Streamlining my process for Etsy sales
I decided to go with a different styled video this time around, because I wanted to show some of the though process that went into changing up my making process to fulfill several orders I had for Christmas gifts. Unfortunately, I had to travel a lot during this holiday season for work and had to limit the amount of products I could put for sale this season. I estimated that I would be able to make four of my cork dartboards in the one weekend I had available to do work in the shop and even though I thought I had planned it out pretty well, it came down to the last second for getting them out the door and on their way. Here's what's normally involved when making these dartboards:
- Cut the back support piece to 36" x 30" (can use either a project board or a 4'x8'
- Cut four pieces of pinewood with 45 degree angles to make the frame
- After gluing the frames to the back support (and waiting a day to ensure strength), paint/stain the desired color of the product
- After the paint/stain dries, drill out six holes to fit corks on the front of the bottom frame - these will be use the darts
- Glue in the corks into the holes in the frame
- Ensure the dartboard is centered with the numbers facing the right direction, and glue the dartboard in place (you can use velcro strips instead if you plan to replace the dartboard often)
- Now for the most time intensive step, time to glue up all of the corks in the selected design. This may also involve cutting up some of the corks to fit into the gaps within the design.
- After all the glue has dried, it's time to bubble wrap and package everything up for shipping
From this you can see there are a lot of steps involved in getting each of these dartboards done. This is where my new video comes into play: I've described steps I incorporated to reduce as much time as possible when making these boards. Since I was making four at a time, I first focused on cutting all the wood at the same time. This not only saved some time in the process, but also made it easier to ensure all my pieces were measured and cut to the same dimensions. I glued as many boards as I could at once, but this is definitely where I encountered a limitation that slowed me down. Not having enough clamps made me have to wait an extra day for gluing upo the frame of one of the boards. Once the first three boards were glued up, I got started on the corks for them while allowing the frame for the last board to glue up. I worked incrementally with attaching the corks to the boards to allow for them to adhere to the board before putting more pressure on them from having the other corks press up against them. Thinking about the process and how to streamline it ahead of time definitely ended up saving me time and let me to complete the orders in time, but the unexpected delays made it way more stressful and rushed than I wanted it to be. However, this is obviously just another step in the learning process in starting my own business and I think it went pretty well for my first holiday season of making!
I'm going to link the first video I made on making these Corked Dart Boards so you can see some of the difference between then and now and because it goes a little more into the actual steps for making one below:
As always, thanks for following along on this maker journey!