Jason Scott, speaking for the board.

Preparations are underway for the store.

As I have strongly indicated previously (I hope), you will never be able to "pre-order" or order an item that does not exist, right now, in the real world, in my storage or shipping area.  That's a pillar, and it does mean things are shifted forward in time instead of being "back-ordered" or "on the way". If you order something, it will go out.

We've got a plan locked down for the discussed hybrid selling of pick sets while also sending out promised sets. The whole cycle depends on sales and whatever Schuyler is able to put into the account (not very much right now, as a Barista, but occasionally some payments as a speaker/consultant/teacher).

There will be three different types of pick sets you'll be able to order, as well as shirts and practice locks. The goal is to sell out each "cycle" of picks to be able to order the next set. People constantly mail in asking to buy them, so there's some audience out there, and that's a bright spot in this.

If you start here and go backwards in the album, there are some photos taken by Schuyler of his work area. He has also talked with some local friends about helping with the building process for the picks. 

The "seed money" for the cycles is about $3000 - $1000 of that has been contributed by a donor, and the rest will be raised from either Schuyler's contribution or from the sales of these shirts, locks, and so on.

This weekend, I begin a trip set to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Minnesota, returning on roughly July 10th. While I'd like to think I can get the store running on the road, I am not 100% sure that will be the case, so keep that date in mind for some aspects to ramp up if they haven't already.

Onward.

Jason Scott, speaking for the board.

I delayed writing a "and we're working on it" update, until we had all the facts in order. So, here are the facts.

• Schuyler has consulted with his family and his fiance and he wants to move forward.
• Schuyler will be tithing 10% of his salary into the bank account from this point forward.
• Schuyler will also contribute 100% of all speaking fees and at-event sales to the bank account.
• We intend to sell a portion of the made lockpicks, and send the rest to backers.
• The goal is to combine the contributed funds and the sales to keep the project sustained.
• Jason Scott will be handling the sales. We will never sell a pick that is not in his hands, finished.

Tonight, the board and Schuyler had a Google hangout and went through all the aspects of the project, including the costs, various approaches, and the information that needs to be assembled. The goal is that the combination of all these factors will keep the creation of picks in batches sustaining through to the end.

This will still take significant time, but we are committed and have committed to getting it done.

When we have details on the steps forward, the prices for picks should people want to buy the sets, and how many sets have gone out, they will be published.

Additionally, Schuyler has purchased the remaining locks for the promised lock sets, the last non-pick backer rewards expected. He intends to have those sets out very shortly. We'll be checking on him that he has done so.

We'll have more details, but we wanted you to have this information as soon as it was firm.

We're making lockpicks. We're in business.

Jason Scott, speaking for the board.

First, let me say this update was way too long in coming - I am working very hard to finish editing a movie project as well as my daily duties and efforts for Archive Team and the Internet Archive, and a bunch of stuff was back burnered while I was working on those. The board has generally let me speak for them so nobody was inclined to just jump in with an update. Let me do a short one here and then we'll have a longer one soon.

Let me harken back to the basics.

I stepped forward and assembled this project for a simple reason: I did not want to see a young man kill himself for having a failed business. I liked his talent and his charisma and his teaching skills, and I thought the world would be poorer for losing him. I still believe all this. As someone who has lost a few friends and acquaintances this way, I thought the right thing to do was to step in and help where I could, leveraging my ability to manage projects and face crowds, even hostile ones, to bring things to some sort of conclusion.

We shipped out a majority of the rewards (numbers wise) and certainly all the rewards that Schuyler had in his possession. (Still a few boxes lingering, of course). That was positive, and I think it gave my friend some hope and oxygen. Bringing himself to a coffee job and living with his parents has done same.

That said, he has a number of lock libraries on hand he owes shipping out to, and he has not done that. He also has slipped here and there with getting information back to us, and has required prompting. I don't like this.

Unlike the rewards and boxes process, the lockpicking process requires Schuyler in a very big way. He needs to be given the cut picks, weld them, prep them, and possibly ship them. He needs to do this for thousands and thousands of picks. 

Therefore, I wrote to him earlier this week, and laid it out. If we do this, we do this. I will be at his house, making him do things, on a regular basis. I will be enlisting people to be taught the skills needed to use this equipment as well as he does, and to build picks along with him regardless of if he's had a hard day at work or just isn't in the mood. While some risk can be mitigated by doing shorter (and slightly more expensive) runs and then focusing on those runs, this is a lot of work ahead. Work that will bring even more people down if he does not come through.

I told him to speak about this with his family, and think about this. And to come back with the real answer, the REAL answer, of if we're going to do this.

It is an adult's choice, not the choice of the young 24 year old hacker who enjoyed picking locks and who wanted to move into sharing his lockpicks with the world and maybe do this full time. Who made stupid mistakes and piled more on until his worldview shrunk to failure and darkness. Who hid his failures with a forced smile until he couldn't even force the smile.

I personally hope he goes for making the lockpicks. He loves lockpicking and the designs are solid and I happen to think the discipline of working on them will make him a better and focused person. I think it's doable.

If he comes back with the real decision being that he can't. the slings and arrows will come. I've seen quite enough of them during this campaign. If he goes that way, that path, the weight of producing all these picks is replaced with the weight of some apparently intense hate mail and campaigns, and personal attacks for years to come. As an adult, he should be prepared for that as well. 

Both of these paths are pretty terrible choices, but they're a choice. He has a support network, now, either way he goes. That's why I got in on this - I was never a backer of this campaign, and I have never picked a lock. I did this for a person, not a skill or an idea.

I've told Schuyler to speak with his family. We'll go from there.

Jason Scott, speaking for the board here.

Commitments both travel and project kept me from gathering all the threads until now. and here we are. We're now at a turning point in the production, so it's time to talk about all the possibilities.

Reviews of Newest Revision of Picks from Test Batch

When we last left things, we'd made a small batch of the newest revision of lockpicks, using the metal and etcher we sourced. Schuyler then took possession of this batch and began putting them together, polished them by hand, and then we sent it out to a number of folks for their assessment.

From members of TOOOL Netherlands: "We both opened locks that we hadn't before (mind you, we just started the competition). I didn't have to get used to the amount of feedback, it felt quite familiar. The grips are just a tad thinner than the grips I 'm used to, but i could get accustomed to them. Grips are a bit sharp, could tumble a bit longer. We liked them!"

From Lix: "The only thing I noticed was the edge that the chemical etching created... a possibility that the tumbler would eliminate the edge. I'm going to keep playing with them, and maybe file the edge of on some of the picks that I'm less likely to use for comparison. I'll let you know what I think after so more time with them. All in all though, I am extremely happy with the picks. The handles are thinner and lighter than I expected they would be, which is good. The feedback from the lock is fantastic, unlike any other pick I've used. They do feel a little "delicate" so to speak, but I am also very heavy handed."

Others were handed lockpicks to try them out; a person newer to lockpicking liked the feel, while others have not gotten back to us with an answer yet. On the whole, people seem to find these picks good products, and are concerned about the finishing and smoothing of them. Schuyler says he is aware of this and has refined the process of making the picks, including his fiancee' covering a tumbler for future use.

Some Hard Numbers / Pieces of Information

People who are not into the nitty gritty can skip this section - a summary comes into the next section. From questions I hit the group with a while ago:

• For the metal that will form the picks: Who is the vendor that we are looking at?McMaster Carr
• Which part number?9074K999 (SPRING TEMPERED 1074/1075 SPRING STEEL .020" THICK, 12-3/8" WIDE X 100 FT COIL)
• What Price? $722.5. not including shipping 
• How long is the material? 100 feet (shortest they sell) 
• How wide is the material? 12-3/8 inch 
• For the metal that will form the handles: Who is the vendor that we are looking at? McMaster Carr
• Which part number? 9784K51 http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/119/3738/=l4rob8
• What is the quote? 61.83 not including shipping 
• How long is the material? 100 inches ( longest they sell) 
• How wide is the material? 12 inches 
• Are we paying to ship to the etcher? Yes
• For the pick sheet I saw 6 full sets of 20 picks, a 10 and a 5 per sheet. Is a sheet 1 foot by 2 feet of material? Yes 
• What is the size of the handle sheet? 1 ft x 2 ft 
• When we are quoted etching prices and they refer to a "pair" is that two of the same sheet, or one pick sheet and one handle sheet? When requesting the quote from the etcher I specified pair (1 handle & 1 head) they replied with prices per sheet. We pay per sheet, not pair. 
• Can we mix sheets to get the discount, or is the discount rate per sheet? In other words if I order 100 sheets of each type do I pay [(100 * the 100 rate) + (100 * the 100 rate)], OR [200 * the 200 rate]? My understanding is that the discount comes from duplicates of the same type. 

Information about the picks per sheet from Schuyler:

Pick Sheets:

7 of:

• Long Hook 
• S Rake
• Half-Ball 
• Snowman 
• Large Diamond 

• L Rake 
• Medium Diamond 
• Gonzo 
• Medium Hook 
• DeForest Diamond 

• Everything else 

 Handles: 100.5 per sheet (that is 201 total, but we need 2 handles per pick.)

What this all Costs

We have a lot more spreadsheet than this, but we ran all the numbers of the sheets needed and the costs involved. Here they are. For brevity, I'm not including the whole spreadsheet, but it just breaks down the picks-per-sheet calculations and how many are needed. There's some calculations for overages and breakage, and so on. These are realistic numbers.

In total, 140 pick sheets (at $722.5 a sheet) and 180 handle sheets (at $61.83 a sheet) will be needed. This is 280 feet of pick sheet stock and 360 feet of handle stock.

The total cost for the material is $2167.50 for the pick sheets and $5564.70 for a total of $7732 material costs.

The cost to etch these 320 sheets will be $80 a sheet, for a total of $25,600 etching costs.

So, the estimated cost to provide all promised picks to all backers minus shipping is $33,332.20.

If there's concerns about these calculations the spreadsheets can be passed along for others to glance at, but that appears to be the number to make all picks.

So Now What

To recap, we have:

• A tested, working design for a Schuyler-Towne-designed lockpick set.
• A procedure (metal, etching, assembling, finishing) to make the lockpicks
• Thousands of owed lockpicks using this procedure and metal
• $1000 from a generous donator who wants to see this effort completed
• Volunteers willing to help assemble the picks along with Schuyler, and overseen by him to ensure quality control
• No other financial reserves.

Like so many other situations, it's a case of needing money to complete the task. Tens of thousands of dollars, in fact. To be clear, it is best to do these pick etchings in sets, i.e. roughly $9,000-$10,000 worth of etching at a time, and not, say, sheet-by-sheet. The savings are considerable and the discounts kick in. 

We've talked among ourselves in the Repair Board, and there are several approaches we've come up with to move forward. They include:

• Tithe Schuyler for years. Currently he is still working as a barista but he is actively seeking to become a full-time designer again, as well as taking paying jobs to give speeches. 
• Manufacture the sheets and sell a percentage of them to fund each run. (We do not have numbers for this at the moment, but the percentage sold versus provided to backers could be anything from 1 in 10 to 10 in one.)
• Sponsors hop in to cover as much of the cost as possible in return for including information or other items in the packaging for the picks.
• We give people the option to walk away, declare it quits, to no longer want anything from this kickstarter, as a way of donating towards finishing it by reducing that $33k number. (Note: Not to vote to kill the whole endeavor or anything, just to give people the option to be taken off the list of people owed picks.)

We absolutely, definitively, utterly do not want to do a kickstarter or fundraising for the costs. It doesn't pass the smell test and is not the way to work on things at this juncture.

So, while we're considering this situation, I am opening it up to you, his backers, to discuss what your thoughts are. The board can proceed in a number of directions at this point. The picks are real, they're in hands and are proven to be actual picks and to do what Schuyler promised they would do. But we need to now make a lot of them. And there is, at this moment, $1000 of the needed $33,000 to complete the task.

Thanks again for your patience between updates. I'm off any intense travel schedule for the next few months, and mean to bring updates more frequently.

- Jason

Jason Scott, of the board, speaking here.

First, let me apologize for the delay. It was a classic case of wanting to make a big splashing announcement over the understood requirement of posting frequently, and that's a mistake not worth making.

Fundamentally, we are at this position:

• Pretty much all lock/sticker boxes are out. A few remain, still.
• The design is locked and verified.
• The design is additionally locked on the larger size of metal. (Cheaper to do etching).
• Now it's just double checking the numbers and acquiring funds.

And the last two are the big deal. As you probably know, the board has roles within it, with me the Loudmouth Organizer, Jason Aller the Numbers Guy, Andrew the Money and Arrangements Dude, and then Brian Martin, the Spotter. We then have Schuyler as Designer/QA Guy.

After some back and forth, Andrew came back with some estimates and prices for beginning production. The prices were higher than I'd been led to believe and are slightly out of what I'd call the range of "at-hand cash" (Roughly low five figures). So I've asked Andrew to pass the information over to Jason to go over them and ensure all the prices and costs are correct and that there's nowhere we can save money without sacrificing quality. (For example, we already found that we were using pick-quality metal for the handles in the original estimates, which was silly. That's been fixed.)

Either way, the next part will be raising funds to buy picks in these batches, whatever the size is. I had initial discussions with a sponsor who would have funded these picks in return for an advertisement packed in with the sets, but they've not been responsive through the holidays or recently. So my hope is to talk to other potential sponsors about funding or contributing towards batches of the picks in return for being mentioned or having some wrap-in item. (Obviously, they would not be affecting the picks in any way, such as etching their name on it or some similar situation.)

Meanwhile, Schuyler has begun the process of interviewing with potential companies to hire him as the same sort of designer he had previously been working as. If that contingency comes through, he will be putting a larger portion of funds into the non-controlled-by-him bank account than he already has. (Money from that account was used to make the rounds of protoypes)

That's where we are, on January 25th. We continue to be committed to making this right.