Knives vrs Cheesebugers which can be made faster?

I considered posting this under the makers and manufacturers forum, but unfortunately there is no forum to handle generic manufacturing questions.

We have all experienced long (longer than we would like anyway) lead times in obtaining the knives we want. I do not have a problem with this. When we want a handmade knife built by a specific craftman we should expect and be prepared to accept a longer delivery interval.

But, I'm curious, in a modern fully equiped production facility how long does it take to produce a knife. Lets assume we looking at starting with raw materials and endinging with finished stock. Lets also assume that product engineering and machinery programming have already been completed. We have just started our stop watch When will we see our first batch of finished goods?

 
The Cheeseburgers will win. In most places they will have been sitting under the heatlamps for hours before you get started
smile.gif

 
not2sharp

not2sharp

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Most of the time we buy knives off the shelf also. But, is the assembly/manufacturing process that much more complicated?
 
My guess would be that in a fully automated facility the process could be very simmilar. That is if we're strictly talking about creating a knife from a particular pattern.
As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that this is how they make those cheap Taiwanese and Chineese knives that you can buy for $5 at the gas station.
For a quality product there are QC issues that are pretty much non-existant with those aforementioned knives or Cheeseburgers for that matter. There was an article in the Feb 200 issue (maybe the Jan 2000 issue) of Blade Magazine about Böker that you might want to read about how they run their shop.
 
Far as I know, it takes a knife or at least a sharp rock to turn a steer into a cheseburger. So I'd say the knife has to win
smile.gif

Seriously this is an intersting question.I can't give you a definite time frame. You should go to the buck website www.buckknives.com They have an online tour of the factory that shows exaclty how their knives are made. Hope that helps.

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Fix it right the first time, use Baling Wire !
 
For one thing, the heat-treat is gonna take a while and needs several steps, including a cryo-treat (deep freeze w/ liquid nitrogen) sometimes. And during heat-treat, if you put too many pieces in the same oven, there'll be variations between the blades in the middle versus towards the edge.

So right there, you've got a step that ties up expensive high-temp ovens for a considerable period and works better in small batches. As one example, I've seen Mad Dog's oven, it's freakin' *miniscule* and holds just one bigger piece (9" blade length or above) at a time or several smaller ones. And for mostly hand-made pieces, he's a very high volume maker...so that small oven has to be a bottleneck in the process. He's setting up a much bigger oven the size of a small hot-tub.

Jim
 
About a month ago I had the honor to visit the Camillus cutlery factory and watch the whole production process. It blew my mind. They were stamping out backspring one a second but then they need to be hand assembled, buffed, beveled, sharpened, radiusd, oiled tweaked, inspected, packaged and shipped out. The process was really interesting. I really took this process for granted untill I saw it for myself.

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Jake P
Anchorage,Alaska

 
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