How We Make A Custom Guitar Pick (KAW) #1

 It’s been exactly 3 years from the time of this posting since we first developed the use of resin art material for making guitar picks.
The very first Bifrost Pick was conceived in March 2019.

Well what makes this material so special?
Well it’s a work of art that stands on its own.
This isn’t material you can just buy off the shelf…
It has to be crafted and mixed using various resins and techniques to really make it special.
This isn’t something that can be learned over a weekend as it has many nuances and one wrong move will leave you with a very expensive & messy pile of gray goo.

So since the very beginning we are proud to have become very good friends with Justin of Kaotic Artworks. Justin had been testing a new build technique for his resin art and wanted to see what we could do with this particular piece.
Follow his work on Instagram @KaoticArtworks

Speaking of the material,
This one featured an all new design that was made using the perfect balance of man & machine. The internal amber/translucent design was precision printed and encased with the various poured resins. Yes the resin starts off in a liquid state before being masterfully mixed & solidified to what you see now.
This piece featured hues of dark forest green, lime green, dark blue, and a cool turquoise which all contrasted nicely with the amber design.



Best of all, many of these resins featured a UV reactive component which adds a new level of complexity to it all. In normal light, you see the colors in their natural state, but put it under a UV blacklight and the colors radiate into something totally different. There really isn’t anything like it… but check out the video below and see for yourself.



Some more info on how we handmade this guitar pick…
This pick was a bit more challenging to make than most because we had to do some extra aligning if we wanted to take advantage of the amber design of the material.

With other materials we can maximize the surface areas of the material and make the most of it. Here we only had a shot to make a total of 5 picks and they had to be perfectly placed.
We chose to go straight down the center of the material to pick up a good ratio of translucent amber and the green/blue swirls.

We also figured we would try using our latest pick logo.
It’s a bit more complex than the original sword & laurel
But we also like the aesthetic of the helmet & shield while keeping the laurels. We just recently used this new logo on our "Quicksilver" Hoplite XL picks.
We ended up painting the logo engraving black to add some contrast to the already colorful material.

Once cut we decided on making this pick with a tapered profile so it wouldn’t be so distracting to the main idea which was the material itself.
The pick was tapered to a sharp point and then beveled in a way that was still functional but didn't remove too much of the material. This was also a practical decision because now there’s more material to wear through from playing, making the pick more durable.

It’s not shown in the video,
But we went through 3 sanding stages on the bevels before polishing them.
The polishing process was a 2 step process using a solid compound and then a liquid polish that we mixed ourselves. The result was a brilliant & glossy “jolly rancher” finish as Alex calls it. The final step was then to sand the faces of the pick for added grip. This has to be done very carefully so as to not affect the freshly polished sides/bevels.
One wrong move and it’s back to the polishing stages!

So there you have it,
One very special pick ready to roll.
Unfortunately this pick is not for sale as we were only able to make a few.
It just didn’t make sense to create an entire new product and promote it to only make 5 of them. Instead the first one was already auctioned off on our Instagram @Iron_Age_Guitar. The remaining 4 will eventually go the same route. We also have another similar video to this one coming up, so if you liked this one, stay tuned.

Thank you for watching & reading about the process with everything that goes into it.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below.

Regards,
-The Iron Age Team

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