Things are about to get busier...

...on the Grinding Division side of things.

You might say I have my work cut out for me.  :D

Home again

I'm back home after an AWESOME honeymoon that spanned much of the Southwest.  My wife and I are working on consolidating households, which means turning my barbaric burrow of bachelorhood into a semi-barbaric abode of quasi-civilized co-habitation.  Curtains in the windows and everything!

In the meantime, I'm also working on catching up on e-mails.  Please continue to be patient with me as I try to get back with you.  If you haven't heard back yet, feel free to give me another ping.

Workin' for the weekend

I'm getting married on Saturday.  Between now and then, I need to finish up all this:

All the 'hawks and five of the knives need Kydex sheaths.

If everything keeps going as smoothly as it has been, I can pull it off, though I will probably be taking them with me to mail to customers from the honeymoon trip.  My loverly bride-to-be, bless her heart, is ok with this.  :)

Gettin' hitched!

I'm getting married on March 29th (WOOHOO!!!).  I've been putting in some long days trying to get as much work finished up and off to customers before then as I can, and have gotten behind some in my e-mail correspondence.  So if you haven't heard back from me as quickly as I should answer, please be patient and give me another ping.  I'll try to get back with you ASAP.

On a related note, I will be taking my laptop with me on my honeymoon so that I can answer e-mails, but don't be surprised if there's a delay then too.  I intend to be very occupied.  :D

Wrecking some padlocks

There was a request in a forum to get pictures of breaking padlocks.  It was a test I'd been planning on for a while, shooting some video of it, but hadn't gotten to that point yet.  I decided to go ahead and test it out with shooting photos and get the video at a future date.

I tried padlock breaking for the first time with one of my Wreckers that I was hanging onto for myself to shoot some demonstration videos later.  I wasn't as quick or graceful about it as Ryan Johnson, but I was successful.  My spike doesn't fit as well in the shackle of the padlock as the RMJ does.  Don't know if that will lead to changing the design down the road or not as busting padlocks is not the only design consideration with them.

Prior to starting on the lock, a standard Master Lock:

After the shackle broke:

 

Hard to tell from that pic.  Let's take a closer look:

You can see that I struck at the body of the lock with the point of the spike.  I honestly don't know if it was prying or striking that broke the shackle.  It wasn't a dramatic event and I didn't see it was broken at first.

I decided to try it with a lock with a shorter shackle.  It was even more difficult to fit the spike in with the heavy chain links.  I ended up striking with the spike until the lock popped open.  You could not re-lock it afterwards due to the damage.

 

Here's a close look at the longer-shackled lock:

And the various places on the shorter one that got hit:

 

 

It was hard to get my camera to focus on the end of the spike's point, but you can see that while the steel wasn't untouched, it almost was exactly like it started out.

 

I still plan on shooting video of lock breaking sometime down the road.

Matched pair of 18" Wreckers

These were commissioned by a fellow for himself and his buddy.  Everyone needs a friend like that.  :)

Unless this is a dueling set.  Hmmmm...      

18" Wrecker models, in black, unsharpened inner beards.  

And the Kydex to go with them.  Double-adjustable, quick-detach shoulder slings for carry.

I feel like I need something like this on a T-shirt.  :D

Handful of tomahawks

This is part of the previous batch that went out to customers.

The 12" Wrecker with sharpened inner beard in olive drab has been popular so far, but some of the future batches will lean more on some of the other options.

 

18" desert Wrecker, sharpened inner beard, bare sheath.

 

 

18" Woodsman with sharpened inner beard.  Black with olive drab Micarta, double retention straps on the sheath.

 

 

And a naked 18" War Chief with sharpened inner beard, in black.  Naked, you ask?  Ain't got no pants!  :D