My adventures in dice-making are going well, but going slowly.

I've been working my way through the backlog of commission requests, but not nearly at the pace I'd like. Part of it was working out the process and schedule, part of it was plain old bad brain times. At the moment, when I'm really on schedule and cranking things out, I can finish two sets per week, three max. I've got at least 20 orders in the queue.

Some of it is unavoidable because I'm still committed to using UV resin. Despite it curing much faster than epoxy resin, it turns out to not really save me much time. Turns out you can spend twice as much time to polish something to be half again as good, and there isn't really an upper limit on how many times you can do that. Dice is a hobby for perfectionists, so I've been trying to get the dice into adequate shape without overdoing it. Still, when you factor in the sanding, the washing, the polishing, the painting and the second polishing, 7-10 dice every two to three days is my max right now.

Epoxy resin dice makers have solved some of these problems in ways I can't use with UV resin, but I'm still committed to this process because I think it's exciting. I sit down and I start trying things and trying things gives me more ideas for things to try. It's a lot like software engineering in that way. Having to wait 24 hours for epoxy resin to set to see if I had a good idea doesn't excite me at all.

Part of it is going to speed up soon. I've been working with a local friend with a machine shop to make a few tools that let me work faster with the resin, and we're even looking at producing more to sell to other crafters. I can't talk about that much now, but I'm excited about it.

A few people on the (very helpful!) discord for the dicemaking subreddit were skeptical there was any reason to use UV over epoxy for both time and quality reasons, but I'm convinced it's a useful new tool that people can incorporate into their process that allows for designs that aren't possible or practical otherwise, and I'm stubborn enough to make everyone agree with me by proving it.

Still, I have quite a few finished dice that I've produced while experimenting for people's commissions, and I'd like to start selling them online.

I did a set for the Oakland Cat Town cat cafe that fetched $180 at a charity auction, which is considerably more than I've been charging for commissions. So, my first toe in the water is this eBay auction for a pair of D6es I made. Granted, it was a charity auction, which makes people generous, but if I've been lowballing myself for one-of-a-kind dice, maybe I can take this more out of "side hustle" territory. This might help me gauge that.

Here's the dice!

And just to show off, here's a few more I've been working on over the past month or so.