P&S ModCast 425 - Dauntless Manufacturing - Primary & Secondary Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And we are live. Literally, we just linked up, made
sure audio works, videos working. We haven't even said anything yet,
so we're truly going to have some there's going to
be real intro stuff going on. Well, I guess I
should start out by saying, welcome to podcast. Today's date

(00:24):
is April, was it ninth or eighth? Whatever? It is?
Twenty twenty five. The episode number is four twenty five.
The topic Dauntless Manufacturing. You're not familiar with these guys,
cool designs, well made knives, some really cool collaborations being produced.

(00:49):
And also there happened to be a couple new designs
just on the cusp of being released really soon. That
seem to be if I were to say, I think
they're kind of on the op ends of the spectrum
when it comes to purpose. There's a booie knife. Yeah,
that's how I've been taught how it's pronounced.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Man, what a good looking knife. Yeah, I've grown up, yes,
grown up seeing these going that's a good good looking knife.
But yeah, also like a fighting dagger, Yeah, which I.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Would I have. I should have had it sitting on
my desk, but yeah, we have. It's a that's a
really great one because it's inspired by the V forty two,
the First Special Services Force from World War Two. Yeah,
it's just a rad story and I'm sure everyone listening
to this has at least touched on that in history class. Ye,

(01:46):
if you could just tie in all of the cool
people in World War Two that had to do with
like Shanghai Police Department and municipal police and all the
hand to hand fighting development that happened during World War
Two and the Special Services in the OSS, they all
like connect somehow to the First Special Services Force And

(02:11):
it's such a cool design and it's got so much
history to it. So yeah, I'm excited about that one.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Then going a step back, and then you had, I
want to say, was it a Japanese inspired design?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, so we have the musashi, Yeah, which is so
the Japanese pattern. Quaken has been around for literally hundreds
of years, and we were sitting around, going, we should
make a quaken, and we should make it how we
would think the modern interpretation purely based on the application

(02:53):
because it was supposed to be a concealable tool back
in the day, and and we went for it and
it turned out so nice. It's a really cool hidden
tang design that holds onto a lot of the shape
and the style, and then it's got some really interesting
modern touches to it. Obviously the materials, but then also

(03:16):
a reinforced tip on it which looks really great and
it's super functional too, so it's a really cool We
even went it so far as the original sheath or
sea would have been specifically made to tuck into the waistline,
and so we went with a center line sheath that
would tuck into the appendix area just the same way.

(03:38):
So it was a really cool in our opinion, we
take what historically is important about a blade and try
and hold on to that as much as possible and
create a really great usable tool. So I love the
Musashi and of course Book of Five Rings. If you're
well read, you should definitely read that as well. And
so Mayamoto Musashi is a guy that I've read going back,

(04:01):
I don't know, probably twenty years, and so it was
a it was an easy choice on the name and
I love it.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
And then a step back from there was was that
the Moss then or the Harris.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So the Moss is the small DC and that one's
a really nice looking design as well. I should have
had all of these sitting in front of me that way.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
And people have the internets.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, right, But the Moss is a really great DC
that fits a lot of times. In our opinion, EDC
knives start shrinking, especially fixed blades, they get smaller and smaller,
and that includes the handle and then all of us
guys who want to hold onto a whole knife get
left in the dark. And so the the Moss is

(04:47):
a super usable, relatively small blade at about two and
a half inches, but with a full four finger grip,
and it's got some really classic lines to it that
are really great. So yeah, the got a couple of
different blade styles and a bunch of different handles, and
that one's a really cool U E.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
D C.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
But really a wide range of usage usages on that one.
But it's that one's a great one. I've been carrying
one of those for months. I can carry anything I want,
and so I end up finding what I really really
like in our line and go from there.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, and then was the Harris.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Harris isn't the Harris isn't new?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (05:30):
A good friend of ours, retired Delta guy now FBI
William Harris is a really he's a really good friend
of ours and we've known him for years, and he
also is a hell of a backcountry hunter. He's a
hell of a hunter in any regard really, and he said,
you know what, you should really make the best hunting knife.

(05:51):
And I thought it was probably more hilarious that, you know,
we had a guy that had uh I know, he
was in the army for more than twenty years and
seventeen years on delta and he's talking about a hunting
knife and that, yea irony is funny to me because
everybody there's so many designs that come out of the

(06:13):
Special Forces and they want something very specific and this
was not it. It's really cool though, because it's got
a a really good history on that blade too, being
a Nesmak design that really has tons of history going
back even tied into like the founder of the Boy
Scouts and so on and so forth. So really cool
design there too.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
And at some point there's the Hiker.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yep, there's the hiker. Hiker's my design.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
There's beIN too.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
So the hiker isn't super thin. It's three sixteenths of
an inch. The original Hiker was quite a bit smaller. Okay, yeah,
but the current Hiker is is I don't know how
to explain it. It's a really it's got a modern
take on the custom knife industry. My design language tends

(07:08):
to be a little bit more brutalist than other people.
So you'll see, like the Moss that was designed by
Chris Moss, the other half a dauntless and he's got
a great eye from beautiful flowing lines. And then you
look at mine and my designs tend to be kind
of blocky and inorganic, and people tend to love them

(07:29):
or hate them. But we've got a lot of people
who love them, so I'm I'm happy to be here
with it.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, yeah, okay, so I have to look at my
internets here. You also have matt Helm work Knives.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yes, so we actually have how many designs we have
through Matt.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Is it four?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (07:49):
No, work knives?

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Therefore the work Knives, there's four. So our original design
with matt was the Persian, which which production.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Runs of, which is my favorites inside a cool knife.
But then our second design with matt Helm was the
work Knife, and at the time it was thought of
as a standalone product, and then soon after we got
into it he's made a whole bunch of different blade
styles with the same basic handle, and we thought, well,

(08:19):
I mean, if people are loving them and they're great knives,
then we should expand into the rest of the line.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
And so we have the V one, which is the
normal work knife that's got a nice warm cliff blade
on it, the V two, which has a little bit
of a modified spear point almost it's a non traditional
blade shape, but it works beautifully, then the V three,
which has a swept Persian style, and V four, which
is a really aggressive tonto. So we've got four different

(08:51):
versions of those, plus the original Persian which is a
little bigger, and then his two other designs of the
dog Bone and the dog Bone K. So lots of
stuff there.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah. Yeah, So I don't know how many of your
guys's knives I have. I do know for a fact,
I have a work knife V one with an orange handle,
orange sheath. Specifically, I keep that in my work truck. Yeah,
that's an awesome utility blade. But also I have to
I had to get I don't know if I have

(09:25):
one or two of the V three's because the Persian
is so cool. I want to I just want to
I want a whittle or something with it. And I
also have one of the original Persians, but Hiker, yeah,
I have, I have Harris, I have several. And the
problem that I find is as a as a police officer,

(09:51):
as a gun guy, I see these, I get them,
and then I go, okay, now what I have them?
These are cool. I want to get. I want get
I want to get instruction on how to maximize their
uses and also how to figure out what works with
what tasks best.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Right right? Have you read through our blogs?

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I haven't, and I understand you guys have been. That's
now been much more active recently, I've been.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Trying to do. I'm not much on marketing and so
little history. Chris and I are both career machinists. I
came up through the Department of Defense. I was a
DoD civilian for a while. Chris got his journeyman card
working at NASA in Virginia, and so we come from

(10:40):
very technical manufacturing side of things. And so to me,
I want to make an awesome product, and I wanted
that to be enough, and then so then it really
you have to market things. And so I'm pressed into
this role where I'm marketing more and more and doing
less and less, machining and making and h and less

(11:04):
and less designing even as we grow, and it's an
important thing to do. But so as I learn, especially
on how to add stuff to or add value to
our product through the content that we put on our website,
specifically the blog and the knowledge base, it's something that
I can contribute. But it's a it's a learning curve

(11:26):
and I slowly, slowly, I'm getting through and understanding how
to tie it all together.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah. Yeah, Well for me, I see the cliff coming
out or is out it is out yep. And then
also the dagger coming out that's going to be see.
Oh I see those and go I just want them.
I just want them because they're so good looking, they're
such good knives.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
And then in June we also have the surgeon, which
is our ADC scalpel. Have you seen that?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
And it looks like you just got one out. Yeah,
so this is a really cool one.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
This one's the ringed version and.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
It's a.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
You know, I like to carry things before we release
them into the public. And yeah, with the cliff being
this big knife, traditional style knife, and then the dagger
being a very specific use case. Another ADC to add
is going to be really cool all at the same

(12:24):
time because they're all so very different. So yeah, that'll
hopefully be coming in June as well.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So we've just touched the surface of stuff that you
guys covered. How did you get to this point? Where
did you start? So you said you were a dood
contractor did you have any any desire to go in
this direction growing up? Did you want to do knives, guns,
anything like that, or you always wanted to be a firefighter.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
So I remember back when I was about twelve years old,
somebody asked me, a grown up asked me what I
wanted in my life, and I told him that I
wanted to I wanted to make guns for a living,
and I did that, but I very specifically wanted to
make things and I wanted to learn things. And after

(13:18):
a false start in college and starting a family really
early in life, I was like, well, I guess manufacturing
is the way to go. And so by the time
I was in my late teens, I was in a
machine shop and trying to make a go of it
in the world, and I did pretty well. And Chris
has a similar story where he was pretty much had

(13:40):
decided that he wanted to make stuff very early on,
and we both found our way into machining pretty honestly.
Chris is an established knife maker. Knife maker on his own,
I can stumble my way. I've made knives before we
were making knives professionally, but Chris is an incredibly skilled

(14:04):
traditional knife maker, just incredible. I am, okay, We're both
really good machinists. And we went through He went through
NASA and I went through the DoD. I worked for
Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technology Division at Indian Head and nave

(14:26):
Air down at Pax River. But by the time that
was that chapter to come to the close, I said, well,
I'm well into the defense space. I guess if I
go into private sector, then I'll go into the firearms
side of things. And I did that for seven or
eight years, and then somewhere along that line, I hired

(14:47):
Chris again because I had previously hired him in the
d D and we had been friends for years by
that point. I hired him again out in private sector
and they went well, and eventually we were hanging out
one night and I said, I'm gonna buy a machine
and stick it in the garage and I'm gonna make
a go of it, And I was like, do you

(15:09):
want to do one in He's like, he said, let
me think about it. Next day he called me up
and said, yep, let's make it happen. So we, uh,
we literally bought our first CNC mill off of Craig's
list and it was a terrible machine, but we shook
our piggy banks and made it happen. Both of us

(15:29):
worked full time in gun industry for another two or
three years before we were before it was able to
support him, and then I was full time in the
industry for another two years after that. So I quit
my full time job in h twenty twenty or twenty

(15:50):
twenty one, and uh been working just for myself since then,
or for ourselves, I guess, yeah. But really, when we
started the business, there was a there was really a
three pronged business plan. We wrote down the business plan,
and the business plan was to have a branch that

(16:11):
did consulting to help reshore manufacturing, so helping people bring
stuff back to the United States and set up their
internal processes to research and development support for the firearms
and defense industry. And three was internal products and that
we weren't sure if we were going to do firearms

(16:31):
accessories firearms parts, but it was going to be branded
with dawn lets. We need that. And so our very
first product, we were both working full time outside and
it was entirely in Chris's garage, was the Matt Helm Persian.
Matt's been a friend of mine for a while, and

(16:53):
I asked them. I was like, hey, we should collaborate
on something. We'll make the knives, you sharpen them and
handle fulfillment. And at first it was going to be
like twenty of them, and then it was going to
be one hundred of them, and so we got to
that number and Matt said, that's a lot for me
to sharpen with everything else Matt does, and I said, well,

(17:16):
how a don't we just handle it and we stick
your name on it. And at the time, we didn't
know how to do our own sheets or KAIDEKX, And
so we actually called John at Filster, who I had
known since my freshman year in college. Yeah, so I knew,
all right, I've met John way way way back in

(17:40):
two thousand and four. So yeah, and so I called John, say, hey,
can you make the sheets So the first hundred sheets
for Dauntless knives were made by John when he was
in the basement shop in Philly, so way way way back,
if you're familiar with that. They all sold in a

(18:02):
week and we all kind of had this moment of well,
we better make more of them.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, And so about what year was this? That was.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Twenty eighteen, twenty eighteen, So we decided we were going
to make more and we had we ran two or
three big consulting gigs. On the other side of things,
we did maybe one job in the research and development
support and we haven't been able to touch anything but

(18:34):
knives since. So it was planned, but it wasn't planned
exactly like this. But I'm happy about it. I like
what we're doing, and I think we've been able to
apply our expertise pretty well here.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah. Yeah, So how do you guys go about determining
what decision or what direction to take? How do you
figure out what? How did you determine? Okay, we're going
to do a bootfe or we're going to do the
dagger or whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
So we take two very very scientific approaches. We take
the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks
approach and sitting around and going you know would be cool?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know it would be cool. That's right.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
And then a third approach is whenever we talk to experts,
you really need something cool. So so I mean I
think that we I think sometimes the industry loses the
fun that it should have. You can maintain good design
and create great products and still have a blast with

(19:37):
the things that you want to see and do. So
for us it was very much with almost every product, Hey,
you know what, this would be a really great way
to move this forward and do this thing in the
industry that we think is have has been needed. We've
had some impacts in the industry, whether people want to

(20:01):
admit it or not, where we've we've really pushed other
companies to improve in areas that maybe they didn't feel
like they needed to improve in. And that's been part
of our our our ethos from the very beginning is
to really be as good at this as we possibly can.

(20:23):
We want good design and we want great products, and
we stand beside behind everything that we make. So that yeah,
there's there's how do we move forward is a little
bit of a loaded question, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
So then with the individual designs, I determined materials, whether
it be the knife itself, with the blade itself, or
the handles, the scales.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
So for a long time, when we first started us
being machine as, we wanted to use tool steels for everything,
which is technically a good way to go, but the
knife industry is very, very focused on steals that whatever
is the hot commodity right then, and so when we

(21:19):
started as machinists, all right, we want to make these
out of D two and S seven, which are great
tool steals that machinists are happy to use and work with,
but they also just happen to be things that come
out of Asia quite often, and so we would quite
often people go, where are you making these? Like in

(21:41):
our garage, like behind our house. But then on top
of that, we started realizing the niche that we're going into.
People demanded really the best possible steals, and so that
kind of narrows it down. You start looking at what
American made steels there are and which ones fit into

(22:05):
the use cases for our products. They need to be
extremely tough, they need to be something that's very high quality.
So you narrow down and they have to be machineable,
which not all knife steals are machineable, because not every
knife company machines their things, and so that kind of

(22:27):
narrowed it down to a set of materials that we
really like to use, which at the moment we really
really like ae b L which is a great stainless
on the lower cost end, and then we really really
like CPM three V and Magna Cut and AECRV two
and a couple other little ones thrown in there. But

(22:48):
we start with when it comes to materials, we want
to make sure that whatever we're making is extremely durable
and long lasting, and that that doesn't rule out a
lot of things, but it makes it easier to understand
where the market is going to support those materials.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah. Yeah, Now you brought up Magnicut, and I've seen
Magnicut offered on a lot of your products. What exactly is.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
That Magna cut is a powdered metal steel. It's was
invented by a pH d who's I think the only
PhD in the United States that has his PhD in
knife steel. His name is larryen Thomas. Laren Thomas is
a really really smart guy in material sciences and he

(23:38):
went to CRAP I forget which company, CPM and said,
I think I can. I think we can create a
steel that's really well performing in edge retention and toughness
and corrosion resistance. Those were the three main and things

(24:00):
and balanced that really well. And they did and it
works as advertised as the real numbers show. Uh, there
are some people that thought it was going to be
the wonder steel to end all wonder steels. It's a
really good steal. That's what I come back to. It's
it does all the things really really well. And the

(24:22):
the only I guess problem with it is that it's expensive,
and so it is the most expensive standard steel in
our line outside the specialty steels like uh, Damascus and
san Mai and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Have there been designs that you guys have put together
where you had to have specific we need to have
this specific steel for this specific knife. This is this
is this is a package twice.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, whenever we did the Musashi. This time around, to
tie it in even more with the historical aspect of
Japanese blade smith's, we wanted to take a a san
my steel, which is a traditional Japanese style of steel,

(25:13):
where they put a really great edge retention steel in
the middle of two super tough steels, and normally that's
some carbon steel, which makes for a really great blade
that usually takes a lot of effort to keep really nice.
But what we wanted to do was take magna cut
in the middle and stick a A E B L

(25:35):
stainless on the outside. So it's a rough equivalent to
a modern version of a excuse me, of a Japanese sanmi.
And we had Chad Nichols of Nichols Damascus do that
for us, and he did a phenomenal job. So we
had probably the coolest purpose built steel sand min that

(26:01):
that we've ever seen, and so we had him make
that specifically for our Musashi design. So there was that one,
and he since added it to his standard lineup and
I love seeing it elsewhere because he probably would have
done it eventually without us, but because he's a smart
guy and he'll do that kind of stuff. But it

(26:22):
turned out beautifully, and the the historical significance and tie
in isn't lost on people who bought it.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, So with that in mind, With that in mind,
then so within your power, any of those knives produced
will have that specific unless something better comes around.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Uh yeah, So if we do another production run of Musashi's.
We'll probably do more of the Sanmai versions as well, yeah,
which they sold out really quick and so and with
with expensive special steals like that, I never know if
I'm going to make enough, because I don't. We're not
a comempany that makes We're not the guy waving the

(27:04):
flag around saying this is the last time we're ever
going to make this configuration and if you want it,
you have to buy it. And there's only twelve of them,
and scarcity is not the name of our game at all.
We want to be a lot more. Like so, Randall
Knives is amazing and if you ask them to make
you a Randall number one, they'll make you a Randal
number one. Like they're not going to tell you no, sorry,

(27:26):
you could only buy that in the summer of seventy
three during a full moon. You know. It's just well,
it's not what they do. So we'll make more eventually.
We limit very few things.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
And I've seen you guys do that with re releases
of things and just go out. Do I want another? Yes?

Speaker 2 (27:46):
I do.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
But yeah, what we're hoping.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Is everyone who bought one the first time tells all
their friends about it and they're in line for the
second time. And we really try to keep stuff in stock.
We've had we've had dog owns in stock, which in
the past has been very difficult. We've had them in
stock for seven or eight months now and doing quite well.
I love having stuff in stock and not that way.

(28:13):
You don't have people that feel like it's a mistake
that they were rushed to buy something. We're selling a
tool here, right, We're not selling We're not selling hype
or you know, a ticket that might get punched, like,
it's just that's not how we're doing things.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, So what was the second knife? The second design
the cliff, So I'm not surprised. I am not surprised.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
So if you see that, you get a line across
the top there, that's called a hormone and a hormone.
Yet again, it's it's a traditional tie in our old
school knife making thing. You see it a lot in
really fancy kitchen knives nowadays, and it's basically it's the

(28:59):
forced transition area from the really hard part of the
metal to the softer part of the metal, and it's
the grain structure size basically, And there's a lot of
material science and cool stuff for the big brain guys
out there.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
And it looks really cool too though.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
It looks amazing. But what started all this is Chris
was making Because Chris works all day making knives and
then he goes home and spends time with his family
and then puts the kids to bed and then goes
out and mix knives in his.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Bride dreams about knives at night.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
And he made this. He started making this beautiful bowie,
just gorgeous bowie, and it was like, hey, we should
make a we should make a production version of that. Yeah.
We kind of laughed it off for about a week
and then we both kind of came back and said,
we really should. But if we do it, then we

(29:57):
have to do it like really really well. You can't
just make a full tank knife, slap some scales on
there and say this is inspired by this design that
Chris made.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
You've got to look so traditional it really is.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
It's it's not something that factory knives are supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, and uh.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
So we came back to it and one thing we
decided right away was that it's got to have a
hormone like a traditional knife that looks that that pattern
has to have a hormone. So then we kind of
went back to the drawing board. There's a few different
materials steels, blade steels that react really really well to

(30:40):
a hormone, and there's like W one, which is a
really cool tool steel, and then there's this material which
is one c R one, which is it's I tell
people it's a modern traditional carbon steel. It's it's consistent,

(31:01):
it's built like a nice modern steel would be. It's
coming from a mill that's doing things extremely precisely, but
it's acts like an old carbon steel, like a fifty
ten ninety five or something like that. But it has
beautiful characteristics with toughness and edge retension, and it takes

(31:23):
a really really nice hormone. And so when we decided
to do this knife, we said that's that's the material
we want to make it out of. And it turned
out gorgeous, absolutely beautiful. It's We entered it into the

(31:48):
judging at Blade Show in Texas and one best Best
American Made in the factory division, and the judges basically
said this isn't this is what you see in a
factory made knife, and we're like, thank you, that's what
we want to.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Hear, yeah, yeah. Well the issue I'm finding with it
is you have four options, yeah, and they all look
so good they look and how do you figure out
which you don't? You need to get all for that's
all there's.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh man, I haven't so normally we have one person
and it's never the same person. But there's somebody who
buys one of each. Yeah, and we haven't had that yet.
But they're not cheap knives, so.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Like block or one of these.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, yeah, a nice clock right, you could you could
end up to a usable scope in some markets, you know.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah. Yeah. So you have a harpoon point and a
clip point. What are the differences between?

Speaker 2 (32:50):
So the clip point is the traditional it's got this
dip right here. The harpoon point has a little bit
of an arch right here instead of a dip, which
isn't quite is you know, when you think of the
the traditional Bowie design, you think of a clip point.
But there's the very first bowiees didn't look like Bowie's.

(33:13):
So I mean we kind of you have a lot
of artistic license as long as you stay within a
little bit of a style. The clip point blade or
the wide blade with a stabbing tip, and a you know,
some basic geometries and proportions, and then the handles. There's
a few different basic styles. We went with a flared base,

(33:36):
which is a style that Chris has executed beautifully in
his normal knife making, and so whenever he started making
his version, I said, oh, we could definitely do that
and turn it into a production piece. I love it.
There's a few downsides to that. If you have really

(33:57):
really wide hands, they're not as comfort as like a
coffin shaped grip, but they're I think the most aesthetically pleasing,
and to me was somebody, I have pretty big hands,
but they're not Why for my hands? It works really
really well because it retains in the hand really well,

(34:18):
and that way I can effectively use it to open
Amazon packages.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
And that's right, that's what's important.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
You could use this for anything you really want to.
It is a very serious piece of kid. Yeah, as
soon as we release them one or we released them,
I got an email from someone who wanted to add
it to their battle belt, and I think that probably
be the most hilarious thing I've ever seen, and I
really hope to God that it is hanging on his
battle belt right now.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Well, as someone as a kid in the seventies and
eighties going through truck stops seeing knives like this and
going oh, these are cool and they crap knives. And
then to see the real thing, This is the real, real, Oh,
this is real. I love it, absolutely love it. And
then also and then the handles are my KRTA and so.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
There's regular Mikarta, which is the brownish color that's available,
and then black two ten which both look great.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
They do yeah wow, and then a brass.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Brass guard yep with it. And it's really cool because
I don't know that I show it very well in
the pictures I post, but it's a key hole guard,
so it's machined and it just has this beautiful fit
that just goes down into the handle with the keyhole shape.
It's it's a little extra sometimes.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh it's it's it's and it's beautiful. It is a
work of art. But also when I get one, I
am going to be excited to use it for opening
Amazon packages or I'm going to go camping, not going
to have any use for it, not gonna do anything
because everything's taken care of for me. But I have it.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
It's right, it's it's just so gorgeous and I can't
wait it is. I've stuck mine into a tree already.
I haven't been brave enough to throw it, but I
probably will because yeah, oh because because, let's face it,
as a kid who wanted this bowie, you wanted to
throw it too.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
It's just yeah. So, speaking of also gorgeous, you guys
have Pineland.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Offerings, Yes, the Pineland.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, so what's what's the background on that, because there's
there are definitely similarities between them and they're definitely to me, man,
they look even better than the standard production. And I
have a couple oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
So the story and to some people in your audience,
they'll hear the word Pineland and they'll know exactly where
it is and what it sits in. But we are
we started our shop in my garage and then Chris's
garage in central North Carolina and Central North Carolina where
we are is part of a fictional country called Pineland.

(37:23):
And Pineland is part of the final selection process for
US Army Green Rays and Special Forces, and there's a
very very long standing military exercise called Robin Sage and
basically the candidates, the Special Forces candidates in selection, the

(37:50):
very last thing they do is go through Robin Sage
and they're dropped into this fictional country where they have
to help the resistance fighters create their or run their
resistance for lack of a better term. And this exercise
has been going on since I believe the seventies, and
it's been an integral part of selection for a long time.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Now.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Chris and I neither of us are veterans, but we
are in Pineland. There's whenever Robin Sage is going out
on like blacked out hues are going over and it's
it's part of this area. It's it's very significant to
our geographical location and whenever we were okay. Back a

(38:39):
few years ago, Matt Helm had gotten a frame for
his twenty eleven, an aluminum frame. He had gotten it
analyzed in this color case hardening by a company called
Vital Manufacturing. And Vital Manufacturing really good people. They make
the coolest stuff, grips and frames and stuff like that,

(39:02):
and they do anidizing. The finish on the Pineland scales
is a color case hardening look anidizing. But Matt said
we should do some scales like that, and I said
that's great, but once you start making aluminum scales and
getting them anidized with one thing, it just never stops.

(39:23):
You'll do purple and pink and gray and green and
tied eye and whatever. So we've got to have like
a specific set for this, and we had already talked
about different special editions to do, and so then we
started talking about Pineland or what we came up with
was the Pineland Edition, and the idea was, we'll make

(39:46):
thirty of each model. So every model that we make Bladestyle,
we will make thirty of them and they'll all be
serialized from one to whenever we stop. We never repeat
a model in the Pineland series. So we've already done
dog bones and work knives and there will only ever

(40:06):
be thirty to forty of them. So the idea was
they should look like they're made from battlefield materials. There
should be enough to equip one small fighting force of
thirty ish people, and then they should be traceable in
a way that a fledgling country would be trying to

(40:29):
trace its arms that it's issuing to its people. So
it's a very specific configuration. The blades are made of
fifty one sixty, which is really cool because that is
truck leaf springs. Truck leaf springs are made of fifty
one sixty and it just so happens. It makes an
incredibly tough blade. They're heat treated and they're left to

(40:51):
look they're untreated after the heat treat, so they have
the brown coloration of heat treated fifty one sixty and
they come in a woodland sheath, and it's the only
woodland sheaths we make, so you can't get the Pineland
scales or the Pineland blade or the Pineland sheath in
any other way. And I think we're up to two hundred,

(41:15):
two hundred and sixty of them now or two hundred
and ninety of them consecutively. So the very first ones
we made were Persians. So one through thirty five serial
numbers are Persians, and then thirty five through sixty five
or seventy are Yeah, what do you make next? Worknife

(41:36):
v ones.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
I think.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
But anyways, and every time we make a new model,
we may make it on the initial release or later on,
but we make pinelands for them, and some people love them,
some people hate them. No, nobody hates them, but some
people love them. Some of them sell really well. Some
of them don't, which is really strange. We still have

(41:58):
some Hiker drop Point Pinelands and some dog Bone k
Pinelands in stock, which is really strange to me because
both of those models are pretty well selling models and
they've just sat in stock for the last couple of months.
It's okay, I'm not I'm not hurt about it. That's
not how we run our business. But it is a

(42:19):
really cool, very limited special edition. It is the only
limited special edition that we do. Like I said before,
we don't run our business based on scarcity, so it's
the only the only thing we've limited to this point.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
See now I'm on my let's see here.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Are you ordering a Pineland?

Speaker 1 (42:43):
No? So no, I'm I'm trying to figure out when
did I get my first and which ones were the
pine Lands?

Speaker 2 (42:53):
I could probably look it up, yea, mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
I definitely have a work knife three man man because
I love I love the Persian and I thought I
got a hiker.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Mmmm. Let's see here. I bet I bet you have
a drop On. No, you have a Piland V three
and I bet you have no.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
I don't know. Yeah, oh yeah, I looked up on it.
I just looked up Pineland in my emails and like
no I ordered before then.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
We're both looking through order.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, so as a matter of fact, actually now would
be a good time to We'll take a quick little break,
run some ads. We'll be back in about two minutes.
So for you, Zach, if you need to run and
get something, we got just under two minutes. For you
listening or watching aptually, it's a minute and thirty eight.

(44:14):
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that's some good timing, sat right down as soon as

(46:05):
it was over but yeah, nice, just.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
I love it too that I love that design on
the V three.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, So for if you're listening and not watching, I
have my hork knife FEE three Pineland in hand and
just the way it fits in my hand is just
absolutely perfect. So it wasn't a Pineland. It was the

(46:41):
warm cliff cliff. Yeah, but just such a compact, little
handy knife that one was.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
The hiker was just featured on gear Junkie last week before.
They love it too, so that's cool. Yeah, definitely biased
because I designed it.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
But yes, you are as you should be. But uh,
and I have others, but this is all I could
grab really quickly. But also orange arras orange and orange.
So the logic for this same with with the utility.
I think it's a V one also in the same
orange and orange with a black blade. The idea behind
it was I want it to be high visibility. This

(47:24):
is a tool. The odds of me cutting something and
putting it down it can happen. I don't want it
some kind of some kind of camouflage. I don't want
it all black. I want it to be visible or
if I'm in a if I'm in a in a
dark vehicle. I want to be able to see, oh
there it is right there, or if it's in a
gear bag or attached to something. But fantastic design.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
I love the high vised stuff. I think it's it's great,
and I think it's underutilized because we're we're all conditioned
to think concealed everything. But knife, that's not the same
use case. Yeah, and it's yeah, so it works really well.
But I get I get more vocal feedback from the

(48:08):
guys who get orange everything that they they normally say
something to the effect of everyone should do this, and
I said, I appreciate that, we'll keep doing it.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, and it just makes sense. But that's one of
the things I also really like about. At the same time,
I don't like it though about you guys. So many
great options and it's so difficult, just like just like
the just like the new knife where you have with
their four choices, I want them all. How do you
figure out? So I figure out the knife style, the

(48:42):
blade style and the handle and the so much goodness.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, so back, I don't know, about two years ago,
someone said there's too many options and I was like,
you're ridiculous. But then I calculated it, and for one
of our releases, there was something like thirty eight thousand
possible permutations after you looked at blade steel, handle material,

(49:08):
kai deex depth, Kidex pattern, clip, clip, clip orientation, and
it was just like we had five steals and three finishes,
and we usually have about fourteen to eighteen handle materials,
and then we have six or seven different Kaidex patterns

(49:32):
and colors, and then usually we do at least a
regular standard sheath and a deep carry sheath, and then
we have obviously the DCC clips, which are I think
should be standard everywhere, but then we have the Ulta
clip and techlock style and soft loops, and like if
you just multiplied it out, there's tons of options. So

(49:55):
someone complained. They were like, uh, I just get written
decision paralysis and then I just don't buy. Well, I
can't have that. So we came up with the Hot
and Ready series, which is they're all the same, it's
the exact they come off the same line, but they
are a b L stainless steel natural canvas in my

(50:18):
cart up and black Kaidekx, and they're just priced like that,
and they're they're cheaper than everything else because I buy
a bunch of that material and then we use it
for the Hot and Readies and the Hot and Readies only,
and it brings the price down. The Hot and Ready
moss is one hundred and ninety five bucks, which isn't

(50:40):
anything to shake a stick at. I don't want to
take away from that's a significant purchase for anybody. But
as far as a knife that really will last longer
than you, I can't. I can't knock it at all.
So that that for the people to get decision paralysis.

(51:01):
I've got the Hot and Ready line and you can
go on there and click on the tab on our
website this is Hot and Ready, and it'll take you
to basically one of everything that we make in the
simplest configuration we make and the most cost effective. And
we're still life so it's not like you're losing out
on anything. Yeah, but yeah, some people told me they

(51:24):
weren't buying because we had too many decisions. So I
took those decisions away.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
So to go back to something I said earlier, also,
I have these knives. I'm not a knife efficionado, and
I want to go through classes and I have some
someboddies that teach stuff. But one of the nice things
also about these is these are these are investments, and
these are stuff that you know, when my son gets

(51:51):
a bit older and he's going to start going a
scout camp or whatever, these are these are some good
knives that I am completely comfortable with him. Okay, don't
lose it, but it's not going to break on him.
It's going to last them.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah. Yeah, I really hope that I'm still alive when
people are passing these down to their kids, and I
can still see Dauntless making knives. Hopefully I'm relaxing, but
you know what I'm saying, we build a tool that
is in no way fragile, and there's no there's no

(52:29):
situation where what we make just is going to wear
out with basic care. And so I think of I hope,
I hope people hand these down to their kids, and
I hope that these are gifts that are treasured for
a very long time. And I hope that I hope

(52:51):
every little boy that's ten years old and is like,
sees the knife on the top of his dad safe,
I hope it's our knife.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
I want well. Along similar lines, also, so I grew
up LDS Preparedness and all that were definitely part of
the culture. And how many people I've spoken to that
aren't involved in this kind of stuff that aren't gun savvy,
your gear savvy, knife savvy or whatever. And with their

(53:20):
their their bug out bags, what quality equipment do they have?
Super low quality? Typically? Why not go and get hot
and Ready and you know what, get hot and ready
knife that matches what what you need it to do,
and you are good for at least in that one niche.

(53:42):
And you know, go camping, use your use your gear,
use your use your gear when you go camping.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
And the cool thing about the Hot and Ready it's
a really good stainless steel. So if you do stick
this in your go bag and it doesn't come out
for a year, it's still going to come out looking great.
You're not going to have a bunch of rough spots
on it, which when you're using carbon steels are non
stainless is it does take some actual effort to keep
those things clean and in good shape. That's part of

(54:09):
maintaining your gar We all have to clean our guns,
and we have to oil our knives, and sometimes some
of us do it less than they should. But the
Hot and Ready is a great choice for people putting
it in their go bag and using it and using
it and using it hopefully and it'll serve them well.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
And I think we've discussed it years ago in other
episodes discussing all that go bag and preparedness stuff. This
is stuff you probably need to be familiar with, so
it needs to be used, So you need to get
good quality options so it can withstand and so you're
familiar with it, you know what it's boundaries are in.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Your own definitely.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah, So what do you see for the future for
you guys? How do you see additional collaborations? Do you
see so I I've seen several gun companies branch out
and do knives. Yeah, you guys going to have a
nineteen eleven at some point in the near future.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
I would love to.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
I would absolutely love to get hooked up with Joe Chambers.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, you know, I would love to. Joe Chambers would
be killer. Even stepping back from there, I mean, I'd
love to work with Staccato. I know enough people that
work at or for or with Staccato that I should
probably reach out one of these days. I right now

(55:33):
probably isn't a good time, but I've had interest from
the sig Legion people's which is pretty nifty, and I
ran manufacturing or so kind of go back to my
gun industry some days. But I I was a director

(55:56):
of engineering at Hudson Manufacturing with the hilt.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Oh that is really cool, I thought, I I'm sorry
to see what happened. I thought I was such a
great guy to talk to wealth and knowledge with firearms,
and I was so sorry to see what ultimately happened.
Because what a cool product. Yeah, what an awesome, cool product.
And I finally got to shoot one, just prior to

(56:23):
everything going under and when this is really cool and unique.
I really like this.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Yeah, so yeah, I worked there for the whole Yeah,
the whole story arc, let's put it that way, except
for the very beginning. I was one of the first
few employees though. But all that to say, I would
love to make matching grips for the H nine through

(56:49):
Daniel Defence. I'd love to make a collab where they
put one of our knives in a box with their gun.
And I'm not even like looking through this with rose
colored glasses. I know the platform has issues even now,
but it's such a cool tie in with some of
my history that I was. I was ankle deep in
that project for years, and so I'd love to love

(57:12):
to collaborate on something like that. But there's all all
sorts of cool stuff. I would love to love to
do a numbered collaboration one through thirty on something and
it would be just tons of fun.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Mm hmmm. You know. So, what's the name of the dagger?

Speaker 2 (57:31):
The Dermott? Okay, yeah, so Pat Dermott, Pat Dermott O'Neil
was a guy who worked with a bunch of the
cool guys. And he was a combatives instructor for the
first Special Services Force and he was Irish and he
was working for the first Special Services Force, which was

(57:53):
American and Canadian and when they went to deploy, they said, okay,
you'll go on to work with the next batch and
he said, hell no, I'm deploying with these guys. And
so he deployed to the to the front lines with
his guys. So awesome historical figure. But yes, it's called
the Dermot.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
So I could see that being released in a package
with a threaded Walter ppk oh Mand.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Oh my god, it'd be so cool.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Well done. Let me send a text. So it's it's funny. So,
uh oh, what's the official name of the My dad
referred to it as the Fairbairn Dagger.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Yeah, so the one that we based the Dermot on
is the V forty two.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
And are they related?

Speaker 2 (58:46):
There was really like three guys who developed the Fairbans.
It was fairbair Sykes and.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Apple, Apple Apple's Apple Bee's.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Yeah, right, and Apple And really those guys have their
hands in all of the OSS type stuff that was
on the ally side. Granted, on the Axis side they
had their own daggers, but we're not talking about those today,
but on the Allied side, they were all very closely related.

(59:18):
And yeah, very specifically. The the first special Force Special
Services Force had the V forty two, which is just
a gorgeous design, and we took it and melded it
with materials that make sense and made some changes to
the overall. But it's just such a cool design.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
So in your pinion, in your opinion, what are the
improvements that you guys have been able to do?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Ah, So improvements is a weird question because it was
such a cool design that was used for something very specifically.
One of the very first things that people on the
front lines and in use of this dagger had a
prop them with was the tips breaking off and I
imagine that some of them broke off because they were

(01:00:08):
handled roughly, and some of them broke off because they
were jammed into skulls. So, but they used a carbon
steel and it was very hard, and so on the
front line, some people actually reground the tips to be steeper.
We have a little bit of advantage that we're using

(01:00:28):
materials that are a lot tougher than the steels back then.
But a few different adjustments. I prefer not to call
them improvements because they these aren't going to be used.
Let me change that. I will be ecstatic if I
hear as one of these being used in a similar
manner as it was back then. But there aren't a

(01:00:51):
lot of people doing that work these days, let's put
it that way. But we need to make a product
that's going to last, right, So we made sure that
our our bevel angler angles were such that we're going
to have as much of a supported tip and a
strong tip as you can on a dagger like this.
So that's a little bit of an improvement. It's also

(01:01:12):
a lot shorter. Our our blade is proportionally the same.
It looks similar if you look at them side by side,
But the V forty two was eleven and a half
inches long. Ours is under ten inches long. Okay, so
it is a smaller knife. But what the A really
interesting thing. A lot of the modern interpretations of the

(01:01:35):
oss Fairbairn psychs V forty two daggers they use they
use a hidden tang design because that it looks right.
But one of the original design specifications for the V
forty two is that it had to have a hardened

(01:01:56):
pommel for bashing skulls in. And what we did is
made ours a hidden tang design except for the back
here see if I can, Yeah, that's the blade steel
that's that comes through. So it's got a it's got
a nice skull cracker on it. And so that's one

(01:02:16):
of the things that I don't know if I'd call
it an improvement, but it definitely is a harken back
to the original design requirements. The originals were stacked leather
handles and uh beautiful but kind of soak up a
lot of humidity during during the Pacific campaigns ours are

(01:02:37):
g ten or and or my card to scales or
handles and uh they'll probably be a little bit more
stable in the Pacific fighting theater. Also that Pacific fighting theater.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yes, yeah, you know, now did I read correctly? Also,
you guys were finalizing the configurations that you were wanting
to really leaves with these.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yes, yeah, So we just went through our for our
for our release style, we're going to be pretty narrow
on the amount of steels and that are available. It'll
be CPM three V with a nitride finish. All of
you gun guys are familiar with nitride if you have
a glock, because your slides are nitrided. So CPM three

(01:03:23):
V with a nitride finish is an amazing knife steal.
Then we'll have a tumbled uh magna cut blade, and
then we'll have a magna cut blade with black oxide,
So three different esthetics, two different materials. And then we'll

(01:03:44):
also have some damascus and some sand mai for the
same So five different steals to start with, or sorry,
three different steals, four different steals. I can't count. I'm apologized.
Uh but uh So we finished configuring that and we're
we're getting closer onto the handle stuff. There will be

(01:04:08):
black g ten and coyote and Odie green and gray
at the very least, probably also carbon fiber and then
a few other colors that we're working through.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
So there you did say, the same knife as the
or the same blade steel as the musashi. That's cool
and my it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
So that that type of steel looks amazing on a
dagger because of the way that the four different devils
kind of come down and play with the joint line
between the two different steels. So it looks great and we'll, uh,
we'll see how it works. It's a lot of work
to make that steel.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Daggers are hard no matter what you do, because they
take a lot of time to get perfect. And so, uh,
we'll see. I think it will look amazing. We'll see
how much work it takes to get there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Yeah. Yeah, well I remember hearing my dad always would
talk about those those the British Special Forces daggers, and
I don't know why, Yeah, I don't know. And and
partially it's one of the reasons why a webley was
on my bucket list, because something about it he always likes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yeah, yes, speaking of British Special Forces, is it no,
this one's three hundred blackout. I built it, oh to be,
so it has the offset suppressor.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Yeah, and uh yeah, because what was it the infield
chamber in forty five with the inch graded yeahs such
a cool, cool design.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
But yes, the British Special Forces stuff has a lot
of play and influence.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Over my Yeah. So he's always talked about about this stuff.
He's an angliophile, he admits it. But I saw that
you guys posted about about your about your new knife,
and I had to tag them. Yeah, so you tell
me about this. Oh yeah, it's like, tell me about this.
I said, Okay, this is what this is. What you're

(01:06:13):
looking at, is that I might need to get one, Yes,
you do. Is there going to be a Pineland version?

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Yes, eventually. I don't know if it'll be in June,
when we're at least the rest of them. Yeah, it's
such a cool tie in the historically significant on multiple
levels services and then all all the way into selection
now you almost have to yeah, and so we will eventually.

(01:06:41):
It's just those the special edition Pineland ones take a
little bit extra work to get perfect, and so they
don't always make it into the first release.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Yeah. Now, I don't want you to give away anything,
especially if something's in in the front of your mind.
But are there any history knives that you think you
guys need to be bringing into production? Oh man, historic
and to me, so like a K bar to me

(01:07:12):
is fairly historic. Everyone knows gay bar.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
So I love that idea. Idea. I already spoke about
Chad Nichols, who made the Sandmi and makes our Damascus
for us. So Chad Nichols and a guy named Les George,
the knife guys will recognize the name Less George. They
live close to each other and their friends, and they
have a joint venture called Defiant seven Knives, and they

(01:07:37):
are doing some absolute killer modernization work with that style
of knife, K bars and different patterns, and I would
love to do that stuff, and we might still. But
sometimes I look when really good dudes like Less George
and Chad Nichols are doing such cool stuff and I'm

(01:07:58):
just like, maybe I'll just let them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Do it for a while. That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
So they they are just they are killing it with
some amazing designs on on the really K bar influenced
and a couple of really great designers.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Just pulled them up and immediately drawn to that dagger.
That's a that's a cool design. Great, Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
And we see them every year at the different Blade shows,
and I inevitably pay full price for something from them,
So like, I'm I have this one which is their
Valero or Valmara auto, and this this is one of
their prototypes. I paid full price right off the table.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
And then Les is a super cool guy and he's
been badgering us to make the V forty two or
now the Dermot. Yeah, I'm sure he'll buy one from us.
So so sometimes I see guys doing such awesome stuff
and I'm like, you know, I don't need to do
that better, They're they're doing it. So I kind of
feel like that with rm J Forge, they do some

(01:09:07):
amazing stuff and I love the patterns and Winkler absolutely,
like I don't have any desire to do any of
the Winkler style or the belt knives that Winkler makes
because such cool stuff, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
So, is there any way you can help Chris Reeve
increase his production so we don't have to wait six
years for a folder.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
They make more knives than we do, so I'll just
I would love to again people making awesome stuff, right,
there's cool guys, nice people, too. Man Chad Nichols and
Les George are just great people. Ryan Johnson from rm

(01:09:52):
j's Great Dude. So I can't I can't buy all
the cool stuff that I like in this industry because
there's just too much of it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
So how often are you perusing through whatever, whether it's
historical or it's modern, and you go, Okay, I like that,
but I do it this way, I'm going to do
my version.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
We do it fairly often. And also, like the influence
isn't always as obvious for the hiker. One of my
very first like exposures to the high end combatives knives
with striders, and I love striders. I still love them

(01:10:39):
to this day. And if you can pick up a
hiker and not see at least a little bit of
strider influence, like I'd be surprised. But there's there's always
influence some way somewhere. We have one customer we do
oem work for because we also do a lot of
oem work, who sent us some of the Gerber Daggers
sorry Gerber Daggers, and said I want this but modern,

(01:11:03):
and uh, that project turned out amazing. I love it.
And that's Wolf forty or Wolf forty designs, and then
we make the SIAF knife for him and the j
C dagger and all really great stuff. And he's a
really great guy. But that was a that was a
knife that was very clearly designed from some historical interesting stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
You give me all these good websites to check out,
as long as you come back to ours. Oh I
and I do, I do? M M So As a
business owner, how's that path? How has that been? How
is this not path? How's the journey been? Starting that?

(01:11:51):
Starting out already having a full time job and then
it eventually taking over full time would have been the
sacrif vices would have been your regrets? What are things
you wish you would have done differently? What are the successes?

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
The successes that I'm here and lights are on and
I'm getting to make stuff that I like. Right, But
one thing as a machinist, as a tradesman, really, any
trade guy knows this that you go into this trade
knowing that you'll probably be able to earn a good living,
but your chances of retiring young or retiring whole as

(01:12:31):
a healthy individual are pretty low. Right, And it's the
same with police officers and firemens. And anyone who goes
into a trade like this knows that your chances of
getting out early and enjoying the best years of your
life are fairly low. Right, You're going to work yourself

(01:12:51):
into the ground. And so somewhere early on in my career,
I told myself that I have to work for my
find the value somewhere else, because paying into my four
oh one K means that at sixty years old, I'm
going to be a machinist. At sixty five, I'm going
to have a bad back, failing eyesight, and probably some

(01:13:15):
respiratory problems, and I'm going to get a really pitiful retirement.
And what am I going to get out of it?
I'm not going to enjoy myself very much. So early
on I decided that if I was going to retire,
I was going to have to do it working for myself, really,

(01:13:36):
and that's kind of where daunt Let's start it. It
wasn't ever a get rich quick because Chris and I
knew from the very beginning that this was going to
be a ton of work. This is going to be
nothing but hard work, all day, every day, until it's

(01:13:58):
no longer hard work. It's not viable anymore. So the
successes were that we never went without food. There were
some times where it was a stretch and our bank
account was empty and we were really hoping for that
stretch to get to the next thing. And I didn't

(01:14:20):
take a paycheck until, oh man, at least three years
in oh jeez. And I didn't take a regular paycheck.
And I'm super fortunate my wife is one hundred percent
supportive of what we do. And there's no way that

(01:14:44):
I could have made it in the way that I
did without her, because at some point she said, well,
we're in this together, and I have a job, and
so let's make this happen. And so I didn't take
a paycheck. Even after I went full time, I wasn't
on a regular payable. And so the lessons learned, which

(01:15:09):
I said, I knew outright from the very beginning, where
that this is going to be extremely, extremely hard, and
it's going to never make us rich, or it's not
going to make us us traditionally rich, and we're going
to have to work harder at this than we would
at a regular job. And that was completely true, and

(01:15:32):
it's still true. Chris and I still put in more
hours than anyone else. I was the first one here
this morning, and I was the last one to leave,
and then I went home, ate dinner, went for a run,
and then I came back. So there's the lessons are
that there's no easy way about this. There's no getting

(01:15:52):
rich off of the knife industry. There are people in
this knife industry who have made good money doing what
we're doing extent in many different ways, and I'm extremely
happy for those people. I'm not in the I'm not
in any way going to detegrate them their success, but

(01:16:13):
lessons learned. I really wish I would have learned what
marketing meant for a company like ours earlier. I feel
like if I had learned that in twenty seventeen and
twenty eighteen, when I thought I had some idea of
what we were doing, then I think the landscape now
would be very different. But otherwise, you know, I just

(01:16:36):
I always encourage people one to go out and do it.
If you have a marketable skill or a marketable product,
go out and really pound pavement. There's no there's no shortcut.
No one's going to hand you ten million dollars because
you have a good idea. But going out there and
grinding every every day. Also, on the opposite side of that,

(01:16:59):
you know, there are things that are more important than
grinding every day, So just don't be afraid of the
hard work and learning new things and all the other
stuff that goes along with that. But it's not over.
I mean, we're well established for how small of a
company we are, and we punch well above our weight,

(01:17:20):
I think, but it's still you know, we still have
to show up to work every single day, and we
still have to work or tails off, and that's what
we'll keep doing until it's not necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
What would you say your favorite aspect of this is
and does it mirror what you're best at.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
My favorite aspect.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
The design, the actual the actual work though, Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
I love the design of knives and products. Really designing
and developing them is tons of fun to me. I
love it the cliff, the fact that we made this
and we got it from literally a sketch I think
it's sitting on Chris's desk somewhere, to a full fledged product,

(01:18:11):
an award winning product, which is funny to say, is awesome.
I love it. I love the process development of it all.
When I was in private industry, a lot of what
I did was in process improvement and implementation. This is
how we make this product, and this is how we
make it really well. So that stuff is really fun
to me. Also, one thing I've really started to enjoy

(01:18:34):
in the last four years or so has been the
stories that come along with it, the success stories, the
people that are This is I literally saved up for
this knife for six months. I bought it, and it's amazing.
I carried it with me on this life changing event.
You know, I was out hunting elk in the mountains

(01:18:59):
of College Dorado and this is the knife that I
took with me, And this is a formative experience. The
stories have really turned into something that I value immensely,
and I think that's because sometimes when you're in a
windowless shop for sixty hours a week, it makes it
easy to lose sight that people are out there using

(01:19:21):
and depending on what you're making and appreciating and appreciating. Yeah,
so there's so much that's good about it that I'm
really grateful for. And Chris and I we hold itself
and hold each other accountable to making sure that we're
willing to be grateful for what we have and what

(01:19:43):
we've built and realistic about it because not everybody gets
to do this, not everybody has the motivation to do this.
And that's okay, it's all right. I'm not taking away
from anything from anyone, but we get to we get
to make cool stuff. We're machinists who own our own shop.

(01:20:06):
And for every machinist or tradesman who's worked for somebody
else for years knows we have other people making decisions
about what you use every day and how you do
things every day, and it gets frustrating and we don't
have to do that. We have to we have to
decide if we can afford the piece of equipment, but
we get to decide if we buy it, and uh,

(01:20:27):
it's it's really gratifying and fulfilling.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
That is awesome. Yeah, So, how far out in the
future do you see a battle belt sheath for the clift.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
You're not even the first person to ask. So the
problem with that, it's all just design and money. It's
building out kaitex for the cliff, as a high quality
kitex is not cheap. There's lots of plastic venders out

(01:21:04):
there that would bend a piece of plastic around your
cliff and get you something good and usable. The leather
that we have Chattanooga Leather Works making for us is phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
It's just it's so traditional. Yeah, it looks good looking.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
It's great, but it's durable, and it's repeatable, and it's configurable.
You can set it up for a left hand or
right hand, or you can set it up for to
use a strap to the front or a strap to
the back or thumb brake, like, there's so many different
ways to set it up. And I just making Kaitex

(01:21:41):
for this knife kind of feels wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
I can imagine. I can abluely imagine.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
I am messing with three D printed sheets, and that
sounds like it would be even more wrong, but less investment.
So maybe I'll try that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
Yeah, how do you figure out? Do I want the black?
Do I want the natural? And then there's the sheets,
there's the brown, there's the black there. Yeah, but yeah,
just looking at that, that would be one I would
buy purposely for So I have a four year old, Yeah,
this will be his Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
I sent out an email today. I think I sent
it out. Maybe I send it out tomorrow. I can't
remember doing marketing stuff and scheduling stuff. But it's about
caring for your clift. And this is kind of I
try to like tie in that this is a knife
that you'll hand down to your kids.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
You better take care, you know. Nope, nope, it is today.
You sent it out this morning at eight time. See.
Now it's interesting because in these pictures that you have,
oh that even that looks even better.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
And that emails those pictures in the collage on that email. Yeah,
we're done by Phil Swanson and PS Patch Design. So
if you ever need any patches designed or anything, I
don't know if you know Phil. Phil does all of
our graphic design work, and he also does all of
our product photography and like the really nice looking lifestyle

(01:23:15):
stuff like that collage, those are his pictures and he
does such a great job. Oh man.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Yeah, truly a not only a very nice looking knife,
but it just it just appears to be And based
on the experience I've had with your other knives, it's
functional and there's someone like me. Functional that's the name
of the game. And if it happens to be pretty,
it's even better. So if people wanted to reach out

(01:23:46):
to you, if they had ideas, or if they wanted
to maybe do a collaboration or something. How do they
go about doing that?

Speaker 2 (01:23:55):
So the easiest way, there's the form on our website.
Really two different forms on our website. There's the regular
contact form and that goes directly to us, to me,
and then there's the OEM request form. So if somebody
wants us to make a knife for them under their
brand name, we white label stuff, so the OEM stuff

(01:24:16):
go through the OEM form and the contact goes directly
to my email or they can email me at Zachdothal
at Dauntlessmanufacturing dot com. But it's really simple, shoot me
an email. I'm the guy who handles all the base
communication stuff. Chris is managing the shop and doing a
lot of other things in the shop. But whenever it

(01:24:37):
comes to collaborations, we start with just an email saying, hey,
we want to see about sticking our brand name on
one of your knives or something like that. We would
like to see a color way, we want to buy
a fifty.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
Of these or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
So anything that's dual branded, it's got our name on
it too. We make sure that it's a company that
we are happy to be associated with. Right like matt
Helm Right, uh, and and Matt's a great example, he's
a friend. It works perfectly. I love Matt, Matt and family,
and uh, it's great. Uh. But then every once in
a while, every once in a while it'll be a

(01:25:13):
few and far between, someone will say, hey, if we
bought these, could you engrave our name on it? Who
are you? And I don't know. I'll have to check
into it, you know, because they're there. You have to
be careful with your brand and who you're associated with,
and it just is what it is. But yeah, contact

(01:25:36):
me through the contact form and that's where we start.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
So where various places people can find you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
We are on Instagram under Dauntless Manufacturing, are at Dauntless
Underscore Manufacturing. I think we're on Facebook. We have if
you own one of our blades, join our Blade owners
group and then the Adultless Manufacturing Manufacturing page. I do

(01:26:04):
have a very small Twitter presence or x I guess
it's called nowadays and our website Dalles Manufacturing dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
Any final thoughts, Uh, not really.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
I appreciate you coming, you're having me on I.

Speaker 4 (01:26:24):
Know that it's my fault that it's taken this long, right, well,
and and and you had some hesitation happened, because as
someone who who didn't do.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
This prior, this can be intimidating and beyond one of these,
it's it's kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
I've done a few different podcasts, and uh, part of
it is I just really don't like listening to myself talk.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Yeah, yeah, I know that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
Well, Uh, that's that's I've had some really good experiences.
I was on Big Tech with Ike Stevens, and uh,
they've got a great crew. Some of those guys have
moved on. I think Chris Greenfield's out at the Sons
of Liberty now and but really great dudes, and really

(01:27:13):
great and that. So that was a that was a
ton of fun. But that one was funny because I
just we were at shot and I had already started
losing my voice and then went up and talked on
the podcast for two hours. But no, no further, no
further questions here are and I really do appreciate you
having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
Yeah, oh my pleasure. So right now, Cliff is available yep,
four different styles, two different types of sheaths. The dagger
is right around the corner in June. Yep. Any products. Oh,
then you also have the Scalpel.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Yep, the Scalpel's coming in June. So the Scalpel and
the Dermot Dagger are coming in June, hopefully the first
week of June is what we're aiming for. On those,
we'll be restocking some of the work Knife v ones,
which are I think we're down to like one or
two variants of the work nighte V one. We'll be

(01:28:11):
restocking those probably July August ish. And I really want
to design a full size fighter for.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
The hell of it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
I think that'll be a lot of fun. I don't
know when that one will come out. And then also
we will probably slide in some restocks on other stuff
that we haven't done. Full production runs on the dog
Bone D which is the double edge version. That one
will come along sooner or later. But yeah, there's a

(01:28:42):
whole bunch of stuff. We're always making stuff. Sometimes you
won't see anything new from us for a couple months.
That's probably because we're doing a big OEM run for
somebody else.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
And then Hot and Ready's always hot.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
And readies are almost always in stock. We haven't run
out yet.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
Good stuff good, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Lots of good stuff. And if you also if you
have questions about how to set your gear up with
our knives. There's a whole bunch of information on our
knowledge base on our blog, and you could just send
me a question, Hey, I want to put this on
my battle belt or I want to run this inside
the waistband on my support side with the edge forward.
How would I do that? And I can tell you

(01:29:22):
how to do it and what might work best. And
so there's always I sit in front of my computer
most days doing marketing stuff and quotes and stuff like that,
so when those emails come in, I get them turned
around pretty quick.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Cool, good deal. Yeah, well, thanks for talking, thanks for
jumping on, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
So I guess I'll do my final wrap it up stuff.
So yeah, big thanks to Zach over Dotless. Big thank
you to you the listener and the viewer. Also, big
thank you to the sponsors Lucky Gunner, Filster Walter. Additionally,
thank you to the Patreon subscribers as well as Network
Support subscribers. If you go to patreon dot com slash

(01:30:04):
Primary and Secondary, or if you go to Primary and
Secondary dot com slash forum, there's a banner that says
Network Support. Both of those avenues provide an opportunity. It's
an opportunity, a way for you to support the network. Essentially,
five dollars monthly gives you access to these uncut There's

(01:30:26):
going to be no commercials, no anything like that. It's
just a direct link to the non monetized version, so
there should be no ads. Additionally, there is let's see here. Yeah,
so you get the audio only, which a lot of
people seem to want because there are so many complaints
about the so many ads. The problem is I send

(01:30:49):
it off to my host, and then if you listen
to it from someone other than the host, there may
be some things added. These are all hosted the audio
version or all hosted on spreaker, and that's the cleanest
way you can find it. The absolute cleanest way to
find without ads is to go to either network support
or or patroon dot com and five bucks you get

(01:31:11):
these ad free. So with that it helps support the
whole network. I have all these various resources available for
your use. I love putting this stuff together. I love
having these resources together. I love networking. I love hearing
about this. Zach is a horrible example. It's I've spent

(01:31:33):
so much money because of this guy. And this clift
is on my other screen right now, just staring at me.
It's it's going to be a clip point. And now
is it going to be black or is it going
to be natural? I think it's going to be natural
with the brown sheath, here's what see and the black
is so it looks so good, such good good looking stuff.

(01:31:58):
And I have and I and I practically I don't
live in the wilderness, but the wilderness is only two
blocks away. Nice literally literally mean one of these. I
need two of them. I need four of them.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
It would be irresponsible not to have one.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Well, there are four people in my family.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
And the two kids.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
They all need one. Yes, yep. But I love these interactions.
I love these discussions. It's it's cool to have these discussions.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
And then that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
To me. So I haven't met Zach in person, not
that I know of, I don't think so. But I
know for a fact I will run into them at something.
It will be a trade show or something, and it
will be like we've known each other for a while, definitely,
and it's it's so cool, it's so cool. But that
is it. I'm going to kill the feed. It's still
fairly early I still get to beat up my kids. Awesome,

(01:32:54):
And yeah, that clift is just staring at me. It's
it's a good looking knife. And also, yeah, and I
know for a fact there are listeners that are in
the same boat. We have training for guns, there's also
training with knife stuff. There's some pretty cool things. They're

(01:33:14):
pretty cool organizations. Craig over at Nature Alliance Center and
then Douglass But what was that I said.

Speaker 2 (01:33:23):
I thought you were going to say Craig Douglas.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
Oh no, Craig Douglas. Yes for Stabby, but I'm thinking
more like Natural or Nature Uses and then Randall Adventure.
And so as a matter of fact, prior to all
of this, we were talking to Shane Adams who used to
be part of them. I thought he'd be fun to
have with this. Unfortunately you couldn't make it. But there
is training available for this stuff. So if you're like

(01:33:46):
me and you have these cool knives, take it to
the next step and get some training. And that is
definitely on my list that I really want to do,
because yeah, these are tools, they need to be used.
Let's use them to their maximum. So that's all I'm
going to kill the feed I think I'll talk to

(01:34:07):
you later later see now. My biggest question is, Okay,
how do I shut this damn thing off? There's the
button right there. I'm still getting used to this. It's
only been a couple of months. So see you guys
later

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
M

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P&S ModCast 425 - Dauntless Manufacturing

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