waterjet h20knife

R

rickmenefee

Joined
Jun 26, 2005
Messages
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I thought i would post on my experience with this company. I meet Mark last year at the blade show and since he has made two orders for me and have one more in the works. I dont do many fixed blades anymore but i will never cut another one. This man is new to the knife game but not to customer service. Extactly what i ordered quicker than projected and cheaper than i thought. It doesnt get any!!!!!!!!!!!!!! better. I wish i could run my service as organized as this man. 1/16 and 3/32 material i dont mind cutting but 3 /16 is a whole different animal. I saved money if you count my time. I have wore out 2 powermatic bandsaws on this thick stuff and spent hours behind a pushstick. The funny thing is i would have never started making slipjoint if i knew service was available for cutting fixed blades out.
 
here is the link to his profile. mark is a good, honest, standup guy and has been in the same location for 10 years and will treat you right. http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/member.php?u=263645

mark has offered to cut me out a few blanks for free :D (i'm making him a knife in exchange) i wish i lived closer to him so i could get him to cut out all of my blanks but i never know what i'm going to make until i start grinding.
 
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I haven't worked with Mark but I'll give him a try. WJ is definitely worth it especially if you want to do a run of 6 or a dozen knives, or have one big weird order that would be a pain to cut/grind by hand :thumbup:
 
Here you go guy's



Mark VanderWest

Leading Edge Fabricating, Inc

5315 Industrial Park Dr

Montague, MI 49437

Ph (231) 893-2605

Waterjet / Welding / Machining

leadingedgefab.com


grlangr said:
Where is his info? I'm interested in that for sure!!
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I've used Mark and will use him again. I gave him a good order and he knocked it out in 2 weeks total time. :thumbup:

STR
 
Thanks for the kind words guy's.
The quality management system I have in place for the aerospace work we do measures customer satisfaction so I take it pretty serious. The auditors that come in to check me out do too.
You folks are easier to please than the aerospace side of my business and a lot sharper too.
Now that I got bit by the knife bug (buying them) I hope there's is a cure for the fever but by the sound of it I think I'm in trouble.

I appreciate your business.

H2Oknife
 
Thanks to Aldo, the most reputable Steel guy around, I got turned onto Mark and Leading Edge two weeks ago.
Well my first set of blanks showed up last week and they by far are the best quality I've seen. Not only does he do your job right, he has the best prices. He actually took my .dxf file and cleaned it up for me, that shows I'm not just a name on a piece of paper and a check.
Great Job Mark, the next order is going to be a BIG one!

Darrin
 
H2Oknife said:
Now that I got bit by the knife bug (buying them) I hope there's is a cure for the fever but by the sound of it I think I'm in trouble.
Click to expand...

Looks like I'm about 4 hours away from you. I may have to come check out the machinery! (and maybe learn about planes)

And the cure for knifeaholism is to buy just LAST blade.... (and one more last blade, etc.)
 
I was introduced to Mark by a good friend and after talking to him. I discovered that we had both had a similar background in welding and fabrication. Knowing the rigors associated with getting a business certified to ISO 9000 and talking with him, I felt he would be a good person to use for water jet cutting. He doesn't make knives so the patterns are safe, similar to a Doctor/Patient relationship if you know what I mean.
For me, I prefer to forge my steel down from a large round bar to the thickness I need for the knife and then let him use the water jet to profile it. He can cut it with the forging scale left on so that saves me a lot of time. After getting them back, I do a bit more forging to get what I want and the knives are more consistant. I say more consistant because the thickness may vary a bit from billet to billet, but they are close to the same thickness. The Bug Out Blades on my web site are the blades that he has done for me.
A two to three week turn a round is quiet reasonable to me and he has kept it within that time frame. As he becomes more familar with knife makers requirements, he may need to acquire more machinery and hire more help. At least that is what I forsee for him. I recommend him as a person of integrity.
 
anyone wanting to send mark a pattern through the mail should use a material that is sturdy enough to sand so any radiuses can be made smooth. that would make marks job of making a cad program for it a lot easier which will make for a nicer blank.
 
Template and pattern conversion works out pretty good when I can start with image that is just like what you want. If it's close but not perfect all I need to know is that I have a little wiggle room to clean up the geometry to make it flow better. It will save more time on the finishing operation too.

The size of the raw stock has just as much variability as the patterns do. I did a layout for a quote, the customer indicated the material was 24" x 36" the yield was 41 fixed blade blanks. Material arrived and measured 23.625" x 36.2" and we lost 3 blanks due to raw material size under by 3/8" on the width. When using 1/4" CPM 3V it adds up quick. We can get great yield using the waterjet process but the larger the raw material blank the better the layout / yield works out.
 
Here are a few examples of some recent orders I processed.


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Thanks for looking.

H2Oknife
 

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Loving the pics, thats a lot of yield out of that sheet of steel. You got nesting down to a T.
CW
 
Here's an example of some G10 for a local Electrical Utility company. They used our services for stock reduction when they made replacement Hydrogen seals for a land based turbine overhaul. G10 profiles good but will de-laminated when piercing so I have to start from an edge or pre-drilled hole. We don't like processing it due to the smell.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=210572&d=1302449630
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=210567&d=1302449625
 

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Thanks for sharing your pictures Mark. What do you do with the scrap. I see visions of handle broaches in that scrap. ;)
 
Eric,

I checked out the broach thread and I don't see a problem doing a detail like that but one of the members saying "... what about making a chameleon with the outstretched tongue as the digging part?" might be a cool option. It's all about the details..the big stuff seems to take care of it's self.

Mark
 
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