Howdy folks,

It’s been a while since my surgery, and although I’m still wearing a sling most of the time, I AM able to get around, do some lighter shop tasks, sleep comfortably, and work at the computer without any trouble.

My helper who was going to assist with some sheath making caught a nasty bacterial infection, and pink eye, so I’ve made sure he’s stayed away instead of bringing his germs around here.  I hope he’ll be well enough to help out in another week, and since I procrastinated on a few orders that I had expected to finish up with him, I’ll have to get them done on my own over the weekend.

I’m missing the Blade show in Atlanta this weekend, so I hope all goes well down there for my friends and competitors.  It’s always fun to attend that show to see what folks are coming up with, and to talk to people who are really passionate about both the art and craftsmanship of knife making.  Since there were a lot of physical challenges for me this year, I didn’t get enough work done to warrant going to the show, but I expect to register for a table next year because I’m sure to have more complete and refined product line by that time.  All of the experimentation and design work up to this point has taught me a lot, and I think I know which designs I want to make, so I’ll be focusing on increasing production of those tools, and mix a few new things in now and then.

There are still a lot of shop/tool improvements I need to make before I can really go gangbusters with production tasks (after my shoulder is back to full capacity), so I’ll be getting more serious about putting effort (at the computer) into manufacturing engineering during the hottest part of the summer.

I plan to ship 3 Kodiak Lt swords to a few guys this next week, and then I’ll make a new status report video for the youtube/sressentials channel.

Until next time, Watch out for Murphy.

Jared