Knives we are considering to boost our efforts to raise funds for charity.

Thomas Carey

Thomas Carey

Dealer / Materials Provider
Joined
Nov 26, 2010
Messages
722
I am sure many of you will recall our efforts last year to raise funds for charity with our Blackwashed ZT 0801 Minuteman collab with ZT.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...ashed-ZT-0801-that-is-renamed-MM01K-Minuteman

That effort was well received and we had really wanted to follow up with another effort. Last year we were not able to find a company that had the production capacity due to the red hot demand for knives. Recently we reached out to several companies to see if they had the capacity to allow for a follow up effort. Thus far we have received positive response from a hand full of companies.

One such brand is Pro-Tech who suggested a special version of their TR4 Manual with Skull inlay. What do you fine folks think of that idea and is there a particular color combo for the handle and blade that you would suggest?
 
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I cans say that ProTech is excellent. THey are good people and always make room for special runs and other stuff in smaller runs.
 
I would like a photo of the knife. I would recommend staying witha patriotic them using the colors red,white and blue. Towards our veterans.
 
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I think a knife made for a HIV/AIDS research charity would be awesome. The red ribbon is used for HIV/AIDS so a red knife with high polish satin would be my vote
 
As far as aesthetics are concerned,colors, and such I would nto get too crazy. Always best to keep it simple. Ask Dave to make you a couple customs with Damascus as well, you could raffle those off on your site.

CryoGuy5272 said:
I think a knife made for a HIV/AIDS research charity would be awesome. The red ribbon is used for HIV/AIDS so a red knife with high polish satin would be my vote
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While that would be nice, the charity chosen is veterans.
 
RevDevil said:
As far as aesthetics are concerned,colors, and such I would nto get too crazy. Always best to keep it simple. Ask Dave to make you a couple customs with Damascus as well, you could raffle those off on your site.



While that would be nice, the charity chosen is veterans.
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I am of the same mind on the colors. We were going to do a pen which did not work out but. We found out that you can do an anodized bronze color which looks a lot like Flat Dark Earth. We are thinking that with a flat black or perhaps a gun metal grey would give us a great military esque look which would fit well for our brand.

I had not thought about a Damascus version we could raffle but that'a a great idea and I will run that by Dave. =)

As far as charities go I am sure we would select one that helps veterans and their families as we have in the past. I am not sure which particular one we would go with and we are open to suggestions. We would want to go with one that gets 80% or more of the funds they take in to the actual people that need help.

We have looked at some of the finishes they are capable of and they are tempting but the costs would be quite a bit higher. Here are some examples they showed us on I believe the TR2.

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Last time your offerings had a sanitized blade. Are you planning to go that route again? It was a nice touch.
 
Flat Dark Earth, S35VN, Stonewashed/Satin combo finished blade. That would be sweet.
 
The reco's for Armed Forces logo (replace the skull) is a nice one. I didn't like any of the ones you showed, other than the top one.
The reco for damascus is also a very nice touch.
Also RevDevil's..."Flat Dark Earth, S35VN, Stonewashed/Satin combo finished blade."
I'm not fond of skulls (no offense to the company) and I don't enjoy glaring color combos, so keep it simple, IMO.
It will also hold down the prices...a good thing for volume sales...

Thanks for your work...:thumbup:
 
For those that are not aware of the stonewashed/satin blade finish I am referring to here is what it looks like. It's similar to what Emerson has done on his knives:
hXvLyyKl.jpg


As far as adding a branch logo (Navy, Army, etc) I'd much rather see the Minuteman logo. A skull won't be a deal killer for me either. The knives with the Shaw skulls seem to sell pretty well from what I see, as they are rarely in stock.
 
I bought the MM/ZT 0801 last time around and would dig a ProTech with the right look . . . but none of those pictured have it in my opinion. The skull would be expected on an MTech or TacForce cheapie, but neither that nor the color schemes shown are very classy. Getting a patriotic look is tough because it's easy to end up with something gaudy. Same with a logo.
 
RevDevil said:
For those that are not aware of the stonewashed/satin blade finish I am referring to here is what it looks like. It's similar to what Emerson has done on his knives:
hXvLyyKl.jpg


As far as adding a branch logo (Navy, Army, etc) I'd much rather see the Minuteman logo. A skull won't be a deal killer for me either. The knives with the Shaw skulls seem to sell pretty well from what I see, as they are rarely in stock.
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I really like that blade finish. =) Due to costs and the amount we would have to produce I am afraid we would not be able to opt for a different blade steel or a change in the skull to something else. Which is 2 things we would like to do. I will check on both though. Just not sure people would be willing to pay more for those changes.
 
Inazone said:
I bought the MM/ZT 0801 last time around and would dig a ProTech with the right look . . . but none of those pictured have it in my opinion. The skull would be expected on an MTech or TacForce cheapie, but neither that nor the color schemes shown are very classy. Getting a patriotic look is tough because it's easy to end up with something gaudy. Same with a logo.
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I agree with the color comments and the heck of it is those fancy colors would cost us about $30 to $40 more per knife. While they have their place I just don't think they fit on a knife for us. But I do have to say I wondered if there was a tasteful way to do a red, white, and blue one.

As far as the skull goes I am apt to go with it as skull's are popular these days on rings etc but we might opt to not have that based on feedback.
 
I just wanted to thank all of you for your input and for the support of our efforts in general here on the forum.
 
It does look like a sanitized blade will not be a problem to get. =) Also Ionbond has a newer grey DLC coating that's interesting and we are thinking of using that on the blades.
 
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