The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

SpyderPhreak said:
This all assumes the design doesn’t change at all… I don’t think I’ve seen confirmation of that.

Nathan the Machinist Nathan the Machinist is the skinner design for the upcoming preorder changing at all vs. the past model?
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Some minor changes but I'm thinking fundamentally the same
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Some minor changes but I'm thinking fundamentally the same
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Are you going to finalize the price and some fancy options on the same day as the preorder?

Also, will the set of steak knives (my understanding of this being no frills flat grind version of the Skinner 2.0) become a thing in this preorder or are you going to skip that one for now?
 
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Murphjd25 said:
Personal preference I think more. I prefer a skinny skinner 🤣
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With the hollow grind, the average thickness when cutting should be pretty skinny.

Unlike blades meant for cutting/carving wood, where a thick blade stock and a cut hollow grind is hard to use (limits the depth of a cut when the blade rapidly thickens), this isn’t really an issue for a skinner/field dressing knife.
 
Had been .125

I am considering bumping that up an rch to .130-.135 because I'm going to scale the entire thing up 5%. It's still a small bird and trout size knife but this was a request that my father-in-law made that I'm going to honor.

There's going to be a few minor tweaks.

I decided to leave the profile alone. Overall it's going to be a replica of the OG Skinner.

Is there room for ergonomic enhancements? Are there little things that could be done differently such as adding a thumb ramp or jimping? I made the Kephart a faithful copy of the original design and I'm going to leave the design of the Skinner more or less fundamentally the same too. Part of the appeal to me was the elegant simplicity of the design and I'm going to retain that. It's not going to be the ergonomic masterpiece of our regular product line, but it's well designed for the way I skin and gut a deer and the way that I hold the knife and the design that I came up with 20 years ago still suits me very well.

There have been some drastic changes in my manufacturing process over the years

There's going to be a basic model which will be flat ground. Relatively thin but still enough for some careless use. ($340 with an excellent kydex sheath)

There will be a signature model that is hand hollow ground very thin, satin, hardwood of my choosing (probably American Osage orange) with a nice leather sheath for $650.

And there will be a basic steak knife set in Magna cut with Delrin handles. These are machine washable. A set of four for $1,000, no sheaths. I'm not sure why you would want to spend $1,000 on a set of steak knives, but I don't make cheap knives and I know some of you knuckleheads are going to be using it as a steak knife...

Some changes compared to the original, the scales will be removable but it's going to use different hardware than I normally use. Rather than quarter inch pins I'm going to use 3/16" and have custom 6al-4V titanium hardware made that can be anodized. It will be skeletonized for weight reduction but I'm going to leave it solid at the butt because I want a rear balance on this.

The cross section of the scales won't be quite so boxy. However I'm going to leave it square on top up near your thumb. This will give you a control surface when your hands are slippery and create that wider cross section at the top that I like at the front of the scales. The scales will be textured.

The steel choices will be:

3V Delta at HRC62. This is a special tweaked version of Delta 3V that has been processed for finer primary carbides and subsequently a slightly higher hardness sweet spot. Choose this if you're also going to use it primarily as a general purpose utility knife. The steel is very durable, and it holds an edge well in rough use while still retaining good abrasion resistance. It's practically stainless. This is one of the most well-balanced most capable materials you will come across.


D2 at HRC61. Take $20 off your purchase. Choose this if you're going to primarily use this as a skinning knife. This does not have the toughness or edge retention in rough use, but it does have an optimized heat treat with far better edge stability than you think is possible for this alloy and it performs very well in hide.

Magna cut with an optimized heat treat at HRC 62. Choose this if you're running it through the dishwasher. It's still probably going to stain though. This is a high hardness high carbon martensitic stainless steel. It is highly corrosion resistant for what it is but, you know...


TL;DR it used to be an eighth of an inch thick but I'm probably going to go just a hair thicker
 
Apologies in advance for my childish behavior after reading Nathan's post. I'm so psyched about dropping ~ couple of Gs on Friday!

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Any chance of a less fancy hollow version in the D2? I was hoping for micarta, kydex and your standard finish. Or something short of satin if you can’t tumble the thin hollow.
 
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