Collaborating with miss RJ.

It’s a tangled mess of crates, boxes, packing material, real-sized erector sets, forklifts & people. Everyone has there own chaos to deal with and many of the booths are truly built and disassembled each trade show. An impressive change happens over those two days and, assuming I don’t get kicked out for trying to take pictures, I may have some to share of the final results since today is the first day of the SIA convention.

Skadi Nordic will be playing a supporting role in the Swix booth. And if you’ve seen any of our new products yet you know I really do mean supporting.

So I guess what I’m saying is that anyone who wants to come do a midday stint as a Skadi Nordic rep at the On-Snow demo is more than welcome to come take my place for an hour or two…

Susan, Kirsten, Peter, & Laura Valaas

Kirsten Valaas

Chiwawa River

Peter Valaas

Grandma Yasuko's striped jello!

I am now a pad printer. true story.

Sometimes we have really good ideas.

And sometimes our ideas are not-so-stellar.

BootBuddy Gellies Prototype

BootBuddy Gelly -- still functional, lacking the aesthetics.

White Chocolate BootBuddy by Skadi Nordic

Milk Chocolate BootBuddy by Skadi Nordic

Dark Chocolate BootBuddy by Skadi Nordic

I don’t know what I’ve been thinking this whole time. Why would we make BootBuddies out of plastic when they could be made out of chocolate? Don’t worry, I plan to rectify this situation by the time the weather gets cool enough to safely ship chocolate products.

Skadi Nordic is currently in production with the BootDock. The parts probably won’t make sense to you, because you haven’t had the opportunity to see the BootDock in action, but this is what was happening today in our machine shop…

The BootDock will be produced from a (relatively) simple two-part mold. Press the two mold halves together, forming a BootDock shaped cavity, inject molten plastic, wait for a brief cooling cycle, pull the two halves of the mold apart and out pops a finished piece. This is the male side of the BootDock mold being cut by a CNC machine. It looks blurry in this photo because it’s water cooled and that’s the water washing away the heat and the metal shavings.

One of the challenges I have had to face on an emotional level as I have gotten deeper into this venture is learning to let go of infinity! In my previous world, arcs could join at an angle approaching zero and edges could be infinitely sharp. In fact, the concept of a single point was a real thing and a line had zero width. I’ve since had to accept the constraints of the Real World, but what I’ve lost in abstract beauty I’ve gained in functional, physical beauty!

The female half of the BootDock mold, ready to go to the polisher.

Once the aluminum block is finished at the CNC station it goes to the polisher. The polisher is the difference between a matte finish and a glossy finish!

Skadi Nordic BootDock mold

By early next week the BootDock mold will be polished and plugged into the injection molding machine, several test iterations of the BootDock will be run and will be examined to insure that the mold indeed came out exactly how the engineers designed it. If any changes need to be made it’s back to the CNC machine (or just the polisher, depending on the extent of the adjustment).

Progress at Skadi Nordic is truckin’ away every day and, to me, the most exciting part of the process is what goes on behind the scenes to develop an idea into a product.