3/28/19

This year started out nice. Then I went to Las Vegas for the Shot show, picked up a terrible sickness and basically set myself back an entire month. I just poked around feeling miserable, and then about a week after I was feeling pretty good, I picked up another cold that lasted another few weeks. Finally, I’m feeling back to normal and putting in good long days of work in the shop, around the house, and getting into other messes now and then.

The progress regarding tomahawk manufacturing is much, much slower than I anticipated, partially due to cash flow for the necessary tooling and such, but also because of the learning curve both for the Computer aided machining side of things, and the actual machine interface in the shop. the ONG Fanuc control was designed a long time ago, and it’s not as simple as operating a windows PC. I’m going to need another lesson from my friend Nathan (who sold me the machine) before I can really get to making chips. I haven’t even figured out how to make the tool changer move which is necessary for loading tools and setting up a program.

So, the next couple of weeks, (while I wait for Nathan to find a free day to drive up to help me) I’ll shift my focus onto the knives I have already heat treated, as well as the finishing touches on the CAM programs, final prep of the machine so it’s ready to get to work, and some organization of workstations and design of new sheath jigs for use with the vacuum forming table I built.

Design work for some new projects is also something I’d like to dedicate some time to, but I’m committed to cranking out a good batch of Tomahawks first.

I am continually amazed how much longer projects take compared to what I initially expect them to. All the while, the list of new projects grows, while old, half finished ones get shoved aside. At least this morning, I decided to get out of bed when I couldn’t sleep instead of laying there non-productively.

There’s a new video on the youtube channel with my friend/apprentice Tom. The next video will come on saturday night after we have a good work day. I’ll introduce him a little bit and we’ll try to explain what the plans are for the next few months, and perhaps years to come.

Thanks for reading this, I plan to make lots of progress and actually launch the webstore one of these days. Computer work really sucks the life out of me, so I’ve been procrastinating.