Kershaw Ruby

poolhustler said:
They don't release total production numbers. If you don't know Kershaw and ZT make great knives, you are living under a rock!!!
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I've had plenty of Kershaws and ZT's. None of the Kershaws I've had were anywhere near as well made as my Acies, and I've had some higher end Kershaws.
I've had a few ZT's that weren't as good as the Acies, and I've never had a ZT that was noticeably BETTER made and engineered than the Acies. On par maybe, but not better.

So, does anyone know if the Acies2 was produced by Kershaw or not? Maybe I shouldn't be getting my hopes up......
 
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dr_fosg8 said:
Right, BUT, that has nothing to do with the foundry exporting raw steel.

I would guess the blade is prefab in Japan, IE shaped and HT then install in the US.
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You would be guessing wrong, sorry.
 
bearcut said:
I've had plenty of Kershaws and ZT's. None of the Kershaws I've had were anywhere near as well made as my Acies, and I've had some higher end Kershaws.
I've had a few ZT's that weren't as good as the Acies, and I've never had a ZT that was noticeably BETTER made and engineered than the Acies. On par maybe, but not better.

So, does anyone know if the Acies2 was produced by Kershaw or not? Maybe I shouldn't be getting my hopes up......
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Have you ever owned a ti tyrade, speedform, volt, or TiLT?

Yes they manufactured both Acies for A.G.Russell. Both are very nice knives.
 
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dr_fosg8 said:
I would guess the blade is prefab in Japan, IE shaped and HT then install in the US.
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KAI is the only company that is allowed to work Hitachi steel outside of Japan.

And yes, they made the Acies. And at least a couple of the Bradley Kimura Balis.
 
poolhustler said:
They Never said that production total was 200. You have your facts wrong.......
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You are correct, sir. This thread (page 2) referenced $80K being made by Kershaw in a matter of minutes. At $400 a pop, that comes up to 200 knives.

But the number wasn't officially from Kershaw. And that was before the 95 were released for sale through the website afterwards.

Also, being special commemorative knives, a large allotment had to be allocated for subsequent distribution to dealers, etc. A $400 knife is a pretty nice gift to give/receive; much better than a $200 knife that cost the same to manufacture. :)
 
jginnane said:
You are correct, sir. This thread (page 2) referenced $80K being made by Kershaw in a matter of minutes. At $400 a pop, that comes up to 200 knives.

But the number wasn't officially from Kershaw. And that was before the 95 were released for sale through the website afterwards.

Also, being special commemorative knives, a large allotment had to be allocated for subsequent distribution to dealers, etc. A $400 knife is a pretty nice gift to give/receive; much better than a $200 knife that cost the same to manufacture. :)
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I believe all the KAI limited editions are now sold exclusively through the KAI website. There won't be any going to dealers.

And the website stated that it wasn't 95 more being released, it was people not fulfilling orders and server issues.

All signs lead to this being a pretty rare Kershaw.
 
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PURPLEDC said:
I have heard people say this but evertime they are asked to fact check their information no one seems to respond. And supposedly william henry knives are made in the USA by william henry and they utilize ZDP core damascus.
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I wonder if it's akin to Vanadis 4E or super blue. Just because it's rare in the US, does that mean that Hitachi or BU have some secret pact with a small network of heat treaters? Do they come out and say "no, you silly Americans, you cannot work our steel. Silly, silly Americans. You must be Japanese! Ha!"

I doubt it. It probably has to do with the fact that the manufacturers don't see a need to open distribution because of probable low sales. I'm sure if anyone called up BU or Hitachi and wanted 10 tons of ZDP, Blue super, or Vanadis 4E, those companies would ship it right over and tell the buyer they can do whatever they want.

Does Hitachi PREFER to keep the heat treatment in house? Of course, if I made something I could request all day long that whoever buys it from me should return it to me for any other work, but in the end, if they're willing to pay my asking price, my product becomes theirs and they can do whatever they please.
 
Thomas has said as much. And, William Henry's ZDP blades are done in Japan for them.
 
Tripton said:
I believe all the KAI limited editions are now sold exclusively through the KAI website. There won't be any going to dealers.

And the website stated that it wasn't 95 more being released, it was people not fulfilling orders and server issues.

All signs lead to this being a pretty rare Kershaw.
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Well, I'm kinda hoping it's rare, so it'll join my recent "grail" purchases. But a couple issues -- first, let's say Kershaw did a production run of 500 of these. They sold enough to establish $400 as a legitimate first-sale price. Then they have a big chunk of the remainder for special gifts -- politicians, high-level dealers (with the understanding there'd be NO resale, at least for a set time period), other individuals in the industry they want to curry favor with including the trade press, retiring employees in lieu of a gold watch, perhaps a few sent back to Hitachi for steel testing, internal R&D a few, and so on.

Let's guesstimate this chunk of production at 20%, or 100 of my [imagined] 500 blades. Let's further stipulate, since I'm just spitballing here, that the entire project was funded by retail sales of the first 200 (or 295) knives through the website.

Question now -- if you were the competent manager of Kershaw production lines, would you not want to pursue such an approach? The number in the open market is still severely limited and they're worth at least 175% of the Kershaw ask, right out of the gate. (Check Ebay.) You've got plenty to distribute internally, for all the above-cited reasons. You made the entire production pay for itself. You even have retail customers who paid $400 considering themselves lucky! Finally, you still have an inventory to carefully leak into -- and control pricing in -- the secondary market.
 
jginnane said:
Well, I'm kinda hoping it's rare, so it'll join my recent "grail" purchases. But a couple issues -- first, let's say Kershaw did a production run of 500 of these. They sold enough to establish $400 as a legitimate first-sale price. Then they have a big chunk of the remainder for special gifts -- politicians, high-level dealers (with the understanding there'd be NO resale, at least for a set time period), other individuals in the industry they want to curry favor with including the trade press, retiring employees in lieu of a gold watch, perhaps a few sent back to Hitachi for steel testing, internal R&D a few, and so on.

Let's guesstimate this chunk of production at 20%, or 100 of my [imagined] 500 blades. Let's further stipulate, since I'm just spitballing here, that the entire project was funded by retail sales of the first 200 (or 295) knives through the website.

Question now -- if you were the competent manager of Kershaw production lines, would you not want to pursue such an approach? The number in the open market is still severely limited and they're worth at least 175% of the Kershaw ask, right out of the gate. (Check Ebay.) You've got plenty to distribute internally, for all the above-cited reasons. You made the entire production pay for itself. You even have retail customers who paid $400 considering themselves lucky! Finally, you still have an inventory to carefully leak into -- and control pricing in -- the secondary market.
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Lot of "ifs" there, mixed in with a dump truck load of speculation.
 
jginnane said:
Well, I'm kinda hoping it's rare, so it'll join my recent "grail" purchases. But a couple issues -- first, let's say Kershaw did a production run of 500 of these. They sold enough to establish $400 as a legitimate first-sale price. Then they have a big chunk of the remainder for special gifts -- politicians, high-level dealers (with the understanding there'd be NO resale, at least for a set time period), other individuals in the industry they want to curry favor with including the trade press, retiring employees in lieu of a gold watch, perhaps a few sent back to Hitachi for steel testing, internal R&D a few, and so on.

Let's guesstimate this chunk of production at 20%, or 100 of my [imagined] 500 blades. Let's further stipulate, since I'm just spitballing here, that the entire project was funded by retail sales of the first 200 (or 295) knives through the website.

Question now -- if you were the competent manager of Kershaw production lines, would you not want to pursue such an approach? The number in the open market is still severely limited and they're worth at least 175% of the Kershaw ask, right out of the gate. (Check Ebay.) You've got plenty to distribute internally, for all the above-cited reasons. You made the entire production pay for itself. You even have retail customers who paid $400 considering themselves lucky! Finally, you still have an inventory to carefully leak into -- and control pricing in -- the secondary market.
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You have an active imagination and far too much time on your hands...... :)
 
poolhustler said:
You have an active imagination and far too much time on your hands...... :)
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Spitballing. Take the serial numbers of the 4040s posted so far on Ebay and the "born on" dates from accompanying certificates showing the date each serial actually finished production. The more knives that get listed the better, but right now it seems we're talking ~150 a day for 3-4 days.

You can't assume each day was a full run, don't have any numbers for blems, don't know how semi-finished the knives were before they got to Kershaw. But I would say 500 completed knives are a good guess, perhaps the upper end of production, almost certain to be within an order of magnitude. And no matter how FUBARed the website was that night, they didn't have the handling capacity for so many simultaneous orders. (That's why I think they need to turn this over to an e-Tailer like Amazon in the future.)
 
jginnane said:
Spitballing. Take the serial numbers of the 4040s posted so far on Ebay and the "born on" dates from accompanying certificates showing the date each serial actually finished production. The more knives that get listed the better, but right now it seems we're talking ~150 a day for 3-4 days.

You can't assume each day was a full run, don't have any numbers for blems, don't know how semi-finished the knives were before they got to Kershaw. But I would say 500 completed knives are a good guess, perhaps the upper end of production, almost certain to be within an order of magnitude. And no matter how FUBARed the website was that night, they didn't have the handling capacity for so many simultaneous orders. (That's why I think they need to turn this over to an e-Tailer like Amazon in the future.)
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............and it continues. lol
 
poolhustler said:
............and it continues. lol
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Keep in mind that the relative rarity of a production folder, from a company division with only 300 employees, is gravely affected by the size of the universe of buyers. IOW a few dozen more knives released than we anticipate could depress markups for a significant future time.

But: If you believe Kershaw/ZT will continue to grow their business, whatever short term manipulation occurs won't matter much when the universe of buyers is 10X larger. If you think this could happen in 10 years, time for the next big anniversary release, your 2014 investment is likely to substantially outstrip inflation in that time.
 
Not sure if this will work ... ZT0454 and Kershaw 4040, side-by-side. Looks like an F-15 next to an F-16.

See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127890087@N03/

First image -- > <iframe src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/127890087@N03/15854535786/in/photostream/player/" width="2048" height="1133" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>
 
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