If I ever thought I could make things happen in a timely fashion, then I was a fool.  Today I picked up 40 tomahawks from the local CNC shop.  A 3 axis machining center cut the majority of material away from the axe edges, mohawk edges, and the underhook edges on my full sized tomahawks.  Now, I have a bunch of deburring, finish grinding, and other various finishing processes to do before I can send the tomahawks out for heat treatment in Raliegh.

The reason I feel like I’m behind schedule is I thought that while these tomahawks were at the machine shop, I’d have time to do all the grinding on other blades, so that I could send out two batches for heat treatment.   Now that I have so much steel in hand at one time, it’s looking like it will be more efficient to have all of them processed in one batch.

Although it’s been a long time coming, I think that it shouldn’t take too much longer to get the final details squared away.  Having lost a few weeks to back problems, family gathering events, and yard work, I have some semi-valid excuses, but now I’m very motivated to put myself in high gear and get a lot of stuff done faster than usual.

Blade show is coming up soon, and a business associate has asked me to make some sheaths for one of his speculative field knife designs.  They say if you want something done quick, give the job to a busy person.  I have an apprentice who will likely do most of the manual labor for that project, so if he can hold his own (operating oven, press and bandsaw) then I shouldn’t be taken away from my other work except to supervise.

I tried to make a shop status video today with a “point of view” camera instead of the reliable Canon, and I wasn’t impressed with the quality, so I didn’t upload it.  Perhaps I’ll wait to make another video until I have news that things are actually ready for heat treat, and new blanks are being cut from new steel.  (still an item at the top of the agenda, but put on hold because of a few minor details of a few new designs)

There is so much other news going on around the world that my small production seems pretty insignificant.  I wish there was a way to make more of an impact on people, and help individuals understand that their freedom matters more than the trends of the day.  America is about Life, Liberty and Property.  Since there is a presidential race about to commence, I’m sure we’ll all get a little more political in our thought processes.  I hope that a candidates possessing sound logic and sympathy for those of all walks of life will come to be our next commander in chief.   So far, I’m looking at Ben Carson and Rand Paul.