More prototyping underway

Making the Chest!

Things have really been moving quickly over the past week as I've begun building the puzzle chest prototype.  Even with the scaled sketches on the computer I find it incredibly helpful to have a physical object to help with designing and visualization. Now that I have a chest in front of me (or rather sitting underneath my laptop as I write this) I can sketch out puzzle mechanisms like levers, drop pin locks, and tumbler dials on the walls and mock drawers to see exactly how everything will fit and interact in full scale. 

The thing that bugs me a little at this point is I still haven't figured out a good aesthetic for the front of the chest...including any sort of customization to the drawer fronts. The name of the puzzle chest is (tentatively) Secretum Cista which suggests and old antique look. I've searched Pinterest many times in the past few weeks trying to decide on a certain look that fits the chest. I really need to decide on what precious materials I will buy for the chest soon( yesterday), but I don't want to get something that I will regret or that breaths a bit of mediocre air on the chest. 
 

I'll keep you posted!

I have been setting up a camera to record the prototyping process. You can watch me build the cabinet seen above here on youtube.
It's definitely looking like I'm going to miss the Christmas dealine for these chests but for now I'm going to pretend that's not an option. If I act like my business future depends on getting the chests done by Christmas I'm more likely to push the production to max. Sacrificing quality can't be an option but so long as I work smart and plan a little bit before the start of every day I should be able to manage my time well.