Disc Golf Minis and The Struggles of Cutting Resin

Sooooo I'm going to pretend it hasn't been a month (or more) since I've made a blog post 😬....

But I'm back! Shortly after my last blog post my Etsy shop finally started to take off and I was getting quite an influx of orders for the dagger dice boxes, which is awesome but also was a little overwhelming at first! I definitely needed the time to focus on getting into my new routines of the creation process for multiple orders at a time, communicating with customers, packaging and shipping, and not to mention keeping up with social media marketing! I feel like I've got a good rhythm now, and can get back into the habit a fairly regular blog post!

The last couple of months I've been busy busy busy, mostly with dagger dice box orders but also quite a few other things as well! One of which has been an interesting learning and business experience and opportunity! I've had the chance to work with a disc golf maniac (in a good way) that not just plays but also has been hosting tournaments! He brought up the idea of me making resin minis (used to mark certain spots during disc golf) and of course I said HECK YEAH! PS... I knew nothing about disc golf prior to this, so when it comes to rules of the game, I'm lost lol.

The first set of minis I made used pieces of old baseballs he had found when out....discing? Disc golfing? Whatever you wanna call it! And let me just say.... I faced a lot more problems than I expected for making essentially mini frisbees....

To start, the molds I orders showed up a little bent and not perfect circles, but I figured that would be easy enough to fix and sand after doing the resin part. Nope. I was very wrong. Turns out I'm not very good at making perfect circles! Buuuuut I also had to round the edges, so I think the two of those things combined made it more challenging for me. Another problem I came across was making them the general thickness of a mini, I thought it would be easier to cut them down to size... again.... nope.

The first thing I tried was the miter saw. The tricky part was finding a secure way to clamp the resin piece vertically for this....

We used pieces of wood to hold the resin piece in place and then clamped the wood, but it wasn't quite strong enough. The first attempt actually caused the mini disc to go flying, took us a few minutes to find it! Then we tried again and it actually got stuck up in the blade, thankfully the blade/saw didn't break! So that plan was a no go. We had to come up with a new idea entirely.

Our next attempt was definitely more successful! We found a way to clamp the resin mini disc more securely and also switched to a hand held saw with less kick to it in order to prevent the flying disc fiasco we faced with the miter saw

We basically had to do a little bit at a time and then rotate the disc in order to continue cutting it. It wasn't perfect, but for these first attempts we made it work! But I knew for future ones I would definitely be finding different molds to use that were more accurately sized for mini discs so that I wouldn't have to cut the resin anymore!

After I finished all the baseball ones, I decided to try out different circle molds as well as trying to make my own molds, both of which had some decent results! Some of the circle molds I already had were for coasters, and I do like how those ones turned out, but they were a little too thin. The molds I attempted to make myself ended up having a great shape to them, I still had to do sanding after the resin part, so it didn't really make the process any easier. But I do love the mini disc made from my homemade mold!

How cool do the bear claws look??!!

Anyways, I'm still in the process of finding the perfect mold to use and working on my techniques for rounding the edges of the minis, but I've been enjoying the learning process and experimentations!