Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Titanium TightWads!

Hi Folks,

A heavy storm last week knocked out our power and brought down a lot of the leaves, so that's mostly the end of the brightest colors for the year. I just raked up a big old pile into the compost this morning. The fall season always seems to be a lot shorter than I think it will be and the warm days will be behind us soon.

Steel MikroStiks are off to heat treat as are a small batch of rough cut steel Wrunts that were cut at the same time as the rough cut Mini Shiners from a few months ago. And steel Atwrenches have all ground as of yesterday and all I have left on those is stamping and final tumble before they too can go out for heat treat. 

Today I have some of the new TightWads done. These were cut several years ago and I had stuck them on the shelf until I decided how I wanted to finish them. They are made of titanium, but the plain finish of the flat titanium stock wasn't thrilling me, and I dithered around for a couple of years on what I wanted to do to make them more interesting. Finally, this summer, I decided to mill the surface and create a pattern. I originally thought that a standard engine turned effect would be cool but after playing around with it settled on a much deeper cut with a different type of overlap. The result is quite spectacular...a deeply milled texture that catches the light in different ways and feels very nice in the hand. It looks gorgeous with a plain finish and even more dramatic with anodizing effects.

The TightWads have been tumbled extensively, followed by a bunch of hand buffing to create a final satin finish. Sized to hold a stack of credit cards and some cash, they will appeal to those who prefer a minimalist front pocket style wallet. The wide silicone bands are deeply embossed with "TightWad" on one side and "Planet Pocket Tool" on the other. There is a wide and varied range of cool colors in the bands and I will include two different ones with each tool so you can mix and match....this batch of TightWads is all plain without color, but a smaller batch with wild anodizing will also be coming soon.

Plain Finish Titanium TightWads will run $65 plus shipping and the Buy Now button is below, no quantity limit on them. Thank you for dropping by today, as always, and I hope your week is going great!


These are gone for today. More coming soon! Thanks so much. :)


        





 

Monday, October 14, 2019

Titanium Wring Tool Version 2

Hi Everyone,

Well we're finally in full on leaf season up here and the color is spectacular. Pretty soon it will be time to start raking, drain the hoses, clean up the garden and to give the lawn a final mowing for the season. I'm enjoying the last few precious days of warm weather...it's hard to believe how fast time is flying by lately.

Project Updates:

I just finished prepping and stamping the steel MikroStiks and they will be heading out for heat treat soon. They're so tiny that I want to add another small batch of tools to them so that there is a good sized batch of stuff to send at once...in other news, I'm about halfway done with grinding and stamping a huge batch of steel Atwrenches. The nifty new titanium TightWads are super close to finished and will be coming up very shortly. Metric Mini Prybaby 19s in steel are still on the bench awaiting grinding so they are still a ways off. Some thick ti Tommyknockers in armor plate are on the bench and just need finish grinding before final finishing steps. A new Superbug design in steel called the PopWroach is on the drawing board and they were just cut yesterday, so those will be coming sometime in the winter. A small sheet of Zr just arrived to make into Zr MikroStiks sometime in the next few months. The Zr Hangman v1.5 hooks are ready for stamping and are sitting on the bench so are not too far away from completion. A small batch of older rough cut Wrunt tools are milled and just need final grinding and stamps before heading to heat treat along with the MikroStiks. More beads are on the way and actually are done now and just waiting for me to get to the sale. There are at least a half dozen other projects also underway, so the next 6 months will certainly not be dull, and all I really need is 3 hands and 10 more hours in every day, lol...we'll get there eventually though and I keep telling myself that it is not a race.

Today I have Version 2 of the new Wring Tools done. These are made of the same tough upcycled titanium armor plate material from the Dept of Defense. This design, aka The Tick, combines the best functions of the Chigger and the original Ring tools into one tiny tool. The features include a 5/16 wrench, cap lifter, flat screwdriver/pry tip. The finger opening is once again 13/16 on these, but a small batch of 3/4" sized ones will be ready very soon.

This Wring Tool batch has a plain finish once again, but I have added stamps. A second wave of these stamped ones is waiting in the wings and those will have color anodizing as well. Today I just have plain ones done however...

The Stamped Version 2 Wring Tools will run $60 plus shipping and the pp button is below. Limit of one per customer please! Thanks for dropping by as always and I hope you guys are enjoying the cooler weather and are getting out for some fall activities.

Plain ones are all gone, thank you so much!




Wednesday, October 02, 2019

Titanium Hangman v2.5

Hi Everyone,

Well, the day has finally come where my web host has made changes to php that will no longer let me run my old code. So I am no longer able to upload photos and generate new sale pages on my atwoodknives.com site and Jenny can't figure out what changes they have done. I don't feel like setting up a whole new site and shopping cart, etc since none of the off the shelf sites will let me do things the way that I am used to and it would be very costly to pay for a full custom site that I can easily update myself.

So my solution is to keep things very simple and just stick a Paypal button on the blog posts as a way to run the sales. We'll give it a try and see how it goes, but this should be a far simpler way for everyone and eliminate the convoluted steps that I have been doing in the past...

Today I have a batch of Hangman v2.5 hooks finished. This is the same updated rigid design as the Hangman v1.5 but with the addition of a pry tip on the bottom. I have stamped these heavily and anodized the batch, and there are a few non anodized plain ones available as well. The colors and stamps vary widely and no two are alike. Just email me if you don't want anodizing and I'm happy to hook you up. I believe there are even a few without stamps just in case someone wants totally plain.

The Hangman hooks will run $60 plus shipping. There is no quantity limit, but this is my first test sale with the Paypal button and I am not certain just how this will work, but you should be able to add more than one in the cart if desired. Hopefully my settings are right, but if not I will change them next time. I believe the shipping will be added in automatically according to your location and the rate is the same, $14 for international, $10 for Canada, $7 flat rate for US sales. Thanks for stopping by today and fingers crossed that this all works correctly!  

Sold out, thank you everyone! The button worked flawlessly so that's a relief too. More goodies coming very shortly so please stay tuned. :)