Finally! Trestles! And Table Stands!

Trestles have been our most requested items, closely followed by stands that can be mounted to a table/desk. After more than a year of development, our version 3 trestles are finally ready for release, as well as our first table stand. I'm really excited to finally get these launched, so there are huge discounts available!

If you've thought about picking up a Mythic Crafts frame, this is the biggest discount we will ever offer. With this much discount, it means that I will not be paid for my labour to make them so this offer will not be repeated!

I have set the delivery dates to what I expect is reasonable for me to get setup and complete orders. There is a timeline below which details expected milestone dates post-campaign. My estimated production time is based on manufacturing over 300 embroidery frames and 3 test trestles.

The Trestles

Mythic Craft's trestles are made from solid European Beech hardwood, finished with Danish Oil and burnished to a soft finish. The height is adjustable in 20mm (3/4") steps, with the rails flat you can work from 740mm to 1040mm (29" to 41"). The rails can be adjusted from flat to a maximum of 30 degrees angle. This makes the trestle perfect for sitting or standing whether you are short or tall.

The optional rear brace bars join the two sides of the trestle together and make it much more stable and impossible to tip over. They are adjustable in 30mm (1 1/4") steps from 640mm to 1060mm (25.2" to 41.7") wide to support a wide range of projects, chairs, and people.

Optional small frame support bars mount on top of the trestle with quick release blocks that lock in with a simple and easy to use lever. With hand cast rubber inserts and tops, they won't damage the trestle or slip from their position. These supports allow you to use any size frame with the trestle, not just frames wider than the trestle spacing.

Read full details and see pictures here.

The Table Stands

Table stands, like most Mythic Craft products, are made from solid European Beech hardwood. A burnished Danish Oil finish gives some protection against moisture and helps protect the wood.

Hand cast rubber pads protect the frame and desk from damage, marks, and stains whilst being grippy and non-slip. The table clamp will work with any desk/surface from 16mm to 50mm (5/8" to 2") thick.

Easy to use lever clamps hold the table stand together, so adjusting position is super easy. Very little effort is required to make a strong clamp - no more turning handles trying to lock things down.

The frame clamp supports any Mythic Crafts frame sidebar or end bar - it has 4 thicknesses to securely lock onto any frame. The rubber pads prevent any damage to your frame by the clamp.

Read full details and see pictures here.

The Embroidery Frames

Mythic Crafts have been making solid European Beech hardwood embroidery frames that are light and easy to setup for over a year. For this campaign only, they are being offered with a Danish Oil only, or full Urethane finish. Applying the Urethane finish is the most time consuming and expensive part of the frame, so with just the Danish Oil (non-gloss, not as hard wearing), you can save a lot of money on a frame!

See full specification and sizing guide here.

The Cast Resin Needle Minders

Last year Mythic Crafts introduced carved wooden needle minders, and whilst they are beautiful they take a lot of time to make - so are not cheap. After many customers asked for a cheaper alternative, Mark carved tooling wax versions of the needle minders, then cast moulds from them. They are incredibly detailed (to the point of seeing muscle groups on the horses) and cast from a slightly rubberised urethane resin that will not break from being dropped or mishandled.

A couple of drops of white resin is first added to the mould, then the coloured resin is shot in - this gives a swirl/streak pattern, and the white gets trapped in the details of the mould which really shows off the designs beautifully.

As these are hand cast, the depth of colour will vary considerably from batch to batch, as will the pattern of white/colour.

To claim multiple Perks, you will need to back the campaign multiple times, it's a limitation of IndieGoGo unfortunately. Any extra shipping you pay will be put towards items like carved needle minders, carved thread keepers, and other items we make.

Spend over £1000 (approx US$1390/€1135) and you will receive a special goodie pack in your order. This applies to any order, including group or retail orders. Goodies might include carved wood needle minders, carved wood thread keepers, even embroidery frames for especially large orders.

If you're part of a group of friends, society, guild or class and would like to buy more than 3 of any combination of stands, trestles, frames I'm offering free shipping for all the items to one address. You must get in before the end of the campaign, please contact me and I can setup a Perk just for your group! You can also message me on Facebook.

If you are going to be running a class, I can engrave the name of each class member on their frame, as well as your logo or message on the bottom bar with my logo (yours on the left side, mine on the right side). As the instructor, you will receive a free frame if your class orders at least 9 frames of the same size. This has been very well received in the past by students and instructors alike. Please contact me and I can setup a Perk just for your class!

The prices on most items are cheaper than I am typically able to offer to retailers. For this campaign, you'll receive free shipping and have your logo engraved on the bottom frame along with the Mythic Crafts logo. Please contact me and I can setup a Perk just for your store!

You might have heard about us being in Canada, in December 2017 our work permits expired and we were forced to move to the United Kingdom. After losing our son in 2016, our residency application got a bit derailed and never quite got back on track. We planned the best we could for a rushed move, however, a combination of factors has used up my budget to restart the business. Trade grade, precision tools are really not cheap, and these products need a lot of them. I was able to bring one of my key pieces of equipment worth about US$12,000 with me, all the other equipment had to be sold at a fraction of its value due to different voltage and frequency between North America and Europe.

Luckily, shipping from the UK to the USA/Canada is barely more expensive than from Canada with my shipping rates. To the rest of the world, shipping is cheaper than the rates we received in Canada!

As we've just moved country, and sold my tools at a fraction of their value in Canada we need to setup a new workshop in the UK. I did not want to take pre-orders for the new items without ensuring that I would be able to cover the cost of a workshop, tools and the materials to make the items.

Now that the goal has been reached, we know we can buy all the tools and pay the deposit and rent on a workshop for the time it will take to fulfil the orders. Additional orders in the campaign taking us past 100% will be spent according to the breakup below. Rather than buying tools that are the minimum specification required to get the work done to the precision and quality I require, I will be investing the money into tools that allow the items to be made more efficiently and with less waste.

You might be thinking "can't you use cheaper equipment?" - unfortunately, once you drop from trade quality to hobby quality the precision, speed of use, and quality of finish rapidly goes down, much faster than the price does. The equipment on my list is the cheapest that will do the job properly, it would be very easy to spend far more money on equipment.

Building any of my products requires 9 major pieces of equipment, plus several major supporting pieces of equipment (like dust collection) as well as about 8 different types of small hand tools. The lumber comes in as approx. 300x50x3000mm (12"x2"x10') pieces weighing up to 50kg (110lb)! This needs to be cut, planed, milled, drilled, routed, sanded and finished down to the final pieces and that's a lot of work! Using cheaper equipment means a huge increase in processing time (thereby increasing retail cost), an increase in waste, and a reduction in final quality. I realise my products are not cheap, however, I believe they are the highest quality on the market and designed to last several lifetimes. I wouldn't compromise on that, because I know you wouldn't want me to offer a poorer quality product for the same or higher price.

These dates are of course estimates and only matter once the campaign is fully funded - I'll post updates to the campaign as we approach each date to keep you informed of how the schedule is tracking, as well as share pictures of the new workshop/production as we go.

The danish oil only frames have been selling out, so the schedule above does not include the second batch of frames which are expected to be delivered in September 2018.

The production schedule could shift for several reasons, primarily if equipment goes out of stock before I receive the campaign funds, or there is an issue with a piece of equipment that has been delivered. If equipment is back ordered, I've built some contingency funds into the campaign goal so hopefully, I can buy a higher spec piece of equipment, or another brand and receive it in time so as not to delay orders.

I'm not very worried about the wood supply here in the UK - if all else fails I can rent a truck and drive to Germany in less than a day to pick up wood directly from the sawmills at the plantations.

The final potential issue is if there are problems with the finish as it's applied. For the trestles, this is not an issue, as they only have a burnished Danish oil finish which is almost impossible to mess up! The frames, however, get 6-10 coats of urethane, a run or defect at any point in the finishing process adds up to a week to finishing time. I'm going to be using all new spray equipment and a different brand of finish than I'm used to, so the production timeline is padded to allow for some learning curve. Finish application has been the number 1 cause of delays in all past orders.

If you'd love to see Mythic Crafts stick around for years to come, but are not in a position to buy anything right now I completely understand! You can really help Mythic Crafts get back on track by sharing this campaign on Facebook, Twitter, by email or in person to people you know. Word of mouth is how I gain most of my customers, and I'd really appreciate if you could share this campaign!

Be sure to use the sharing tools at the top of the page, it will track who is sending the most customers to the campaign. Later in the campaign, I'll be running a contest with some interesting rewards for the people who have bought the most customers to the campaign, sharing the link at any time will help towards that contest!