P17 Mini Prybabies

Hi Folks,

Happy rainy Monday. It's a cool one here, dark and dreary again. We're having quite a crazy spring so far...mostly cold and wet.

I've been fairly quiet again lately, but it's not because I've been languishing in a comfy hot tub down in some fancy vacation resort listening to Jimmy Buffet. No, instead I've been slaving away in front of a dusty belt grinder and fighting with cantankerous finishing equipment. Hmm, hot tub vs. belt grinder...maybe I need to rethink this gig! Just kidding.

All is well on the project front. I am about to start finishing up a bunch of stuff so hopefully I can get some sales rolling finally. I have some super cool pin tool pokers coming up shortly, The KingPin series. Those will be in bronze, Zr and titanium with hand ground hardened steel pins, pics coming shortly. Also coming is a dedicated, non tool, fidget spinner toy that will accept Scott's 3/8 spinner cores. The steel Wrunts are on deck for grinding so I will be starting on those probably next week. And there are some more 5 Flutes coming too. New drawings are completed for a steel Ghost reissue for late summer/early fall time frame and I hope to have a sample to evaluate soon.

Today I finally have the first wave of CPM 3v Mini Prybabies completed. Officially this is the P17 Mini Prybaby. They are short, only 2.6" long, but quite robust at 3/16" thick. The finish was a long struggle but I finally gave up trying all last week to get them evenly shiny and instead went for a light glass bead blast finish. They look sleek and clean but you will want to oil these when you get them if you want to prevent surface rust from forming. CPM 3v is a wonderful tough material but it is definitely not stainless and even less so when it retains the "raw bar" mill scale as these do. 

These little tools have a great old school vibe to them, with stepped edge grips. I used to call this type of edge look a "deckle edge" after an old 1960's special baseball card series that I had as a kid. Recent research on that name though revealed that a deckle edge is actually that torn paper look that you sometimes see on certain hard bound literary works, so it's not a uniform or geometric shape. I decided to borrow instead a term from the automotive world and I'm calling this effect a StepSide edge.

These P17 StepSide Prybabies feature a V notch pry tip, simple cap lifter, rear pry/screwdriver tip, O2 wrench lanyard opening and a central pivot point opening which is reamed to accept Scott's cool 3/8 spinner cores. When I first designed this tool back in the fall I wasn't focused on spinner tools, so I didn't bother trying to make the central opening exactly centered on the tool as far as weight distribution is concerned. However, the slight imbalance turns out to be an asset, because it allows you to work the tool one handed and get it spinning. It's all quite fun.

The P17 Prybabies with light raw finish will run $70 plus shipping. It is regrettably a rather small batch so one per customer please. The surface ground ones will follow shortly in a day or two so if you miss out today there is another small batch coming. Thanks as always for stopping by today and for your great patience!
  
Wow, gone in a flash, thanks so much everyone!   

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