Everyone Needs A Bobert

Bobert is the 3D printer's name. He's fabulous. He enjoys nomming on various colors of pla and making cool widgets. I strongly believe that everyone needs a 3D printer in their life. The shear amount of things you can make is overwhelming. Besides the things I make to sell like buckets, stirrups, and stands you can make:

An army of Calicats

Or folding tables.

Wait... No... That's not in scale.... Is it supposed to be a bench? Gonna have to resize that.

But even better is a nice way to store all of that embroidery floss that always tangles when you look at it!

Ahhh. Much Better

Pet Peeves

This has been a roller coaster week, I've gotten positive feedback and negative feedback. I'm fully aware that these come with the territory of selling things online. But I'd like to share them in case it helps anyone else struggling with being a maker or online selling.

My positive feedback was nice. One of my repeat customers was super excited about my pitch fork design and that is leading me to launch operation barn tools to make some rakes and brooms and shovels oh my.
I have also garnered a ton of likes and even possibly a sale of my stirrups from a facebook post I posted. Also good.

And then I got slammed a little. I got a customer asking if I could sell my saddle without the bridle, okay fine. I dropped the price on the saddle a bit and put the bridle up separately. It never occurred to me that folks wouldn't want the whole set. Then I ran into my sale picture on a facebook performance show group. Asking if the saddle was LSQ. I do advertise it as such. They commented that it was plain for a western saddle. I'll agree with that. I'm really new at tooling and on saddle #8 I didn't want to be too ambitious. It's also for sale at around $50, what do you expect? What bothered me is that it was done behind my back without crediting the artist at all.

Which gets me to the main point of this post. Always credit the artist. Always credit the person who did the art/design. I've noticed some free creative commons 3D print designs from thingiverse floating around the hobby. The rules for creative commons are that you must cite the maker/ where the design came from. Some people do and I've seen some people who don't. Don't be that person who takes credit even implicitly for another person's work.

Here at HandcraftedByKari, I do a lot of my CAD. Just designing a bucket took upwards of 10 hours and 4 prototypes before I even liked my design. Give the person on thingiverse credit for all the time and effort they put into making that file. *End rant*

Bucket Update. I'm too fancy for my CAD

I started with tinkercad. There is nothing wrong with tinkercad. (Even if my mechanical engineer boyfriend snickered about it a bit.) It was a good introduction but it is super limiting, only able to use basic shapes and all. Now I use fusion 360, it was a bumpy start but I've got the hang of it and one of the most useful features is the fact that I can now make my cylinders tapered which means my buckets can stack inside each other, besides just being fancier. Now to add handles!

Tinkercad Bucket

Fusion 360 Bucket

New Projects Ahoy!

So, I've been very busy with some cad. Now Bobert and I are just working thorough prototypes for the new stuff for my shop. So far I've come up with 2, possibly 3 sets and a novel idea for some performance showing.

Set # 1: Tack Room Organization

2 Bridle Racks
2 wall mounted saddle racks
1 saddle stand
possibly some shelves?

Set # 2: New Horse Barn Pack (easy 1 stop everything you need for 1 horse in the stall)
1 Water bucket
1 small bucket
1 feed pan
1 rope haynet

Set # 3: Horse Barn Accessories
1 Pitch fork
1 Muck Bucket
1 Rake
1 feed scoop?
1 Feed Bin?

I'm also working on putting together a tack shop setup. Because I've made like half the stuff you find in those and honestly I'm working on making more.