I know, “Reproduction” is a dirty word to many Scrimshanders but please stay with me for a bit.

Like it or not, Scrimshaw "Reproductions" are here to stay and the number of Scrimshanders now offering Reproductions is on the rise. We've all seen Barlow’s work all over the place and not including me, I know of at least 5 others that are now offering Reproductions along with their one of a kind custom engravings. If you’re one of the handful of Scrimshaw artists that are able to sell your work at whatever price you put on it, then you don’t need to read further but if you’re one of the other 90% of us who end up selling a $1,000 piece for $600 just so we can pay the light bill then you might want to continue reading.

In this economy with gas prices so high and when a trip to the grocery store cost $20 more than it did a couple of weeks ago, it’s tough to sell anything that isn’t a necessity. Our sales of inexpensive Reproductions has certainly slowed down, my guess is, sales of original engravings have taken a much bigger hit.

Obviously there are far more buyers out there that can afford to spend $15 or $20 on a piece of Scrimshaw than there are people that wouldn't hesitate to spend $300, $400 or $1,000 on a piece. The truth is, the average buyer is more interested in a good price for a good looking piece of artwork and "Fakeshaw" (if you will) is perfectly fine, as long as it's not being passed off as authentic scrimshaw. Others buy our Scrimshaw products because it's on materials other than Whale teeth or Elephant ivory, as long as no animals were harmed in producing it. That in itself is a great sales tool and we do use the phrase, "Scrimshaw that doesn't endanger any Wildlife."

You will be amazed at how much detail our process picks up, I'll stretch my neck out a bit and say, virtually every mark you engrave into a piece, no matter how small it is, will be picked up by our casting process. At this point I will tell you, in order to create molds of your engraving, you won't be able to ink as you go, the lines and dots must be absolutely clean. To learn more go to Reproduction Process below.

One thing nice about Reproductions is, you aren’t locked into deciding whether you want the piece you're working on to be a pendant, a pin, or whatever, you can make pendants and pins and earrings and anything else you want with same piece. When you hold your first handful of Reproductions you’ll start imagining the possibilities that will open up for you.

We found this method of producing very high quality Scrimshaw Reproductions 17 years ago, since then we have made a number of changes and perfected the system, now we are ready to offer our high quality Reproduction Service to other Scrimshanders.

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"Put Your Work to Work for You" Here are some examples of how you can put your work to work for you, using 2 of our designs we have been reproducing for several years.

On this “Sm. Wolf Face Arrow” which is a Limited Edition (LE) piece, it took me around 15 hours to do the engraving, we’ve sold 308 pendants and/or pins, at $20 each and 106 pairs of earrings at $30 a pair.

308 pendants, etc. @ $20 =   $6,160
106 pr. earrings      @ $30 =   $3,180
Total sales                       =   $9,340

Assuming this was ONE OF YOUR designs and your cost was $4.95 per piece, the same 308 pendants and 212 pieces for earrings, a total of 520 pieces at $4.95 each, your cost would be  $2,574 (over time). Because the molds wear out you may need 8 Production molds at $50 your total cost would be $2,974. If you sold them for the same price as we do, your gross profit would be $6,366 for 15 hours of work or over $424.40 per hour. (This piece required a double sided mold.)

Another example is our “Rose Heart” which is what we call a “Flat Back” piece, it’s done in an open face mold, whereas the arrowhead above is done in a double sided mold. (See a description of "Flat Back" and "Double Sided Molds" below) We sell the “Rose Heart” at $15 each for pendants, pins, etc and earrings are sold at $25 a pair. Because it’s not a limited edition I don’t know the exact number of pieces we’ve sold but it’s well over 1,500 pieces. Assuming 25% were earrings or 375 pair, the numbers are;

1,123 pendants, @ $15 = $16,845
375 pr earrings   @ $25 = $  9,375
Total sales                   = $26,220 

Please don’t get the wrong impression, this IS NOT a get rich quick scheme, the numbers above were spread over several years, the Wolf on the arrow was done in 1998 so we’ve been producing it for 13 years, that’s only 32 pieces a year. The little Rose Heart isn’t dated but I believe it was done in 1996, give or take a year, so we’ve been producing it for around 15 years. I also need to tell you we have some pieces that I thought would really go well and we might only sell 6 or 8 of them a year. The real key to making money with Reproductions is, the more pieces you have working for you, the sooner you can depend on them to be your bread and butter. Take some time and play around with the mold fees and the per piece costs below to see if our service will work for you.

Another really neat thing about Reproductions is, if you’re asked to do a custom piece of someone’s loved one that has passed away, you can offer them the option of having copies made for other family members and close family friends, at a very affordable price.

Also, now you can go after all of those opportunities that you thought was not possible, corporate gifts, event medallions, etc, whether you need 10 pieces or 1,000 pieces, we can help you do it. Maybe you’ve thought about someday being able to wholesale your work, well, now that possibility is open to you.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you, "EXPOSURE" is a real key to the success of anything you are trying to sell, if you do decide to use our Reproduction Service, we will post images of your work on our web site with a link to your web site or your e-mail address and we do that as a FREE service.

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Our relationship in the production of your polymer resin Scrimshaw Reproductions. When you pay a mold fee, you are paying for the labor to make the molds, not for the mold itself, Hops' Scrimshaw will own the molds. If for any reason, either party decides to terminate our casting relationship the molds will be destroyed. We will have a simple "Copyright Agreement" you must sign giving Hops' Scrimshaw the authority to produce Reproductions for you, however, in no way will the Agreement give Hops' Scrimshaw the right to sell any of your Reproductions, however, the agreement will give Hops' Scrimshaw permission to use images of your Reproductions in the promotion of our products as well as yours. I will also sign the agreement and send you a copy.

Working in the Blind and Test Molds. Probably the most difficult thing you will have to learn is what I call, "Working in the Blind." In order to make the best possible mold of your engraving, you won't be able to apply any ink as you go, the lines and dots you engrave into the piece must be kept absolutely clean so the mold material can flow into them. This will take a little getting used to but we all "Work in the Blind" a bit between inking, we just don't usually complete an entire piece "In the Blind." After you do a couple of pieces it will get easier. To help you get through a couple of pieces without racking up a large mold fee balance, we are offering a special of "3 Test Molds" for the price of 1 on your first couple of pieces. After that, you will get 2 test molds for the price of 1, this will be our standard policy.

Test Molds. When you've gone as far as you feel comfortable with on your engraving, send it to us for a "Test Mold." Capture as much in your engraving as possible before you send it for the first "Test Mold" will result in fewer "Test Molds" being required. Once you have used your 3 "Test Molds' there will be a charge for each mold after that, as shown in the price list below.

There are basically 2 types of molds, "Flat Back" molds
and "Double Sided" molds. Also, we may make reference to "Test Molds" and "Production Molds" but there is actually no difference in them, the same process, mold material and polymer are used for both. When you tell us the master needs no further work, that's when the molds are referred to as "Production Molds." It's just the terminology we use.

Flat Back Molds
A flat back mold is simply a mold of a piece that is flat or mostly flat on the front and will have a flat back as well, when finished. To create a reproduction of this type of piece. We like the Master engraving to be approximately 1/4" to 3/8" thick, however, the minimum thickness required is 3/16". If you're using a piano key, you will need to glue something to the back to bring it to the minimum thickness making sure the glue comes out to the edge around the entire perimeter so there is no gap between the piano key and the backing that the mold material can seep into. You don't need to sand and polish the backs of flat back pieces because there is always a thin layer of mold material that seeps under the master in the form which will have to be scraped off and this process will leave scratches on the back of the master. The front and the sides of the piece must have a HIGH GLOSS FINISH and must be free of any sanding marks, etc, otherwise our process will pick them up, For most of our flat back pieces we use plastic baseball collector card boxes as forms, depending on the size we are able to group up to 4 pieces together in the form and we cut them apart when the mold has cured and the masters engraving removed. The baseball card box forms are 2-5/8" wide, by 3-9/16" long, by 1/2" deep. A piece that would fill this size form, with no room for any other small pieces, would be considered "Extra Large." If we have to build a special form to accommodate your piece, that form would be classified as "Jumbo" and would require a special quote. To keep your cost down, when you only have 1 piece that will take up just 1/4 of the mold space, we always have a need to make more molds of our smaller pieces so we share the mold space and sharing the mold space has been taken into consideration in the mold pricing.

Double Sided Molds
Being able to do Double sided molds allows you to create 3 dimensional pieces such as Bear claws, Feathers and Arrowheads like the one in this photo or like our "Forever Frog." Also, several of the Event Medallions were done in double sided molds with the image on the front and the event information on the back.

When creating a 3 dimensional piece that will require a double sided mold, there are
2 very important things to consider,

1 - you will need to make a funnel on what is usually the top of the piece. In the photo to the right, the portion above the dark line is the funnel portion. On this piece I used Corian and the funnel was carved as part of the piece. In the Shell piece below, I carved the shell out of ivory, then I drilled a small hole in the top of the piece and carved a funnel out of Plexiglas to fit in the hole.

2 - We have to consider the shape of the piece and its position in the mold so the air can escape. In the photo of the mold above you can see grooves cut into the mold on both sides at the top of the arrowhead and on the half of the mold underneath there is a groove coming from the tip of the arrowhead which also goes to the top, these are called vent sprues. When we pour the polymer into the mold these vents allow the air to escape. If you plan on doing a double sided design please let us know and we can help you with the funnel and vent sprue locations.

Some pieces like the Sm. Fox Oval, Sm. Eagle Oval, Lil' Backup Angels and a couple more, look like they are Flat Back pieces, however, they are actually all domed on both sides, similar to the shape of a magnifying glass which is thicker in the middle and thin around the perimeter. They all required a double sided mold.

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CUSTOM CASTING - "TEST MOLD & PRODUCTION MOLD" FEES

The last mold (Test Mold) we produce and you don't make any changes to the Master Engraving, will become your first Production Mold. Molds wear out, or burn out over time, this is caused by the heat generated from the curing of the Polymer Resin, double sided molds wear out faster because the heat can't escape as much as in open face molds. Small and large open face molds may produce as many as 100 pieces before they burn out, where a large double sided mold may only produce 60 or 70 pieces. We strongly recommend you invest in a couple more molds. If you only have 1 mold, we will only be able to produce 5 to 7 reproductions a day, we have to let the molds rest a bit between pours to give them a chance to cool down.

DESCRIPTION OF SIZES - w/Links to individual designs for viewing.

• FREE Test Molds. To help get you started we will give you 3 test molds for just 1 mold fee. We will make the 1st, 2nd and (if needed) a 3rd test mold.
• Each time we will ink a couple of the copies and return them to you along with the master engraving. Then using the inked copies as reference, you can do additional work on the master and send it back to us for another test mold.
• Everything up to and including the 3rd test mold will be done for just 1 mold fee. You can still do more work on the master engraving for as many molds as you feel you need to, however, starting with the 4th mold, the molds will cost you the appropriate mold fee as indicated in the chart above.
• We will not determine when one of your designs is ready for production, you will have to make that decision.
• I think you will be surprised at how quickly you will catch on to "working in the blind," which will let you go into procduction quicker.

• After we've gone through the "Test Mold" phase and you've decided the master engraving needs no further work, we will start producing your first batch of Reproductions for that design.
• If you don't do any additional work on the master engraving when we send it back for final approval, the last mold can be used as a "Production Mold."
  
• The minimum order quantity for the first batch of any design is 30 PIECES.
• After the initial batch of 30 pieces, you can re-order in quantities of 15 pieces each time.
• If you order 30 of the small Flat Back pieces @ $3.90, that's $117.00.
  and asuming you have 4 molds @ $40 ea. that's $160.00 for a
  total cost of $277.00. If you sell each piece for $15.00 (which is what we would sell them for) your gross profit would be $173.00 or 62.5% but you still have the original engraving and 4 molds. The next time around you can order only 15 pieces @ $3.90 for a total cost of $58.50. When they're sold at $15.00 ea. your total sales would be $225.00 for a gross profit of $166.50 or 385% and I'll say it again....... You still have the 4 molds and the original engraving.

• When we receive a Master Engraving we will determine what type and size of mold will be necessary.
• We will send you an e-mail to let you know what the UP FRONT charges will be, then on your approval we will send you a PayPal invoice for the mold fee, as well 30% of the first 30 piece order.
• When the invoice has been paid we will proceed with the "Test Mold" process. At any time during the "Test Mold" process you can tell us you have completed work on the Master Engraving, we will then proceed with the 30 Reproductions to complete your order.
• Prior to sending your order, we will advise you by e-mail that you will be receiving a PayPal invoice for the remaining 70% of Reproductions, when that invoice has been paid, we will ship your order.

If you are doing a portrait of someone's loved one that has passed away, or a portrait of a baby, a dog, a horse, etc; when only a few pieces are needed, special pricing will apply but don't worry, we will work with you.

If you want to go after a project that involves hundreds of pieces, let us know and we'll work with you.

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WHAT WE DO FOR THESE PRICES.

Polymer resin is a finicky material to work with, especially in the summer time when the humidity is high, it absorbs moisture like a sponge. When it does become contaminated the moisture shows up as tiny little dots all over the image which makes the piece unusable. Likewise, if you pour the polymer resin into the mold wrong, it will show up as a cluster of tiny little dots at the point the polymer first hit the face of the mold. We can't see these dots until we ink the pieces and these little dots result in a loss of 5% to 10% of our production. We want you to receive only the best possible Reproduction we can produce, so we will do the inking, triming, sanding and polishing of all the pieces before we send them to you. Therefore, you will receive pieces that are ready to drill for pendants and earrings, or to mount as broach pins, tie/lapel pins, etc. Also, if you do an arrowhead design, we won't wrap it with thread like our arrowheads are done.

The ink we use is the ABSOLUTE BEST, I will put it up against any ink other Scrimshanders are using. Some Scrimshanders guard the methods and materials their using with their life, however, I believe in sharing the things I've learned with others. Helping other artists improve their work, whether it's an original engraving or Reproduction, it will ultimately give more Scrimshaw customers a pleasant experience so they will come back to buy again, maybe from you or maybe from me. We buy "Speedball Super Black India Ink," before they modernized their label, it was called "Dense Black Opaque India Ink," In my opinion it's the best possible ink to use for Scrimshaw, we buy it by the quart. We pour the ink into a small water color tub that's about 3" in diameter and 3/4" deep, as shown in the photo at the left. We let it sit over night for the liquid to evaporate. The ink will get kind of a crust on it like on Jello when it gets old, we then pour in a little more ink and mix it with gooey stuff and again let it sit out, we keep repeating this until the stuff in the little tub is about the consistency of tooth paste. When it gets a little to thick just pour in a little more ink and mix it up, I use a palette knife for mixing. The ink I'm now using is about 1/2" deep in the 3" tub and it represents about 3 to 4 cups of the liquid ink. All of the liquid has evaporated off but all of the lampblack pigment is still in my tub, NOW THAT'S BLACK. We have tested our ink many different ways with many different chemicals and our ink WILL NOT WASH OUT, in fact, we guarantee it will not wash out. Let me assure you, it will not wash out of clothing either.

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Below are just some excerpts I've gathered from here and there, as well as some random thoughts I thought you might be interested in reading.

A Scrimshander’s work is truly a labor of love but have you ever worked till the wee hours of the morning putting the finishing touches on a piece that should have been done a week ago?  I think we have all done that at one time or another but if not, I think I would like to meet that Scrimshander whose judge of how long it will take to do a project that is 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th in line, apparently they have a better handle on time than what I do and maybe I could learn something from them.   

We all strive to be the best we can be with every project we do and when the project is finished, we sit back in our chair, give the piece another good looking over and say to ourselves “It is Good, it is REALLY GOOD.” I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say, this scene plays out hundreds of times each day, at the work benches and kitchen tables of hundreds of really good Scrimshanders all over the world, unfortunately most of us will never be known, or at least not known well enough to demand the dollars our work is really worth, yet we keep trudging on.

The truth is, there are only a handful of Scrimshanders that are known well enough to be sought after by the handful of collectors who can afford their work. Don’t take me wrong, Scrimshanders like Gary Williams, Matt Stothart, Dale Fisk, Jim Clay and others are truly exceptional Scrimshaw artists and they’ve worked hard to attain the status they hold today but can their work be considered “True Scrimshaw”?

“True Scrimshaw.” Some collectors of Scrimshaw pay a lot of money for “True Scrimshaw,” which is often defined as "Scrimshaw done on Whale bone or ivory by Whalemen or Sailors in the 18^th, 19^th, or early 20^th centuries," to those collectors anything else is “Modern Scrimshaw,” even the outstanding work of the Scrimshaw artists I mentioned above isn’t “True Scrimshaw” to them, it’s “Modern Scrimshaw.”

A Dirty Word. I know to some Scrimshanders “REPRODUCTION” is a dirty word and the Scrimshaw community has tagged them as “FAKESHAW. We’re all familiar with the “Barlow Reproductions,” he’s been around for a long time and you see his work everywhere, apparently he’s doing well with his Reproduction business. I know of at least 5 others that are actively doing Reproductions. Who buys our Work? Other than our web site, eBay and a few dealers, we sell our Reproductions, (Fakeshaw as some would have it), at living history events in the Midwest. At these events we have thousands of people a day come in our shop to look at our products, I think I would be safe in saying that over 90% of them don’t care what the material is, they just want a good looking piece of artwork at a reasonable price. We do have someone now and then that wouldn’t buy anything because if it looks like ivory it has to be illegal, if you talked to them all day they wouldn’t change their mind. Then we have the occasional collector that looks around for awhile and tells us how impressed he is, then buys a few pieces for CHRISTmas gifts, or to set among his collection of "True Scrimshaw" and "Modern Scrimshaw.}

"No more ivory.” We have all probably heard stories and read articles that suggest the current Scrimshanders are the last generation that will be able to carry on the art, at least on any kind of ivory. Assuming elephant ivory will never be deregulated and the supply of Elephant ivory already in the country is gone, this generation of Scrimshanders may indeed exhaust the supply of fossil ivories and after all, it is not a renewable resource. Even if we do use up all of the Elephant ivory and fossil ivories, I doubt that Scrimshaw as an art form will ever die away, Scrimshanders are a persistent breed, they will always find something to scratch a picture into and with the advancements in technology there will surely be new materials developed for other intended uses in the not to distant future that Scrimshanders will find suitable and worthwhile to invest hours and hours of labor to produce a finished piece of art that is equally as beautiful as one done on ivory. I’ve done a few pieces on “Corian,” a counter top material and I’ve seen the work of other Scrimshanders done on Corian as well.

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