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E22: Baker in the house!!
359 Plays4 months ago
Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub... no just kidding, what kind of podcast do you think this is?! We do have The Baker today though! Come hear all about what the boys at Baker Forge and Tool are up to! Listen up, or else!
We'd love to hear from you so send in questions to the show Instagram: @the.tttpodcast
Baker Forge and Tool:
Website: https://www.bakerforge.com/
IG: @bakerforgeandtool
Your hosts:
Denis Tyrell of Tyrell Knifeworks:
IG: @tyrellknifeworks
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TyrellKnifeworks
Website: https://www.tyrellknifeworks.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Tyrell-Knifeworks/61558767232017/
Jerid Sandoval of Echo Blades:
IG: @echo_blades
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Echo-Blades/100085394408004/
Maker's Spotlight:
https://www.instagram.com/stricklandknives
https://www.instagram.com/roccohandmade
Our sponsors:
Two Basterds Tx Smithy & Supplies: @twobasterdshammers
Maritime Knife Supply: http://maritimeknifesupply.com
Pelican Paste: https://pelicanpaste.com (Use TTT10 for 10% off!)
Baker Forge and Tool: https://www.bakerforge.com (Use TTT10 for 10% off!)
Podcasts we love:
- Work For It
- Fire and Steel
- Hustle and Grind
- KnifeTalk
- FullBlast
- ForgeSideChat
- Artisans of Steel
- Can you hear the Eko
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Triple T Podcast
00:00:16
Speaker
What's up everybody. This is Jared from Echo blades and you are listening to the triple T podcast for knife makers. As always, I have the most awesome co-host Mr. Dennis Terrell from Terrell knife works, but even more special today. We have the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Kuma, Damascus, and all sorts. Mr. Corey Baker from Baker Ford's tool. What's up? What's up? What's up? It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. That was quite the intro. Wow. Yes. Yeah. Jared in his radio voice. I didn't even really do it. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Corey Baker.
00:01:03
Speaker
Were you reading that off a teleprompter kind of looked like? No, no, that's that's just my vision.
Corey Baker on Blade Show Recovery
00:01:12
Speaker
Oh, so, koy how you been? You recovered from Blade Show and all that shenanigans. I am recovered. Yes, finally. That took a while. Of course, Blade Show is a there's a lot of work and it's there's always a long recovery time after that. So this year we didn't do anything after Blade Show. In previous years, we've had e events or always had something planned right after the show, somebody coming out to the shop or whatever. This year, I was just like, Nope, not doing anything. We're gonna go back to sleep. So we're all recovered. We're good to go. So I mean, this wasn't Yeah, this wasn't a special. or This was a special show for you, right? I mean, you you guys did something for the first time and i and I bet that was quite the experience. Yeah, yeah. So we did a booth and we've never had a table. We've been going to blade show for years.
00:02:00
Speaker
ah but never, at least in the past, never really had the material stock or the product, enough of it to warrant having a table or a booth. So we would attend the shows really just to have a presence, to meet the makers, see everybody's work, walk the show, whatnot. And this year we you know we'd upped production, we were in our new facility and it was it was time to have a table. And so we we initially were gonna get a table and then figured out, well, an eight foot table is just not enough space. So we're going just gonna skip the tables and go straight to a booth. Which ended up not being enough space either, because a single booth is a glorified table with a little bit more room behind you, and that's it. Yeah, I was going to say a little bit more depth is kind of what I got from it, right? Yeah, there's no more extra room. You get the signage in the back. That's the main thing you get, right? You do get the signage in the back, yeah. Because I guess with a table, you can't like block other people. I think that's the reasoning. It's got to be like four feet above the table or something. Right. Right. So we've got a blast. Nice.
00:02:59
Speaker
We had a blast. It was, it was, I feel like I met so many more people just because we had a like a home base for people to come see us. Because you know what those shows, there's so many people you can just completely miss people just walking the show. And so having a home base, I mean, we were probably two, three people deep in front of our table, our booth, the entire show. It was phenomenal. We had a great time. So just got to go to a double booth next year. Give us a little more width. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. and And sales was good there at the show. You guys unloaded a bunch of steel
Blade Show's Evolving Focus
00:03:34
Speaker
sales was great. You know, I, I was talking to a lot of makers and I, having been to a bunch of previous shows, I really think blade show is more and more becoming kind of a supplier show really, because so many people that go there now are knife makers, not necessarily collectors or buyers. I mean, there still are obviously.
00:03:54
Speaker
But I feel like the general gist of blade show is really becoming more on the supplier side and a place for makers to go get everything they need for the next few months, you know, for their, their making. So, but yeah, we did great. We did phenomenal enough to where I was like, yep, we're definitely doing this next year. So, yeah, I totally agree on the maker thing that, um, it's going to turn into a more into supplies. And we've been talking about this on the show, like how My personal opinion, I think the market is contracting and I think we're going to have less makers in the years to come, especially fortune fires off the air. Um, so I think it's going to be. Collectors and suppliers. Yeah. and i I don't think we're going to see as many like, Hey, I'm just going to go to blade show and maybe who knows maybe maybe a blade show will be an anomaly just cause, but
00:04:52
Speaker
I think it's going to contract a little bit. it's It's definitely changing because the lack of, or the, the fortune fire, not fallout, but the kind of decline of that. And as the interest kind of starts to raise, you know, not when I think just the dissipates, there we go. as it kind of just dissipates in the people who were getting into it as more of a just hobby, those guys are starting to maybe not attend the shows, maybe not make as many knives, and you're starting to get this divide where you've got the guys who went pro really need to aim harder and harder and start diversifying a little more because of the larger market. And you've got a lot of people who jumped in to just kind of play around really start to fall off. Yeah. So
00:05:36
Speaker
I mean, we'll see. Maybe it'll be a really slow decline, but I mean, I think we'll, we'll see. i I jumped in rate at the best time now.
00:05:46
Speaker
I'm declining. Oh, but you got a lot more stuff going on than just time. So that's, that's true. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of eggs. I mean, that's what I was talking about. Diversifying. That's the key right there. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's some to be said too, for you, like for makers that maybe haven't been able to see You know, the steel, see what, what you're, you know, what the, the product looks like, you know, for me, it's always really good to, you know, pick something up, hold it, touch it, you know, do your thing. And especially with like handle material, you know, like I'm one of those guys that will fucking drone on and on and on on the, on the interwebs and, and fill up my cart, but never actually check out. Right. So, sure I mean, it's a whole different ball game to see in person, anything yeah material related. Yeah.
00:06:34
Speaker
So I think I wanted to tell the story, too, because, you know, but we got there Thursday um this year, as opposed to, you know, right at the witching hour like we had the past few years. ah So we got the opportunity to, you know, see people set up and in the in the whole facility. Right. It was like just to see a white tables, the one we got there. Right. Which is weird to to kind of take in. But so I ran into koi and, you know, for for everyone else, right? You watch somebody go through this, like, same thing with Dennis, I call it like this meteoric rise of, you know, like, you guys were here, and then all of a sudden, you know, a couple years and excellent work and and great products, and you guys just got shoot off into the into the stratosphere, right? But you guys are human, right? And and i and I see Koi right before and I'm like, how you doing, buddy? And he's like, you know, Jared, I'm
00:07:28
Speaker
a little nervous. Like, you know, like we we we kind of tried to, you know, we're doing something different. I'm kind of stepping out and I'm like, and I'm thinking to myself, like, get the fuck out of here. You're going to kill it. I know it, you know what I mean? That's what I feel. But I love the the humility and the fact that, you know, every new process that anybody goes through, maker, vendor, you know, whatever it is, we all have that human condition to to have that, you know, sense of fear and and you know, of the unknown and and know what's going to transpire. But I was, a fi when I checked in, I was like, how'd you do? And I said, it was a waste of time where he goes, yep. I i was legit scared to death just because.
00:08:10
Speaker
never run a table for, you know, now you have to be actually a responsible person at the show and you have to answer questions and you're handling money. And it's like totally different ballgame. And up until that day, we had solely been an internet company. I had never sold a product at a show or I okay, here and there in person with locals. But other than that, solely been an internet company and never had done any sales in person at a show. and so kind of a it was It was very new and there's so much to get right from credit card processing to having the cash on hand you need for change, to banners, coordination. We had a lot of guys there, which was a lot of a lot of help really. who i mean That helped with the labor side of things, getting everything set up. but
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really glad we did it, but I was definitely, definitely sweating in my boots on Thursday. so It was cool to see, man.
Challenges of Booth Setup
00:09:06
Speaker
i'm I'm serious. I was like, look at this guy acting normal here.
00:09:12
Speaker
Well, we had a lot of money invested at that point, you know, banners and stuff and flying people in. It's expensive. so yeah Yeah. And and you had you guys ship all the steel there? Did someone drive or what? ah Most of us all all the crew that works in the shop they drove because we all drove because we're only five hours North of Atlanta So the one reason we did Atlanta was because we could drive trying to ship that much steel And then the product was just that would have been a headache. So we there's talks of us trying to do the Texas or the West show as far as having a booth, but you know, that's it's gonna be a lot more coordination trying to get a container a pallet basically shipped out there and
00:09:52
Speaker
Um, cause this stuff doesn't, it doesn't travel well. It's not very light. I could imagine. Yeah. So your first time at a table, really? Like, I'm sure you answer questions all the time online, but like standing in front of like, you know, people coming up, what was the question? Like most people would ask you, like, was there like one question you got the most or anything memorable of like people would ask you? Oh, let's. Hmm. I don't know if one particular question stands out, we because we got a whole barrage. Most people had heard of us. And it seemed like a lot of people who were coming up knew of us, but had never actually used our product before, which was interesting, because I was wondering what the ratio would be of people walking up going, hey, check this knife out that I made in your material, to people going, oh, I recognize you. What do you do again? you know
00:10:45
Speaker
Or I see your, I see your stuff online, but I've never touched it. And there was a lot of people who had never used our material, but knew exactly who we were, knew all the crew's names, all that sort of stuff. Um, so i like apparently, I mean, I was at the same cause you guys do a bang up job of, uh, you know, of social media and and doing things. I mean, I was just watching the other day, you know, you guys were something about like. Who's your favorite music artists or, you know, like, I mean, just the craziest stuff to get like real personal with, you know, all of your team members, dude. And that's that right there, actually that real. So we used to do a bunch of those, like we call them question reels. We'd ask the crew a question. We each ask each guy the same question, basically record their answers.
00:11:27
Speaker
And we did a whole bunch of those like early last year and people really seemed to like them. And then we kind of dipped off because it's kind of hard to get the crew all together to shoot those. Cause they would ask, they would record 20, 30 questions all at once. And then Whalen would break it down and make the reels separately and spread it out over the next couple of months. But it got really hard to get the guys together to do that without interrupting like production work. And so we didn't do them anymore. We got a lot of people who toll ask us at the show, we're like, hey, when are you going to start doing those question reels again? Because those were so always so entertaining. And I had no idea people wanted to see that again. And so that's why we picked it back up this week, is because people at the show kept asking for it. Oh, see, there you go. That's some good feedback right there. I mean, who doesn't like to see all all the the the Baker team do a pocket dump on an anvil? That was my favorite.
00:12:22
Speaker
And then you got Cole there who's bringing out so much stuff. I mean, a yeah so much in his pockets, singles, doubles, all kinds of shots. It was great. Yeah. I was even shocked at how much came out of his pockets and he's there every day. And I was still like, bro, how do your pants stay on? Yeah. a Damn good belt. Well, that's good. At least like from what you just said about like people coming up to you at the show. some people, oh, yeah, I saw you before, but not really knowing what you did like that. That's great. That's exactly why you want to be at the shows, right? Like, right connect that personal connection. Yeah. ye For sure. There was a whole bunch of that we we made a lot of new friends. And of course, we had some people coming up who had knives and their backpacks that they had made in our steel, who maybe were more beginners and didn't have tables or anything.
00:13:13
Speaker
and just being able to see their work and actually having Whelan right there with the camera so we could actually shoot it right there and you know, I'm sure it makes them feel real good that we're really taking an interest in their work because we want to showcase that on our videos, yeah you know, and that was great for people to just bring that up to us. Yeah, there's something to be said for that that that interest that you guys have and seeing your product. But, you know, on the other hand, too, it's got to be what a feeling to, you know, have so many people or even anyone, right, for that matter, right, come up and and want to share their stuff scared new. I mean, and you guys got bangers on your team making, you know, just ridiculous work with this stuff like on the regular. So I imagine that was a pretty cool experience. It was for sure. And, you know, the guys get just as much of a kick out of it as I do.
00:14:02
Speaker
because they spend all these days making the material, but they don't make any finished product. We don't make any here. And so they can't see what it looks like until a maker takes it and turns it into something, and then it comes back to us, either for photos or we see it at the show, that sort of thing. And so it's it's extremely rewarding. we are We're blessed by that. Yeah, and I really didn't think about that. when you When you got I don't I don't think you do but you guys don't do that like grind the corner of a billet or anything like that so you can see the inside you're really looking at you can see like the top of it because you guys grind it but you're not really seeing into the billet at all right you guys don't grind a corner I know some guys do that we we will do that on test runs if we're testing out a pattern or we're testing out a layup and we want to see what looks like we will just grind up bevel into it but we we chop that off if it
00:14:52
Speaker
ever gets sold. it and It never goes on the finished piece. And typically, once we've nailed down what it needs to look like, they'll then just produce a run of it and they don't do a bevel in every piece. Yeah, of course. yeah so Once it's repeatable. so Yeah, and you guys have yeah you got to you have the process down of how you know ah you guys make that stuff. So I'm sure your process is pretty repeatable. Well, as much as forging steel can be, you know, there's always it's not an exact science, you know, one day you're doing something you've done it 100 times and suddenly it just doesn't work anymore. And you're like, what's going on? And we deal with that on the regular. ah We I like to call it shop goblins. we We blame the shop goblins whenever something like that pops up. Damn goblins were here last night. They fucked something up. That's hilarious.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's not always, it's not a perfect process. That's for sure. And there's, you know, yeah, there's always failures or lessons. However you want to look at that, you know, there's a lot of elements at play for sure. So how, how are you guys liking, like, how long you been at the new shop now? It's been um six months or something. Yeah. Since October, October, November, somewhere in there, oh yeah like eight months, almost. It feels like it's been two months. I was actually just looking at some old footage from when we just moved in and I was like, wow, my beard was kind of short. oh Yeah, it's it's it's been a little while we're we're loving it. We've moved in we're fully set up and loving the new space. There's at first it felt like it was too much space. There was a a lot of walk time between this side of the shop and that side of the shop and we weren't used to that much walking. And at first thought it might become a problem.
00:16:40
Speaker
just because the guys were kind of like, this is kind of far away, we you might need to move that over there. But once we figured out our layout, and got things situated where they needed to be and created ah our flow, got our flow again, because the flow is totally different than the shot. Can't repeat what it was in the old place. And so we're set up now, though, we're running, it's we're comfortable. We're set up, we got plenty of room to expand. So I get that flow issue even when I rearrange my own shop and it's, I'm only talking about three steps back and forth. And you guys are like, what is it? 10,000 square feet? Yes. 10,000 square feet. And you went from how many to this? We went from 3000 to 10,000. Wow. So it was a big jump.
00:17:20
Speaker
And I say 3000. But we were sharing that space with Josh Morgan of primitive woodsman knives. And so not a true 3000 because we shared space with him. And he took up some room. It was tight. It was really tight. but We had ah every machine we could pack in there. And ah probably more employees than should have been in there working hot steel. It was it was it was tight. It was time to move. So have you I know you were your either working towards or you maybe have you got the second line already set up in the new shop? I know you were looking for some machines or something. What's the state of that now? We're in progress right now. So as soon as we got back from blade show, things really rocketed. It's funny, right as we got into the new shop, we really started to see ah and a dip on the retail side, as far as our direct sale to shop makers, homemakers.
Shift in Business Strategy
00:18:16
Speaker
um And we're but we compared it to you know our previous years to see if it was an expected dip. Is this a time when we should be expecting a dip? And it didn't line up. It was a new dip. And so not sure what it was attributed to. Went to Blade Show. As soon as we got back from Blade Show, our commercial side really started to go up. And so it they kind of switched places. Originally our commercial side was much smaller. It was always just a couple of big clients every once in a while doing big batch runs for them. And that's kind of switched now and our commercial side has really jumped way up. And we went from about a three to four week lead time before blade show to four to five months right after.
00:18:56
Speaker
Wow. And so we started to really go, oh shoot, we got to really up the this production scale or production line and get a second production line going. um And so we're in the process of doing that now. In fact, next week I have a new Blanchard arriving and I'm shopping a new press, a new furnace, and I've just met made a deal on a new power hammer. A really, really, really big one. I think I heard about this one. um What, um, I'm, I'm fascinated by like the line, like what, what is, give me the order. Like, what are the machines on the line? And like, how does a bar go from let's do the initial stack to, you know, ready to go? Like what take me through it.
00:19:41
Speaker
Okay, so first off, we'll start at basically the assembly table, which is right next to all the band saws. So steel comes in, they'll get the core steels cut. First, they pull a sheet because we have rows of sheets for orders or upcoming drops, and they'll pull the sheet and the sheet will list these steels that need to be made at this certain size. They'll then go to the steel rack and they'll pull core stock and cladding stock off the supply that we've already made. And they will cut it up into whatever size they calculate the cubic inch that the final bar needs to be, ah account for loss, and then make the original make the starting stack. And then pile all those up. They'll go on a cart over to the welding station where they get all tacked up and they get handles attached. And then those will all go, if it has copper in it, they all go to the big furnace. They get loaded into the furnace. If it's just Damascus, they go into a WD-40 bucket soak.
00:20:35
Speaker
and those get wheeled over and set in front of the forges to weight their rotation. um Typically with those because they're not time sensitive, the copper ones are because the copper will oxidize. The straight Damascus can sit in the WD 40 overnight for a bunch of hours if it needs to. And so they'll prep a bunch of those ahead of time, and then just pull them out that each bucket will have an order in it. The five gallon bucket of WD so um So yeah, they go in the furnace, soak time, heat up, and then they're ready for forging. And so typically that's either Cole, Jay or Will. um Jay does more of the management stuff now, so it's really just Cole and Will ah doing the forging right now. And they will alternate, they'll open up the furnace. One guy will take a billet out, walk over to the ah hammer, the big with the 350, set the weld, and that right as he's finishing up, the second guy pulls a fresh one out and they swap places.
00:21:31
Speaker
And so they'll do that until they're all set. yeah And once they're set, they can go into drawing. And so they'll go to the the other hammer, which has a rounding dies on it. And it gets drawn out a little bit. And then it gets run through the rolling mill until it's, and it's typically just one pass to the rolling mill because it's giant. Um, they'll run through the rolling mill to the patterning depth. yeah Like a damn train.
00:21:57
Speaker
and So basically. case So you said it goes through the rolling mill to a patterning depth. Is that what you said? that Like you're going to do ripples or whatever pattern you're going to do? Is that what you meant? Correct. If it's not a billet, that's going to be just left as is, which we call our wavy, which is just leaving the ripples in it from the drawing dice. Sure. If it's going to get a forced pattern, like a chevron, ripple, ladder, something like that, or raindrop. it's run through the rolling mill at a patterning depth. And that patterning depth depends on how thin the final bar will be. And so again, they've already made the calculations, it's on the sheet, what size these need to be rolled out to. In order for when it goes to patterning, the depth is correct for the ratio of the layers. And then once it goes through all that, typical sometimes
00:22:44
Speaker
Depending on where it flows in the cycle, that's a really great stopping spot when they come out of the rolling mill before patterning, they can set all those bars aside and start another run. Cause patterning means they have to take the hammer that has the drawing dies on it. They got to swap it to patterning dies. And so it's that hammer now can only pattern. And so a lot of times they'll stop after rolling and they'll set the batch aside and they'll put a new batch in and do the whole process again and get them all to the rolling step. So that way they can stage several of them and then switch the hammer to the patterning dies and pattern all batches and weight up. So you mean you have a, this is what fascinates me. I expected you to tell me you're using a press for that. So you're using like a Chevron die on a power hammer and just striking that thing once. That is very cool. Their cap dies on the cap dies going over flat dies on the hammer. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
And originally, so that's how we do it now, we there there is ah a change coming on that. um We are going to be switching to a press because I'm getting a 200 ton and that's going to handle patterning. Because the diet we're limited on the width of the bars based on how wide the die is on the hammer. And we are doing a lot of wider stuff now. And so we need much wider dies. And when you go really wide, you got to put in a press. So we've always done it on the hammer because it was much quicker, much more efficient, and the guys can really control exactly how deep it is. And they just, it seemed to work better that way for them. But we are going to be switching that to a press because we need wider dice, which we can't achieve on the current.
00:24:24
Speaker
Again, I am not ah I've used a power hammer exactly once. That's one more time with me. So this is the part that fascinates me personally. So how wide are the dyes on your um on that power hammer? Are the dyes on the. No, the width of the die is two and a half by eight long. OK, that's what I meant. So it's eight. Yeah. So you're having to strike like, let's say you're using Chevron. dies. So you have to match that up. Like you're striking multiple times, I'm assuming to get the depth and then you have to couple hits, and then shift it up, and then shift it up and hit Wow. Yeah. So but they can typically do a whole bar in one heat. That's right. Yeah. and And that's the thing is, if you if you're gonna do it in a press,
00:25:16
Speaker
it has to be either powerful enough or quick enough, because that power it just sucks the heat out with a press. And so there's kind of a balance there. And they found it'd be much faster for them originally to do it in the hammer. um But we're going to get a much power more powerful pressing and do an entire 24 inch long bar by six inches wide in one go. So that's nice. Yeah, Jared and I made Chevron dies and They're great, but you got to have that bill. It's super hot and it's tricky. And the hardest part is matching it up across because you can't really see it because that's what I was fascinated by. You guys doing it on the hammer. right
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah. so you it's Go ahead. I was just gonna say, there's a steep, there's a kind of a steep learning curve with that. Almost all the patterning is done by Cole, just because there is a lot of feeling technique and knowing your where your depth's at in it. And so Cole is kind of the man for that job. And so he pretty much does all the patterning because he's got the feel for it. The other guys can do it, you know, as well. But Cold as most of it for production because it takes some getting used to it So when then you guys are done patterning on that patterning why is that so hard to say? um but On the hammer then you got to grind that off, right? So that's when it goes to the Blanchard You guys don't know what right? No, no, no, it's all done cold. So
00:26:46
Speaker
um After patterning, the bars get straightened and then annealed. So um okay because once they come off the blancher, they won't get heated back up again because otherwise they would scale. And so all the annealing is done at that point. And also if it's softer, it's easier to grind. So straighten and that's a lot of straightening because, you know, the patterning makes it all kind of funky. The bar gets all kind of twisted and kinked. And if it's going to go from that stage to the grinding, on the Blanchard, it has to sit perfectly flat. And so they just spend a ah lot of time making sure they're good and flat. And there's another straightening process after they come out of the anneal. But um yeah, straightening, annealing, and then they go to the Blanchard grinder. Well, they get their ends cut off, they get the handles cut off, so that way there's no junk on them. And then they go to the Blanchard, which currently is our kind of our bottleneck point, because there's only so much steel kind of be that can be ground on that Blanchard, even though it's a and' a three foot diameter table.
00:27:46
Speaker
magnetic table and it runs that up under a grinding head so it can do quite a bit. But the guys can still forge way more than can be grounded a day. And so that's currently a bottleneck. There's a shelf right next to the blancher that's covered in steel and orders that Frank or Blanchard operator he runs that machine every all day every day. And how long does it take to grind like to grind a batch on the ground on the Blanchard? Oh, hey, well, there's a lot of variance based on what the material is. So if it's it has a copper Damascus cladding, meaning it's got the copper in the steel in the jacket material, then it's grinding both materials at the same time, obviously. These grinders when you buy the stone inserts, they you either buy them set up to grind a hardened material, a tool steel, or something super soft. They don't have one that will grind both. And so we spent some time finicking around with what type of stone would grind our material the best
00:28:44
Speaker
Because it's grinding a super, super soft and a steel at the same time. And so though the copper makes it kind of gummy. And so if it's a heavy copper clad, those take longer. And you can offset that by just putting less on the table. So it has less that it has to work on um each under each pass. um Or you can speed up ah slow down the table so it spends more time under the grinding head as it rotates out. There's a bunch of little things you can do, but I would say an average ah batch, a whole batch of like 30 can be ground in a couple hours. Oh, okay. That's still longer than I thought. but Yeah. um ah And it's, again, if it's really thick bars, so it's a magnet table. So if it's really thin bars, they don't magnetize as well as a bar that's really thick because there's not as much mass there. And so if it's a thicker bar, they can actually lean into it and run the machine harder and really hog the material a lot quicker.
00:29:43
Speaker
Because not only do we grind our finished pattern billets on this, but all our intermediary steps are ground on this machine. So Damascus bars are going to get ground and then restacked. Those get all ground as well. But because they're a lot thicker, there's no copper in there, those grind way faster, a fraction of the time. And that's, that's so counterintuitive to us lay people that the soft material takes longer to grind. That just seems weird. the it It just, it gums the wheels up and when it comes up, it doesn't cut as fast and you actually have to what we call rake the stone. It has a built-in raker that you can swing out and run it under the stone and and clean it out. So, but you have to move the whole table out to do that.
00:30:28
Speaker
You know, it just takes time. So it's slower with the stuff that's got a lot of copper in the planning, which if people are paying attention is one of the reasons why that stuff is more expensive because there's more man hours involved in the making of it. Hmm. So cool. So then it comes off the Blanchard. Is it like after the patterns ground out, are those done? ah Yes, oh well, they're they're ready to go for kind of the finishing stages. So the finishing, they'll he'll grind the entire batch and then somebody will take the batch on a cart over to the grinding room and they will what we call trim edges. So the edges of the bars will be all kind of crusty and gunky. I'm sure as you guys have seen, and depending on the pattern layout, they'll actually rip those edges off with a bandsaw. Or if it's just Damascus, they could typically just grind it a little bit to to smooth the edges up, but
00:31:19
Speaker
Anything with copper in it, they rip the sides down with a bandsaw and then clean them up to a scotch brite. So they're nice and clean on the edges. They'll scotch brite the finish again, just to make sure it's smooth and clean. And then it will go to inventorying. And right now, Jay does all our inventorying. So he'll go through. It's the last step in the QC. So he inspects every billet. He restreatens any that got a little bit warped on the grinder. um Any that he finds flaws in get pulled or he cuts the flaws out. and then gets a tallied list of how many bars there are. And he measures every single one of them, with what size they are. And then he uploads all those to the pricing website system. And then they get labels and then they go to the storage rack. And then you start all over. And you start all over. So how many is there?
00:32:14
Speaker
And Jared, jump in if you want to ask them here, because I'll go on for that. I was just going to say, that sounds so easy. yeah i Make more. Hurry up. Let's go. So easy. You get your ass over here. I'll show you. It took 10 minutes just to go through it all. It's it's super simple, right? Yeah. you You've heard of the podcast, Jared's Notorious. Pull something out of the out of the Forge and stare at it for 30 seconds before he hits does anything to it. That's how you get efficient. Boy, I'm telling you, they're at it give it eye to eye contact, you know, show it that you love it and and then put it right back in because you wasted all the heat. So I mean, that's why he bought an induction forge so he could do that. Right. exactly Right. You heat up as many times as you want to right there. Yep.
00:33:00
Speaker
That's all about intimacy, you know, so. So how many then, you know, if any of this is proprietary, they'd let me know. But I mean, how many, how many billets are you cranking out? Let's say a day. Like how many? what What's the? ah It would be hard to count by a day just because we have so many that are in progress all at the same time. A different been a week or whatever your range is. Yeah, we calculated it for the ah the last quarter. um I think it came out to, ah we're approximately doing about 200 bars a week right now. Okay. So it's, and it it again, it varies because so much of they can make all the cladding material at a time. So multiple days might be just making prep material.
00:33:52
Speaker
And then there's a whole bunch of days of just doing final pieces. So, you know, kind of gets lost there and they're working on multiple batches all at the same time. So will that will a second line double that? Is there like a cost there? Like what's the second line going to do as far as production? It's going to depend a little bit. So if we just set up a second line to mirror the current production line, then it would in you know effectively double ah production time. But what we're goingnna what we're kind of playing with was if the second line is a more of a support line.
00:34:31
Speaker
So the second line spent more of the time making all the prep material or during doing certain steps in the production to free up the machines on the other side to do a different step. So that way a batch can go from start to finish a lot quicker through both stages where both stages are doing both parts or doing multiple parts of the same operation during the batch as opposed to it running its own separate complete batch start to finish. And so there's going to be some playing around there to figure out exactly which one does better. And it may end up turning into a mix of both. I'm not sure. Right. Yeah. That's going to be some interesting, uh, playing and figuring out like, you know, yeah, the it also but this is like, I hear Brent and Ryan and those guys talk about production work. And this is like that on like a massive scale, uh, trying to optimize that kind of stuff.
00:35:27
Speaker
but and and And again, it depends on what what's coming through. You know, if if an order is for a whole bunch of mocha may, you know, that's going to throw off a lot of things because the mocha may has to be treated so much differently. um Or if we're working a huge batch, if that's something that's just Damascus, then it's not going to use the copper furnace at all. And the guys are going to spend a lot of time at the main at the forges. And so the copper furnace is going to be wide open. And so something else can be running in that. um Anyway, yeah, there's so many variables based on what's coming through and which orders we're working on. It could, you know, it's going to change on a weekly basis. so What's running where? That's part of Jay's job. Figuring that out. That 200 bars, that's both for, for commercial and, and your regular market or are you? Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's a right now. So it was about a 70 30 where 70% was to the retail and that was last year. But as if we've gone into this year, it's pretty much flip flopped. It's about 70 to wholesale 30 to retail. Okay, not wholesale commercial. When I say commercial, I mean, ah bigger knife companies who are ordering large volume, or not even knife companies. There's other stuff being made right now. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting when you get into like artistic stuff that isn't knives. Like I think you guys have a massive potential market there when you you start thinking about those things that aren't knives. i I'm sure you guys have thought of a ton of this stuff. that's That's going to be fascinating to see where you guys go. Yes. So that was a big push for 2024. And one of the reasons we brought on our first sales rep
00:37:14
Speaker
um We announced that in the newsletter, but we didn't announce it on Instagram or anything. Um, but we, we hired an actual sales rep who is specifically hired to push us into markets that are non knife related, um, or go after some of the bigger and knife guys who don't know we exist yet.
Diversifying Beyond Knife Markets
00:37:33
Speaker
So, but more primarily to push us into stuff that's non knife, because, you know, as we talked about earlier in the show, the knife stuff is kind of up and down, you know, And we to hem ourselves into just that market would, you know, it's not really a smart business move. And so it's been a long term goal to be in a lot of other markets. And we're just that's really been a focus for this year. I got a question. Yeah. Out of the two dudes I'm looking at, who was the first to do the Kuma? I'm pointing at Koi. I have no idea.
00:38:10
Speaker
No, we talked about this on another show one time, or or you and I talked about it in person. And I think you did it ah six or nine months before I did. Oh, okay. i I remember looking on YouTube and at the time when I was trying to figure out how to do it and not seeing any videos online. not Obviously this stuff's been done a long time ago. It's been done for forever. But um yeah, I don't, I guess, yeah, 20, early 2020 or late 2019, I guess is when I started. Yeah, i I have to go back and look at my first video. I'm pretty sure it's spring of 2020. And you guys were in 2019. Gotcha. So but we didn't even know each other at that point either. It was like, yeah, no, we had talked about this a years later. So
00:39:02
Speaker
Right, we we got to working with this material completely on our own, separately. Yeah. So I don't know let's remember. Oh, the other company, Dion Damascus, that's the first place I ever saw it. And whenever I saw one of their products or somebody else using their steel, that's when I first i ever saw copper in a Damascus blade of any sort. Figured I try it. Dennis, where did you first see it? So the first, the I'm pretty sure the first YouTube video that least that I know of was Valhalla Ironworks. um Oh, Alex. Yes. That's right. let's do it it And he wasn't all that successful, I think in his first video, but he did it. I think he finally got it to work and he had some issues. And, and I remember this is a interesting story because I'm on vacation.
00:39:59
Speaker
in Mexico. And I'm talking to Spencer heavy Forge. Okay, you you don't i don't know if you know Spencer, but he and i and I don't even know Spencer that well at this point. But we're kind of chit chatting because we both have YouTube channels. And I'm like, have you seen how and he happened to see the video to him like I so want to try this and we're chatting about how I want to do this and how we're going to each try it. And then the week after I got back from that trip, is the first video I posted on that. Gotcha. Which did OK. My channel was still small. It was this one, this buoy knife, the one I have to hunt. Yes. That's the one that really blew up. That's the one I couldn't ever get out of my feed. And she kept showing off. Yeah. I appreciate that. I don't know who this guy is. I don't know who this guy is. That's not mine. I didn't make it. That's hilarious. Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker
The only reason I ever made that knife a kumai is because it's the only piece of Damascus that I've ever used that wasn't mine. so i wasn't just um Chad Kimmel gave me a piece of um Damascus from Salem. Yeah. So I wasn't just going to use Salem's. I didn't want to make a knife that was just Selums, Damascus patterns. So that's why I chose to take that as cladding and and do this pattern. yeah yeah So yeah, that one ended up really good. I was happy. Nice. Very cool. So yeah those those guys who just take stock Damascus and make knives at them, those guys are real. Who needs them? but Get out of here.
00:41:49
Speaker
That's a joke for anybody listening. Oh shit. There's people, there's three, but there's three even more now. Cause I'm going to let people know. Yeah. go w w dot bakerforge dot com So I want to know, do you have a favorite pattern that you like to make or like to see, or you think is the coolest or like of the ones you guys make? For a production pattern, I would say it's a tie between the W's core copper mine that we did with the crushed, the high layer crushed W's or the Riptide, the original Riptide. That's my favorite of the, you guys do is that Riptide and it's, it's really, that's a really hard one to, for us home Smiths to make without the big machinery. That's a really tough one. Cause that that's one has the Chevron pattern in it, right?
00:42:40
Speaker
ah Ripple, but it looks like a chevron. Yeah. Okay, but so that's a different die Yeah, chevron and ripple are two different dies. Okay. I didn't maybe I didn't understand that when i are you sent me up and but we did a version We did a version of riptide the riptide elite was in chevron originally and that one was it was a different the layout was slightly different and and we used nickel shims and copper in that one. um That one had chevron, but the original riptide was in ripple. Yeah. Yeah. that That's probably my favorite pattern that you guys do. It's just, especially with the black core, it just looks, that's that's my favorite. that That one pops the most. that I would say that one's probably been our biggest seller to date.
00:43:31
Speaker
That one tickles a lot of fantasies. Yeah. Yeah. we We make a lot of it, a lot of custom orders for it too. So. Yeah. I don't doubt that at all. um Jared, do you have another question? Cause I got one that's going to take a while. yeah
00:43:48
Speaker
On the spot Jared, on the spot. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got questions, but now I'm interested and I hate when I'm interested in what Dennis has to say. So I think I'm going to let my question lie. Okay. Go ahead, sir. Koy and I talked about this. I think it was at Texas a couple of years ago and I've been fascinated by this and I don't know that you've talked about this on the air. So we talked about how, you know, and I've said in many videos, don't do steel to steel welding if there's copper involved.
00:44:18
Speaker
because it copper melts at 1984 degrees Fahrenheit. And you usually, you know, I tell people you want to be at 2000 or preferably 2100 to forge weld steel to steel. You guys will forge weld steel to steel and have copper in the billet. And you guys do it as I understand around 1900 degrees. Is that ish? That amazes me that you guys can can can get,
00:44:52
Speaker
you have such success forge welding at that low temp. What's the secret? As far as getting steel and steel to bond with copper in there, I don't know if there is much of a secret to that. Yes, we do have a specific temp we work at, um but it's obviously below the melting temp of copper. Because all our stuff, well, for the most part, all of our welds are open. So we don't seal the but billets into cans or anything like that. And so yes, we weld steel to steel at a lower temperature than most people forge weld. And the reason we kind of got into that was I was talking to Steve Sorser years ago at a blade show. And I was talking, I don't remember what we were talking, it was something about around forge welding. He was talking about forge welding and
00:45:38
Speaker
different atmospheres and stuff and putting stuff under vacuum, you know, getting all sciency on me. And he mentioned that he had gotten steel and steel to weld in an ah open environment, in an open forge, as low as like 16, it was 1600 something degrees. Properly cleaned, properly prepped, he had gotten steel a stick um successfully at that low of a temperature. And so me being me, I immediately went home and was like, ha haha well, this kind of opens up some possibilities to see what we can do. And this was a while ago. Um, I think I was back in my garage shop at the time and started just playing around with welding steel at the same time as, as working with the copper in the bar. And it it worked at the temperatures I was running in that it just worked fine. And.
00:46:28
Speaker
You basically, I mean, there's not really a whole lot of secret to it. You just want to get the billet to the point where the copper's not melted, but the steel is as hot as it can be. you know And it works. you know I mean, you have to have the material clean. We have a pretty rigorous cleaning process. I know a lot of Smiths who make Damascus, and they don't prep nothing. In fact, I was shocked. a First time I visited Jason Knight, and he had a whole bunch of stuff cut up. And he's like, all right, go weld this. Let's get it in the fire. and i was this There's a lot of mill scale and I think there's some rust under there and he didn't care and it went together welded fine. Now there's no copper in there or anything but we have a pretty rigorous cleaning process to make sure the clean the steel is very a clean um when we're working with it. So I think that's more important than anything is having very clean mating surfaces and very flat mating surfaces. Yeah. So yeah, and I agree on the cleaning and I've seen
00:47:25
Speaker
I think it just increases your success rate. Like, yes, you can do it with a rusty piece of steel, but it doesn't mean, you know, in your case, you you don't want the, whatever, even if it's only two or three percentage points, that's, that's six billets in a week, right? Like for you guys, that's, right that's terrible. Um, yeah, we just, we want to eliminate any potential variable for, for an issue. And so we we clean everything really well. The copper really wants stuff to be cleaned. The bronze wants stuff to be really clean. Nickel doesn't care. um steel Steel apparently doesn't care, but I've always cleaned my Damascus stock. but Yeah. And I've had this discussion with people of um the grit you you use just cleaning up the steel, even on, especially on the on the first grit. Like I know some people will just clean it with a 36 belt.
00:48:20
Speaker
and I've talked to some other Smiths, and if you want the really, really fine lines, you gotta to clean it at a higher, because those are the mating surfaces, and if you got 36 grit, you're gonna have a fuzzy line. So you gotta have nice, you know, at least do a 120. Right. Yeah, so coming off our Blanchard, the Blanchard stones are 46 grit stones. So they're really abrasive. But if you just let it do a cleanup pass basically, and it's just barely grazing, it leaves a pretty decent finish. And we've been able from the comparison we've done side by side, it looks to be about a 120 grit finish. yeah So anything coming off the Blanchard is at about 120. And we clean it up with a really coarse, heavy scotch bright to just knock any burrs off and wipe the face of the billet. And so
00:49:12
Speaker
120 with a heavy scotch brite, and that's as far as we take most steels for stuff, not the copper, we cleaned that up. Yeah, but you're not prepping raw um raw steel like for stacking like regular Damascus, you're not prepping mill scale on the blanchard, right? No, that just does ah just a scotch brite. Okay. um Unless it's really grungy and messed up, which is rare from our steel supplier, it's not typically an issue, it's just a gentle scotch break, we'll clean it up and make it nice and shiny and smooth. And that's plenty enough for the steel. Yeah. And especially if you're doing the Blanchard, that's like restacks. That's not it's that first, when I do in the 30 layer, like that's where it really matters, I think, because those layers are going to get crushed down, you don't want them fuzzy. Right. Nice. and sharp So sure. Yep. Cool.
00:50:07
Speaker
You know what you can do, though, if you don't want to cut up a bunch of Damascus, like just you want to just, you know, ease up and that process completely. You can't go see our buddy Lawrence Lake at Maritime Knife Supply, where he offers the most incredible service that he will cut up all of your steel for, you know, us people doing one billet at a time, you know, And, uh, and, uh, you'll have anything else that you need for a knife making supplies. He's got steel handles, pins, stabilized wood, one, two, three blocks, drill bits, carbide and mills grinders, calipers, heat treating, and he carries our boy.
00:50:56
Speaker
Gator piss. Gator piss. Yeah, boy. And some Baker, Forge and Tool products. So ah make sure you go check out Lawrence and telling the boys that Triple T sent you. And I also am now going to report it live, like I did before, where I you know mentioned that in circa 1997, Lawrence Lake took off from the free throw line and dunked Jordan style tongue out. He is now officially a part of the Canadian NASCAR circuit. And I watched him. I don't know if he won, but for this story, you guys just use, you know, theater of the mind here. Yeah. And his car sponsored by a maritime nice supply took the Canadian NASCAR championship. Sure. I still am going to have to see this to believe it. I'm telling you, it's true. Did he post about it? He did Facebook. Yeah, on Facebook. Go get it.
00:51:53
Speaker
yeah I'm not old enough to be on Facebook. Sorry. That hurt. Oh, my God. to a banger ah Hey, younger than both of us, I'm pretty sure. So why he's on Facebook. That's hilarious. I did not see that one coming. That's good. Yeah. So anyways, it never happened then, Corey.
00:52:24
Speaker
Well, uh, yeah, I love maritime love Lawrence. Great dude. We've got some more stuff rolling up to his neck of the woods as far as steel is concerned, uh, later this year. So he'll be getting a restock of some new stuff. So y'all keep a look. yes Awesome. And if you're at home and you don't have any of these fancy tools, but you're going to smack these bills together with a hammer, you got to go to two bastards, uh, Texas Smithian supplies for all your hammer needs. You need a fat peen in your hand to be wailing on these pieces of Damascus. So go get yourself a great hammer from Frank at Nita over at Two Bastards. They got everything you need. Frank is awesome. You have such a cool dude. Fat peen in your hand. I've met him for the first time at Blade Show, and holy crap, that guy is awesome. What a character. He's a riot. He is a riot. Really enjoyed hanging out with him.
00:53:21
Speaker
I think we're going to have him on in in a while, maybe next month or something. I'll ah hit him up and get him on the show. Yeah, for sure. Nice. Good dude. And good stuff. I love my fat bean. I need a fat bean. I love getting hammers from other hammer makers. And I don't have one of Frank's yet. So Frank, if you're listening, yo, hit me up. I need a hammer. Oh yeah, he's on Facebook. So yeah I wouldn't know.
00:53:50
Speaker
sex keep tellinging him you know You heard about IG.
00:53:57
Speaker
ah oh shit Well, I mean, since we're at it right now, paying some bills here, you know, when you've gone to Lawrence and you beat the shit out of your steel with your fat pee and you got your finished knife and you want to make it all sweet and smooth, you better go and check out Travis hands at Pelican paste and get yourself some hard wax, soft wax, some Pelican oil. And, you know, your hands gonna be all beat up from, you know, all that manly work you're gonna
00:54:28
Speaker
getting that hands off with your fat being too long for me. I love it. Yeah. Take care of your pain mean machine and put some hands all on there and get all that healing goodness. So, uh, and if you're going to go check it out, go to Pelican pace.com and you can use the discount code triple T 10 for 10% off your purchase. Another good dude. yeah Great dude hung out with him at the show too. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And you could always tell where he was because he was always wearing an orange shirt. I know. What was that all about? There's only a handful of people that get a pass for orange for me. And it's Donny Delavige and Travis. So yeah I don't know. It's a Florida thing. I think he's trying to be an orange or something. I don't like Florida or anything. Gator. Oh, maybe it's gross. So Giants. So Jared, that's three sponsors.
00:55:27
Speaker
That is three sponsors. Can you believe that? That three people actually thought it to be a good idea to come in to hang out with us. And how does the show already have three sponsors? I mean, how many episodes have you all done? Like four, five or six now, but yeah, it counts as a total. So yeah, five. So this is a double. Yeah, yeah we're goingnna heart next week. Yeah, that's right. This is episode 22. I can't believe it. Wow. Well, I've loved it from the start. It's a great show. Y'all do great. I appreciate it, man. We appreciate the support, Koy. And I think it's probably a good time to introduce our now fourth sponsor for the Triple T podcast. And we're excited and through the roof to have Koi and the Baker team on board and thank you so much for for the support and we're happy to be teaming up here because we love what you're doing we love the product and that's what we're about is support and
00:56:36
Speaker
Getting hooked up with ah good people that do good things So as I said, I love the show and I'm happy to be a part of it I think I think I listened to the second episode first Because it was the newest one when I jumped on and I went back and listen to the first one and I was from the get-go I was like, yeah, I really like these guys We're gonna have to end up sponsoring that show because these guys are too good. The chemistry is great. It's hilarious I laughed the entire time mostly at Jared, but yeah, so true
00:57:07
Speaker
God, no actual to today geez I'm old, I'm not funny. No, I laugh at him, not with him. Oh, okay. yeah Yeah, come on. What I'm saying, because this is this is the yeah i'm and no illusions. Jared is the entertainment, whether it's on purpose or not. Hi, I'm Dennis Terrell. I do good things. Listen to me in the same voice every time. YouTube.
00:57:37
Speaker
Oh, geez. I may break a little an end of it here, but I did tell, uh, you know, Koi that, you know, I want to introduce him to, uh, Dennis, which he already knows, but I said, Hey, this is my, my business partner, Dennis. He's old. So you may have to speak very loud. you see but yeah And this is an IG when we're typing, but yeah. Yeah. brey no Otherwise on Facebook talking to ourselves.
00:58:10
Speaker
And then I had to name the chat just to make sure I remembered that line. Right. So. Yes. You're good for it, Dennis. Hey, I'm retired now. You can call me old. Yeah, Friday was my last day at the day job.
Dennis's Retirement and New Focus
00:58:28
Speaker
All I did was take my laptop and monitor to the office. And it feels it felt really weird, especially coming back into my office because my whole desk is clear because I don't have the giant monitor and the other computer. um So yeah, that's been weird.
00:58:44
Speaker
had a yeah retirement party yesterday, which Jared was gracious enough to send. what What's. Before we get into this real emotional. wanting I do want to say that the discount code triple t 10 is now live at Baker forging tool. So if yeah you're interested in doing that, ah we highly recommend it and take advantage of that. Um, and again koi. Thank you. We are absolutely Yeah, don't yeah don't use those other podcasts. Uh
00:59:22
Speaker
discount codes, just use others. TTT10. TTT10. Right. There's nothing easier to remember than that. Yeah, so much easier. You could do it on the 10 key. You know, I mean, simple. And if that code if that code is used, then I get to throw in the special gator piss in that order, the stuff that Jared so kindly provided for us when he milked a gator in Florida. It's more potent. It does. It has an extra bit additive of Jared's fear. even That's why Jared really had a smile on his face. The secret ingredient there, tears of Jared. That's right. that That's a good promo. um I can see Bobby. Take that take that picture of Jared and then put the Gator piss underneath. I want to see the milking. I want an update for that picture.
01:00:18
Speaker
if we If we can get an utter on the Gator too, that'd be amazing. Yes. And collab discs with the Gator page on Instagram. Let's do it. ah Yeah. And make sure he has his Pit Viper liftoff. So, you know, flip ups too. Cause that's right. All right. Okay. That's it. All businesses taking care of back to the good stuff here, Dennis. Uh,
01:00:45
Speaker
is retired. Can you fucking believe that? I know, that's great. It just means I get to do what I want now. I can hopefully make some money at the same time and yeah, spend my days making tooling, making knives and yeah. ah Got to, I'll give you the shop update that I have. Finally got to ship out 25 sand shark sanding machines on wednesday Wednesday. Yeah, something like that. Wednesday. Friday, Friday. That was awesome just to get all that crap, get all that stuff out of my shop. I can actually walk around in my shop now. So that was nice. And then got the second batch of 25 should ship out probably Wednesday. Probably I'm shooting for Wednesday. so and then And then back to knives for a while. While more parts are getting created for more sand sharks.
01:01:44
Speaker
I'll be back to knives. So I'm excited about that. Got to some cool on the sand on the sand shark got a quick question. Is ah so do you vision all making these in house for the foreseeable future? Are you going to at any point maybe partner up with a bigger manufacturer to actually produce them for you? what What's the gameplay in that? Yeah, I mean, I'm not looking to be a big conglomerate. So I will for my foreseeable future, I'm probably going to have them still made in house keeps my son with something to do. um So for a while, I'll probably make them I and i mean, you know, ah who knows? I mean, unless demand goes crazy. um Yeah, I'm still thinking we'll make them in house. Gotcha. Got it. And I think I can assemble one in a
01:02:36
Speaker
Just problem. I mean, I haven't got it down to a science ship or probably, and we do them in batches, but if I would have divided it out, I think you can probably make assemble one in 45 minutes. Um, so with the, you know, the profit on those, it's, uh, it gives me something to do. Yeah. And you're going to be, you're going to be looking for that now that you're retired. You got to find something to do. Right. Yeah. But I was, I have my little sales folder in my, on my email system that has all like my commission requests. And I haven't looked in that thing in a long time and there's a lot of commission requests in there. So I think I'm going to be busy for, uh, for quite a while. Now, not all of those will actually pan out into actual commissions, but of those emails, you get a lot of tire kickers. Is it, do you get most people to reach out or kind of solid or.
01:03:32
Speaker
Um, do you always get the tire kickers, right? But this folder is usually like, I've already weeded out the tire kickers. These are people that are interested, want to be on the list. Um, and still some of those are going to fall out. Right. But, um, but they're aware of the price point and that sort of thing. First thing I ask people, what's your budget? Just so they're, you know, we're talking the same game and not, you know, yeah um, but I want gold and I want it for a hundred dollars. Or they just have no concept. Like they were looking at Chinese knives and they, they want those prices, but, but, uh, I had my first knife. I think I'm going, I have one knife that is like seeing one knife build that seems to be my nemesis, which is I've, I've tried to coup my karambit three times and failed all three times.
01:04:27
Speaker
And I made Kuma so many times and I don't know why this build, it's not because of the, it was just random chance that it failed all three times on this build. So, um, are you trying to curve the billet or something to go with it? Or are you just cutting it out of a wider bar? But that's not what I failed at was actually putting a curve in. I just, the first time I just. I think I was on my phone not paying attention, leaked out some copper and it was toast. I think the second time I think I had a weld issue. And then the third one, I don't remember what happened on the third one. Shop goblins got you. Yeah, exactly. This is this is my shop goblin build. That's a real problem. Yeah. So that's that's what's going on in my life. Jared, what about you?
01:05:21
Speaker
I'm lagging out. um I just finished this guy. Yes, I saw it. I am so we'll tell everyone what where well what you're showing us. No. yes Yeah. Great radio right here. Well, for everybody listening, it's Damascus. Yeah, it's a it's a low layer Damascus um chef. I think it started as 11 layers and um but I ground this thing really damn thin. So I think it only I lost a few layers on it, but it's got a couple nice thick bands and I had it um etched out dark um with ah
01:06:06
Speaker
Black yeah I think we use Gator piss and then I sanded that off to show to give a comparison between the dark dark and this low contrast um That ended up with and the customer wanted to roll with that The the low contrast look and I think it looks great. I'm um with how dark the ah the koa handle came out I think you might have the the dark black finish would have Would have been good too. But um yeah, that's I've been working on that one for a while. So coy I'm not the fastest knife maker in the world. And know it's ah it's pretty much a I love to profile knives. But you know, so to get something done and and finished out is it feels really, really, really good. And and this week end was the first time that I was able to get back in the shop since blade.
01:06:56
Speaker
All of this traveling, all of everything I was doing between work and stuff is the first, first weekend I got back. So, um, which is funny because, uh, we installed this, um, AC unit, uh, the Mr. Cool, the, what am I calling it? What's it called? Mini split. Mini split. Yeah. Um, and. Dennis, through all of our great thinking, we put it in. You know, I've I have a pretty large gap under one door that goes out. And anyways, coy it's about to be like hotter than Hades here for the next week or so. I think we're getting up to I think I'm going to see one hundred and eleven for like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. um it's Yeah. So it's it's a smooth like ninety nine right now. Oh, yeah. So this this AC was but it.
01:07:44
Speaker
It was tits. Dennis, there was two like vents in one of the walls in my shop. And I don't know how I didn't see it. I don't know what the fuck they're for to, you know, get something out of there. But Sorry, and there are two vents and I didn't ever realize it, right? So sometimes, I guess when it's 100, the shop wouldn't get that cool. So I turned the lights off and I look back and it's like still daylight in there. And I'm like, dude, what what have I been doing here? So you had had top vents? No, inside the wall. Yeah, no, I know but the top of the top of the wall and and below. There was two of them.
01:08:23
Speaker
And I always say the outside and they're to the outside straight just screened like a like a like a dryer vent cover on the outside don't know what it was about the only reason why I know there was two because I only saw the one and I I filled that one up and turn the light off and I was like Oh, there's another one. Anyways, those things are all taken care of. and And what a difference. It's I don't know. I just want to explain to you guys, if you don't understand, if you're running an AC holes inside of the compartment in which you're doing that let the heat the cool air out, it's not very functional. So you don't say the update. Yeah. Nice. Hey, I was saying I bring the value here, you know. yeah
01:09:07
Speaker
ah boy I don't have the vents on the top but the vents on the bottom are normal I have those but mine are behind a piece of wood and I I don't there's not much heat that comes out of those and those are by California law because it's a garage and they let out um carbon monoxide all that bullshit right because that stuff sinks but I don't have the top ones the ones that like near the ceiling Yeah, I don't, it was, I cannot believe I never saw it. I'm serious. It was like a a real moment. Like, how have I never seen this? You know, so anyways, took care of that. So I was all nice and cool. um And then I wanted to bring up that, since we're talking about, you know,
01:09:50
Speaker
mind blowing new information. You know, I clean the filters on my AC you know unit in the house, too. The AC is working better now, too, here in inside. So again, oh I see. Have you cleaned it from here? Right. Have you cleaned the filters on your Mr. Cool? ah No, you should. I just actually ripped them open. They're pretty good. Oh, OK. Because they they haven't got much use. So I'm never in the shop, right? I'm barely in there. I, in fact, that just reminded me that I need to go up there and just take some compressed air and just blow the dust off them because they, I've heard that if you don't do that, you can actually ruin that unit. Oh, oh yeah. You'll, you'll fuck up the units. Yeah, that's not good. It must be nice to have AC in the shop. Yeah. What is it like with you guys when you guys have that crazy humidity?
01:10:44
Speaker
And the so things running ah as soon as we got back from blade, I threw an window unit into my office. So my office is one of the ones we had added to the building ah when we were moving in. it's It's inside the building, but it's completely sealed off. And I actually did a special type of installation so that it helps soundproof it away from all the loud noise. That way I can actually have phone calls in my office. Right. But. there was no AC in the entire place, even in the office areas, because up here in the mountains, we typically, most people don't have any AC, just because it doesn't really get hot enough around here for people to need them or elevation, you know, whatever. But the radiant heat from the rest of the shop really started affecting the office areas. And I had to throw a window unit in mine because I was dying. But yeah, the rest of the shop, the open shop has no AC. We have a lot of
01:11:37
Speaker
doors. So bay doors and side doors that we open up and we've got giant know four or five foot tall fans that help move the air around. But it gets hot. It gets very, very hot. um There's a thermometer ah thermometer thing, whatever you call them, hanging in the thermostat. There we go. Hanging in the ah forging area. And this last week, it was just hovering around 115 for most of the week. So it gets hot over there. But, um, in my office, it's nice and breezy 67. So, man, i I feel for your guys working in that stuff all day, every day. Uh, I'm running a class like eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th, uh, two different classes actually of July. So in like next week, um, and I've told them like, you know, we're hit and miss, we're going to do this class because if it's a hundred degrees, we're not, and they're Damascus classes.
01:12:34
Speaker
ah when we're not going to be outside all day doing the like we'll be dead. Yeah, well, so it helps when they run the vents over the forages. So in let's start back a little bit again, andoi okay, so originally, the building was a furniture manufacturing place. And so they had an area in there where they would spray their paint, the paint booths, anywhere they sprayed their paint. And so those booths, they have four of them. And those booths have built in ventilation and a pull fan exhaust fan that vents pulls air in and vents it out the top out of the building. And so we when we moved in, we retrofitted those and we put the forges and furnaces in there. And that way it can pull the radiating heat off those and suck it up and pull it out of the building. The only problem is they're really loud.
Unique Climate Challenges
01:13:25
Speaker
And obviously, it's kind of loud in there anyway with all the machines running. But these things are like
01:13:29
Speaker
obnoxiously loud, like even if you're, you know, when you're wearing your headphones, you can't communicate with anybody. So they don't run them all the time. um And if there's a noticeable difference, if they're running it, it gets nice and breezy in there, and it really starts to cool down. But if they turn them off, it starts to heat back up really quick. We don't run them at all in the winter, because they some of itself vents out. But be it helps actually build the heat up in the building. and you see How many months of the year you guys get get that temperature like that? Oh, for it to be really, really hot in there, we'll only have it a couple of months out of the year, pretty much in it July, August and the September, it's already cooling down again. So it's really not that long to have the really hot months.
01:14:11
Speaker
um and you guys are You're in North Carolina now, like how high up in the mountains are you guys get snow or? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So we're so we're in but the shop is in Boone, I live in across the border in Tennessee. We're depending on where you're at anywhere between like 35 and 38,000 or 35 and 3800 feet. So not crazy high, but we'll we get a good winter. I mean, we get a good bit of snow most. We'll probably get a couple storms a year where we'll get, you know, two feet and a couple of storms. And then the rest of it is just, you know, regular five, six inch snows scattered throughout winner so the the Boone weather is really weird though. It's sort of, it's considered technically can be considered a rainforest based on how much rain we get. Um,
01:15:04
Speaker
they don't call it a rainforest, but based on rainfall and precipitation, it could be considered one. And then it's also snowed every month of the year. So it's snowed up here even in August. Really? In the past. Yeah, it's snowed up here every month of the year. Not in them one year. But why I know what you mean. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so our our weather is really weird. But for the most part, it stays very um temperate. It's not very hot. It doesn't get crazy cold like the way up north area, but it's very humid. Lots of humidity.
01:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, man, you were you were you were speaking to me because eventually I want to leave this place. But the the weather here is is really the but kicker. Like humidity is something that I mean, it is. It's literally perfect temperature here, except for this ah like a couple couple months. You know, we get a you know, some hot hot bangers. But I mean, I'm I'm 20 minutes, 30 minutes away from 10, 15, 20 degree cooler. Like it's it's that. Yeah. Yeah, we live 20 minutes apart, and it's usually at least five degrees cooler at my house than it is at Jared's. Yeah. Is that just proximity to... ah What is that in proximity to? Some sort of body of water? a mound range Mountain range. Mountain range. Mountain range. Okay. Yeah, he's over a mountain range, basically. So it's water on there. Gotcha. i mean He's on the desert side. Yeah, basically, yes. It's weird though. i'm i'm I'm right near the water though too. you know i got I have Discovery Bay and the... you know
Exciting Collaborations
01:16:34
Speaker
I mean,
01:16:43
Speaker
i mean don't let it deter you, Jared. It's nice up here. I don't know. man i Those those at that time I spent it with in Florida. Florida is not the same. It's not that's a different. Florida is way further south and way more humidity. There's way more. OK. Oh, yeah, it's not. This is not anything compared to Florida. Or Atlanta. i was Oh, OK. All right. Well, now you're speaking my language, because every time I walked out the goddamn door in Florida, I was like, oof. I literally had to say that, like, ugh. Yeah, you got to sit down. It's terrible. Yeah, I'd love id love to hear Jared's voice when he goes outside and there's snow, because he's a California boy. So. No, like 10 times like ever. But you you don't get like snowed in or anything, you know?
01:17:33
Speaker
It's never incapacitating. So there you go. Come on out. I'm coming. Let's do it. I'm definitely coming, whether I. Oh, good. I'm definitely coming. I just don't know when I got to get this business underway and have have some normality for a while. But yeah, I'm definitely I want to come out and see the shop for sure. And absolutely. And my stepson, like we were chatting about is only five hours from you guys. Right. So yeah I'll probably go out, visit him and then take off and go see you and my wife will fly home or something. And we'd love to have you. If we, yeah, let's plan ahead. We plan ahead. We can maybe work on a project or something while you're here. Cause I know we've been talking about doing us some sort of collab work at some point, and I would love to do that at some point.
Innovations in Damascus Production
01:18:19
Speaker
Yeah. Definitely make some content out of it and we'll have a good time. I'm sure. I prefer you come out this way, Koy, because
01:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't ever, um the furthest I get to you guys is Salt Lake City for Blade West. That's the furthest I get. It's only another 10 hours drive.
01:18:41
Speaker
I fly to Salt Lake. I know. Just keep on rolling. So I'm going to steal Jared's question here. what's what's What's going to be new? What's coming up on the Baker side? but Anything you, can we get a scoop here? So new isn't like new products, I guess. Sure. I mean, so yeah, we're we're still expanding, you know, still growing, got new tooling coming in. And that's mostly to help keep up with stuff that's coming in orders wise, um expanding into new markets, getting the salesman that's all new. So product wise, I've been dabbling with a bunch of stuff for a long while. And the problem is,
01:19:21
Speaker
Most of the testing and evaluation stuff is all done by me because that's where my passion is, is just messing with stuff and doing new things, trying new stuff. And one of those things was the mosaic copper Damascus that we showed some stuff of right before. Awesome. it Awesome. Yep. That was fun. That was fun. It kind of fell apart a little bit because we're having trouble remaking it. ah As soon as we posted it, I knew, I knew we shouldn't have posted about it yet. It was too early. But I was so excited about it. We posted it. We had a company you know reach out, and they put an order in for some. And we made most of the order. And then the shop goblins got in and screwed everything up. And now we're back to square one on that project. but
01:20:07
Speaker
more work on that because there's a lot to be discovered over there. And there's also a lot to be discovered on a kind of spin off of that. And that's doing mosaic work within a canister with powdered elements of powdered steel, and either powdered copper or solid copper components. We've done some in the past, we have successfully made a canister that was solid powder with a 3d print in it and we had solid or just a copper powder. So the copper powder and steel powder and we're able to solidify both at the same time into a homogenous piece. And so that we know it works. And so it's just the application of that into a final product is kind of where we need to go with it. um But we're really excited about that specifically. That's yeah, that's got the
01:20:57
Speaker
The juice is flowing just the powder because i've I've done the 3d print one a couple of times. And it's a cool process. And I want to i i so i I still have this guy on my desk. Oh, yeah, like yep that I plan on doing I just haven't done but putting copper in that mind blowing. I don't think I could get that to I don't have the precision and the machinery that you guys do. But the temperature, yeah temperature control is where it's at with that specifically, because you got to get it. You have to get the copper pretty much melty. I say melty, not melted. But yeah, yeah, yeah it it was a royal pain. And out of the block we did the bottom third wasn't usable and basically the top quarter wasn't usable. So there's a lot of waste to it.
01:21:48
Speaker
um So there's refining that needs to happen on that. But um so that's, that's something we've been delving into. Obviously, we're always coming out with new patterns. A lot of that's inspiration from other people, um other associates that we work with closely guys like Jordan, JB blades, ah Grayson from gray blades, you know, guys like that, who are always shooting attacks to me and going, yo, put this there, switch that around and cut a patterning die to make it look like a circle and boom, you know, they come up with something and and we start working on it. And it almost always comes out looking fantastic. Those guys have a very creative mind for that sort of stuff. And whenever they have an idea, we're able to turn that into their vision kind of into what it would look like. JB came up with Riptide, you know, and that was a hit. And obviously, sometimes they come up with something real stupid and you're like, yeah I get poor all the time. Hey, can you
01:22:47
Speaker
Because I've had people say, hey, make make a mosaic with copper. And I tell them, you can't do that. I'm not you guys. like i And I explain why. like it's not and But they want it they want it in a knife. I'm like, then you'll have copper on the edge, and that's dumb. And I've had people say, well, why don't you layer the copper this way and feather it? And I'm like, again, that'll make a terrible knife. um yeah So have you guys ever played with feathering with copper? That's been, so man, I want that to work so bad, but the copper just cannot stand up to that shearing. It can't do it. And no matter how we've tried, it's it's never worked. So I'm not opposed to trying again, but I'm out of ideas for how to make it work. I think there's just a limitation there that is not going to be easily overcome just due to basic physics. Yeah. What one actually, yeah. i mean
01:23:45
Speaker
if anybody can do the feather, but you guys, but I'm not trying it. That's like so hard. I do want to do a kumai chef knife with an integral bolster because you don't see those very often. So if I can manage to construct a big enough piece of kumai that looks good, that, you know, I'll have to play with that. So I haven't seen. I mean, we could definitely try that. I mean, it's just a matter of getting your ratios right for that. Right. We've done integral billets in the past, we always just put the copper in the bolster though, because that's easy, because you can just weld the bolsters on. But welding the bolsters on to a bar that's got copper in it, you've got ratio problems, because you don't, you got to make sure your clattiness remains thick enough through all the stages of grinding to put the bolsters on. um Yeah, anyway I would start with really thick material, probably thicker copper, not crush the bolster as much and then
01:24:45
Speaker
like oh draw home the rest I would do it that way. But I'm talking to me for one billet, not you guys doing production. So when we started down the whole integral route, the reason we do forge welded bolsters is because we had a lot of trouble trying to draw it out of a block because we started there because that was kind of our initial thought was start with a thick block and we just you know, pinch out the blade portion in the handle portion. um once you get to a certain spot, though, the pressure on the thin piece versus your thick piece makes it want to pop in that radius. Oh, interesting. We kept popping over and over. And so we kind of abandoned that we didn't spend a ton of time working on it. We just were like, you know what, welding the bolsters on is so much easier. We just moved to that. So not saying it can't work, but we struggled with it. didn't Like the pressure of that radius for some reason. Yeah.
01:25:40
Speaker
Mine. The next k nut I got a crack is that stainless Damascus. That's the, I'm going to, I'll be, I'll be working on that one again. Hopefully soon. We'll see. That's something that's on my list. Um, I need another furnace for it. Cause we know I don't have room to play with it right now, but, uh, I've got my Argon set up with my tubes and my cans and everything. So they're a recording problem.
01:26:09
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. i'm I'm fine. He's gone. It's like, anyways, he he's like, there we go. Yeah, I can hear you. I was talking nothing but good things about you, Dennis. I swear. I didn't think anything bad. Yeah. Okay. Right on. So. All right. Well, well, Dennis fixes his computer. Yeah. that was weird Back. Oh, My, my stupid computer accidentally hit the Siri button on my, on my Mac book. And then I guess it was trying to record my voice and I can't hear you guys anymore. I was like, what the fuck? Sorry. I missed the last 10 seconds. What were you guys saying? That was, I said, we didn't say anything bad about you. Not one liar. It was all kisses and butterflies.
01:27:05
Speaker
Yep. I was like, I'm so happy he's retired. I can't wait to see what he's going to do. Like, he so deserves this. Like, I mean, you know, it's. Yeah. That's when you poured out all the emotion. Yeah. Sorry. It never happened again. No.
01:27:22
Speaker
ah Oh, man. Yeah. I don't know what the, what we were. um New. Oh, I was talking about the stainless because you mentioned stainless. the amount yeah That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I spent some time talking with, um, Well, the artificial what's his will bring him. Yeah, yeah, I did too. Yeah. He's a wealth of knowledge that dude, genius. um Yeah, that's something I'm definitely going to dive into. And of course, we're going to try to put copper in there somehow. Don't don't ask me how I don't even know. But um we're gonna start with just stainless Damascus, because there's a huge portion of the knife market who strictly use stainless steel, and won't touch carbon steel for obvious reasons. Everybody knows why.
01:28:05
Speaker
And so we kind of want to tap into that and easy way to do that is to make stainless Damascus. Although it's not very easy to make. It's kind of painful and laborious. But I think what you guys once you guys figure it out, so you guys don't use any kind of nitrogen purge or anything like that in your ovens today, right? You don't do any of that. No, no. Yeah, no, but we will obviously with stainless. I'm going to start with just doing them by the billet, you know, with a welded tube to a tank, doing them per bar, but we'll eventually for production have to purge an entire furnace of some sort. We'll actually probably move to a hot press furnace um that does all the pressing and heating all at once does all the fusion. Cool.
01:28:50
Speaker
I was going to say, yeah what do you do when you pull it out? Then it's immediately oxidizes in your screen, but I see what you mean by. Yeah. Interesting. Have you ever seen those machines? No. Oh, they're super cool. They're built for more like the aerospace and medical industry for fusing parts together when they need zero, super high tolerance and they need zero change to the surface of the material. No no oxidation or scale. Right. And so. And this company I've been talking to on and off for the last year, they custom build them to whatever you need it to be set up for. But basically, it's ah it's a heated chamber kind of like a kiln. And it has a RAM top and bottom ah that has is has as a hydraulic press basically. And you can program it to press at a certain time in the schedule or at a certain pressure. So basically, you would load a bunch of billets into this into the plates. And the press would
01:29:47
Speaker
put tension on them, it would heat the box. You can purge the box of air with a vacuum or nitrogen or both, argon, you know all that, and increase the pressure as they heat up to whatever temp you run. And you program this all into a cycle like you would a kiln. And so you basically just stick all your steel in there, hit go, and it presses it, heats it up, diffusion bonds, everything, and then opens up, cools down, and is done. What is that thing worth? The base model starts at a half million. I was going to say it's got to be something like that. Yeah. They're expensive and they're huge. They take up a lot of space. There's a lot of complex stuff with bells and I don't even know engineering stuff. Um, but they, once you have it set up to run, that would be massive step in the right direction for production, anything. Copper related or stainless. You could do regular Damascus in it too. Um,
01:30:48
Speaker
though I were they were trying to sell me on ah on a newer version where the heating elements didn't come from elements inside the furnace. It came through the electrical, feet they call it basically how you have your your like a coil for an induction forge. It's like an induction force, except that induction comes through the Rams of the press and induction heats up what's between them. And make so, much more stuff yeah yeah. So, and they're, they said there's cycle time for that to heat up diffusion bond and come down one hour for whatever you can fit in there. It was one hour to bring it from cold room temp. You put it in there to cold enough for you to take it back out and it not oxidize.
01:31:34
Speaker
So that would be incredibly efficient for running batch work, but I just have to find a half million dollars actually more. Cause I wouldn't want the base model. Yeah.
Teaching and Craftsmanship Highlights
01:31:47
Speaker
Uh, that'd be awesome. I mean, to see, to, to see you guys go to that level. Um, I know we're, we're all rooting for you because, uh, I mean, like damasteel is I think the only, you know, production. stainless out there and, you know, it's, I'd love to see an American company, uh, you know, go for it. Um, and I think it would be wildly popular as, you know, as popular as your copper, um, steels have been, I think it would be crazy that then and the commercial aspect to that as well. Yes. Well, then you could do anything in it. You can do powdered stainless, you could do titanium.
01:32:32
Speaker
You could do these materials to copper. you know yeah would yeah It would just be a matter of going, what temperature does it need to be? All right, that's it. Because there's in zero oxygen. And you can put a vacuum on it, which really increases your chances. Now you don't have to heat it up so hot. The higher the vacuum, the lower the temp you need to burn it at. so You're a mad scientist.
01:32:55
Speaker
Not yet. Down the road. He's mad. yeah yeah i Definitely mad. i'll do I'll do my part for that that half million plus. I'll go back to Florida and do. Do a special ah batch of Gator piss again for you. Yeah, my man. That's right. We we want the special stuff. The right hand, the hand and melted milk milked and milk fear based. Yes. ah why I still say you should have ah a gator petting area at Blade next year. Have a little corral with a gator in there. You know, I don't I don't think the blade show is excellent. No, that gets kicked out.
01:33:37
Speaker
This is one of those permission versus, uh, you know, forgiveness forgiveness. We are going to do some more with the Gator piss stuff at the show next year. We're actually going to be teaching, uh, one of the classes in the classroom. Totally. Yeah. You guys should totally do that. Yeah. Yeah. We already, we reached out to them right after we got back and we're like, Hey, what do you think about, well, I didn't even know how to approach them for doing that because I'm not in that circle with the blade show people. So we just sent them an email. And they responded like, hell yeah, that sounds like an amazing idea. Let's, let's set it up. So that's cool. We'll have a class at Atlanta next year. no ah The, the number of blade shows I've been to, I've never got around to taking a class even once. I'm too yeah busy wandering around the show, but yeah like go to the out one if you guys have it.
01:34:29
Speaker
I walked into a random one one year. I don't remember what show it was that just because I wanted to, I was looking for Steve Swarzer's class. He was teaching something on Damascus. And I was like, Oh, I got to swing in and see what he's talking about. And I walked into one where they were teaching sharpening and felt awkward because I stepped in and everybody kind of looked, you know, turned around and I was like, Oh shit. And so I just sat down bored. bored me to death for four minutes. And then I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna slip out like because this is so boring. I agreed. Don't you have to pay for those classes? ah Yeah, i i I didn't pay. I was just looking, I was just gonna peek into Steve's. There wasn't anybody standing there. Yeah, I honestly have never, you know, theres there's always one that I want to go to. But yeah, saying never, I never get my ass in gear enough to
01:35:23
Speaker
yeah You know, put it on a calendar and actually go. I'm like talking to someone at the table or something. Yeah, same. ah I rarely, I don't go in there. Just too much going on. Well, speaking of talking about people, Jared, let's do the the maker spotlight. Who you got this week? Sure. I have a gentleman.
01:35:49
Speaker
What?
01:35:52
Speaker
Oh, no, I'm having to go ahead. Do yours. That was weird. I hit the link and it told me I need to be 21 and older to see it. The first time I've ever seen that. Wrong website, Jared. Yeah, exactly. you see spot like Trying to shake things up here. Oh, boy. um I am going to talk about Strickland knives. This is Alex Strickland. He is a journeyman. He's actually a full-time welding instructor. um what That's what his bio says. But if you go to Strickland Knives, ah he's doing some just some crazy Damascus. um so ah beautiful ah the His third post-in is just this beautiful explosion.
01:36:42
Speaker
um Seems like an explosion to me. But um just just some really nice Damascus work. i see He's working on a Quillen dagger, a few posts down some some really nice work. And then I looked up and he's got 610 followers. I'm like, how is this possible? Looking at this guy's work. um Just really, really nice stuff. So yeah, go check out Alex Strickland at Strickland knives. And um yeah, give him a follow. Check him out. Yeah, he's got some phenomenal Damascus. Yeah.
01:37:19
Speaker
And like down further down, he's got a clamshell. I think it's a guard. Just some really nice work. So good job, Alex. We're loving it. Yeah. That's amazing to me how.
01:37:36
Speaker
how that works. um I have a Rocco handmade knives, Brian Narrochi. um And I picked this guy Dennis, I want you to look through his stuff here. And it does not speak Jared likes, right?
01:37:59
Speaker
No, it don't handle right. OK, you can't. It does not. But I saw this this this hunter and this hatchet with the with the antler and the the animal material combo. I think that's fucking awesome.
Balancing Art and Business
01:38:15
Speaker
and And it seems to be a theme that he's got going on on some of the stuff. So I have found an antler type of bone and Jared. And I and I really, really like it. So um I was like, I have to bring this up. ah And he's got ah three thousand seven hundred and fifty eight followers. And it is Rocco R.O.C.C.O handmade on I.G. Make sure you go check him out and show him some love. Yeah, I see. I see a bunch of his knives where he uses um the part of the antler where like two tines
01:38:53
Speaker
kind of separate and he uses that as the the butt of the knife, which I think is really cool. Because I've seen guys try to use that section as, you know, and it's just sometimes it's just too thin and it looks goofy, but the way he's done it is using that as the butt and then the rest of the handle is some other, like whether it's G10 or synthetic or whatever it is, like, yeah, that's a great use of of of that material. Yeah, I'm I'm digging it. And now generally not not not my favorite thing in the world. But I was like, this that's really cool. So I thought I'd give him a shout out. And yeah, I was not following Brian. So now I am b Brian Naraki. Rocco handmade. Cool. Nice.
01:39:41
Speaker
All right. And then I guess the last business here um is your triple T. So how did that go? I didn't watch it. Little finger. No, saw that at the notes, by the way, if I'm nothing, I'm honest, buddy. So I had to make sure we talked about it plenty. So yeah, the it so I'm I'm I'm redoing. I'm telling this for Koi, but I'm redoing this intermediate series. where I take people through like in depth, step by step, how to do a hidden Tang, that when a guard and, and I've done this intermediate series before, but I thought I would refresh it and go through it again. And I'm making a, um, a buoy. Um, but I thought I would differentially, differentially heat treat it. Um, and, uh, of all of the issues or of the times that I've had a crack on a knife,
01:40:38
Speaker
95% of those are from a differential heat treat, just because the stress on the blade is different than the spine, and that's where you can get cracks. Sure enough, um came out with a beautiful hormone, really nice, lots of action in it, but had a crack that was halfway up the blade, halfway down the blade. So ah yeah. Can't use a nail. No, it's garbage. Now I gotta redo that. i'm gonna I'm going to, you know, keep that video, put it up as a fail. This is what happened. You know, this is, you know, how not to do this. Yeah. Hey, that's my job. Yeah. yeah And now I got to like make the knife and get up to that point for this week's video. So I'm going to be busy along with doing these sand sharks. But, uh, yeah, differential heat treats can be a finicky bitch.
01:41:32
Speaker
So how, how are you going to fit all that in with a job and everything? That sounds like a lot to do. Oh, that's right. That's right. baby hi Damn. I guess the koi and I'll just go to work tomorrow. I mean, fuck it. I guess and not yeah back to it. hey his His work is the same as mine. It's playing with stuff that he loves. So I'm sure there' that there's work involved too, but you know, my My job is so much more office work now and I never envisioned it heading that direction. And just one day I woke up and i was like, i'll shoot, I'm going to go walk into the office and then I'm going to walk out the office at the end of the day. And I'm not even going to touch a hot piece of steel because that's my life now. Not every day, but still, you know, I started this making everything day in, day out and being on the shop floor in the heat, touching every piece.
01:42:26
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, as things grew, things changed and that's sad sometimes, but you're, you're the big boss head, honcho, man. You got the business stuff to do now. The business side is really like, that's, that's really what I love to do. I love the business side of things. Um, I love for it. And I think that's why you guys are so successful because let's face it. Most of the makers suck at the business side and that's why they have the most problems. Um, right and I am certainly not immune to that. So that's where I'm going to have to invest some time on the business side. Yeah. It's, it's a totally different beast. You know, a lot of these um people that get into this on more of the art side, you know, as a craft and it is, you very much need that artistic mindset when you're creating stuff like this, but.
01:43:17
Speaker
Artistic mindset that gets you nowhere in business. starving our Starving artists. That's right. And stepped on. Passed up all those good things. Yeah, that's one thing I love to do is I love talking business with knife makers and um because getting the vision for their side of things, you know, because we supply knife makers, but, you know, the business looks different from them on their part of, you know, their side of the equation, their side of the table. And I don't know, I leave live and breathe business. So that's my jam.
Baker Forge's Social Media App
01:43:50
Speaker
Nice. That's good.
01:43:52
Speaker
All right, man. Hey, we got, Coa, you got anything else? where Where can people find you? Let's let's do all the socials. Everywhere but Facebook, apparently. No. ah Baker Forger tool on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you know, Whelan posts all those. um getting Getting a lot of traction over on X, the the old Twitter or the new Twitter, I guess. There's a nice knife maker community growing over there. um Definitely a very different platform than I think most people are used to. But um also on YouTube, bigger foraging tool over there. We're going to be trying to do more content over there. But as I'm sure Dennis knows, long form content takes a lot of time.
01:44:36
Speaker
and I don't like doing, I don't like sitting in front of a camera that much. You know, it's amazing when you're when you're having a good time and you're talking and we're having this this great conversation and everything. and And again, this is why I do the notes, Dennis, and and one note that I failed to put on here and something that I um I need to hear a little bit about Koi is the the Baker Forge and tools social media app. Oh, yeah I mean, that that that is something that I think Koi give us the quick rundown on that. um Yeah, absolutely. We can get so people if they're not already getting it. How can they get started? What what it's about? What it what it can do? OK, so first off, it is available on Apple and Google Play stores.
01:45:24
Speaker
um We launched the app multiple for multiple reasons, ah one of which we saw, we've been working on it quite a while. um Initially, the first reasoning was we wanted to diversify our marketing and not rely so dependently on the social medias, whether that be Instagram or Facebook or whatever. um Obviously, those platforms are getting more and more fickle as time goes on. with people who like to make short, stabby things. And so we wanted to diversify ourselves a little bit and have a place to be able to reach our customers directly without having to rely on third-party apps. And so as we were developing that, then came along the whole concept of, well, what if we just took this a little bit further and we actually created a community side to the app. So it's not just a place to buy the steel, but it's also a place where
01:46:14
Speaker
We can have groups. You can have a social media component to it where people can post their work. And we, of course, since we own it, we can say, hey, you post whatever you want as far as knife related stuff. You know, we're not going to censor anything. We can set up the quote unquote algorithm however we want. There is no algorithm. It's just timeline. So newest stuff at the top, oldest stuff at the bottom. that's how you Instagram used to be, but we added that into it and we started really liking how it was looking. And so that really became more of the driving force because the market really seemed to need that. they needed needed
01:46:48
Speaker
the knife makers were looking for a place to go. Now not to say ours is the end all be all. um And it's of course it's a new app. So there's limitations. It's not as full of cool little gadgets as Instagram is but it is not censored. It is free to download. And when you get in there, you can click on the social And you can create your own company page on the app. And you can rep all your of your own stuff. You can join other groups and post your stuff in those groups. And it's free and open to use. No censorship, no algorithm that's going to bury your stuff. um The launch went really, really well. We had thousands and thousands of people download it and jumping on it and groups created and whatnot. Quickly found some bugs that we needed to work on our system.
01:47:36
Speaker
We're not programmers by any means. I had, of course, people helping to build that back end. But there's, of course, bugs that need to be worked out. So um still working through a couple of those. Most of them have been ironed out already, but they've had ah an a weird issue with the notifications. Notifications went haywire on us and a bunch of people were getting notifications about people joining groups that they were not associated with, but they would still get a notification. Anyway, most of it's all been fixed up. You talk in my language, software, bugs. Right. Yeah, exactly. You i you know way more about it than I do. I'm tech illiterate. So yeah, it was it was it was really good. you know it's It's an easy place for people to buy the steel. It's so much easier to use. The feedback we got on that aspect particularly was,
01:48:26
Speaker
It's way too easy to buy your steel now. It's dangerous now. You just click on it and before you know it, what ah you already paid for it. It's already paid it's already in there. It's a much cleaner process than the website, which is a clean process already, but it's still, it's just so much faster and easier on its own app. um And it's very easy for knife makers to pull up if they're, let's say they're standing at a show, and they're talking, you know, they use our material, and they're talking to a customer about a custom build, or even if they're online, they need a screenshot of a particular type of steel that they're trying to sell their customer on. That was something we had a little bit of, but we were getting feedback on from people was, hey, we want to showcase a certain pattern, but I can't find on the website, I don't remember what the name was.
01:49:12
Speaker
But it's really easy to do that in the app because it's all in there. It's all intuitive and fluid. So it's a lot easier for people who are quoting jobs using our material to just pull up the app and go boom, there it is and show it to the customer. So anyway, yeah, that's kind of the short and dirty on the app, the Baker app. Well, while we've been talking, I actually finally downloaded it. Uh, I've been procrastinating on that. So I'm in, I mean, there you go. you Right on. Welcome, Dennis. we we We welcome you. Yeah. Now the 1500th way to get a hold of me, it feels like. Right. So people, you can go on now and you can find Dennis's channel and his his page over on the Baker app. and yeah yeah There'll be a triple T set up there here. An echo blades. And then that's all you need. So yeah buy some skill and go check our shit out. That's right.
01:50:12
Speaker
yeah Yep, we still do have the group set for manual approval. So we do have to, on our end, approve the groups before they're officially launched. We set that up just because we weren't sure how many weird groups people were going to try to create or like spammers and stuff that are not being a lot, but that's still probably a good idea. Yeah. Yeah.
Conclusion and Future Projects
01:50:33
Speaker
We wanted to weed out the packy guys. So yeah, for sure. Yeah. Cool, man. Well. Uh, I think this is our longest podcast to date, Jared. There's no thinking about it. This is the one you waited all this kind number 22 to bring our boy coy on and break records. That's right. What did we hit? I don't see a clock on this end. Uh, an hour and 50 minutes. Oh, that's a long one. Yeah. Dig in guys. You almost could break it up into two parts. I know, but we're not gonna.
01:51:10
Speaker
It's been so great having you on Koi. And of course, thank you so much for joining us as a sponsor. We'll be looking forward to talking about your stuff. And yeah, let us know if there's new new stuff you want to talk about or you want us to talk about it. And yeah, for sure. Keep the chat going. Yeah, absolutely. Remember to speak loud. Okay. Yep. Speak loud. Got it. Hype loud, too.
01:51:38
Speaker
Always good to talk to you, buddy. Yeah. Likewise. Likewise. You're all the best. Thank you so much for having me on. All right. That's it, folks. Thanks.
01:52:04
Speaker
and That's a wrap.