Weevils with Extra Grind

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone is having a pleasant week so far. It's cold and rainy here today and there's still a lot of snow on the ground but there are promising signs ahead... we are turning the corner on winter and spring is definitely on the way very soon.

I've been busy in the shop working on tools. Those 3v Ghosts are heading out to heat treat this week so are about two weeks or so away from completion. Also, I've been running the tumblers 24/7 and trying to get some odds and ends finished from older batches so there may be a little more activity here than there has been lately. In addition, the secret ti Mystery Tools are in process and those should be ready to go in a few days. The second half of the month is going to be getting extremely busy compared to the first half!

Today I have the rest of the S30v Weevils finally finished. I decided to regrind and retumble these and I gave them each an extra grind above the "eye". They came out really nice I think.... The batch is not very large so I will keep it at one per customer on the Weevils and they will run the same as the regular ones, $60 plus shipping. Thank you for stopping by and have a great afternoon folks!

Sold out! Thank you!

S30v Weevils with Vintage Finish

Good Morning Everyone!

Goodbye gloomy February. It has been a nasty month here in New England: gray, dreary and depressing. Luckily March is just about here and I'm looking forward to more moderate temperatures along with some melting of the snow and ice. Some brighter skies wouldn't hurt either.

So, update time....I still haven't gotten around to grinding those 3v Ghosts but I'm hoping to set aside a little time in the next week and get those going. That means we're probably 3 weeks or so away on them at this point. No worries though, there's plenty of interesting stuff coming up in the meantime so I think everyone will be quite entertained.

Today I have more of the Weevils done. This batch came back from heat treat with a very dark finish to the steel. I think they must have run them through a different tempering oven than the last ones or something. Or perhaps they were monkeying around with the temperatures in order to bring the Rockwell within specs. At any rate, I could have tumbled the heck out of them to try to achieve a brighter finish but I kind of like the more rustic style patina these have. I'd call it a Vintage finish.

This is a relatively small wavelet so I'll make it one per customer on this sale and hopefully a bunch more folks will get a shot at them this time. The Weevils run $60 plus shipping and the purchase link is below. If you don't see a link that indicates that the sale is over and they are temporarily sold out. However, I am by no means done with Weevils, there are still many more to finish in the days ahead. Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a pleasant upcoming weekend!

Vintage Weevils are gone for now thank you!

Invasion of the Weevils!

Hi Folks,

It's still cold and miserable here in New England but the sun is gaining strength every day and I'm pretty sure Spring is right around the corner...

I've been slogging away on several projects and progress is being made. The 3V steel Ghosts are about to get surface ground after which I will grind the bevels and finish the cleanup steps in preparation for heat treat. So expect those in about 3-4 weeks. In the meantime there is a bunch of cool stuff to get through starting with:

Todays' offering is the first wave of the Weevils. This little guy is actually Superbug III but with some tweaks. After much study and comparison I decided that the direction that the Superbug II had taken was not really what I was going for in the original idea. Although I did like that design, the more compact form factor of the Original Superbug was more pleasing to me and so I decided to make that my starting point and go from there. So I changed the bottle opener to a more efficient hook design, tweaked the o-ring grooves and gave him an "evil" eye. 

The Weevils are S30v steel, 2.7 inches long, .7 inches wide and about .175 thick...a small but very hefty little package. They come with the usual #1 Philips bit, extra o-rings and #.5 NiteIze S-biner clip.

The Weevils run $60 plus shipping. The batch is fairly large and there will be more waves of these coming in the next week so I'll give this one a limit of two per customer. As always, thank you so much for your patience and hope everyone is having a great week!

Whew, that was quick...Sold Out! Thanks Everyone!

Happy Tuesday!

Hi Folks,

Hope everyone is having a nice week out there. It's still quite chilly here, in the 20's today, so I'm hunkered down and getting some work done.

Update: I'm working through some steel tools right now, revisiting an older design and making some tweaks...The first batch of Superbug III, the Weevil, is at heat treat right now so will be back in about two weeks. Second batch of Weevils is in the tumbler today and will be heading out for heat treat later this week. Also coming will be a batch of 3V Ghosts and those are getting cut this week if all goes well so look for those in early March probably. And the SSMT, Super Secret Mystery Tool, is scheduled for cutting in the next week or two...those are also going to be in steel, and maybe followed by a wave of them in ti.  And lastly the unmentionable ISMT, or Incredibly Secret Mystery Tool, is still on schedule for early Spring. :p :D

So today I have the rest of the brass BedBugs with antique diemaker stamps finished. As before, these are one per customer and there aren't very many of them so this may be over rather quickly. They are $50 plus shipping and the link is below.  As always, thanks so much for stopping in and stay warm!

Sold Out, thank you!

Brass Bedbugs

Hi Folks,

Sorry for the long radio silence, I've been extremely busy getting various projects underway. There's been a ton of new things to work through for 2013 but I am slowly getting it together. I have a number of interesting projects going and I think everyone will be quite pleased as the winter goes on and new items are revealed.

Alas, I have some bad news for international customers...the US Post Office just raised their rates and it's not pretty. Priority International is now $24, Priority to Canada is now $20 and Express Mail has gone up to $38. Sorry guys, obviously this is out of my control. My understanding is there are some services that remail at a discount from the US so if you purchase a lot of items from the States then perhaps that is worth looking into but I don't know how they work or if they are reliable. I do know that several of my international customers have been doing that for a while with apparent success so maybe they will chime in on the comments.

So for today I have some brass Bedbugs finished. These are all stamped with my antique diemaker stamps. There are lots of the usual skulls, bugs, leaves, anchors, boats, owl heads, sword hilt, etc but because brass is a soft metal I was able to try out some new stamps that I have not dared try on harder materials. So in addition to the majestic eagle wings pictured below there are also quite a few new and unusual images such as a clipper ship, liberty crest, various shields, lion, sun god, Indian head, tiger face, sphinx, and many others. Some of these will come with a black NiteIze clip but I'm running low on them so others will have a stainless NiteIze clip.

The stamped Brass Bedbugs will run $50 plus shipping. The batch is sizable but not huge therefore I'll make it one per customer so that lots of folks have a chance at them. The order link is directly above the picture below, if there is no link then the item is sold out. Thanks again for stopping by and I hope everyone is staying warm!

Brass Bedbugs are goen for now, thank you so much!

           

           

 

And 4 More!

Hi Everyone,

Well, the SUSale rules clearly state that winners have 24 hours to respond with their payment. I had four people who did not contact me and I even gave them extra time until this morning...so unfortunately for them they are going to lose out and instead four other folks will get a chance. Here are the 4 alternate winners:

507  Secret Santa
890  Emfd
914  raymond
1036 afrankart

I'll send out emails now. Thanks again my friends and have a great weekend! :)

Surprise! Nineteen More...

Hehe, I wouldn't usually do this but I actually did have a total of 79 of these completed so nineteen more folks are going to luck out tonight. :D

72 Droc7683
119 Tindjin
155 Shermanator
182 brian l.
185 vittorio
331 endorian
347 rmfromm
377 Robsterk
519 stldagger
652 Bad13Luck
723 Marcrothe1
729 Jawbox
784 JustinV
806 jwvanvactor
816 ColoradoDO
972 wethera
1007 Seth
1019 amy
1021 alecia

Thanks again folks, emails will go out shortly! :)

Dace Winners!!

Oh my goodness, I am speechless! All I can say is THANK YOU to everyone who signed up. Well over a thousand entries, absolutely amazing...

OK, so drumroll please....and the winners are:


32 Crow
37 Nwomer
66 mojodoc
97 jhooke1
122 AtwOOd iz AwEsOmE
152 ralphdrocketman
162 1Artful_Dodger
175 Six String
177 Rick
192 howmuchwoodcouldawoodchuckchuckifawoodchuchcould
207 dregoth
226 kirb66
232 ken
253 Terrell Skies
255 edjelley
258 Jonnyfishstix
276 k4ih
289 DaceforBob
313 DD214
316 mrbrooks40
341 Greenline85
350 GGold
359 clarkedb
367 kangjin
380 Ironwood
384 frosty_1
405 AMGS55
423 Lmbc2
450 LovinLife87
473 Mahoney
482 ixbrian
496 JWest
528 magic95vert
551 Apprentice101
559 Epoch
561 mike cartwright
573 Customstockz
589 Graham
608 Toyroom-ah
614 Nyteshayde
617 chimes13
659 Ted Gorbachev
743 lag1980
794 phantomK
798 ddewey
807 Lurch104
808 Drahkis
820 Moose
821 Tyge
830 sherriman
842 biglittletony
851 brebrenet
873 sdshootist
874 Peachy
902 indabayou
921 Dave1234
945 KKNoDoubt
969 Jennie
1024 Frankv
1027 kelly

Big congratulations to everyone and once again, thank you SO much! I will send out emails right now...it's going to take a while so please bear with me.  

Dace SUSale!

Hi Folks!

Can you believe it? It's true...I FINALLY got around to finishing a few of these little Dace knives. The story behind these is a long one but after seeing them sitting around the shop for a couple of years I decided that they needed to be rescued and sent out into the world.

What happened was this: These were supposed to be a neat little midtechy kind of keychain knife. I had a local company which shall remain nameless cut them for me. I then spent a bunch of time doing the rear grind, name stamp and profiling the edges. Then they were CNC V ground by the same nameless company. Initially everything was looking good but there were some problems with the grinding machine and the grinding wheel and the results were not what I expected at all. The grinds were very poor and the pieces did not tumble out well after heat treat. At that point I didn't feel the knives were saleable and I was looking at a hell of a lot of work to try to fix them. So, absolutely disgusted, I threw them into a box and put them onto the shelf. I seriously considered writing them off and scrapping them but couldn't bear to do it.

So fast forward to last summer, I was looking at them again and I decided to try fixing some of them up. Now, the original wheel used to grind these looks like a giant donut and is about 18 inches in diameter. I can't duplicate the original grind shape exactly because my home equipment is totally different. What I ended up doing was to regrind these all by hand with a handheld die grinder and small wheels. Essentially these are now all hand ground blades as a result. Since this is a very imprecise and difficult to control method of grinding, the final finish is what I would call "rustic". So be prepared for some bumps and waves because the Dace definitely do have imperfections but with the raw bar finish I think they manage to achieve a certain overall harmony that is rather pleasing.

These are tiny knives. The V ground blade is just over 1 inch and the overall length is a hair over 3.5" The material is .166 thick S30v steel with a heavy raw bar finish. The vacuum heat treat, cryo and tempering to 59-60 Rockwell was done at S&W so they are perfect. They pop bottle caps like a champ and the pry tip on the butt end works very well. For safety, please keep the knife in the sheath when using the tool functions! And speaking of sheaths, the final piece of the puzzle is the great kydex work which was done by Kip from the Toolbook community. A big thank you to Kip for the nice job on these!

This is the first wave of Dace Knives. While I do have more I'm really not sure just how many I will ultimately finish. Some of them may not be worth saving and others didn't make this cut and will have to be refinished yet again. I have no idea if or when I will have time to finish more so please don't pester me about it, I'm just happy to finally get a few of them good enough to offer this one time. In the future I may make more midtech type knives but I certainly will go about it differently and hopefully avoid the pitfalls that I met with this batch. ;)

So, this SUSale is for 60 Dace Knives. They are going to run $190 each plus shipping. I will let US customers choose between insured Priority Mail for $10 or Express Mail for $15 but International customers will have to use Express Mail International for $35. Obviously these are one per customer and any duplicate entries will be discarded. This is a very large SUSale so it's going to take a bunch of work for me to get the results up tonight and to send out emails. For this reason I think maybe 6 PM Eastern time is a good time to end it as I will be working for hours afterwards dealing with it all.

As always, thank you for stopping by!
 
Sign Up is over, results will be posted shortly. Many many thanks  to all who signed up!


List of Entries

Sign Up Sale Rules

Ti BedBugs

Hi Everyone,

Just want to say up front that I really appreciate all the interest and support this year, you all have been unbelievably kind and generous. I'm extremely fortunate to have so many fine people collecting, using and enjoying my crazy little creations. Thank you so VERY much!

Today I have some titanium BedBugs finished. These are very light and handy little guys. They have a plain stonewashed finish and come with #1 Phillips bit, two sets of #204 O-rings and a stainless #.5 S Biner from NiteIze. I may not bother to make any anodized titanium captive bit tools partly because fresh O-rings tend to leave a little bit of oily residue on the metal which dulls the colors slightly and is tough to clean. Anyway, they're great just the way they are so I'm not going to worry about it.

Titanium BedBugs run $45 plus shipping and once again it will be a limit of two on them. Probably it's too late to get anything there before Christmas given the tremendous volume of packages and the delays that are already underway with the post office. Regardless, I hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Christmas and all the best for 2013!

These are gone for now, thank you so much!

Wow!

Holy Smokes, that's a lot of people! Thank you all so much for all the interest, it's very much appreciated!

Ok, so drumroll please....and the winners are:

9 kibitz
32 Acolon
140 GSRPh
149 Bhenning
249 ksj2110
253 Occ Doc
293 Wilko
579 Marcrothe1
607 Eaty2k
643 pleasepickme
829 fast freddy
836 Conorb

Congratulations to the winners and thanks again to everyone who signed up! I'm sending out emails right now. 

SnakeBite SUSale

Howdy Folks,

It's rainy and gloomy here this week but that's better than a foot of snow so I'm not complaining too much. So far we are getting off pretty easy this winter.

Today I have a small number of SnakeBites done. These are what remains from the old batch that I made several years ago. They are 5/32 (.160) S30v with stonewashed finish and come with kydex sheath and bead chain. They make a great little neck knife or pocket tool kit.

I have just 12 SnakeBites available. They will run $185 plus shipping and the sign up link is below. Since we are getting close to Christmas I think Express Mail is the way to go on these so within US it will be $15 and for International it will be $35. 

One Entry Per Person Please! If you are not familiar with the SUSale rules please reread them here:

Sign Up Sale Rules

The SnakeBite SUSale will run until 7PM Eastern Time tonight, December 18th. I will end the sign up at that time, remove the sign up link, and send emails to the winners shortly afterwards. Thanks for stopping in and I hope everyone is gearing up for a great holiday season!

SnakeBite Sign Up is over, thank you so much folks! I will post the list of winners and send out emails to them shortly. 


List of Folks Who Have Entered

Stainless Count Sporkulas

Howdy Folks,

Well I'm working my tail off trying to get a few more sales in this year. I've had some unfortunate delays and setbacks this holiday season so am not getting quite as much done as I had wished but that's OK...just means there will be more items available for January. :)

Anyway, today I have some more of the Count Sporkula tools done. These are the 301 stainless steel ones. There are a couple of stonewashed pieces but most of them have a light glass bead finish on them. These are great wallet tools and would be perfect little stocking stuff type items. They run $45 each plus shipping. I'm going to limit to two per customer as the batch is sizable but not huge and I did carefully check the sales page this time to make sure the limit is set to two. My apologies for all the confusion earlier this week!

Stainless ones are gone for now, thank you so much everyone!

Bronze BedBugs

Good Morning Folks!

It's a cold, rainy and dreary day here but at least it's not snowing. Great day to hunker down with a hot drink and do a sale.

This is a new item that I've been planning for a few months. The BedBugs are a simple bit caddy tool and a good excuse for me to get to play with a variety of materials. Because of the simple design I can use some metals which are a little softer than usual since there is no pry function or cap lifter to get chewed up. So the first wave of these are in warm and lovely bronze, alloy 510 which is a spring tempered bronze. These are already beautiful but will develop a great patina over time. I encourage you to handle these frequently, get them wet, spill stuff on them, rub dirt into them and ding them up because they will just get better and better looking as time goes on. I can't wait to see what they look like in a year or two.

Other BedBugs will be coming over the next weeks and months as well and some of the other materials will include titanium, naval brass and 316 stainless steel so there will be some interesting variations coming. BTW, some of the Atwood Scholars may note that I made a couple of little sample tools last year which I called BedBugs but I decided not to go forward with that design...I didn't want to waste a great name so I thought it would be a perfect fit with this little tool. ;)

I'm on a campaign to save my fingers this winter so I decided that instead of putting all these together I would let you all have some of the fun...hehe. So these will ship with a little bag containing two sets of rubber O-rings, a #1 Philips bit and a small NiteIze S clip and you guys can put them together yourselves. I love these little clips btw and you'll be seeing them again as I have some other tools I want to use them with up the road. Definitely handier than a lanyard for certain things.

The BedBugs will run $45 each plus shipping and I'll put a limit of two per customer on them so hopefully a few more folks will have a chance to pick one up. As always, thank you so much for stopping by and I hope everyone is having a great week so far!


BedBugs are Sold Out for now but I have lots more coming so no worries! Thank you!

Plain Titanium G5 Prybabies

Hi Folks,

Well, it would seem that the holiday season is upon us once again. I thought it was just here about 5 minutes ago but the time sure is flying. It doesn't quite feel like December here either because we still don't have any snow but that's fine by me. It will be here soon enough...

Things are cooking along at a reasonable pace despite a few recent setbacks. I'm grinding some new Mystery steel tools this week and hope to get them further along over the weekend. If all goes well those tools will be going to heat treat early next week so should be back the week before Christmas. A second new tool design, which does NOT require heat treat, is being cut today and Monday and those will be coming perhaps as early as next weekend. So there is lots of cool new stuff on the way shortly!

Today I have more titanium Prybabies done. I decided to leave these with a plain stonewashed finish and so none are anodized. No stamps or grind variations either, just plain Janes because there's a lot of people who like vanilla. I should know, I'm one of them! :D There will be stamped Prybabies, more anodized Prybabies and probably eventually even some patterned ones coming but it won't be until next year.

For the newbies just a reminder, the ti G5 Prybabies feature a pry tip/wire stripper notch, bottle opener that doubles as a 5/16" wrench and a set of SAE wrenches ranging from 1/4-9/16", all in a compact package that is just over 3 inches long and is 5/32 (.160") thick.

The plain ti G5 Prybabies run $65 each plus shipping and I'll make this sale a limit of two per customer please. International customers: You have a choice on this sale, one item can be shipped via either Priority International for $17 or Express mail for $34. If you order two then they will automatically ship via Express Mail.

Thanks for stopping in folks, always appreciated!

These are all gone for now, thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

And the Winners Are...

Wow, another great turnout. Amazing stuff...thanks for signing up for this one!

OK, the winning numbers are:

 9     Rlyle531
53    Speed Racer
192  BusyBadger
197  Roylee
286  the grizz
320  NeonEcko
365  Boricua
368  kemtitec
417  Gschaffner
425  Kaos
524  p8r1ck
541  JaredC

I'll send out emails right now, thanks again and have a great weekend folks!

SUSale: SlotShots

Hi Everyone,

Well, the OD whistle SUSale was such a success yesterday that I thought we might as well keep the ball rolling with another sale...this time I have dug deep in the Atwood Archives to bring you another blast from the past!

Today I have twelve 303 stainless steel SlotShot cups. These are the old school diamond knurled BigShots with three milled slots that will accept the small tritium tube markers, users to obtain and install the tubes themselves, if so desired. These are gorgeous cups and I can't believe I had these hiding in a box down in the shop, totally forgotten about. They even have the little dice with each cup.

So, the 12 SlotShots will run $75 each plus shipping. International customers will have to pay $35 for Express mail due to the weight, I don't want any problems with customs and tracking issues and you know these are going to be checked out since they weigh so much (1/2 lb each).

Let's make this one a little earlier...The SlotShot sign up will run until 6PM Eastern time this evening, Saturday 24th. Winning numbers will be drawn at that time and emails sent. Once again, thank you so much for the enthusiastic support and interest, I can never thank you all enough!

Sign Up Sale Rules

Sign Up is over, thank you once again everyone! Will post results shortly...


List of Sale Participants

Wow!

Holy Smokes, I know I've said it before on previous SUSales, every one of which always seems bigger than the last, but I'll say it again: Amazing turnout for these!

OK, after going through and pruning doubles (ahem) the numbers were drawn and are as follows:

26 Ansel1
131 Samson
231 rab4
239 Daniel Jr Castonguay
282 Giovanni
302 Lucasbartends
394 omegahpr
415 JohnS
455 dj jazzy reff

I will send emails out right now to the winners. Thanks once again folks, really appreciate all the support!

OD Green Aluminum Whistles SUSale

Howdy Everyone,

Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one! I ate too much as usual and then watched some GREAT football games so it was a pleasant and relaxing day for me.

Ok, so it's been a long time since I've done a Sign Up Sale. I have several regular projects underway but due to unforeseen delays they are taking forever to get finished...so in the meantime I thought perhaps a little SUSale action would be just the thing to break the monotony.

For those folks who are more recent fans and have not encountered the SUSale system before please familiarize yourself with the rules and also, remember that it's ONE ENTRY PER CUSTOMER please. We carefully go over the list and any duplicate entries will be deleted at the end before the random numbers are selected so don't be "gaming" the system here!

Sign Up Sale Rules 

Today I have something really special and very old school. These were leftover from a run of whistles that were made about 6 or 7 years ago, back from the very first run of whistles. At that time I wanted to use mostly just stainless or brass to make whistles. However, the guys at Amherst Machine stuck a bar of aluminum in the machine and turned a dozen plain aluminum bodies as a test to prove out the design before running the rest of them. I sold a couple of these plain unanodized aluminum oddballs over the years but hung on to the rest. Earlier this year when I sent out the 5 rib Longslides for anodizing I decided to throw in these whistles as well and finally get them finished up.

So, there are a total of 9 Olive Drab Green Aluminum Rifle Knurled Whistles available. Eight of these are on Dungeon Finish matte bead chain. There is one more that has the lanyard hole drilled at a funny angle and that one is on a keyring, so it's a true one of a kind setup piece.

The whistles will run $50 each plus shipping and the sign up period will end tonight, Friday 23rd at 8PM Eastern time so get your entry in before then. The winning numbers will be announced shortly after 8PM and at that time I will send emails and purchase links to the winners.

Sign up period is over, thanks so much to  everyone who entered! List will be coming shortly...

List of the Folks Who Have Entered

Sandy and Updates

Hey Folks, people keep emailing me and asking how I'm doing after the storm. I appreciate the concern! The answer is, that we only lost power for two hours.... so we got very lucky and the storm missed us for the most part. No damage here whatsoever. I do feel pretty bad for the folks in the low lying areas of NY and NJ. My best wishes to them and I have made a small contribution to relief efforts. Hope they get things straightened out soon!

On another note, I'm working on some new drawings and designs this week. Also preparing for some batches and lining up materials and cutting schedules. It's going to take a little bit for me to get the next batches of items together but I think you all will really like what is around the corner! :D

Have a great weekend and stay safe.