A Day in the Shop: What Production Actually Looks Like

Production days have a logic to them. Not because we've engineered them that way, but because the materials demand it. Wood has to be cut before it's finished. Candles have to be poured before they're cured. Everything has a sequence, and the sequence shapes the day.

Morning: Wood

The CNC runs first. The Shapeoko takes time to set up — toolpaths loaded, material secured, zeroed — and once it's running, it takes its time. The machine is precise, which means it doesn't rush. A run of lids might take forty minutes. We use that time.

While the router works, we're prepping material for the next run, sanding anything that came off the previous one, or doing the administrative work that doesn't require hands on tools. Production days aren't idle time between machine runs — they're layered. The CNC is the anchor, and everything else happens around it.

The Finish

After routing, each lid gets sanded, checked, and moved to finishing. We use pure tung oil — applied by full submersion so the oil feeds into the grain rather than sitting on the surface. The first coat soaks in quickly. We pull the lids out, set them on the nail board to drip and cure, and wait. Full cure between coats takes at least twenty-four hours — there's no shortcutting it and getting the same result.

Between coats, the surface gets buffed and polished rather than sanded, which keeps the grain texture intact while smoothing any raised fibers. Depending on the piece, we apply one or two coats — enough to seal and protect for daily handling without building up a film that changes how the wood feels. By the time a lid is done, it has a surface that feels like wood, not like something coating wood.

Afternoon: Candles

Candle production runs in the afternoon, when the shop has warmed up and there's no risk of the wax cooling too fast. We melt 100% soy wax in batches, add phthalate-free fragrance oils at the right temperature, pour slowly into black glass jars, and set them to cool undisturbed. A batch takes a few hours from setup to cleanup, not counting cure time.

Cure time is non-negotiable. We don't ship candles that haven't had their full cure — the wax and fragrance need time to bond properly, and a rushed candle doesn't perform the same way. That means production planning runs days ahead of fulfillment, not hours.

What a Day Actually Produces

Not as much as you'd expect. A full production day — CNC in the morning, candles in the afternoon, cleanup throughout — might yield enough lids for one batch and enough candles for a partial fulfillment run. That's the reality of small-batch handcrafted production. The output is modest. The standard is not.

That's the trade-off we made when we started, and it's one we'd make again.