Mission MPF folder and MPK review

Thanks for the questions...

Thad... Dexter E. has one set of "loaner" knives (1 MPF1-Ti and 1 MPF1-A2-Tanto) and the Navy has the other. Both are testing them as we speak. I will see what I can do when these knives return.

Cobalt... We will not advertise the steel bladed knives as products to be used in extreme environments, ie., seawater. There will always be the titanium to be used for these missions. But, there has been so many, many requests for us to produce our knives in steel that we just can't put it off anymore. The real reasons we have not produced steel knives as of yet (the MPU being the first) is:
(a) cash flow and
(b) time

Cash Flow - Titanium plate (raw material) is not only 12 times the cost of (01) steel, but the building of these knives is also 10 times the cost of a steel one. If we put the same "keystone" markups as steel knives have, the MPF1-Ti would sell for about $750 retail! As always, we will put as much quality into the steel knives as our titanum knives - the steel ones will just be much easier to build. So as you can see, one has A LOT of cash tied up in order to produce a titanium knife.

Time - We are very thankful to the US Government for their continued belief in Mission. Every time we get ready to produce a steel knife, we get hit with another order for 300-500 MPKs. The demand for MPKs has reached Internationally since the MPKs National Stock Number (NSN) has been merged with the Nato Stock Nnumber (NSN). Both are now the same stock number and the MPK is approved for International (NATO) Military purchase as well. Therefore, we haven't had a lot of free time to spendon steel. We hope to be getting more on track though, with our recent hiring of 2 additional personnel to exclusively work on MPKs.

A2 - we surveyed close to 300 people; knifemakers, other cutlery manufacturers; other non-cutlery manufacturers, metallurgists, consumers, military, etc., and the results were overwhelming that A2 is the best choice for blade material - looking at manufacturability, quality of the metal, performance, etc. In fact, please look at our website and look at the corrosion tests. The results surprised even me. Of course, even after 4 years, there was 0 corrosion on the MPK (no surprise), but for the steel knives (big surprise) the tool steel knives looked worse, but after scrubbing the rust off, the tool steel knives were in FAR better shape than the Stainless Steel knives! The tool steel knives lost material from the outside - oxidation reduction (?), but the stainless knives severely pitted all of the way through, so much in some areas that the integrity of the steel was compromised. Another fact that led us to A2. Anyway, for extreme environments, there is still no substitute for titanium, not even ceramic or stellite. In fact, a competitor talks about Navy DSU and Navy SDV teams using O1 tool steel - guess what, not anymore. DSUs tool steel knives all rusted up and they ended up giving them away to the users or throwing them out - the titanium MPKs they bought are still servicing them well. SDV1 - they used to use O1, for about 3 weeks, until "premature decomposition" set in. All of SDV1 exclusively uses MPKs. So in extreme environments, please use titanium.

Greg - The handles for the next 500 MPFs are on the CNC mill as we speak. We will be making more titanium blades, but will also be making some number of A2 - both regular grind and dual grind tantos. We are probably looking to ship April/May timeframe.

I hope this long winded explanation was of some help.

Sincerely,
Rick
 
One last thing that we could use some help on...we are in the process of making 500 more MPF1s. There will be titanium regular grinds, steel tantos, and steel regular grinds, and maybe titanium tantos. What percentage, or how many of each of these 4 blade styles/materials would you think we should build?

250 titanium, 250 steel (125 tanto, 125 regular)? or

100 titanium, 400 steel (200 tanto, 200 regular)? or

100 titanium, 400 steel (50 tanto, 350 regular)? or

??

Which types do you think would sell best?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rick

PS, Dexter, do you have an easy way to post a picture of both blade styles on this thread? I will try and get a couple of pictures of the tanto style on the website soon. Spark?
 
Rick: Wow! Thanks for all the great replies. I hope us forumites aren't taking too much of your attention away from producing knives.
smile.gif
In response to your query, it is my opinion that although you will likely have no trouble selling any Ti bladed folders that you produce, I feel there are many of us who would like to get our hands on the A2 version. I guess what this means is that I would recommend going with 100 Ti and 400 A2 blades. In terms of tanto vs clip point I can't say, as I have never seen your tanto design. (But I really like your clip point)
BTW, can I assume that the A2 blades will be coated with a Black-T or similar?

 
Well, hard to predict future sales, but I would go with option 3. The first run of the steel blade knives will probably open a bigger market than the titanium blades have at the moment. And the current more for general chores suitable design will IMHO be a bigger seller than the tanto. I personally like tantos, but your current utility style blade form is hardly to beat and should please a broader audience.

What about 420V at some point? I know, always looking for the latest technology. But since Nitinol is so expensive...

Best regards,
Ralf
 
Rick, I'm just waiting on your FTP information to go "live" with your site, the last time we talked you said you were getting a new ISP....

Spark

------------------
Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here
 
I guess if you have to make 500 total, I would say that the steel should take presedence, because there are so many people out there who still think Ti is inadequate for cutting, yet they want a custom frmae lock which, your's is the only custom frame lock out there since apparently the Sebenza is not from what people in the other forums are saying. Equal amounts of tanto and regular grind. I saw the pic. of the tanto and it looks great.
 
Thanks for the feedback.

I agree that the steel will sell well. It is interesting that the people that we have spoken to have strong opinions on blade designs. Meaning, that for the tantos, they either love them or hate them, same for the regular grind. Seems to be split about 50-50. So I agree with you that...
a) more steel than Ti on this next run,
b) maybe 50-50 on the blade designs.

Thanks again for all of the great feedback.

Sincerely,
Rick
 
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