- Joined
- Jan 31, 2014
- Messages
- 167
Well, I finally have a quiet evening, and I've put this off too long anyway. My name is Henry Kloepper. I live in Lincoln Nebraska, and am in the process of trying to get a knife making company started. This thread is an introduction to me, my past work, and what I'm aiming for in the future as a knife maker.
I was a late bloomer when it came to working with my hands. I grew up with computers (starting with the original Apple Macintosh) and only started down the path that lead me to where I am when I had the opportunity to drive a 1971 Triumph GT6 back to West Lafayette Indiana for a friend whose parents had bought the car but lived out of state. That hooked me and within a month owned a 1970 Triumph Spitfire. Keeping that car running taught me a lot, the most important of which was that I loved tinkering. I continued to learn about how cars worked hot and heavy for a few years, when my interests were channeled into building hand made electric guitars.
Working on guitars taught me a lot about wood. As you can tell from the pictures, the friend I was making these with and I were making almost everything. We even went so far as to do our own tree harvesting from a nice belt of dry land along the northern part of Kansas, to get Osage orange and walnut with the smallest growth rings (making them denser and less porous).
Building guitars was great, but hand grinding some of the metal parts accurately on a 6" Bench grinder was testing my patience, so we had a local machine job shop make us some of the hardest ones. While there checking on parts one day I asked if they happened to be looking to hire someone without any experience. To my surprise they had me interview with the Tube Fabrication manager. The position was for a tube laser operator(the most expensive machine in the company). I knew that my lack of experience wasn't going to outweigh the excellent interview I had, so I went to the local University library and checked out a dozen books on machining and machine shops. After a week of reading and trying to teach myself some g-code I went back to the guy who was my contact for parts and asked if there was anything else I should read before asking for a chance for a second interview. His jaw hit the floor and he called up the manager I interviewed with. He came over and talked for a bit and recommended to me another book. Two days later I was offered a job, although I took a $2/hour pay cut from my previous job it was the best thing I ever did. Within the next year both my buddy and I decided to stop making guitars. He became a fantastic bartender, and has competed successfully. I continued my journey into manufacturing.
Shortly after I was fully trained on the laser, our department purchased a CNC tube bender. Although the $250k bender was technically a step down from running a $1.2M laser, I fell in love with the machine and the art of tube bending, and requested to be the operator. Since the company has a tradition of buying machines and then building the work to meet the capacity, I had enough free time to work myself into the position where I could teach myself Autocad and Solidworks, design tooling, meet with customers engineers, quote parts, do maintenance, and eventually go on to supervise a half dozen people running around 10 machines and have 3 years under my belt as the local Society of Manufacturing Engineers chapter chair. By this time I knew that it wasn't just tube bending, I loved manufacturing.
I decided it was time to re-examine my bias against going back to school, and enrolled in an associates program for manufacturing engineering technology. While I was there I also took classes in DC electronics, digital circuits, and microcontroller programming. One of the early classes that everyone takes in the manufacturing program is Materials of Industry. In that class it was the discussion of CPM steels that lit my fire. My final paper was on A11,and by the time the class was over I had designed an automatic knife with a CPM S90V blade. Here it is during the assembly process.
The process of making that knife tight when locked up taught me to hold off on crazy tolerance designs until I had a CNC lathe in the garage to back up my CNC mill. My manual lathe is OK, but not for things where I want to hold 0.001" or better on a regular basis. As I finished up school, and evaluated what I want to be doing in 5 years. I decided that I still wanted to be making knives, so I started planning out a run of a dozen fixed blades. All but 2 were CPM S90V, the two that weren't are CPM 3V. The 3V knives were designed around the needs of my cousin when working his parents Christmas tree farm. I made one for him and one for myself, and a third for a friend from S90V for deer processing. I've thoroughly enjoyed the knife, as has my cousin. Because I designed it for him, I named it after his son. I introduce, The Westin. (the one without the finger ring)
The wharncliff was the knife I expected to like the most, but it turns out that sometimes we stumble onto something we love. To take up space in the nest and get better usage from my S90V, I designed a small EDC style fixed blade. I knew as soon as I held the blank it was going to be my new EDC for as long as I have a belt. The picture is the final result. Both this knife and my "Westin" were guinea pigs for finishes. The final sandblasted and sanded finish was my favorite.
Before I knew it, every knife I wanted to sell was sold. I decided it was time to snail up (pardon the Turbo reference, I have a 5 year old boy) and make it happen. I have 40 knives that would probably be considered mid-techs in process. Very slight revisions to both the small EDC and The Westin. In addition to that I have 4 of the EDC blade with a more multi-grip friendly handle, and sized up about 35% that should make a good skinner.
In addition to the CNC blanks I have approximately 20 knives (18 in the picture, a few were left out) that were hand cut and profiled that range from practical and traditional in shape, to strange and most likely to end up as new garage utility knives (in 3V no less), throwers, or wastes of time.
Up to this point I have been using the name I came up with when I started machining parts in my garage, Interference Fit Co. As I have decided to pursue knife making I'll be changing the name to Kloepper Knife Works. I was hesitant to change but everyone has been encouraging me to put my name on the product. While I'd normally prefer not to be so out there in the public eye, I decided that this is a profession, skill, product, and effort that I was proud to put my name on.
If anyone actually made it through reading all of that alive, and is curious to know more, comment on my designs, or just make a joke, I look forward to your contribution. Over the last couple of months, this sub-forum has become my favorite. You guys all act like gentlemen, and I am honored if I'm able to become one of the new makers that manages to not go bankrupt
and make new friends along the way.
I was a late bloomer when it came to working with my hands. I grew up with computers (starting with the original Apple Macintosh) and only started down the path that lead me to where I am when I had the opportunity to drive a 1971 Triumph GT6 back to West Lafayette Indiana for a friend whose parents had bought the car but lived out of state. That hooked me and within a month owned a 1970 Triumph Spitfire. Keeping that car running taught me a lot, the most important of which was that I loved tinkering. I continued to learn about how cars worked hot and heavy for a few years, when my interests were channeled into building hand made electric guitars.
Working on guitars taught me a lot about wood. As you can tell from the pictures, the friend I was making these with and I were making almost everything. We even went so far as to do our own tree harvesting from a nice belt of dry land along the northern part of Kansas, to get Osage orange and walnut with the smallest growth rings (making them denser and less porous).
Building guitars was great, but hand grinding some of the metal parts accurately on a 6" Bench grinder was testing my patience, so we had a local machine job shop make us some of the hardest ones. While there checking on parts one day I asked if they happened to be looking to hire someone without any experience. To my surprise they had me interview with the Tube Fabrication manager. The position was for a tube laser operator(the most expensive machine in the company). I knew that my lack of experience wasn't going to outweigh the excellent interview I had, so I went to the local University library and checked out a dozen books on machining and machine shops. After a week of reading and trying to teach myself some g-code I went back to the guy who was my contact for parts and asked if there was anything else I should read before asking for a chance for a second interview. His jaw hit the floor and he called up the manager I interviewed with. He came over and talked for a bit and recommended to me another book. Two days later I was offered a job, although I took a $2/hour pay cut from my previous job it was the best thing I ever did. Within the next year both my buddy and I decided to stop making guitars. He became a fantastic bartender, and has competed successfully. I continued my journey into manufacturing.
Shortly after I was fully trained on the laser, our department purchased a CNC tube bender. Although the $250k bender was technically a step down from running a $1.2M laser, I fell in love with the machine and the art of tube bending, and requested to be the operator. Since the company has a tradition of buying machines and then building the work to meet the capacity, I had enough free time to work myself into the position where I could teach myself Autocad and Solidworks, design tooling, meet with customers engineers, quote parts, do maintenance, and eventually go on to supervise a half dozen people running around 10 machines and have 3 years under my belt as the local Society of Manufacturing Engineers chapter chair. By this time I knew that it wasn't just tube bending, I loved manufacturing.
I decided it was time to re-examine my bias against going back to school, and enrolled in an associates program for manufacturing engineering technology. While I was there I also took classes in DC electronics, digital circuits, and microcontroller programming. One of the early classes that everyone takes in the manufacturing program is Materials of Industry. In that class it was the discussion of CPM steels that lit my fire. My final paper was on A11,and by the time the class was over I had designed an automatic knife with a CPM S90V blade. Here it is during the assembly process.
The process of making that knife tight when locked up taught me to hold off on crazy tolerance designs until I had a CNC lathe in the garage to back up my CNC mill. My manual lathe is OK, but not for things where I want to hold 0.001" or better on a regular basis. As I finished up school, and evaluated what I want to be doing in 5 years. I decided that I still wanted to be making knives, so I started planning out a run of a dozen fixed blades. All but 2 were CPM S90V, the two that weren't are CPM 3V. The 3V knives were designed around the needs of my cousin when working his parents Christmas tree farm. I made one for him and one for myself, and a third for a friend from S90V for deer processing. I've thoroughly enjoyed the knife, as has my cousin. Because I designed it for him, I named it after his son. I introduce, The Westin. (the one without the finger ring)
The wharncliff was the knife I expected to like the most, but it turns out that sometimes we stumble onto something we love. To take up space in the nest and get better usage from my S90V, I designed a small EDC style fixed blade. I knew as soon as I held the blank it was going to be my new EDC for as long as I have a belt. The picture is the final result. Both this knife and my "Westin" were guinea pigs for finishes. The final sandblasted and sanded finish was my favorite.
Before I knew it, every knife I wanted to sell was sold. I decided it was time to snail up (pardon the Turbo reference, I have a 5 year old boy) and make it happen. I have 40 knives that would probably be considered mid-techs in process. Very slight revisions to both the small EDC and The Westin. In addition to that I have 4 of the EDC blade with a more multi-grip friendly handle, and sized up about 35% that should make a good skinner.
In addition to the CNC blanks I have approximately 20 knives (18 in the picture, a few were left out) that were hand cut and profiled that range from practical and traditional in shape, to strange and most likely to end up as new garage utility knives (in 3V no less), throwers, or wastes of time.
Up to this point I have been using the name I came up with when I started machining parts in my garage, Interference Fit Co. As I have decided to pursue knife making I'll be changing the name to Kloepper Knife Works. I was hesitant to change but everyone has been encouraging me to put my name on the product. While I'd normally prefer not to be so out there in the public eye, I decided that this is a profession, skill, product, and effort that I was proud to put my name on.
If anyone actually made it through reading all of that alive, and is curious to know more, comment on my designs, or just make a joke, I look forward to your contribution. Over the last couple of months, this sub-forum has become my favorite. You guys all act like gentlemen, and I am honored if I'm able to become one of the new makers that manages to not go bankrupt
and make new friends along the way.
