On Deck

Full sized Son of PryThings up next. Most of them have tiger stripes, couple of satin ones will be available. Couple of patterned ones as well. I'm finishing up sheaths over the weekend...

The Swiss Cheesiest

After mulling over these for about a year I finally decided to do a small run of them. These are the full sized Prybabies in the normal 5/32" thickness but I used 154CM this time instead of S30v. I figured that would provide for a little extra stain resistance and also because that's what Crucible happened to have in stock when I called a few weeks ago... :D LOL, it's a great cutlery steel and I have some little knives coming in it as well. First time I've used it but I'm very pleased with the way it grinds so far and heat treat is very similar to what I'm used to.

BTW, did I mention that these bad boys are light? At 26 grams each they are damn near weightless in your hand yet still quite strong. I beat the crap out of one prying on a wooden pallet with no ill effects and with the corner of the forks easily backed out a sheetrock screw in my bench with no deformation. So I'd say they're good to go. ;)

Heat Treat This Weekend

Will be heat treating this weekend so I finally will have some new stock. A few items may be done as early as Sunday but most will be completed throughout this coming week. There may be some further delays if I decide to do back to back heat treats, but we'll see how much energy I have. This load will have Son of PryThings, a couple Goblins, a few Micro Cards, special Prybabies and a few other little Goodies...so stay tuned. :)

Clarification

Just wanted to make it clear, I'm still going to be making oodles of one-offs and unique pieces. What I want to stop doing is finishing pieces per customer requests. In other words I will still be offering all kinds of different stuff. I just don't want to have to do as much of putting a particular color of cord and a certain pattern on a piece for Joe. I would rather put out 10-20 pieces with several different cords and patterns and let Joe pick one. See what I mean? It's the endlessly varying special requests that are confusing the hell out of me and slowing me way down. Even with spreadsheets and such it is just darned difficult to keep everyone's special requests straight.

So let me make what I want in larger batches, fiddle around with some, leave some plain, finish them up as I see fit and offer them up to you. I think we all can be pretty happy with such an arrangement don't you? :)

I've Been Thinking....

....and a lot of my thoughts lately have revolved around how inefficient my operation is. I spend half my day on emails trying to sort out customer requests and on the phone with people. Sometimes these requests are for one item and are very straightforward but a lot of times they are for multiple items. That's the hard one, when someone asks for 5 things and they are all custom finishes and configurations. Consequently not enough is getting done in the shop despite the long days I put in, and it's generally 7 days a week at that.

If I had only 3 different items total that I was making it would be so much easier. Really it would. I could have a chance of staying ahead of it all. But with dozens of different items and then on top of that many different patterns, colors and cord options I'm just driving myself crazy trying to keep it all straight.

It's worse than being a short order breakfast cook in a busy diner. Everyone wants eggs but they all want them different. And then there's the toast... :D To tell you the truth that is sounding more and more to me like a dream job......NOT! :)

Anyway, what can be done? Well there's quite a few options and believe me I have reviewed all of them carefully. I'm not going to get into all of them and I'm not asking for ideas, believe me I have more than enough of my own already. The ones that make the most sense are the following:

1. From now on, no custom orders will be accepted. I just can't do it right now. I can't make anything to drawings or alter in a significant way any of my current designs. I just can't get to anything totally custom right now for anybody.

2. I am moving to a scheduled method of production where I will be making larger batches of one item at a time. When those items are finished and completed I will move on to the next one. But when they are gone they are gone, at least for a while. At least until the next cycle starts. One of the things that's been killing me is stopping in the middle of a batch of something so that I can slip in a few of this or that for people's requests. It's nuts to do that and really throws everything off.

3. Also, I will be creating a Discontinued List on my FAQ page. There are many items that I have decided to stop making for the time being. Not to say that some of them wouldn't come back at some point but for now certain things will have to be discontinued.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that I hope that folks will be understanding of my situation. I really am just one guy here and for the time being hiring help is not an option. Maybe in the future there will be an Atwood Factory filled with happy workers making toys but right now it isn't going to happen.

So I guess what I am saying is please be patient with me, I am doing the best I can. And when you see something you would like to have come up on my site you might want to get it now because I can't say for sure when or if it will be available again.

Jury Duty

I pulled jury duty tomorrow so might be a delay in shipping until Wednesday. Who knows, maybe my employer will spring for the $5 and cover my lunch tomorrow. :D

Comments

Some assholes have come up with a Blogger comment software that is spamming my comments section after a post is made. My apologies if any recent comments might have gotten deleted in my attempts to clean up the situation. Hopefully the new settings will make it possible to exclude these jerks.

Thar She Glows!!!

Bug Out Bars Return!

I've been having fun with these. Some new pattern and cord wrap combos are spicing them up. :)

Prybabies in Progress!

Yeah, I know, most of you probably already own a Prybaby...but others do not and they're all emailing me and asking me for them. So I've got a big pile going with regular Basic ones and a few XLs. Also some Minis and Mini XLs. A few lefties in there too...hopefully will have these done by mid week and then I can get back to grinding some Bug Out Bars next and then some knives.