The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

tinfoil hat timmy said:
Have you decided what and when if ever the next pre order will be?

you know... the casual, week long, take your time and plan your budget kind.
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We may do a pre-order or a non-binding poll for the upcoming year of the classics so we can get material on the way in a few months. Or next year. But I don't really plan for a week long open pre-order until the DEK project is at least largely finished because I don't like too many open orders at once. But I do need to keep raw materials in the pipeline because there can be long lead times for me so I have to balance that. This can result in a pattern being available without a pre-order for it like the SDFK. I have to balance our production schedule with maintaining a manageable open pre-order list.
 
I like to process materials in more-or-less the order that I receive it. First in, first out. But this would have me doing the folders before the DEK pre-orders. Which is no good. So sometimes I have to postpone pre-orders to get other projects that are in the works pushed through, but that is frowned upon. So I mostly work on open pre-order projects even if there are other projects ahead in the line. This balance is challenging and is one aspect of my business that I struggle with.
 
We don't just manufacture knives for ourselves, we are still a contract manufacturer serving the fiber optics industry, the printing industry and other knife makers. Some of these jobs, you can't tell them hey I've got 500 pre-orders ahead of you, your crimping dies need to wait until next summer. That's just not a feasible way to run a job shop.

We had a journeyman machinist here but we had to let him go because of some quality issues (It takes excellent vision and an unusual mindset to make CPKs). His replacement is starting on Monday, but we have been down a crew member for most of this year. These have been strange times, it has been difficult to find a good person who wants to work.

This folder project is killing me. I've been wanting to do it for years, I have a design worked out and detailed, I have all of the materials, special components and specialty tooling here ready to go. I had machines open and underutilized manufacturing capacity, but we weren't able to do it because we've been short-staffed and the utility fighter pre-order had to be done on time, and we are focused on the DEK right now.

We actually have an awesome amount of manufacturing capacity. We have four automatic grinders, five CNC machining centers (Mori Seiki and Makino), one of which is a vertical pallet changer and one is a four axis horizontal with pallet changer. Our manufacturing capacity is, in my opinion, really remarkable for a couple of dumb knife makers. And it is going to take the majority of this capacity to do the folder development process because I will need to set up each operation on its own setup (which we can leave set up) as we go through the entire design because there are tweaks to be made to dial in a folder and we don't want to learn about an issue after making a bunch of parts. So I want to have every operation of every component set up all at the same time and make one and test it and then tweak it and make another one and do an iterative process until we have it dialed in. That's going to take the whole shop and finding an opening where the entire shop is available to work on a single project is just very difficult to do. We had an opportunity earlier this year but we got ready for blade show instead.
 
The K18 project was quite a speed bump. I'm glad we did it, we're better manufacturers for having done it. But the tuition was steep and the difficulties we had in our process on that project (while making us a better manufacturer,) would have put some people under. We were very late delivering, and I'm still embarrassed about that. But I am proud that we accomplished it and brought such a cool piece into this world. I can see in retrospect that it was probably a mistake to undertake that project, and I will never make the K 18 again, but it is an accomplishment that I am proud of.
 
Nathan not to brownnose but I do truly appreciate your thoughts about how you run your business, balance different priorities, and the learnings you take from all your endeavors. I think the candor and insight is pretty unique in this industry and I’m grateful for it.
 
ferider said:
Morning Nathan,

what about these Cruwear BFK Mules .... any plans yet ? Thanks !

Roland.
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I'm waiting for it to get cold again before I ramp up our heat treat development process again. That's kind of a winter time task because the ovens keep the shop warm. The AC units can barely keep up this time of year.
 
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