Empyrean MMXXVI – Build Log from the Bench

The Empyrean picks started in early November, a few days after the last Dragon Scale batch left the bench. The holidays were closing in, the calendar was rolling toward a new year, and I knew I needed a bridge piece—something that felt like a small crown for 2026, not just another version of the same. Digging through the material stock, I pulled out a Kaotic Artworks slab I’d been sitting on since the end of 2022: a thick sheet of wild, celestial resin I’d been saving for “the right thing.” This was it.

Choosing the Firmament: Why This Kaotic Slab

Empyrean really began a couple of years before it had a name.

At the end of 2022 I picked up a slab of Kaotic Artworks resin—about 10.5 by 10 inches, roughly 9 mm thick. Greens, violets, white, and fine gold running through clear resin, enough for around fifty picks. I set it aside, because it felt wrong to just turn it into standard shapes and call it done. If this sheet was going to leave the shelf, it needed a build that matched how it looked.

By November 2025, the idea had a name: Empyrean. A kind of “crown above the rest” concept for the new year. From that point on, the Kaotic slab wasn’t optional. It was this sheet or nothing.

Shown Below: Preparing the Kaotic resin sheet for the build.

The first warning sign only showed up once work had already started. I left a UV lamp sitting on the sheet for about an hour and came back to find a warm, softened patch where the light had been parked. That’s the tradeoff with this kind of resin: it looks incredible, but it isn’t as hard or heat-stable as something like acrylic. I’d used it before for picks and they held up fine, but this time I wanted more—something that didn’t just survive, but carried a sharper, longer-lasting edge.

That’s where the composite tip idea from the recent Dragon Scale run came back in. If the Kaotic could handle being the face, and a harder cast tip could take over at the edge, this old slab could finally earn its place in the lineup.

Shown Below: Kaotic Artworks resin sheet under UV blacklight

Carving an Inverted Crown into the Heavens

Once the material was set, the main design problem was simple: how do you work a “crown” idea into the tip without hurting playability? The answer was to cut the shape out of the material itself instead of relying on pick shape or surface engravings.

On paper, it started as a straightforward crown motif near the tip, pointing upward, with the harder casting forming the points. In CAD that looked fine—until the Iron Age Sword & Laurel went on the face. The sword naturally wants to drop toward the tip, and the center spike of the crown wanted the same space. That clash forced a rethink.

The solution was to flip the whole thing. Instead of a crown sitting on top, the crown became an inverted impression machined into the Kaotic resin. The composite tip fills that negative space from below. It keeps the joint keyed in mechanically and lets the sword fall right down the middle prong of the crown, clean and centered.

Shown Below: CAD Design of the Empyrean Guitar Picks

The finished pick is small but substantial: about 30 mm long, 26 mm wide, 5 mm thick, with a tapered profile that sharpens as it runs toward the point. From tip to tip, the crown span is around 8 mm—enough to be visible without crowding the logo or getting too close to the contact areas. Both sides are taken to a full satin finish so the surface feels dry and sure, not slick. Under normal light the face is busy but controlled; under UV it jumps hard, while the pale tip and crown seam stay calm and readable.

It’s a quiet bit of engineering built into a loud piece of resin: the crown is part of the structure first, and the story follows that.

When the Crown Cracked: Bonding Failure and Salvage

The first real test came on January 3rd, 2026.

The plan was simple enough: let the composite tips cure for a full day at around 70°F, cut the batch out over the weekend, finish a sample, and have Empyrean ready to show that Monday. I’d used the same dual-cure polyester mix on the Dragon Scale run and it behaved perfectly there, so I wasn’t expecting a fight.

Shown Below: Inspection & rounding up all the broken picks

The first warning was subtle. As I lifted the initial row of picks off the CNC table, I could feel the tips rock slightly against the Kaotic base. That shouldn’t happen. A quick press of the thumb at the seam—pick braced between middle and index finger—and the tip folded over. One bad mix, maybe. Then the second poured row did the same thing. At that point it wasn’t a fluke; it was a pattern, and my stomach sank a bit.

On the surface, the castings were solid. The failure lived right at the bond line, where a hard, exothermic polyester had tried to grab perfectly smooth, heat-sensitive epoxy. The same method that loved the C-tek style base on the Dragon Scales simply didn’t have enough to bite into here.

Shown Below: Close-up of the broken picks

Scrapping the idea outright was on the table. Instead, I took the slower route: every pick had to go through a rebond. 91% isopropyl to strip residue, full dry, then a wire brush to carve “teeth” into both mating faces. Another alcohol wipe. Then 2-part epoxy was worked into the joint and the two sections were keyed back together, locked by the crown geometry itself. I did this in four batches of twelve. After curing for 24 hours, each pick got the same stress test—thumb on the seam until I felt the Kaotic resin flex slightly. This time, the joint stayed put.

Lessons From These Picks: What Changes Next Time

On paper, Empyrean should have been straightforward: reuse a composite-tip method that already worked, pour it into a more dramatic material, and move on. In practice, it forced a few rules I’ll carry into every mixed-resin build from here on.

The first lesson is simple and unglamorous: never trust a smooth pocket. On the Dragon Scales and earlier experiments, the base material and the casting resin played well together as they are very similar. Here, a hard polyester was trying to lock into a softer Kaotic slab with smooth-cut walls. There wasn’t enough for the casting to grab onto. From now on, anything involving castings has to have the mating surfaces prepped—no exceptions.

The second lesson is to expect the unexpected, especially on a short timeline. A process that behaved perfectly on C-tek and burl didn’t act the same on art resin, even with the same mix and cure window. Empyrean didn’t convince me to stop mixing systems, but it did make one thing clear: any new stack—no matter how familiar the steps feel—gets treated like untested ground.

The last lesson is patience. I don’t think the build itself was rushed, but the deadline was tight enough that there wasn’t much room for things to go sideways. When the joints failed, there was no way to fix everything and still hit the original date. I knew that committing to rebonding all forty-eight meant a few extra days of sticky, unglamorous work, but the alternatives were either shipping a run I didn’t trust or scrapping the batch entirely.

That’s the part I’ll remember next time: build in more margin, take the time the process actually needs, and leave room to fix what reality brings up.

In this case, patience meant accepting the delay, working through the rebonding one pick at a time, and sanding off all the extra epoxy instead of pretending the first attempt was “good enough” or scrapping it altogether. It’s not glamorous work, but that’s the kind of slow correction that keeps a special run from turning into a bin of almosts.

A Crown That Answered to the Bench

Empyrean MMXXVI started as a long-shelved slab of wild resin and a simple premise: turn it into a small “crown jewel” that could actually be played. Along the way it exposed the limits of smooth pockets, mixed resin systems, and deadlines that don’t leave much margin for things to go wrong.

Forty-eight picks later—every one of them cleaned, rebonded, and reworked—the run that remains is less about a flawless first strike and more about what it took to make that crown hold. If you’d like to see where all of this landed in finished form, the limited edition Empyrean MMXXVI guitar picks will be available on January 16th, 2026 at 12:00 PM Central for anyone who wants one of the few pieces that came out of this particular experiment.

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