wenger sak factory tour - delemont switzerland

[swissbianco]

hello,

at the iwa 2011 i got invited from the kind wenger people for an factory tour in delemont, since im in swiss anyway for a short time. to say it short - i had a blast! saw all the manufacturing steps and details got explained too, was not allowed to make pics for ovious reasons.

all pics are here: http://s253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/swissbianco/swiss army knives/wenger factory tour event/

this you see after an short walk from the delemont train station, the wenger factory is located on both sides of the main road there

factory store:

conference:

here is an video of the wenger factory store: http://www.youtube.com/user/swissbianco#p/u/5/bbGkVDEB-vA

mrs alice christ, who worked for wenger bevore mr elsener did buy the company to save the swiss quality from the chinese, gave me an spl gift, an wenger evo wood prototype, only two of them where made and did not make it into production jet.

http://www.youtube.com/user/swissbianco#p/u/3/brSKL44lr2E

merci alice, that spl sak will stay in my personal study collection.

the wenger brand did stand in the shade of victorinox for an long time but in the last few years they did make alot of great improovements and the manufacturing plant is now updated with high tech machinery as well for production, assembly and boxing of the knives. i was amazed how many of the swibo line of professional fixed blades they made that day, they did say its an usual manufacturing day as i was there.

of course we did talk about spl swissbianco editions and first will be the titanium sak and an recreation of the 2008 swiss military trial sak, an important model that is not avaliable. the day went so well i got invited again, making the best out of the short time im in switzerland.

congratulation to wenger, big step ahead!

 

[KTMADV]

Thanks for the pictures Roger! Congrats on getting that special gift and thanks for the updates on some knives.

Joe

 

[swissbianco]

i was an second time there, more talking and this time i did make some pics of the backside of the factory, same as with victorinox in ibach there is an small river, for back then power the forging hammers etc.

all pics: http://s253.photobucket.com/albums/hh59/swissbianco/swiss army knives/wenger factory tour event/

there will be some limited editions coming, collaboration between wenger and +B, i was impressed with the quality of the products and i see some wenger +B sak like an titanium with one or two hand blade and of course the 08 swiss army trial sak.

 

[kozak6]

Those are some neat pictures. Thanks for posting them.

I'm rather curious about Wenger's 08 trial sak. Is it something like the Wenger Ranger 78?

One of Victorinox's websites says that 7 suppliers were invited to participate in the trials. Do you have a line on any of the others?

 

[nsa-x-file]

Very nice photos Roger. Thanks for sharing. I hope to visit one day myself.

 

[swissbianco]

first, that trial was an absolute disaster. not swiss, not eidgenosse, absolute bad. an article is in the swiss gun magazin that hit the nail on the head.

short, first they wanted an sak like the german had. an vic oht. plus some swiss had that allready, the 90 armee sak. then the responisble swiss army people did announce that they want make an trial and asked swiss companys to participate. there where 3 companys that did so. then one non swiss tradition jude did say that we swiss need to let foreighn companys in that trial too, according to international law and that caused an storm of "oh no" in switzerland as we all did see an chinese pcs of crap be issued to ouer soldiers cause they offer sure the best price. then they did say they did not find suitable quality outside swiss, that did then somehow change to the original 3 swiss competitors who only 2 did supply actual sak for that trial and wonder over wonder, absolute surprise, the vic oht did win. but that is now all history and gone.