The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

Yeah, the EDC is a CPK classic. We want to re-release the original EDC1 with the updated scales and call it the EDC1.2. And the Field Knife, the 8" Shiv, the HDFK and a 10" chopper. We have some classics that I want to revisit, and we may do that next year once the DEK123, K20, Folder, kukri and fireman's breaching tool are cleared out. We're sitting on over a ton of steel here that needs to get worked through and then we'll be able to place an order for the next run of projects, probably about this time next year which will mean a pre-order or two.

I do want to do an integral Shiv and if Abby goes somewhere expensive for school we may do a few very special daggers.

How do I decide? I do what gets us excited and I also look in my crystal ball.
Thanks a lot for the reply.

I kind of expected that. You are in a position to work on what you want to work on. You have earned that clearly from your commitment to quality in design and in product delivered. All of your blades will sell out, clearly. So you work on what you want to work on.

For me, as someone who has owned some other nice knives, but not a collector at all, what I see is your continuous striving to improve the designs. For one small example, I think the FK2 is an improvement over the FK based on what I've seen, clearly.

Your handles are the best. I don't see why so many companies make a knife with a polished handle. Why would we want a slippery, polished handle?

I used to work as a quality engineer. I believe that the great companies are always striving to improve the product. The status quo is not good enough. It can always be improved.

Well, I have gone on pretty long here. Thanks a lot for doing what you are doing.
 
Nathan, sometime ago you listed what was on the whiteboard and what were maybes. Can you do that again with current plans and approximate estimated release dates for all of the projects that are more than two weeks out😉?

We're going to start heat treat on the SDFK this week

We have cut up and are decking material for the DEK1,2,3 now and will start milling in about two weeks

The Fireman's breaching knife and the Kukri and the folder are all in various stages of material prep and tooling and are being fit in as capacity allows.

We finished milling the first half of the DEK123 scales production and are switching over the SDFK now

The last of the new 6" double edge utility fighters are getting prepped for heat treat now. These are a bear and will not be sold at the pre-order price.

I have put the heat treat development for Magnacut and Cruwear on hold until the weather cools off some but I will pick that back up this fall.

The K20 material has been prepped but won't go on the big green Mori until the DEK1 are off of it

There is a lot of material here being processed now. Once it is finished the projects that I want to pursue is a run of Integral Shivs and a year of "return to our roots" where we will attempt to produce shelf stock of Field Knives, the EDC, a 10" chopper and possibly the Shiv and/or HDFK. That would be in production in 2023. We may do a pre-order for some or all of it. Also, our prototype development run of folders could produce 50-100 knives. If so we'd sell some of those and if there is any interest we may do our first production run of folders next year.

I'll have a better handle on it in about 2 weeks
 

Hi Nathan. How do you suppose CPK would fare?
The key here is that the blade looks to be very thin, maybe 0.04" at most. I profile blades on the grinder all the time and even with soft annealed steel, it is much slower than that and builds up enough heat to stop and dunk occasionally. Of course my blades are 3-8 times thicker.
 
The key here is that the blade looks to be very thin, maybe 0.04" at most. I profile blades on the grinder all the time and even with soft annealed steel, it is much slower than that and builds up enough heat to stop and dunk occasionally. Of course my blades are 3-8 times thicker.
The video is sped up quite a bit, but specifically to the heat buildup; I thought it was pretty cool to see the pins heat up enough to blacken/char the wood scales around them.
 
looking forward to 'ice hardening' my stainless.
speaking of hardening, Nathan the Machinist Nathan the Machinist , how much semen do you figure I could fit into this tank? Metric answer only, please 🤣
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