Category Woodworking

New shows, new products, new woods, new images, but committed to the same gaming excellence.

2025 marks the end of Silverwood Wood Design’s 5th year in operation, and the journey has been remarkable. As many of you may not know, before 2021, I travelled around attending literary-themed events promoting my book series. Starting in 2021, we began our exploration into the world of wood-crafted gaming accessories and there appears no going back.

Here’s some quick stats of our journeys.

• Shows Booked This year 18 (87 in total since 2021)
• Unique Shows Attended to date 54
• Miles Travelled This Year 7,200+ (33.4K+ since 2021)
• Farthest West Show This Year: Kansas City, MO – New Record (Previously West Plains, MO)
• Farthest East Show This Year: Washington, DC still holding the record
• Farthest North Show This Year: Cleveland, OH – (Current Record Holder: Milwaukee WI )
• Farthest South Show This Year: Lexington, KY – (Current Record Holder: Tampa Bay, FL)

Winners and Losers

Most of our repeat shows this year saw modest gains year over year. Some notables in the loser category which will most likely fall off our touring schedule. Cincy Con, a neat little war gaming/miniature themed show in the Hamilton area around Cincinnati was a repeat show for us this year. This late winter show sports a convenient location and excellent convention food for the price. The show is very well run, so there is no beef there, but unfortunately, the revenue for the show is simply not there.

Next on the chopping block was a new show, and quite frankly, a last-minute invite: KC Retro Con. As the name implies, this show is way out in Kansas City. This show is focused primarily on Console Video Games with a dash of toys and collectibles. We have learned over the last several years that these types of shows do not perform well for us. We went into this show ill-informed and thought it was a broader gaming show, much like Midwest Gaming Classic or Southern Fried Gaming Expo. The show runner and staff were friendly, and we found some great food nearby, but the show’s performance was the worst of the year for us, and we experienced one of our firsts. Read on.

The last show that we are at least calling a temporary hiatus to is one of the tougher ones to say goodbye to, Awesome Con in Washington DC. This show sports one of our largest attended shows, but even with a slight rebound from last year’s poor performance, rising costs, and the overall time commitment, plus one of the worst load-out experiences ever, has caused us to leave it off our show calendar this year.

Let’s switch gears to some of the year’s highlighted shows. Our second year at GenCon’s Maker’s Market (5th year overall) saw our biggest sales to date of any show – hands down. We took over 1,600 items and sold around 761 items. Our ScoreKeeper line, which we launched in 2024, blew away our expectations with 260 units moved. This was in part due to the launch of the new Starfinder 2e at Gencon, and the help we got in specializing a board for the Pathfinder/Starfinder community.

The show that unofficially launched Silverwood Wood Designs continues to perform well for us, and that is the Indiana Comic Con. As this was our 5th year, plus our first of 3 shows in Indianapolis, saturation is always a concern. We don’t exactly specialize in what one would call a consumable product. Our dice towers are designed to be around for a while. This year we posted our largest sales to date for this show. Our biggest concern going forward with ICC is the continued rising costs and shift management at the show. ICC has seen some big changes over the last 3 years. 2026 could be a watershed year for us or it could be the beginning of the end of a beautiful relationship.

Two more shows to highlight would be our newcomer for the year, the long-awaited Origins Game Fair, in Columbus, OH. This is a show that has avoided us for some time, but we finally made it in this year, and we experienced some very good vibes. This should probably go in the “Highlights” of the year, but we had two celebrities stop by and look at/play with our giant dice tower. Shout out to Dr. Who, Sylvester McCroy, and Dice Tower’s very own Tom Vassel. We look forward to returning this summer.

Lastly, and certainly not least, is our very own local show, the Indiana Toy and Comic Expo here in Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve been vending at ITCE since 2018, and this year seemd to be a breakout year for us. Billy and the gang run a bang-up show. Traditionally, we do not do well at Toy and Collectible shows, which there is a lot of at ITCE. This show is definitely the exception to the rule, and one we will continue to attend as long as we are lucky enough to get selected.

New Products

We’re always trying to find new ways to add to our repertoire of products without compromising our emphasis on value. This means coming up with designs and features that require minimal time and/or materials. Our ScoreKeeper line of score/stat cards continues to grow. We are now up to 27 different designs for various games, ranging from Euchre and Rummy to Dungeons and Dragons and Ticket to Ride. Our DnD Character ScoreKeeper leads the pack with 159 units moved this year out of 267 units.

New ScoreKeepers this year include:

• Pathfinder/Starfinder 2e
• Magic the Gathering Commander Zone
• Hero Quest
• Miniature DnD Character Sheet
• Lorcana Duel Tracker
• Cascadia Rolling Hills/River

Probably one of our biggest surprises (and it shouldn’t be really) was our Deluxe Deck Vault, as inspired by some of our biggest fans — you know who you are. This large capacity deck storage box sold very well overall, but it was a curious beast. Shows that you would have bet that it would do well, it wouldn’t sell, and then shows that had no bearing on card games, it would sell like crazy.

Dice storage was a big focus for us this year. Unfortunately, we had several misstarts as we tried to figure out the best design/value proposition. Our first major product release, which was also a fan-recommended design, is what we call a Dice Rack. This product is meant to be paired with our standard dice tray so that you have a dice storage container and rolling in one piece. We think this has a lot of potential, but we still need to try and figure out the best way to market at our shows, as the rack consistently gets lost in the shuffle, and it is not readily apparent what it is or how it functions.

Our next big dice storage option came at the very end of the year, and it only had some brief exposure before the Christmas season. The product is called our Dice Cabinet. It is, as the name implies a brick-like cabinet with 4 magnetically closed drawers that can store 8 sets of dice per drawer. The concept is to offer multiple types of drawers so that you can have dice storage, dice tray, figurine trays all in one cabinet. The core challenge with this product is cost/value. Because of the amount of time and materials in this product, we are not able to produce this as effectively as most of our other products. This is going to force it into a different market. The plan is to keep one or two on hand for shows as a “Centerpiece” and take custom orders when pricing is not a concern.

Our last major product release for the year was the Scorecard Case that pairs with our small ScoreKeeper trackers. This is one of those no-brainer ideas that, in concept, is fantastic, but in practice, is harder than it looks. Keeping in mind that all our products are cut by hand, making sure that the design is consistent enough to support any of our smaller ScoreKeepers proved to be a hit, but sometimes a miss, proposition. Overall, it has been very well received, and we are looking to innovate and expand that product in new ways.

Highlights and Firsts

No year in review would be complete without a list of Highlights and Firsts. I’ve already listed for you some of the first appearances of products, so I won’t repeat myself here.

I guess the most critical highlight would be that our year-over-year sales were up to our highest level in 5 years. We love what we do, but if we can’t pay for it and make a little on the side, I’m sure I can find other things to do with my voluminous spare time (hint: large amounts of sarcasm implied).

Marketing-wise, we added an LED Sign to the top of our giant dice tower. You can now see our booth from far far away.

We had our first noticeable theft. I say noticeable because I’m sure we’ve had things lifted in the past, but we’ve never observed it. This event occurred before the show even started, after we’d just set up the booth and left for the evening. Fortunately, the product was recovered, and the culprit was caught on video.

I don’t know about you, but I love good BBQ. Whenever we’re travelling to a show, we always like to keep an eye out for localized BBQ. I’m not sure how localized it was, but while we were in KC this year we hit Jack Stack’s Freighthouse BBQ. This was, as the young people say, “off the chain” or maybe “sick”!

We added some new shows that we plan on returning to next year. As already mentioned, Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio, will be an exciting recurring addition to our show schedule. The Cleveland Gaming Expo also surpassed expectations. We seem to do well at shows that have a broad mixture of gaming. Having done KC Retro earlier in the year, which was all video gaming, this one struck a good balance of board gaming, video gaming, classic computer gaming, and pinball machines.

The last highlight of the year would be the improved performance of our online sales. This has been an area that, quite frankly, has been a point of major discouragement for me. I spend so much time on the Silverwood Wood Designs website, and it has shown very little until this year. Maybe the word is spreading. While I don’t see us giving up the travel and shows, I would like to get to a more stable schedule and be able to rely on online sales a little more. In time, maybe.

Up Next, 2026, what to expect.

The leadup to GenCon 2024 was crazy-busy for us. We had hoped that it would be a successful show, but the level of response we received was overwhelming. What this meant was that the last 3 weeks post GenCon has been very busy as well as we worked on the 60 or so items that were custom ordered from the show. At this time, I’m happy to report that all but 3 items are shipped or sitting in the proverbial mailbox waiting to be shipped. The last 3 items should be ready to go tomorrow. Given that we had several special new designs, around 8 different species of wood to order and a range of product types, I feel we managed to keep our response time well within reason. We typically promise 3 weeks, toward the end of GenCon we started hedging our timeline with 4-5 weeks, but it looks like we’re going to be well within 4 weeks for everything. Thank you for your orders.

Without getting into too much detail, I thought I would share some stats with you, just in case you’re interested. If not, skip down a couple of paragraphs. We sold 467 individual items during the weekend. Our newest product line — the ScoreKeeper Score Cards — did incredibly well, we sold 125 units. Of those, 61 of those were the DnD Character Sheets. The Phase 10 trackers were the next most popular, followed by Euchre and Rummy. Honarable mention goes to our non-existant Cribbage tracker — 0 sold. I say this because we must have had 100+ inquiries regarding a Cribbage board. Needless to say, we now have a Cribbage board and it will be available on our store page this week. I am still working on Cribbage set, which will include a storage case to keep your cards and such.

Our Pocket Towers continue to be a hot item, as we sold 81 in various wood species. Our standard dice trays were close behind with 80 units sold and our standard towers clocked in at 60 units. Our Modular Game Master Screens sold a total of 7 units. The biggest surprise and disappointment was our Deck Box sales. This was one area where I thought we would do much better, but ended up only selling about 21 units. Regardless, we were amazing at the response and support we had during the show.

Our 8′ tall dice turrent was a big draw. I saw countless people strolling down the hall just having a grand ol’ time and their eye would catch our big dice turrent. Some would recognize it immediately and respond accordingly with phrases like — wow, that’s huge, or I gotta try that. Others responded in disbelief or curiousity. Some even wondered if it was for sale. While we never put an “official” price tag on it, we offered it to several people, but noone came back on Sunday to pick it up. Oh well, I guess we can keep it and show it off to our other Con guests.

We also had some great booth-buddies. We were next to the creators of Flock Together which is a fun cooperative board game. It is chicken-themed which lends itself to some great puns scattered throughout. Congrats to them for selling out during the show. We managed to snag a copy before they disappeared and got the creator’s autographs on the box. Besides that, they were great people to chat with and we had a lot of fun hearing all of the chicken jokes.

We’re already excited for next year. The hope is we will be able to return with more and new product ideas, so stay tuned for updates.

If you haven’t checked our convention schedule, for the summer, you should. We’re going to be in Indy, PA, Atlanta and Evansville — oh, wait, that’s still in Indiana isn’t it. Right now we have a confirmed remaining schedule of 10 shows, but we have 6 we’re still working on, so keep an eye out as things progress.

We’ve just launched our new Score Keeper branded score and stat cards for various games. So far, we have Score Keepers for Euchre (Midwesterners need only apply), Rummy, Spades, Canasta or Hand & Foot, Phase 10, Pokemon and Magic the Gathering, Dark Tower, and a Dungeons and Dragons Character combat card.

I still have plans to work out a few more including a combat card for Pathfinder. So, keep checking back with us. So jump over to our shop grab a handful for yourself or friends and family. They make great gifts.

Well, production has begun for preparations for our massive 2024 season. Its massive for several reasons. First of all, we’re going to be doing some massive shows. If you haven’t read my previous post, we’re returning to Awesome Con in Washington DC in March. We’ve also got the fantastic, Indiana Comic Con also in March, plus the Midwest Gaming Classic and GenCon, to say the least.

Another reason this season is going to be massive is because of some of the new products we’re going to be launching. We’ve got a new game or two, plus several new card storage and dice storage options coming your way. I was supposed to be off until February 1st, but my creative assistant couldn’t wait to get started, so we began production early this week. We have well over 100 new items we’re planning on making in the next 4 weeks in preparation for our first couple of shows, Geek Meet Indy and Awesome Con.

Silverwolf Illustrations is also busy putting the finishing touches on several brand new illustrations to adorn your favorite dice tray or deck box. Check out her Instagram channel for sneak peeks in the works.

Speaking of sneak peaks, we had our cell phone caddie on display for the last few shows of last year so we could get feedback from our fans. Geek Meet Indy will have first chance at purchasing the cell phone caddies with or without our Modular Game Master screens.

Last but not least, we’ll be releasing our newest card storage option called the Deck Vault. This beauty has the storage capacity hard core Magic The Gathering Commander fans have been begging for. This card box will hold not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 double sleeved — yes, you heard me right — 4 double sleeved commander decks. Look for this monster to make its first appearance also at Geek Meet Indy.

Our other new arrival has yet to receive an official product name. We’ve had several people stop by our displays and comment on our dice trays and how they would make nice shadow boxes. So, we have modified our traditional design and added an acrylic slide-out panel and now you have a dice tray that can double as a shadow box to showcase your favorite dice. Optional display stands and wall mounts are being developed.

As you can see, while we’ve been taking some time off, we haven’t been idle. I hope you’ll help us make 2024, the biggest yet for Silverwood Wood Designs. Looking forward to seeing you at one of our many shows this year!

Welcome to Silverwood Wood Design’s Maker’s Log. In these short videos we step through our process of making all of our various gaming accessories. I hope you enjoy this first episode which focuses on our most popular item, our Dice Towers.

We made some changes here. By changes I mean we have finally gotten into the modern era of internet bandwidth. Just a few days ago, we were blessed to have fiber installed to our home out in the middle of no where, and now I have 1 Gbps of beautiful up and download speed.

Most of you are are like, so what. Well, when you spend your life as an IT professional and the last 3+ years have you working remotely on a legacy DSL circuit that at best gets you 3.5Mbps (I know its not dial-up, but I’ve been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, ripped up the T-Shirt, burned the pieces from the T-Shirt and buried the ashes), you tend to only use the internet for absolutely the bare minimum.

Hellooooo Fiber! One of the things that I have put off doing, because of stated internet limitations, has been the sharing of videos that seem to be the rave across the blogosphere. So, you should expect, or dread, a new channel of uselessly entertaining content coming forth from Silverwood Wood Designs. I promise we’ll get better with our production quality, but for now, its a matter of just churning out content, because that’s what all the publishing houses do. You know like, Disney, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

So, without further comment, I welcome you to our first Unboxing Video, featuring our newest tool in our Wood Designs stable, a Creality Falcon 2, 22 watt laser engraver and cutter.

2023 is a New Year, and with the New Year comes new shows, new products and new goals for Silverwood Wood Designs and our associated products, Silverwood Chronicle Books and Silverwood Tableworks. We’ve kicked the year off with 3 new shows in Frankfort KY, Atlanta GA, and Butler County OH. Frankfort and Atlanta were both disappointments on many different levels. CincyCon at the Butler County Fairgrounds in Ohio, was moderate success. The show by our normal standards was relatively small, but because of the gaming nature of the show, we managed to do well.

Spring brings more new shows in new locations which we are very excited for and hoping for a positive response to our product offerings. With these new product offerings we have just showcased our newest items at the last two shows a modular game master screen and accessories and new dice sword case. Response has been very positive for the game master screen so much so that we sold out in Atlanta and sold half of our stock at CincyCon. The dice sword case has received much less excitement (certainly gotten some ooohs and aaaaahs), but our first two are still in our inventory.

Silverwolf Illustrations has been busy working on new images to sport on our products which we will be introducing in the shows to come. Let us know what you think and check out our Super Bowl commercial that didn’t quite make it to prime time!

So far, 2022 has been a break-out year for me and our ventures, The Silverwood Chronicles and especially Silverwood Wood Designs. At this point last year, I was ready to give up. I had thrown numerous things at the wall hoping something would stick, and all we seemed to get was stained walls. It wasn’t until I started looking at the details, that I saw a glimmer of hope.

I had told my family that unless we could demonstrate that the shows were profitable, or at least breaking even, that I was done. There was no since being upside down on these adventures any longer if they were not going to carry their own weight. Going into Q4 2021, it didn’t look good. We had poured a lot of capital into building out Silverwood Wood Designs and so far the performance had been just okay. Our two final shows, one of which was a startup convention, had to provide some serious lift to meet the predetermined objective of breaking even for the year.

After the dust had settled, we managed to eek out a small profit for the year. The final two shows had done it, and the startup convention really opened our eyes to what potential there was with Silverwood Wood Designs.

Starting in 2022, we decided to pull out all of the stops to see just what we were capable of. This meant more shows, new destinations and bigger risks. Keep in mind, we had been limiting ourselves to a key group of shows and central Indiana to help minimize costs. This we knew had to change and so we started looking for shows in surrounding states. We have so far done shows in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana and Florida this year. Next year, we are already looking at shows possibilities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Washington DC.

We had some great shows in 2022, and a few that were not so great. One thing I have found out about this business is that you are always learning. You can always see where we are headed next by visiting the Events page. While we continue to grow and expand, I’m doing what I can to maintain the fiscal standing that the business needs to continue to pay for itself and not tap into personal resources. By the end of 2022, we will have participated in 17 events. In 2023, we are hoping to hit 20-24 events.

I would be remise in mentioning that during this year, we have launched several new products in our Silverwood Wood Designs catalog. As such, this has limited my ability to write and design new games. That doesn’t mean there are projects on my mind or in development, it simply means that they currently are not taking precedence due to the fact that SWD’s products is what is creating the draw and paying the bills.

As I mentioned earlier, we are expanding our shows into other states and moving to add some larger shows. A few that are already on the books for next year include the Midwest Gaming Classic up in Milwaukee and Atlanta Comic Con. It has been a wild ride this year, but we are looking forward to what is in store for 2023. Please tell your gaming friends about us and check out our new shop at http://www.silverwoodwooddesigns.com/shop

The lighting of the balloons. What a gorgeous evening to watch massive balloons light up the evening sky. Enjoy!

What a fantastic time we had at the Indiana Comic Con! My biggest regret was that it was on Easter Weekend and I was unable to spend that time with my family. I hope that Imaginarium will be a little more conscientious of this in the future.

Beyond that, had an awesome time. We met a lot of super people, and made some new friends. One of the funniest moments of the convention was when someone came up to our table and remarked about why there were so many dice towers around the con. We obviously didn’t think there were that many, but our response was that it was the item most requested the previous con.

Speaking of dice towers, we started out the show with 22 unique designs and ended with 7 towers. Dice trays and deck boxes were also a very popular item this show. All in all, I think we brought 104 items and returned with about 30. We were blown away by the response. Kat with Silverwolf Illustrations, is currently working on some new images and I have some new ideas for products that we will be working on for the next time around.

We also ran into some Silverwood Chronicles friends. It was wonderful to talk to many of you that had started the series and wanted to continue it. One of the challenges I have is trying to balance out the focus of our booth. I guess the bottom line is I am a creator and I love creating things. Books, games, accessories and the like. As such, I want to make available all of those things with our friends.

Right now, we have a pretty busy schedule this summer. Currently we have six shows coming up over the next 4 months and we have committed to going to Tampa Bay Comic Con in July. We’re always looking for smaller one day shows that we can squeeze in over a weekend, so if you know of one that is not currently on our events tab, please message or email me and I’ll look into it.

So, big thanks to all of the Imaginarium team, especially Lexie. It was a great show. Everything was very well run and it looked like everyone that was there had a great time! Looking forward to Tampa.