,  additional shelving units, and new refrigerator and freezer units, which gave the store the opportunity to expand its inventory (kind of a nice thing when town residents are a long way from bigger chain stores).

Well, I thought it was charming to the point of adorable that this information made the newspaper. Stop the presses! A grocery store is getting new shelving and refrigeration units! There was nothing about drug busts, or strings of murders, or terrorist attacks. Nope, one of the biggest news stories of the week was the local grocery store was making improvements.

Just a slice of life in small-town America.

The overworked tankard-maker

Older Daughter has been slamming through the first of several massive tankard orders from her customers. We're talking anywhere from 300 to 500+ pieces per order.

This particular production run was somewhere on the order of 190 pieces.

Needless to say, she's been burning a lot of midnight oil to meet her deadlines.

So when a friend of hers put together a cartoon meme titled "The Overworked Tankard-Maker," she cracked up.

This is her.

Very accurate. And it gave Older Daughter some much-needed levity during a very busy time.

Like a well-oiled machine

If there's one thing Don and I remember all too well, it's shipping day. When we owned the tankard business, shipping days were frantically busy.

Now that the business belongs to Older Daughter, she's learned the stress associated with getting everything ready to go.

Today she had a medium-sized order of tankards shipping out (60 pieces) to a long-time customer in Ohio. FedEx, with whom she ships, always arrives at around 4 pm, if not later. Always. Always. Always.

For this reason, she took a chance with a dental appointment in the morning. She had pre-done many of the steps necessary to pack tankards for shipment – laid out newspapers (for wrapping), pulled in shipping boxes, fetched a bundle of bubble wrap, etc. – before attending her appointment. When she returned, she did some last-minute work on the pieces and got ready to pack the boxes.

Naturally, FedEx showed up at noon.

Older Daughter explained to the very nice driver that the boxes weren't yet packed, and was it possible for him to come back? When he asked how much time she needed, she told him ten minutes. He agreed, since it would take him that long to complete his deliveries around the neighborhood. He would swing in on his way back.

Ten minutes. The boxes weren't even assembled yet, much less lined with bubble wrap. But she came back into the house and announced, "All hands on deck!"

Don and I sprang into action, and we all slammed to get everything accomplished. Between the three of us, we got two large boxes assembled and taped, lined with bubble wrap, and packed with 60 tankards, each wrapped in newspaper. We got labels printed, boxes taped shut, labels affixed to the boxes, hand truck brought into the house, and boxes loaded up and brought out to the driveway.

The driver was actually back in fifteen minutes, not ten. Older Daughter says she looked at the clock when she came back into the house the first time and noted it was 12:02 pm. Using the hand truck, we wheeled the packed boxes out to the driveway at 12:14. We had three minutes to spare.

Older Daughter chuckled about it for hours afterward. "I still can't believe how well we all sprang into action like that," she commented a couple of times.

Like a well-oiled machine. Muscle memory. It sure helps.

Tankards coming out our ears

Older Daughter is working on a massive tankard order of 280 pieces. She's been working long, long hours (last night she was in the shop until 10:30 pm). She split the order into two parts, one larger and one smaller. This is the larger part of the order.

Today Don and I pitched in and helped coat the insides. It was reminiscent of the old days when all four of us would sit around the table applying food-safe epoxy resin to hundreds of mugs.

Older Daughter, as you may recall, took over the woodcraft business almost two years ago, and has built it up very nicely. As always just before shipping day, there are tankards everywhere. But that's okay. We've had this kind of chaos for over 30 years, and not many craft businesses have been around for that long. Business is brisk and wholesalers are clamoring for cups. Once she ships this batch out, then I'll clean house.

No complaints.

Want tankards?

Older Daughter created an Etsy page for some tankards.

Pieces have free (priority) shipping through the end of the month. If you order immediately, they might arrive by Christmas.

 Just letting you know! Go check out the selection.

Currently there are no "coffee cup"-sized tankards (capacity of about 16 oz.) available. Most of the styles available on the page hold about 24-26 oz.

To reiterate, these tankards are suitable for hot as well as cold beverages. Enjoy!

Another solution to a vexing problem

Older Daughter has been working very hard supplying wholesale customers with tankards. This is her busy season, so she's been putting in long hours. Last week, she packed up four huge boxes for shipment.

This cleared out a significant amount of chaos in the house, as you can imagine, but it also highlighted a persistently vexing problem.

Unlike our last house, our new place is vastly smaller in terms of square footage (3600 sq ft vs 1400 sq ft). This means finding nooks to stash things – especially things used in the woodcraft business – can be challenging. There are some things that can't be stored in the barn or shop because they can't be subjected to temperature fluctuations. This includes epoxy resins, wood glue, rubber hoses and rubber bands (both used in the assembly process), and other items. Additionally, some things are only used for indoor assembly or use (such as duct tape, paint brushes, etc.), so it makes sense to store them indoors.

Bottom line, we had no place to put them.

Now let's back up a bit. A couple years ago, I put up a post asking for reader input on what we should do with the gaping hole that would result if we were to remove the kitchen's dishwasher, which we never used and didn't want.

The result was a lively discussion of ideas for the resulting space. Well, we did end up removing the dishwasher (during last year's plumbing woes) and – since nature abhors a vacuum – the empty space quickly filled up with shop accouterments, including the list of materials mentioned above. The result was a jumbled chaotic mess that often required a lot of deep digging to find the necessary stuff, which in turn often resulted in a pile of materials in a high-traffic spot in the kitchen. It was a vexing problem.

Additionally, Older Daughter recently purchased a delicate piece of equipment for adding to her woodcrafting repertoire: a laser engraver.

For obvious reasons, she doesn't want this exposed to the sawdust-y conditions in the shop. However the dishwasher space is exactly the right dimension for storing it.

So Don decided to fix up the storage problem once and for all by making some beefy shelves custom-fitted to the dishwasher space. He measured carefully, cut the cleats and shelves, and got everything installed.

Now the laser engraver has its own shelf, and everything else fits more efficiently into this space. Doesn't seem like it made a big difference; but trust me, it did.

It's the little things, y'know? This simple fix resulted in a much more organized kitchen. Now I can install a pretty curtain to hide the woodshop items and we're golden.

Slammed with orders

Now that Older Daughter is entirely in charge of the woodcraft business, she finds herself slammed with orders.

Traditionally in this business, late summer and early autumn are the busiest times of year because so many of the large shows her wholesale customers do fall in September and October. To cope with the workload, she's calendaring her days very carefully: Today she'll do this; tomorrow she'll do that; next week she'll do such-and-such. Each day has its tasks outlined.

This means the house is stacked with simultaneous production runs in various stages of completion. It's been this way in our home for over thirty years. It beats the alternative, as we always remind ourselves.

Older Daughter is also building herself in some days off here and there so she doesn't burn out.

While there are specific tasks that are irksome for her (sanding is top of the list), overall she's pleased with the amount of business she has. 

Her next planning step is to get ahead during her slow season and start to build inventory. In the past, this has been a surprisingly hard thing to do. It's impossible during the busy season, and often too cold to work in the shop during the slow season. (Our new shop is smaller and easier to heat than our old one, so temperature shouldn't be as big an issue.)

It's nice to see the family business handed down to the next generation. Older Daughter has new design ideas she wants to implement as well as different marketing strategies she wants to try. It's fun to watch her business grow. Onward!