Reminder: This is the experience that I went through - You WILL have a different experience than me. This isn't to dissuade ANYONE from joining in the hobby, but instead to show some realities of making dice TO SELL or AS A JOB. I hope you found this informative and helpful :) Also go check out the Giveaway in the description and my buddies at Terragon Gaming/Terrain! They are super nice people, and I love working with them. :)

One of my friends started her own dice business where she sells sets for average cost $100 per set and she constantly gets anxiety about her prices. But the thing is everytime she opens her shop, the inventory that she had spent months working on sell out in minutes. If she were to lower the price, not only would she not have enough profits to justify the work, but it would be impossible to meet the demand. Sometimes setting a higher price is about recognizing the value in the product you have made.

The way I price any of my handmade items, whether it's dice, tumblers, ornaments, whatever, is a simple formula: (cost of materials × 2) + ($15 per hour). My materials get covered, the "×2" covers wear and tear on my equipment, electricity, etc, and I get a living wage for my time. Using your numbers in my formula, your finished dice would retail at just under $15 each, not including shipping, which is what I currently price my d20s at. I completely understand that everyone's mileage varies, and experience plays a huge role in this too. Thank you for sharing all the Nitty Gritty details. 💗

This was all great practice, next time I'll be doing d6's (less sanding by far!) for my Patrons next year :)

I started my own woodworking business about 3 years ago. I used to sell my stuff way too cheap. I was afraid I wouldn't make sales, or that my product wasnt good enough. It took some time for me to realize that my skill set and knowledge has value. Yes, lots of people will tell you your stuff is over priced or low ball you on price. Just plant your feet in, stand by your product. Eventually someone will fall in love with what you have made and think it's worth every cent.

This is a brilliant insight into the market. Not only to temper expectations to those thinking you make it look easy, but to just fully appreciate what creators go through. Thank you SO much for showing us this.

I'm a small handmade dice seller and I cannot explain how much I appreciate how thorough this is. Making dice is my fulltime job and I enjoy every little step (even when they take HOURS), but it IS a lot and it takes a lot of skill, patience, and love.

For the next run I would recommend you to ink the dice before you sand them, this way you may be able to remove the paint mechanically which could be faster. Or maybe secure the towel to the pottery table just like the sanding paper. Hope this helps! Love the dice you make

Hand made dice, especially ones that have glitter pieces or specific colors is definitely a luxury art piece, and after this vid I understand why people sometimes sell sets for upwards of 60 dollars

You could possibly speed up extraneous paint removal by using a micro-fibre cloth taped to your potter's wheel, soaked in isopropyl alcohol. Might save a bit of time? Great video, very interesting! 🎲👍🏻😎

What a amazing video! Honestly if people are thinking about starting their own business making dice this really shows all the work and unexpected costs it takes to go into dice making which is already a competitive market! You are a legend and a scholar!

Definitely shows why injection molding is the go-to for actually manufacturing dice on a large scale. You can make a single d20 in a couple minutes compared to a 12hr epoxy cure.

13:20 For this step, a rag on your "orbital sander" and an occasional alcohol drench will probably do wonders on the turn around times for cleaning the ink.

I have never even touched dnd in my life but yet I watched this entire video, good work!

I started making dice as a hobby about 7 months ago. Recently started selling a few, but I would never want to do this fulltime haha. Thanks for the vid! And please do make more tutorials. Learned so much from you!

Hello Rybonator ! You're a titan ! I'm sure you could produce nice dice in industrial quantities ! You succeded brightly and showed us what patience, work and passion Can overcome every challenge. You're an example for anyone who love dice , and I'm decided to play D&D with some of the dice you make ! Hugs from France and keep being awesome !

Damn, I polish one (1) set and I'm over it. I can't imagine doing that many dice in one go.

What I love about your videos is they’re kind of like inner monologue ASMR for the maker process, which always involves more failures and setbacks than most folks let on. Love and appreciate your process and thanks for representing it so well. 💚

As a fellow dice maker that has been selling dice since day one (I feel like selling those first sets was both a mistake and a blessing though), this was super helpful because I sell my single dice for $15 and full sets for $60-75 for base sets and I was unsure if that was too high for my personal market. This confirmed that to be a no, but I have also slowly automated a lot of my process and I use a resin that cures in an hour so I can get more sets done in a shorter time. The most time consuming part of my process is definitely the sanding/polishing phase with inking being a close second. I have also given up on old making for a while so I am outsourcing that process which is also included in my price calculations. Still working towards being able to sell dice as at least a part time job, if not full time.

Holy cow, dude! First off, you did an incredible job doing every single step of a production process all by yourself as far as I can tell. AND doing the whole filming, editing, sound mixing etc that's your regular task... Holy shit. I would have gone a bit crazy after a week! I hope your video sponsor was generous, seriously O.O Doing all that for minimum wage seems kinda nuts. Be very interesting if any boutique dice makers leave comments about how they approach mass producing dice.

The silicone molds can be cut along their side in a zig zag, this let's you remove the pieces faster, but it still registers properly when it's closed. You could place the molds back into Dixie cups if you want to ensure they stay properly closed. And if you were to paint the letters first, and then sanded after, you would have eliminated the step of wiping the paint all together because the sanding would have removed it, (adding a little lubricant to the sand paper would keep it from getting clogged as well.) Hopefully those ideas might be appealing to you! Awesome video.

I just want to say thank you for putting this up. I'm actually about to start making dice here in the next week as a hobby, eventually as a side hustle, and this helps put some things into perspective. Keep up the great work!

Those dice are so pretty tho (I like the rose gold and the dark blue ones the best)!!! Wouldn't know those were mass-produced, would just think they were all individualy made!

Thank you so much for doing this video! My friend once mentioned that I should try dice-making and I was considering it but I didn’t really know what to expect. I was aware that there was a lot of money and work involved however I didn’t know to what extent so this was definitely an eye-opener. I appreciate the hardwork you put in to give us answers to our questions. Thank you again, man!

00:13:39 those people's product looks awesome (I definitely forgot to look into them in the last vid you made with them)

Thanks for the edutainment video! I probably won't ever be selling dice as a job, but this just shows the value of the work that people who do sell dice full time put in, and it is astounding. They definitely deserve to charge at least $20 per die (not counting shipping) if not more, for all that work. Personally I like buying handmade items in person, I love being able to meet the artist of something, it makes the art seem more valuable and worth however much they want to charge.

Thank you for making a video like this! It's so important to know what you're getting into any time you start up a creative venture, be it business or a hobby.

That is just a fantastic breakdown. Thank you so much. I’ve always been tempted to make my own dice and still may, but knowing the steps and the time certainly helps me frame it before I get into it.

Radical, thanks Rybo! Last summer I began the process of setting up a pressure pot and whatnot which I'll finish this winter when i get back from college, and this was a super helpful video! That's a whole bunch of work and I appreciate your having done it and even more so, having shown us the process! I believe that if I were going into dice making specifically to make money then I would probably take a step back to reevaluate after this, but I'm mostly just gonna be making dice for a fun hobby, gifts for friends and family, and I'll give a go at selling them, although I'm not too worried about it!

I’ve been wanting to get into dice making for a while now and have always loved your channel, this video is super helpful!!

Hey Rybo thanks so much for what you do and the commitment you have to making these videos. They truly are a treat to watch and learn from! Have you ever tried making a "frosted" dice, something with more of a rough sand/polish. A tutorial on that would be great!

This was a really interesting look at a big labour-intensive project. The teal and gold was my favourite, they were beautiful.

This made me think of including dice sets in my art commisions. It would probably be a nice way of getting my name out there, make the art more… i forgot the word, but ‘wanted’ since you would, by paying just extra, get personal dice to the same character you commisioned. I am planning on being a freelance artist, and already draw commisions beside school. My main commisioners are dnd players, so it would probably be worth it after some years. I wouldn’t make big badges like this, but it would make me able to work on the commisions while waiting for critique on the W.I.P of the art itself

Great vid Ry. This is why I tell people to start just selling to recoup the costs of your hobby before deciding if you want to actual try to make a profit long term. Also, I recommend you switch to dragon skin 20 for cap molds. its more flexible than the stiff sorta clear 12. makes it way easier to get the dice out.

This was useful for me. I'm working on a project where I have to make a top piece out of resin for one of my products, and I've been trying to figure out how to simplify doing it in mass. Thanks for the info, it's exceptionally helpful.

Coming back to this, i feel like estimating ongoing costs. If we assume you use the same molds, in this case these were specific to the kickstarter, but if we pretend they were ones you had a commercial licence on, or a free use policy, or designed yourself, then we can cut the time and cost of making molds off of future dice. Presumably you'd still be making new molds occasionally, whether a mold wears out, breaks, or you just add a new design to your collection, but I don't think its unreasonable to treat that as a rare ezpense and exclude it from what im doing now. So we cut the cost of silicon, the new pressure pot, and let's say most of the nitrile gloves since they come in large packs if you look around, and if you use 2 a day on the top end, a pack of 100 will easily last a month, so call it $5 i guess to be in the safe side. That leaves us with $325. Thats assuming you need to buy an entirely new stock of paints and alcohol inks, and that your isopropyl doesnt last, but since you would go through most of a stock, and there is a limited shelf life, im happy to call any left over a bonus. the maths on time is actually a little off, your original time is 5 hours short, you spent 160 hours, not 155, so we stick with 155 since we're subtracting the mold making process. you also said you think you could go faster next time, lets hazard that at about a 20 hour difference, possibly an overestimate but it doesn't seem too unreasonable a jump from literally your first time working in this scale to maybe a few batches in. so 135 hours we'll stick with the same minimum wage, but anyone can adjust that to their own local needs. So $978.75, plus our $325 ongoing cost of materials, we have $1303.75. all these numbers assume the same amount of dice being made, so lets assume a similar failure rate (hopefully, you would be able to reduce that with experience, or salvage some of the failures for other uses, maybe sell the ones with just cosmetic damage at a lower rate?). So 280 dice to sell, we need to sell them at $4.67 each to make minimum wage.

Taking the time to make jigs for repeatable results is key. Another thing I'd try is adding registration marks during the casting to save some time later on. When it comes to getting a repeatable process in large scale, it's the tiny bit of optimizations that cuts time down. Honestly, after doing a first batch and making a profit my next steps would be to add another Ppot, making more efficient molds like the cap sprue hybrid to cut defective losses but add time as a tradeoff. The ultimate downside that I see is sanding. There isn't much you can do there.

Mass manufacturing that many dice dice yet still keeping that incredible quality standard of yours is absolutely amazing. Incredible work as always!

If you were adamant on using a brush for the numbers, I’d recommend a shorter bristle and just ‘stabbing/tapping’ the paint in, would probably be faster when there’s a lot of die to paint

I appreciate the plug at the end about reasonable prices for handmade dice! I can’t recommend a ceramic tumbling media enough if you do another Kickstarter. Takes way less time to polish.

One thing to consider is that as a handcraft clacksmith, you're probably not going to be set up for a mass production project like this. I'm hella impressed that you pulled this off. My own notion would've been to do giant slab molds and void out the individual slots as they wore out with trash dice, to save time on pouring/flashing removal/demolding. But I totally get your logic and the dice looked fantastic.

Wow, this was really eye-opening! How many sheets of Zona paper did you go through for this particular project? And how did it compare to the amount you go through for a regular single set of dice? Thanks!

Rubbing the dice on a towel with alcoline is easier than the other way around. Still, some work, but you can turn the dice easier will scrubbing

Thanks for sharing! Since I found your channel a few months ago, I calculated everything and figured out to make my first dice, it would be around $500 out of pocket because of all the upfront tools and excitement you need. Been putting it off for financial reasons but hope to get everything at the beginning of next year :)

I've looked at making dice more as a side-job sort of thing. The market is...niche, but maybe it would be feasible.

Your content is always very informative and enjoyable to watch, you did a great job with the video and the dice 🖤

I have been making dice for a few months, still perfecting the sanding and polishing, I have problems with my hands and boy does it take it out of me. Very satisfying though. Your video came up and hosetly I can't believe how many in that space of time even with so many moulds and sanding pushing in a wheel. I'm not making my own mods having masters scares me, but you zoomed through those moulds like a total pro, I feel like I'd be more confident makong moulds after watching you do it for sure. Great video!

For the sanding process. I believe you could speed it up a good 5x+ if you created a jig in which you could place a bunch of d20's. You would then press this jig onto the orbital sander therby saving your hands from cramps and doing more than 2 at once. Assuming it takes more than a little while for the actual sanding so it makes sense time wise. When removing paint you could also put that cloth on the orbital sander or some spinning device so you just hold it against it and it the paint dissapears.

Couldn't you just use the higher grit Zona papers to get the excess paint off? I don't know if it would clog up the papers as I've never used them before. But since they're meant to polish it would seem they'd strip the paint off well enough.

What a great video! An a concept I wanted to know about-entering dice selling. Thanks!

Great tutorial! I don't have a desire to get into these for profit, but you have definitely shown me that it's not as hard to do as I have long thought. This process can translate to other items as well, so it's a cool little collection of knowledge for personal projects or gifts.

Great video. It's interesting to see what this process was like for you and get a little better insight and appreciation for the work that goes into handmade dice.

Is there like a list of items needed for a total beginner to making dice? Like, what is the cost to entry?

eyyy that's the pressure pot I bought! ❤️

i'm in a fair few facebook groups for crafters (mostly fiber bc yarn is the most easily accessible thing rn due to space) and the amount of hours people put into shawls and quilts and plushies and string art commissions and octopus hats and elaborate princess dresses for a kid thats not even 2 its astonishing at least by the time you're done with the yarn, all you have to do is block it resin has so many in between waiting steps, like laundry

Great video I really like the cost breakdown. For manufacturing purposes, I would spread the cost out of the silicone and pressure pot out for the life of the items. If you have an idea how long they will last you can attribute the depreciation of the expense over time. Silicone example: If you can reasonably get an average of say 40 dice per mold, each dice gets roughly 1/40th of the cost of the silicone applied to it. I don't remember the actual average, but this should convey the point. Pressure pot: With equipment depreciation is usually based off of use hours or units. I would probably base it off hours here because time used is what's creating wear. It doesn't matter if one dice is being vacuumed or 20, the pot is doing the same amount of work. So if you plan on using it for 4 hours each batch, 10 dice batches, and it lasts 100 batches it becomes pennies per dice. Still assuming long-term goals. The trick with manufacturing minimize direct materials cost (e.g. gallon of silicone not quart pricing) and maximize throughput. The more dice you create with each mold, the less expensive the mold becomes. If you had squish molds that funneled the wasted resin into a tray mold at the bottom, you could sell those, turning the waste into profit. This video is a really interesting look at startup costs. Great information and great analysis!

IT'S BEAUTIFUL!:0

This is incredible, so much damn effort...

Partially commenting to help the algorithm bc you deserve all the views for all that work- but also, I ADORE all those dice. If I ever do dice making as a part of my career, I think I'd plan to make like, 5 dice sets as a startup, then 1 themed set a month for promotion. My main thing would be working on commission, not trying to mass-produce anything. Anyway, I hope you were able to stagger your time (basically make it so while you were waiting for one thing to cure, you did another thing) because I'm intensely worried for your sanity if you piled everything at one time- I couldn't quite tell tbh. It's a lot easier to sew over one seam at a time than all at once, since I'm inwardly tying this back to sewing-

Rybo! Love your videos. I got the crazy idea yesterday to make dice (d6 probably) for my wedding as wedding favors. I've never made any dice, but I've watched a lot of your content, and have been tempted to get into it before. I think I'm gonna give it a shot! Practicing some basics first, of course.

noot noot

Thank you for the video, very informative! I really enjoy all your videos and they always give me lots of inspiration for my resin projects! I was wondering though what type of pressure pot is this new one you just got?

I really like how fast he talks. I so often put videos like this on 1.5 speed or higher but I watched this at normal speed and it felt like actual information was being shared in every moment.

The thing about the bigger buckets of silicone.... sometimes it's worth the extra price to get it in small manageable doses. If you do insist on getting it in bulk, sometimes it's better to process your shipment into smaller containers when it arrives so you can make sure you aren't wasting the savings on your mixing tools. You can make your tools dirty once and re-package it into sizes you know you will need later. It also helps keep the mixture even. The buckets settle out with time, so your first project might cure different than your last even if you did the same process.

The pink-gold dice are sooo insanely gorgeous, I'm absolutely in love with them!

As someone that is taking the first steps to start making dice professionally: thank you. My wife and I love your videos and are excited to get started and honestly most of my excitement is because of you and your videos. So again, thank you.

13:36 With cleaning up the dice inking step, you could use a buffing wheel or polishing cloth on the orbital sander's disc.

A very thorough, and I would say successful project! Thanks for sharing your experience. After doing this project, would you agree that painting the digits all by hand like you did is probably the least efficient way to fill them in? My first thought was to pour the dice and the paint in a zipper-seal baggy, shaken and massaged it until all were fully coated, then taken them out to drain for a few min on a rack or better yet a funnel to collect the flow off, then wiped the excess off with paper towels. Or perhaps dip painting them with a thinner paint more like a "wash" in painting miniatures. Dial in the proper viscosity and flow characteristics then dip the dice in, excess flows off the flats leaving a coating in the digits. Set on a rack to dry. Perhaps a greater investment of materials (paint, thinners, flow modifiers and initial time investment to dial it in) but less time, far less I would think, overall. The end result of painting them by hand would probably be superior. though for the time spent painting by hand its probably not worth it in my opinion. Then assuming that you wiped when wet or used the wash dip there would be far less dried residue to remove from the surfaces, the removal of which could potentially be automated in the vibratory sander by changing to a softer polishing media and using a bit of solvent (alcohol) and a short run time. My thinking is that your main bottle neck should be the creation of the dice molds, and the resin casting process including de-molding. After that the post processing should be mostly minimal. I say mostly since if you truly cannot use the vibratory sander on that function then hand sanding will be a bottle neck also, so I would find a way to get them done in the vibratory sander.

Awesome video! Out of curiosity, what type of pressure pot did you get that was ready to go without modifications for resin?

First off awesome video. Very informative. Considering those molds and all can be reused it isn't terribly bad.Not sure there is that big of market though to make up for the amount of volume needed to make it worth while.

I've gone from not knowing anything about dice making to wanting to make my own dice and thinking about how to make them and sell them from watching your channel, I really appreciate this vid and honestly it just encouages me even more to go for it and make it a business

It’s a good way to put everything in perspective!!!! I’ve always wanted to do this so it’s a good way to get a breakdown of everything!!! Also the dice look heckin gorgeous

See, it's videos like this one that are really important in showing and explaining the amount of work done in any creative field. Anyone who's made art, in some form, has probably come across some client who has massively under valued the amount of time and effort that it takes to make their craft. You're pricing yourself for like... federal minimum wage which isn't enough enough for some people to survive depending on where they live and you make dice professionally. So thank you for the careful and thorough breakdown of each step.

I have a few remarks about this (I do price calculation as a job) a) Don't facture in the purchase of a pressure cooker into the final amount because that will last a HECK of a lot longer. Estimate how many dice you'd expect to make before it breaks, multiply that by 0.7 (durability, maintenance, breaking sooner than expected ...). b) The speed at which your work tends to increase vastly with experience. You learn to use better materials (the hot glue is proof of this) and you also learn ways to speed up the process. For example, if you did your painting BEFORE your sanding, you could sand down the paint without needing to clean it. The sanding would strip the paint away and you'd be able to skip a step. c) Always look at what the market dictates. Is it better to mass produce these dice, or is it more profitable to make dice on demand (colours by order)? The profits you make off 10-20 dice could easily be the same as a single custom die. d) Factor in return costs - some customers will be unhappy, some dice won't be perfect or won't roll randomly enough.

To reduce the cleaning time I have started to wipe, in a sanding fashion, the face of the dice on a piece of printer paper placed on my glass top immediately after I painted it. This completely completely removes the cleaning the paint with solvent step, and greatly reduce the finishing time.

I was astonished while seeing over how much time this video was done... holyyyyyy, you're amazing! By far this has been one of the best channels I've subscribed to!

Nice, vid. I didn’t think I was gonna watch it all. It was really interesting! That royal blue d20 with gold lettering was awesome 👏

I also have the gallon buckets of silicone. what i found works best for me for getting it out to use is a soup spoon! bit easier then another cup and less messy!

Giving me inspiration to finally update my store with all the new sets I've been cooking up since I moved

Thanks for this video, I have just poured my first silicon moulds for a basic 7 set of dice........ I hope they come out well !

I thought about quite a lot of ways to improve each process as you were doing this. For example, you could make holders for like 100 dice for each type of dice so that you can use a wide sanding belt on top and just wait for it to be done. Instead of flipping each dice in the holder, you use another holder to flip all of them together, so then you only flip individual dice half the times. To not have to insert each dice manually in the holder you could make a filtering device so that you could just dump all the dice down a chute. Instead of making the silicon molds in cups, you could custom order 2 sided metal cups or maybe 3d printed ones so you can remove all the fiddling with cups scissors and hot glue. Since the painting process takes so long and the wiping takes a long time anyway, it would be a lot easier to just dump all the dice into the paint before the sanding process, then you have a lot less work to do and eliminated the painting. And since now there is only paint on the edges, you can put stickers on all sides of the dice and just throw them in a vat of alcohol, them leave them for a bit, come back and swoosh them around. Putting the stickers on wouldn't take very long because there are sticker guns that let you just pull a lever to apply a sticker and have another one ready. You could also rig up the trigger as a pressure plate in a block that has a shaped hole for the base of a die, so then you're not pressing the trigger just turning the die, setting it down on the pressure plate and repeating. All that's really left to do at this point is selecting colors, switching sanding belts, turning over dice, putting on stickers and the silicone and resin mixing and pouring. And you don't even have to remove the stickers off the dice, it can be your signature thing as a company and the customers will like peeling them off anyway. The biggest limiting factor to scaling now is the whole sticker rigmarole, but you could put the block with the die hole on a holder for it attached to a servomotor programmable by arduino which is also hooked up to the fire impulse of the sticker gun, so then it automatically rotates the die and stickers the faces, you just flip it around when a row of sides is done.

After all this time, I can't believe "Big Dixie cups" just flew over my head

This is a really interesting and thought provoking experiment. Thank you for showing us this side of things!

Awesome video. I appreciate both the cost rundown and time it takes to make so many dice. I assume electric cost of the pressure pot would add a small bit of cost too. I guess I can simply enjoy watching others make Dice as I don't even play Table top games any more and don't want to bother with running an online store.

I think the molds could be improved. At this scale you want a silicone tray instead of cups that you can fit sideways in your pressure pot. (for that to work you also have lay the pressure pot on the side) . You could fit multiple trays in there at once. Might need temperature control as well at that point. For cleaning the dice you can stick a microfiber to your pottery rotor.

thanks for making this BTW, a huge help. and every grievance is fully true. ppl need to know what they're getting into when they get into it.

You made some really amazing dice, nice job! I especially love those royal blue and light blue ones.

Thank you so much for your informative video's! I am starting to learn how to make dice, mainly to make them as gifts for friends. The startup costs are really high, so I hope I'll make them all happy :-)

As a miniature painter, I audibly groaned at 12:17 ... Amazing video though! Makes me want to pull out my vacuum and pressure chambers and give this a go!

Thank you so much for this video! I have no intention of making dice to sell, but I DO enjoy buying dice, so it is extremely helpful to know that those prices for handmade dice are in fact reasonable. Etsy, hold onto your butts, because the dice buying is about to commence!

I think using spray paint to paint the numbers would go much faster, and you could use a polishing wheel to get the surface paint off once it dries. This would also make the earlier polishing process no longer needed. Just some thoughts on a good area to improve speed.

Honestly, even with adjusting for higher rates of labor and with efficiency gained from experience (of mass producing) the math is pretty good. I am not about to go start an etsy selling dice but I appreciate the video and think you can easily apply the methodologies to other maker hobbies as well.

This was so informational!! I love your tutorial videos and the dice you make always look high quality. If you did sell any dice I would happily pay for a set.

If you end up buying another batch of silicone in bulk like that, they make pumps that either fit in a cutout in the lid of the container or that you fill a smaller jug that then attaches to the pump mounted on a bench. Jimmy DiResta uses the bench mounted style one.

A like and a comment because I know how much work this must have been. Awesome video, really appreciated the cost breakdown and realistic time actually spent just prepping.

Love your videos, and that was an interesting one!!

Cracking video. The quantity of work is incredible. Also I'm surprised you didn't put a moist shop towel down on the orbital sander and just pressed the dice into it?

honestly i think you actually encouraged me to do this MORE, my wife and I are really interested in making this a part of our already running business, we do vinyl t shirts and graphics, and other resin products and its all really nerdy stuff too so this is perfect. I really love your videos man, you are an inspiration for others! can I ask what 3D printer you use/recommend?

For anyone else wanting to get in, it took me about 18 months dice making and selling as a hobby to break even. I ended up selling 50 sets over those 18 months and making 1400, which was enough to break even with expenses. I did not count my labor as an expense, so I made $0 in my own pocket, as Rybonator stated in the video after doing it I know I could do it much more efficiently now. The start up costs were massive. 3d masters ~$100, silcone for molds ~$250 (had to make multiple attempts), definitely a learning process, Pressure pot and air compressor ~$300, various powders and dyes ~$100, Inks/paints ~$100, Resin ~$400, then there were a lot of misc expenses such as pipettes, mixing cups, gloves, respirator, etc. Rybonator got me into making dice and it is a fun hobby, but it definitely has a high start up cost. I'm a teacher and want to spend this summer doing it as a "job", but really want to make my own design, which would mean paying someone to do that and buying new masters, then making new molds from those masters, so likely an additional $400 - $500 in expenses between all that. I know I'll be able to make it back so am not worried, but it is a lot. My biggest piece of advice is that you are probably undercutting yourself when you first start. I was selling sets for $20- $30 and got multiple messages saying they paid $70+ for similar quality. If I was more confident in my work and priced better I could have broken even in half the time. My side goal for this coming summer is to sell a set for $100. Its a fun hobby and even though I am not making profit I still enjoy it.

In terms of the sanding, painting, then cleaning would it be easier to paint the dice once they come out of the mold and then use the sanding to also clean it in order to save time or does that wear down the sandpaper too much?