First off, the important stuff

Thank YOU guys for all of your pledges so far.  We have rocketed past 10% and are moving steadily towards our goal.  We've picked up some great media so far, including a recent news piece by MSNBC.  Hopefully all of this exposure will help us get to our goal even faster, but we wouldn't be where we're at NOW without your support.

Finally, some pictures…

So it took a little longer than expected to get some pictures of what our tier awards look like.  I have posted several images to our main page, but I also have some great build photos for you here.  Here they are:

These Hermes stickers are going to come with a transparent background.

Both the T-Shirt and Polo shirt are going to have the STAR Systems Logo on the front.  Here is what it looks like up close:

For our first run of shirts, we decided to put the Hermes logo and "Pit Crew" on the back of just the T-Shirts, and leave the back blank for the Polo shirts.  We thought this gave the Polo a cleaner and more professional  look.  Don't worry, if you'd prefer to get a Polo AND have the image/text on the back, we will make that happen for you.  Morris has a very good contact at our local print shop that he has done business with for over a decade.  They are very good to us and will take of our, and your, needs.

We've finished the Hermes Model for our first backer!  Here's the mold set we have for the model:

Here's the model in various stages of sanding/painting:

And the finished product:

As you can see, we are doing all of the prep and finish work ourselves in our shop.  They take several hours to achieve the level of detail we are looking for.  The model is formally 21" front-to-back, 15.25" wing tip-to-tip, and 7.25" tall.  We may stencil in the Hermes Logo on the side, or we may leave it up to each individual backer.  What do you think?

And finally, since we have our first backer for a Hermes Paperweight, we have started work on one.

As you can see, our piece starts out as a stainless steel bar.  The entire paperweight will consist of one machined piece (no attached parts), machined on our 2 ton lathe:

Tier Updates - Cumulative Awards!

I am very pleased to announce that our tiers are now cumulative!  What this means, is that whatever tier you pledge, we will give you all tiers below that level!  This is retroactive for all backers (thanks again!).

The only exception to this is our $500 tier.  You will not get a paperweight at this level.  Please message us if you'd like to work something out to receive both items.

Thanks again everyone!