Greetings!

I returned home from vacation (visiting friends and family in Oregon, Nevada and Arizona) in the wee small hours on last Thursday morning (the 15th).  On Friday morning, I took all of the new 1095 blade blanks to the heat treater to be annealed.  When they are done this week, I’ll work in some straightening and flat sanding as other work commences.

Other than the trip to the heat treater, since I returned home, I’ve been doing yard work non-stop around the family estate in order to earn my room and board.  There were two pine trees that needed to be cut down, 3 acres of yard to mow, an old garden shed to wreck, and garden beds to cut down/weed.  Now that things look reasonably presentable (at least until next weekend), I am ready to head back into the shop, and get some real work under way.

Tasks for this week are: setting up the mill to machine tomahawks, starting machining work; getting heat treated blades ready for cerakoting; organizing sheath jigs and designing some new ones for the “Murder 2” sword and other new blade designs.

Our little Romaxx CNC router needs to be retrofitted so its dust collection system is more effective, and its new aluminum t-slot table needs to be installed so the whole machine is more versatile for mounting both sheet goods and small parts in either a vise or rotary axis chuck. This is a medium sized project that will require some thought and precision, so I will peck away at it as I get other things done.  I must get the CNC back in action before too long though, so I can make new handle scales, sheath jigs, and other things.

There are also quite a few emails I need to respond to that I haven’t gotten to while on vacation.  Folks with deposits in will be getting my first priority work, and as I clear out my to-do list, I’ll be figuring out a work and cash flow strategy for the upcoming year, as well as taking pictures of the outgoing pieces so the website can be updated properly.

My sister is probably going to squirt out her first baby this week, so that event may take me away from the shop if I am needed for any reason.

I plan to make a status report video by the end of the week, and also I will try to get some new product test videos shot or at least planned.

Cheers

Jared