Random Thought Thread

Nathan the Machinist said:
From a thread with less traffic, I thought this might be of broader interest.




We're doing a run of a few simplified knives at a competitive price point for distribution on Amazon. They handle the distribution, which is one of our bottlenecks. We're going to continue offering our best in class (very high performance, detailed, semi custom) here on Bladeforums, but I'm spreading my wings a little with our new growing manufacturing capacity and entering a somewhat less niche area with some slightly simpler and more "consumer" grade knives and I thought a Super Duty Field Knife would be a good entry for that. Here's a knife that cuts well, stays sharp, can't be broken and can even be hammered thought a 1/4" bolt without damage. You guys are accustom to magic, but "normal" people are going to lose their minds. It will be a little thicker and more obtuse primary geometry with simplified geometry all around. Still Delta 3V. Still heads and shoulders better than the usual offerings that people are familiar with out there, but not quite dialed to 11 like our high end work here to get it closer to the price point "normal people" are comfortable with.

We generally strive to make the highest performance knives that we're able to make with the high end metallurgy and manufacturing processes that we utilize here, which involves balancing durability with cutting performance with a nod towards cutting performance with the knowledge that our audience here are experienced knife users that know how to use a knife so we can lean a little thin. However there are plenty of "normal" people out there with very low expectations because they've been using cheap Walmart knives and other mass produced garbage who might be looking to graduate to something a little more advanced and these folks may not be looking for a race knife but will be attracted to something that is practically unbreakable and doesn't go dull in a timeframe they're familiar with. I hate to say we're going "main stream", but I want to starting getting out there a little and introduce our brand to "normal people". No offence to you lot of miscreants.

This is an experiment. Can we make a basic knife and sell it on a platform that non-knife-nuts are familiar with. I'm going to start with an SDFK.
Click to expand...

Huh! Seems like a good idea to me:cool:
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
From a thread with less traffic, I thought this might be of broader interest.




We're doing a run of a few simplified knives at a competitive price point for distribution on Amazon. They handle the distribution, which is one of our bottlenecks. We're going to continue offering our best in class (very high performance, detailed, semi custom) here on Bladeforums, but I'm spreading my wings a little with our new growing manufacturing capacity and entering a somewhat less niche area with some slightly simpler and more "consumer" grade knives and I thought a Super Duty Field Knife would be a good entry for that. Here's a knife that cuts well, stays sharp, can't be broken and can even be hammered thought a 1/4" bolt without damage. You guys are accustom to magic, but "normal" people are going to lose their minds. It will be a little thicker and more obtuse primary geometry with simplified geometry all around. Still Delta 3V. Still heads and shoulders better than the usual offerings that people are familiar with out there, but not quite dialed to 11 like our high end work here to get it closer to the price point "normal people" are comfortable with.

We generally strive to make the highest performance knives that we're able to make with the high end metallurgy and manufacturing processes that we utilize here, which involves balancing durability with cutting performance with a nod towards cutting performance with the knowledge that our audience here are experienced knife users that know how to use a knife so we can lean a little thin. However there are plenty of "normal" people out there with very low expectations because they've been using cheap Walmart knives and other mass produced garbage who might be looking to graduate to something a little more advanced and these folks may not be looking for a race knife but will be attracted to something that is practically unbreakable and doesn't go dull in a timeframe they're familiar with. I hate to say we're going "main stream", but I want to starting getting out there a little and introduce our brand to "normal people". No offence to you lot of miscreants.

This is an experiment. Can we make a basic knife and sell it on a platform that non-knife-nuts are familiar with. I'm going to start with an SDFK.
Click to expand...

Please make shipping to Canada an option for these :) I noticed some items on amazon.com don't ship to Canada.
 
benchrest308 said:
JustinFournier JustinFournier you may find this interesting
https://www.ckom.com/2020/10/09/marengo-elevator-fire-forces-evacuations/
View attachment 1433980

Not my picture.
Click to expand...

Scary. In some ways we’ve made some simple tasks completely burdensome in the name of safe operating/working procedures and on the other hand we haven’t been able to figure out things like this have been happening as long as we’ve been erecting buildings.

I guess you can call me old school but in a lot of my day’s tasks I still think the best form of safety is competency. People become complacent when they think safety is being handled by a machine, a system etc.
 
The title "how to head shoot a deer out hunting" is a little funny to me. It's pretty straight forward. Step 1: shoot the deer in the brain. Step 2 <---- there is no step two...

Personally I've never had one get shot in the jaw or nose, they've always dropped where they stood. However, if you hunt long enough you will eventually get an inhumane shot. I've had one. You try to be responsible and stack the odds in your favor but if you've ever missed (I have) you could instead have got an inhuman hit. I only attempt a head shot if I have a rest to set my rifle (this is most of the time) and I've never missed like this. But I missed a heart lung shot once with a black powder rifle because I didn't have enough experience with one (you have to hold solid follow though a LONG time, which you should do anyways but...) and I was shooting off hand. Not a problem shooting paper off a rest but I cleanly missed a deer this way. But that was a miss that could have been a painful wound. Imagine a .50 cal ball though the gut. That would really suck and could easily have happened. I was a grown man and an experienced hunter when that happened. I never fooled with a black powder muzzleloader again, it's not for me. I also had a miss when I was a boy due to a lot of bullet drop, not knowing my holdover, an underpowered rifle, and the real root cause ---> inexperience.

Those are two of my three misses. All due to inexperience. They all could have caused pain and suffering. The third "miss" probably did, and I'll never know. most longtime hunters can tell similar stories.

If we were seriously concerned with humane hunting we wouldn't use anything but the absolutely most effective hunting weapons. High powered scoped precision rifles. And we'd hunt up close over bait. <--- super reliable humane harvesting. But in reality that's too easy, it's boring and barely removed from farming, so we have an entire hunting season dedicated to primitives such as black powder and bow hunting. Because we're hunting. As people have done since before we were even really modern humans. And like every other apex predator.

While it's true that pain and suffering is always a risk, in my opinion it really isn't the end of the world. You try to mitigate that risk. You make a solid effort to be humane and responsible. But in my 30 years of hunting I've probably killed more biomass than the average wolf, and I'll bet the animals I've killed and eaten preferred going out my way then being killed and eaten by wolves. In the natural order of things, herbivores like deer are prey. Most starve, freeze or are eaten alive. Most experience a horrible painful death, naturally. If some small percentage of a hunter's kills aren't completely painless, I don't really see the problem with that. You try to be as humane and responsible as practical and accept there is always some risk. Unless you are a vegetarian, you are killing animals (directly or by proxy). I'm okay with eating meat.
 
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Nathan the Machinist said:
The title "how to head shoot a deer out hunting" is a little funny to me. It's pretty straight forward. Step 1: shoot the deer in the brain. Step 2 <---- there is no step two...

Personally I've never had one get shot in the jaw or nose, they've always dropped where they stood. However, if you hunt long enough you will eventually get an inhumane shot. I've had one. You try to be responsible and stack the odds in your favor but if you've ever missed (I have) you could instead have got an inhuman hit. I only attempt a head shot if I have a rest to set my rifle (this is most of the time) and I've never missed like this. But I missed a heart lung shot once with a black powder rifle because I didn't have enough experience with one (you have to hold solid follow though a LONG time, which you should do anyways but...) and I was shooting off hand. Not a problem shooting paper off a rest but I cleanly missed a deer this way. But that was a miss that could have been a painful wound. Imagine a .50 cal ball though the gut. That would really suck and could easily have happened. I was a grown man and an experienced hunter when that happened. I never fooled with a black powder muzzleloader again, it's not for me. I also had a miss when I was a boy due to a lot of bullet drop, not knowing my holdover, an underpowered rifle, and the real root cause ---> inexperience.

Those are two of my three misses. All due to inexperience. They all could have caused pain and suffering. The third "miss" probably did, and I'll never know. most longtime hunters can tell similar stories.

If we were seriously concerned with humane hunting we wouldn't use anything but the absolutely most effective hunting weapons. High powered scoped precision rifles. And we'd hunt up close over bait. <--- super reliable humane harvesting. But in reality that's too easy, it's boring and barely removed from farming, so we have an entire hunting season dedicated to primitives such as black powder and bow hunting. Because we're hunting. As people have done since before we were even really modern humans. And like every other apex predator.

While it's true that pain and suffering is always a risk, in my opinion it really isn't the end of the world. You try to mitigate that risk. You make a solid effort to be humane and responsible. But in my 30 years of hunting I've probably killed more biomass than the average wolf, and I'll bet the animals I've killed and eaten preferred going out my way then being killed and eaten by wolves. In the natural order of things, herbivores like deer are prey. Most starve, freeze or are eaten alive. Most experience a horrible painful death, naturally. If some small percentage of a hunter's kills aren't completely painless, I don't really see the problem with that. You try to be as humane and responsible as practical and accept there is always some risk. Unless you are a vegetarian, you are killing animals (directly or by proxy). I'm okay with eating meat.
Click to expand...

I think the video is educational if for nothing else the slow motion footage. You should see it. I don’t want to spoil it.
 
JustinFournier said:
Scary. In some ways we’ve made some simple tasks completely burdensome in the name of safe operating/working procedures and on the other hand we haven’t been able to figure out things like this have been happening as long as we’ve been erecting buildings.

I guess you can call me old school but in a lot of my day’s tasks I still think the best form of safety is competency. People become complacent when they think safety is being handled by a machine, a system etc.
Click to expand...
Complacency will kill you.
 
In the tropics, in the tropical rain forest, deer don’t grow as large as they do in Wisconsin or Ohio, and they must be shot at a relatively short distance because of the dense forest. Thus they are often shot with buckshot or... with a .22 shot to the head. Within a hundred yards a .22 long rifle bullet will put a deer down instantaneously, as if a switch had been turned off. In my case, I will only do this type of hunting with someone I know very well, and would not go shooting with anyone I don’t totally trust with their aptitude to shoot straight. Of course, not all will be always perfect.
 
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Lorien said:
eO3jkk3.jpg


the coolest finds are always off trail
Click to expand...

Yes they are, found this today while flagging a reroute around a beaver pond.
70F70153-DBC0-4917-BEC1-3AA9303CD15B.jpeg 11754851-A957-4CE8-9C40-0EBCAC5EB900.jpeg 81F129C3-072B-449A-8FE6-7265A3846851.jpeg
Biggest patch of Chicken of the Woods I have ever seen on a single log. My water bottle in the last shot is a 2 1/2 quarter for scale.
 
Lorien said:
please tell me you are going to eat them
Click to expand...
Took what I could reasonably eat it the next couple days, probably a few pounds. No way I could eat all that, I suspect there was well in excess of 100 pounds on that one log. If you were closer I’d pick you a feed sack full, but I don’t think it would make the transcontinental trip too well as we sit.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
From a thread with less traffic, I thought this might be of broader interest.




We're doing a run of a few simplified knives at a competitive price point for distribution on Amazon. They handle the distribution, which is one of our bottlenecks. We're going to continue offering our best in class (very high performance, detailed, semi custom) here on Bladeforums, but I'm spreading my wings a little with our new growing manufacturing capacity and entering a somewhat less niche area with some slightly simpler and more "consumer" grade knives and I thought a Super Duty Field Knife would be a good entry for that. Here's a knife that cuts well, stays sharp, can't be broken and can even be hammered thought a 1/4" bolt without damage. You guys are accustom to magic, but "normal" people are going to lose their minds. It will be a little thicker and more obtuse primary geometry with simplified geometry all around. Still Delta 3V. Still heads and shoulders better than the usual offerings that people are familiar with out there, but not quite dialed to 11 like our high end work here to get it closer to the price point "normal people" are comfortable with.

We generally strive to make the highest performance knives that we're able to make with the high end metallurgy and manufacturing processes that we utilize here, which involves balancing durability with cutting performance with a nod towards cutting performance with the knowledge that our audience here are experienced knife users that know how to use a knife so we can lean a little thin. However there are plenty of "normal" people out there with very low expectations because they've been using cheap Walmart knives and other mass produced garbage who might be looking to graduate to something a little more advanced and these folks may not be looking for a race knife but will be attracted to something that is practically unbreakable and doesn't go dull in a timeframe they're familiar with. I hate to say we're going "main stream", but I want to starting getting out there a little and introduce our brand to "normal people". No offence to you lot of miscreants.

This is an experiment. Can we make a basic knife and sell it on a platform that non-knife-nuts are familiar with. I'm going to start with an SDFK.
Click to expand...

I’m in !! As luck would have it I have amazon prime :-)

Also would like to ask :-) Any chance there could be a run of “best in class” CPK SDFK ? For those of use here on forum :-)
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
We're doing a run of a few simplified knives at a competitive price point for distribution on Amazon. They handle the distribution, which is one of our bottlenecks. <SNIP>

This is an experiment. Can we make a basic knife and sell it on a platform that non-knife-nuts are familiar with. I'm going to start with an SDFK.
Click to expand...

Can I ask what your thinking was with Amazon rather than doing, say, a dealer exclusive for distribution through one or more of the known knife dealers? To reach the total non-knife audience?
 
madcap_magician said:
Can I ask what your thinking was with Amazon rather than doing, say, a dealer exclusive for distribution through one or more of the known knife dealers? To reach the total non-knife audience?
Click to expand...

Dealers won't want to take and distribute hundreds of knives at a time but Amazon will. I can ship in bulk to Amazon and they handle all aspect of distribution. If I were to use a distributor for this they likely wouldn't move enough product to justify the run. They also need a larger markup than the fee that Amazon charges. So you'd end up with a situation where I'd need to distribute the rest of the run myself or somewhere else. Then you're either undercutting your dealer or the product is languishing on the shelf. Neither are good. I get so many emails from people wanting to order a knife outside of a sale, but this becomes a logistics problem here when we attempt to do stuff outside of a sale. Folks hear about our work and want to try it. They google it. If it comes up on Amazon they can simply get what they want when they want it, no convoluted order process for them (or Jo).

We have a good business model now the way we have it and I'm not going to stop offering our best work here on the forum, but I think there's room in our production process for runs of simple knives with less hand finishing that can be offered in bulk through somewhere like Amazon. If there is a knife distributor that also wants some of these I'd be happy to provide them, but they'd have to accept a much smaller markup to be competitive with Amazon and I don't see that happening.
 
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