Method to the Madness
In order to provide some transparency on the various methods that we use, and better articulate the differences between them.
How do I make my knives?
3 separate and distinct ways.
1) Handmade Series: These items are made 100% by hand, by Jana and I, here in our shop. No computers or CNC are used in these creations. Any and all forging, shaping, machining is manual, and at every step of the process either the work is held by hand, or the machine is guided by hand.
Most of these items are one of a kind, and while we sometimes work in batches, the nature of the process leaves each one unique.
2) Custom Series: This is the stuff most folks will probably know me for. These items are designed by me in CAD and made 90-95% in house using a combination of CNC and traditional stock removal knifemaking. I began using CNC machining around 2014, the 17 years prior I made them all by hand.
I currently run one small CNC mill. All reaming and tapping is done manually, because I have trust issues. All fitting is done by hand using a belt grinder, files, stones, and sandpaper. All lathe work is manual.
All custom blades are cut and profiled from barstock, surface ground, and machined in house. For batches smaller than a dozen or so, I heat treat the blades here in the shop using an electric kiln, or salt kiln depending on the steel, and I include a cryogenic cycle to the quench using liquid nitrogen as appropriate. The blade bevels are all individually ground by me, freehand without jigs or guides of any type.
For larger batches, we might have the titanium parts blanked on a waterjet and the blades sent out for aerospace certified heat treat. The fasteners and bearing systems are made by our friends at Ti-connector. Everything else is done here in our shop.
And finally, the newest addition, and the reason I'm making this post:
3) Fulltech Series: Limited production Munroe designs, outsource manufactured to large degrees or entirely out of house, using state of the art OEM and contract machining to achieve a better performance to value ratio.
Yep we skipped right past mid and went full.
Enough fluffy talk, economics is a bitch. I'm trying to crack the temporal nexus here and the apparatus is experimental, not to mention expensive.
Rest assured however, while I have (and will) mix categories 1 and 2, I will never cross the streams with 3. Any FullTech models will remain their own thing, and will be clearly marked as such.
by Fire and Iron,
-D