Hey everyone. I wanted to apologize for the lack of posting lately. I have been swamped at work with the Spring season arriving and haven't been in the shop much. Ive been thinking about how I wanted to improve my product lately and what would be the best business practice moving forward. I have decided to streamline and will be doing things a little differently. Ive come to the conclusion through feedback and testing that my knives are good but not great. How will I improve?????? First, I will be doing a number of designs, not just new stuff all the time. It gives the customer a base knife that they have either seen or handled before. I am in the process of reworking the designs and making hard templates. This will ensure each knife is the same. I have also changed the designs, mainly handle size. Ive learned that most people don't have larger hands like I do so my handles were to large for them in either length or thickness. I have scaled them down to fit most hands. Second, I am grinding my edges much thinner. Again, through feedback, Ive learned that I had sharp knives but that they didn't always perform as well because the grinds were too thick. Third, and probably the most important, I will be using Parks 50 to quench in. I recently went out to Matts shop where we hooked up the oven and heat treated a few knives quenching in Parks. They came out so much harder than the oil I was using previously. I sharpened one of them up and did some testing and HOLY CRAP what a difference. With the thinner edges and higher hardness they cut so much better and stayed sharp longer. I also did not have any chipping or edge deformation.
So this is how I will be doing business. I will be making my basic patterns. Orders will be accepted on those patterns. I will offer grind choices of flat, convex, and even scandi. I will also be doing more hamons. As of now I have about six designs that I am happy with. I am in the process of completing some knives to show what those designs will look like. I should have four or five done real soon as I just need to handle them. I will be using natural and black micarta liners with different color g10 pinstripes along with natural pins and tubes or black carbon fiber pins and tubes as well as stainless tubes. In all honesty after using the micarta pins, I wont use metal again. It is so much easier to get a smooth handle when contouring. They don't bulge up like metal does.
I think everyone will be happy with the new KFU Knives. I will continue to add new designs as I go after I test them out. Thanks everyone for all the support!
So this is how I will be doing business. I will be making my basic patterns. Orders will be accepted on those patterns. I will offer grind choices of flat, convex, and even scandi. I will also be doing more hamons. As of now I have about six designs that I am happy with. I am in the process of completing some knives to show what those designs will look like. I should have four or five done real soon as I just need to handle them. I will be using natural and black micarta liners with different color g10 pinstripes along with natural pins and tubes or black carbon fiber pins and tubes as well as stainless tubes. In all honesty after using the micarta pins, I wont use metal again. It is so much easier to get a smooth handle when contouring. They don't bulge up like metal does.
I think everyone will be happy with the new KFU Knives. I will continue to add new designs as I go after I test them out. Thanks everyone for all the support!
perhaps even slightly scaled down
