Sausage Making

I recently learned a cool German phrase "Das ist mir Wurst." Which loosely translates to "I don't care" but it literally means, "It is sausage to me." I believe this phrase refers to the notion that people want to eat the sausage, but really don't care how it is made.

In this spirit, I have kept a lot of the sausage making details out of the main updates, but here on the EpicGrip blog, for those that do care, let me spill some beans on how the EpicGrip sausage is being made.


First, for anodizing, I got a shiny new pair of titanium tweezers for dipping the picks in the acid bath. Originally I tried this with alligator clips, but the electricity just went through the clip, and rusted it to hell, ignoring titanium entirely.  I made a modified pair of tweezers out of an old prototype pick, but this thing is super slick, and much easier to work with. I'll show video of the dunking process when I start the anodizing run. Until then behold the awesome tweezerness below. This will make my life much easier...

Let's see, what else... I got the toppers. Here is what 5000 cards looks like:

The postal service tore a pretty large chunk out of the lower left side of the box, but none of the cards were damaged. 

So I had the cards, but folding them by hand proved to look a little unprofessional, so I poked around Amazon for card-scoring solutions and found a really great solution in a Martha Stewart Crafts Scoring Board... (Don't judge me... It works great!)

So I set down with a box of 250 cards to see what I'd gotten myself into... 

I swear I DO own other t-shirts, I just happened to grab the same one this morning as the one I wore in the jam video... 

Anyway, after mis-scoring, cutting through, and otherwise mangling the first few cards, I settled into a nice cadence of about 13 picks per minute.  If you want to follow along with the production, just let this gif run for another 385 minutes...  AKA: If anyone know where I can order pre-scored card-stock for next time, please let me know...

And, after about 40 minutes of this... I am done for the day... Actually it's not too bad once you get going... I'll probably pop on a movie every couple of nights, and should be done way before the picks arrive.

Two boxes down, 18 to go...

Which leads, of course, to... 

Where are we with EpicGrip production?  

The story up until now, (for those who haven't been following along,)  is that there was an issue with the pick tolerances, and some of the EpicGrips would have been too thin.  Luckily, I caught the issue right away, and after tossing around a few ideas, the manufacturer and I agreed that they will use a slightly thicker sheet of titanium.  

Good news for you, for your patience (or tolerance,) you will get your EpicGrip upgraded to a thickness slightly thicker than the original 1.0mm spec.  Some of samples they sent were thicker, and I can attest that the extra thickness is awesome. You wouldn't really notice the difference without a pair of calipers, or a really sensitive scale, but the general sense holding one is that it just feels more substantial than the v1 prototypes (which were already awesome).

I've gotten confirmation late last night from the manufacturer that it will take 4 more days to complete the new Titanium sheet,  he expects the new material will be finished on 27th, and the stamping should begin immediately.  This means the EpicGrip manufacturing process will now be completed by September 15th.  They will then be bulk shipped to me, where I will anodize them and package them up for their final trip to all your doorsteps... I know some of you were hoping to squeeze these in to fit September birthdays, So I am sorry for the delay.

When do the Surveys go out?

I plan to send out an email survey (requesting addresses and colors,) about half-way through the manufacturing process, this is currently looking like Sept 8th.  I will update again before that to confirm and to remind everyone to keep an eye out...

Now that I have the tops and the bags and a couple samples, I was finally able to put it all together and here is how it worked.  

The first assembled EpicGrip package ever!

This one I hand folded (before Martha Stewart stepped in), so I expect your packaging will be centered a little better.  I'll admit... There is room to improve, but I'm so proud that I hit the staple-mark on the first try...

And my weekly plug for someone that I met through KS who is awesome goes to...  

I've been emailing with this dude Kyle, who is making innovative music accessories, and using some of the proceeds to help kids in Mongolia.  Keep an eye out for his Kickstarter campaign which should be starting up really soon.  Great guy, great ideas, great work.

As always feel free to email me with questions or whatever... :)