Category: Design blog

First things first…I got hit by the Covid. Yes, despite three shots, I got it and it has been now two weeks since I had it tested positive. I’m still coughing quite a lot and it is not fun, I have basically not enough energy to do as much as I would like to.

As I’ve been in process of designing some practical details for the knife building phase I noticed that I need to do some modifications to the tang. This will involve some grinding. My current angle grinder is probably not the optimal one but I’ll try to manage it for now. I’ve been playing with sheath ideas a bit as well as the handle. Those two are somewhat dependent on each other so it needs some careful thinking.

Just a while ago I got a confirmation that blade blanks will be shipped to me shortly. At this point, those are in a pretty raw state and need finishing touches, including sharpening. I’m still prototyping a bit with the blades but closed beta testing shouldn’t be too far in the future.

The next steps for the prototyping are:

• Finalize the first prototype knife. Needs a bit more grinding to be done.
• Start designing sheath. There are two options for the sheath in my mind, but likely I will go with the Ka-Bar style sheath.
• Make handle reproducible. It is easy to make a handle, but I haven’t done those in batches so I need to see how it goes.

My stock of curly birch was almost empty so I had to order some more. Now I’m fully stocked for some serious beta testing. My plan is that during this spring (2022) I would be able to finalize the first five beta knives and send those to selected testers. Based on the feedback I would then make needed changes and prepare for the launch. Let’s see how it goes.