Happy New Year!

Hi Folks,

Hope you all had a great holiday season! It was very nice here and we have been enjoying some crazy mild weather for the most part this winter. Hardly any snow so far, unlike our poor besieged neighbors in upstate NY, although there have been quite a few gray and gloomy kind of days. Right now we have a doom and gloom sky with light rain, but I will certainly take it.

Well, I sure hope you like exotic toys, because that is what is headed your way this year! I'm gearing up for some very interesting projects...steel PryDaddies are at heat treat right now, so will be back sometime in the next few days. I have some old SportWrench #4s that I had forgotten about, which I have anodized some wild colors and so those will be coming shortly. I have spent most of the past week playing with drawings, and several older tool designs are good candidates for updates either in steel or other metals....still trying to decide what to make, but new Count Sporkulas and Mini Poltergeists are already underway. And, I still have a bunch of knives here which need sharpening and final finishing. So, please stayed tuned because it's going to be a very fun year ahead. ;)

Today I have something really wild for you. I have been asked for ultra exotic metal alloys for years, and I have dragged my heels for numerous reasons. For one thing, tools made of these materials tend to be quite expensive to make, and also a lot of extra work. And if I screw some pieces up, which is inevitable, it is a costly loss if I can't save the item. But there is no denying their great appeal, and so even I have finally given in to their siren call...I decided to look into making a few small runs this year, and we're starting out with some Timascus MikroStiks! 

This is my first real chance to play with Timascus, and it certainly has been an educational few days. They start with at least two or three different grades of titanium, fluxed and heated to white hot and then the mass is pressed into a solid billet. Afterwards the billet is cold rolled out into thinner sheets. So there is a bit of variability in the patterns and also the resulting contrast of materials. Looks like some of these pieces have some zirconium content as well. Super fun to play with and I'm looking forward to making some more tools out of this if I can get more stock.

I elected not to stamp these as there is already a ton of stuff going on visually. I'm also playing around with some new edge treatments, and these have a very cool Tank Tread style grippy edge that really enhances fine motor control over a small tool like this...These are contrast anodized a wide range of colors to best show off the materials. Lots of wild greens, blues, purples, rusts, etc. There are a couple available with no coloring too if anyone wants to email me, but without coloring you're kind of missing the point of these, hehe...  

Timascus MikroStiks will run $80 and the link is below. Thanks as always for your patience and for dropping by today. Have a great weekend ahead!

All gone, thank you so much everyone!