Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast. Your weekly dose of knife
news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your
host, Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco.
Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DeMarco. On this edition
of the show, I'm speaking with Tim Kell of T.Kell Knives. Tim
is a former Marine, a talented machinist, and the helmsman of one of
the most successful knife making ventures in the usa.
He's grown his fan base, and yes, I do mean fan base, or t
kellions with a weekly livestream produced by his wife who goes by
cw. People love Tim, it's true, but
it wouldn't mean much if he didn't make such amazing knives.
I'm proud to be a design contributor to Tekel Knives and look forward to many,
many years of more fruitful collaboration with Tim.
But first, let's catch up with him and find out what's going on. We'll take
a look at some really exciting new knives in the offing. But first, be sure
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Tim, welcome back to the show, sir. It's great to see you. Hey, good
to see you and hear you as well. All right, so let's start with
what is, to me, the most exciting news. You
got a lot of stuff going on at TCL Knives. You guys are always expanding
a lot, but you are coming back out with my favorite
knife, the Agent 001. This guy. Yes
indeed. That's not even a setup. I've been carrying it for, for a
long time. I go back and forth between this and an EDC depending
on where and what I'm doing. Well, let's, let's, talk
a little bit about how it's changed since the first run. I
have them both here and I can hold them up for illustration.
I've been going on and on about this for the last couple of weeks on
this show. But let's, let's talk about some of the differences
between, between the first and the second run. So
the first run was incredible. I think an industry changing blade.
And all we did is what we typically do is we listen to
customer feedback and then each knife that we have in
our lineup, every time I do the next run, I tweak it.
So we brought a new machinist in and on board,
you know, Nick. And he has this
ability to really take exactly how I think
of something in my head and literally put it into steel. And
limitations of standard machining don't really mean much to him because he's self taught,
kind of like me. So everything that we wanted this, I think
what you and I envision the blade to be to begin with, that's what he
did. So we did the step milling. We added the,
the chamfers on the top and in the finger. Well, and
it's incredibly precise. Really, really. I mean
each identical. And it's,
it's just artwork. I mean it's incredible. And we went back with Battle Worn,
which is. We brought Battle one back. So that darker matte gray
bronzish antique look, I think it's
just right now it's probably the best blade we make. I think
aesthetically the way it handles, it feels. The dimensions are
absolutely spot on. Perfect. I'll just keep staring at
it. Yeah, me too. Here, I'm going to hold this up close so people can
see that beautiful step milling on the bevels. And I
have a close up video of this coming out in preparation for the October
1, 2025 drop date. Something I love
showing off is the beautiful chamfering
on the corners, like on the jimping and
on the finger guard. And
to me that it, it's a, it's just another step. This is the first
one here. Beautiful and incredible. But this one is
just has a refined nature to it. That's right.
Yeah. I remember when I pitched it to you originally, you were like, well, I
think it's great. What are you doing? I'm like, just, just wait, man. This thing
is. There's science behind the step milling too. And I don't know if a lot
of people realize that. We do that. You step this way
and it steps. So if you get really, really micro or super
high Magnification, you'll see that it's almost like a square pattern.
And that reduces the amount of blade that touches
whatever you're cutting. So about 60%. So it
absolutely just flies through cut. So we can do a thicker blade stock.
It's not just a look, but man, it sure looks cool too. Tim,
are you saying in cross section? If you look at it, it's a,
like a, like the side of the great pyramids or something? Like a.
Yeah, yeah. Almost. So it's, it's almost like a cross hat. So it's step
harder, you know,
up to blade. But you, you don't really notice that there's little
tiny. Oh. So that really,
it, it just. You have the high points on the blade and that means there's
less cutting. And it moves either if you're cutting meat or food
or just the air because you're a mall ninja, it
flies through everything faster. Okay. So it's less surface area
touching, whatever. Oh, I had no idea. But I guess that,
that, you know, you, you know that when you're going up the blade north
to south, there's going to be steps. You can see them. But going towards
the tip, that accounts for the natural distal taper that you have.
Right. Okay. So another thing I noticed is
the. You went from five gimps to
four gimps on the thumb. On the thumb
ramp. What was the thinking there? Just brain
consistency. That's how many we have on the rest of the stuff. So I
just thought that it'd be smarter just to do that. My. I have
this symmetrical eye and I was like, Nick,
man, that, that drives me freaking crazy. I want them bigger, but
I want an equal number so that when you look at the Raider or the
Outrider or anything, they all have that same flavor. Well, it's, it's
interesting because it is more comfortable and, and it. And
it does not lose any of its grip. That
was my concern. When I told Nick. I was like, I want to. I want
to. We need to chamfer it because it's. This is not an out. We're not
trying to strike ferro rods with this thing. And we're going to be pushing really
hard, but I don't want to sacrifice grip, but I want that sharp
corner gone. And it was a lot of trial and error, but I
think we nailed it. So what was it like going from. So
Nick Chuprin is who we're talking about. NPC knives. What was
it like going from your first
machinist for the first run of 001s to Nick.
It was a really easy transition for me. Nick just.
He. He's like us. He really thinks outside the box, and he has this
GKL style. Sure, I can do it. And it's. It's a challenge
because geometrically, when you're using
a program that does 3D modeling,
it wants to make everything symmetrical.
The ang. The sweeps, the curves. It wants all of that to be a
uniform curve. And when we have this taper
so this angle, it's hard to see here. This
curve is not the same as the medial ridge. Typically, they
have to be when you do CNC CAD work. But because we
have a clip on the front and then a sweep, that took a
lot of doing, and he almost couldn't pull it off. And finally he's like,
I got it. And, you know, I was like, I knew you could. So it
was. It was a challenge because the original blades were milled
this way, and we were swiping it with a machine that had
a tilt, so a fifth axis. But now that we went to 3D to
put the step milling in like the rest of our blades, very
challenging to get the program to do what we did when we hand ground them
in. So what. What's amazing to me is that it's
easy to draw by hand, and then you have this
incredibly sophisticated machine run by incredibly
sophisticated software, and it runs into difficulties
that. To me, that's kind of ironic. And I jab them.
Originally, my first machinist who's still with us, Jeremy.
I would be like. He's like, I can't do that. And I'm like, well, you
said your, you know, quarter million dollar machine can do what my hands can
do. Not so. And it was. That's
right. And they did. So the new
grips, too. This. This. Okay, you. You offer
about 30 different grips traditionally, right? Different
manner of G10. And I love your Pearl G10, but you
also had layer G10 and Micarta's and stuff. And now you're offering
this battle lock, which I have to say, and I told you on the phone
recently, I was a little bit skeptical of, because, like,
frn, isn't that a step down? But tell.
Tell us about this. I. This is just having them in hand has totally
changed me. Tell me about this. And that's exactly what a lot of people say.
Like, man, people. People don't like the fancy plastic. That's what people were telling. It's
fancy plastic. I'm like, but it's glass nylon. You know, it's
more durable than what people are used to. But it's
going to be more impact resistance and we can get the grip out of
it and the weight savings that we want if we
do a glass fill nylon. And it just made a lot of sense to me.
One, from a manufacturing standpoint, to be able to finally get the amount
of texture and the color saturation that I wanted. And I have to be
an American product. And I love.
This is a. It's the same 60 grit texture that you'll find on
common pistol companies. And we had to. We had
to find the manufacturer of this pattern and get
permission to use it. So
I knew that it would increase grip and that's what we really need because my
grips are more. Less on the, you know, broomstick style
handle. And I'm. I'm in your camp. A lot of people
were skeptical. And then they, they grab and they're like, man,
why didn't anybody else do this? And I guess they didn't ask the right questions.
So are you saying that the, the design, the
contours of your handles are more slender, therefore you need
more grip? What do you mean? Yeah, a lot of people. So G10, when
it gets. You get your skin and your oils, it can load up
and get slick. Especially Micarta is really, really bad about that.
Initially they have a lot of grip, but then they're difficult to
clean and to put a lot of texture in them, it kind of messes with
the integrity of the surface. So you'll get chipping and flaking. And I couldn't get
it aggressive enough but not be sharp and
still be something that would be cost effective to manufacture. I
was always chasing that grip, get the extra amount,
and I think it needed it. I'm super, super pleased with how they turned out.
I'm also, you know, a shallow guy. I like the way things
look. It means a lot to me. And the. I, I
just have this olive drab and. And the desert
tan. And those are not very bold and
bright colors. But the color saturation in these are amazing.
They look beautiful. We. We're the.
Oh. And the colors are almost infinite. So we've. We've come out since
with this bright blue. We are married to solid
black. Sorry. If it all. Yeah.
No, no, no, no. Doesn't like it. All right.
I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, if it focused earlier, but
you were saying the colors are infinite. Yeah, they. They have
metallic colors, they have starburst colors. We can even put fleck in there, but we
can't do multiple colors. So that's why we're keeping the. The
Burl G10s around. That's kind of a. You know, I'm a guy that
obviously loves pistols and, and firearms. And as soon as I get
one, I'll pull the, the grips off.
And sometimes I want it to be matchy matchy, so
I like the availability to still be able to do that. So we're keeping all
of those around for aesthetics and
still get grip. But then we're going to be switching primarily to the solid colors,
but we're going to re release some with the color flex in them.
And I mean, I looked at their color catalog. They're literally
thousands. Wow. Now, you mentioned the Burl G10. I'm a
huge fan of the Burl G10. Probably the most.
My most carried tkal knife. And I got a pile of them. Here
is my purple burl
G10,001. But you have
this proprietary red, white and blue G10 which appeared on this very
special FMF that I love showing off. I love showing this
thing off. As I mentioned to you on the phone, my older daughter
said immediately upon seeing this, I want that when you die.
I'm like. Which is a nod to your parenting. If
they like my stuff, they're a winner. That's what I. I couldn't agree more.
So is that burl G10, is that proprietary to you, like the
whole thing, or is it just that color combo or.
No, the manufacturer approached me I blade show several years
ago and said, hey, what do you think about this stuff? And it was.
They were swirling different material like metal, like we did
with Melissa's blade and things like that. And we were
already using the layered system, which everybody does. And I basically
just asked them, hey, can you do just the
colors and can you just. We want like a wood grain kind of
swirl look. And they, they don't
credit me with that. I do think
that I was probably the first person to ask for that. I just thought it
would look really cool and it would reduce the amount of skus because we had
a blue and black and a black and blue. And I thought, man, that would
be cool if we could do a burrow pattern. And they came through.
So we're. It's. It's gotten popular too. I've seen other
company or other knife manufacturers starting to use it. So
maybe, maybe I came up with it. Well, let's just say they didn't.
Okay, so we'll be narcissistic for a moment. I want to. I want.
We will move on to Other knives. But before we do, I want to
mention that when you sent me these production
samples of the new agent series, you sent me two
things that are new to me.
One of them is the Badger Claw sheath and then also this
awesome Ulti clip. And I want to talk about both of those for a second,
but tell me about your. Your work with Badger.
Badger Claw sheets. I mean, this is just so beautiful.
That came by way of Nuge. Tom
Nugent from Knives by Nuge. He and I share some common
material sourcing, and we both are feeling the constraints of
American manufacturing. And he said, listen, man, you should call the guy at
Badger Claw. He comes through for me every time he uses American.
Literally. They're American cows. They speak English. I've talked
to him, and he's in Texas, and
he's fast and he's super open to be able to. Hey,
man, I got this cool idea, and he's. He's like me. He's like, yeah, sure,
let's do it. And it. It just
expanded the possibilities of what was possible. And I love Apocalypse
sheaths. They're quiet, they're comfortable, they got holes to mount
stuff. I. I like them. I almost considered moving completely to
it because, you know, Kydex leave it in a car and it's garbage
for too long. So, you know, we're trying to back into using some
other more creative products. Right.
For sheathing, but we. We don't have that nailed down yet.
But I love it, and that I have to give that credit to. It's a
niche. A great nude, too. Yeah. Yeah. And I.
So wait, now I got a couple of things. We're going to get back to
Nuge in a second. But you were pointing to the handle. Are
you saying that. Were you implying that maybe
shes could be made from the same sort of FRN that you're making the battle
locks out of? Maybe. Stay tuned. All
right. Knives by Nuge. I love Tom Nugent.
He's a great guy. I. I have two of its knives that I absolutely
love. Both of them have this incredible
jute wrap on it. So I had to get the
DP1 with the I. Well, I love that. I
do, too. With that. With the N Knives by
N Jute wrap. And it has the Badger claw. It's a
perfect setup. I dropped this in my pocket. It's good to go.
And I discovered that with the 001, I can do the same thing, even though
it's, you know, almost twice the size of the
DP1. So one thing I love about these, she's.
You can drop the whole thing in your pocket and. Yeah, same.
Like, almost the entire thing is. Is covered up, especially in, like,
work pants, khaki pants, and then jeans. Just a little bit
peaks out. And then it's so easily removed and put back in.
I love this setup. Well, it gives you the gentleman carry, too.
You know, it's not as intimidating when you just have a leather thing with a
little tiny handle sticking out. It's codex. Looks tactical, so,
you know, and it's really comfortable. I like them a lot.
Let's talk a little bit about this
clip, the Ulti Clip spring clip. I've been
loving this. You sent this with. As a sample with the.
With the 001s. And yeah, I had it for a few
weeks. I had it for a few weeks and did not. Did not put it
on. And I finally put it on, and I'm so
glad I did. I really loved it. That was an interesting project.
We. There's a guy who used to make what I thought were the best
IWB holsters, and I.
I reached out to him, Eddie Massaro, about this clip. Man, I
think we can use this for blades. I would like to explore that. And
we went back and forth for several, several years
trying to come up with some kind of an idea. And he basically got to
retirement age and said, I'm done with it. You want to buy the company? And
CDub and I were actually getting her a new phone,
and we were talking about it while we're trying to deal with the Apple Store
people. And I'm like, you know what? Let's do it. So we were going to
buy this holster company just to get access to the
clip. And I. I guess.
And in the time that we were going to get back home and really discuss
this seriously, sold the rights to that clip to Ulti
Clip. And I'm like, eddie, I don't. I don't want the
holsters. It was the clip that I wanted. And he's like, oh, no.
And then he put me in contact with the guys at Ulti Clip. I kind
of knew Ryan, you know, God rest his soul,
and his family from thinking
about carrying some of their other clips, the Slims. And we kind of had a
little. A basic relationship. But then he and I started
really communicating closely on this is what I'm
thinking. Instead of just a single skinny little clip,
let's do something that mimics more of a wider clip. You'll get
more stability. You can do the lock in if you make it out of this
material, you can spread it and put it in any hole configuration.
And we went back and forth for, gosh, a couple years.
And then I think Blade Texas,
he and his engineer come up and they're grinning and they've got these things.
And I was like, that's it, that's the one. And he goes, that's
it. I knew it, man, we finally did it. And then I said,
we want to roll it out. It's going to become our exclusive clip. We were
going to debut it and then they asked if we would debut it with them
at Blade Show Atlanta and we did. So we debuted that clip
on Melissa's Blade and they
entered it and actually won accessory of the year. Which was kind of a really
proud moment for myself.
You know, I'm not, I didn't invent it.
I'm just happy to have been able to give them input to really make an
incredible product. I love the clip. Just
from looking at it, I thought, oh, that's going to be too
like, flimsy is not the word. But it's like it's not going
to stay flat against the belt for some reason just looking at it.
That's what I thought. But this does two things. First of all, the
spring is. The spring material is
really durable and really stout. But it solves
the, this is what I love the most. It solves the age old
problem of clips and the holes. You can spread this thing out
to fit any hole configuration. It is awesome. And
I love it. I love it. I got to get more of these in my
life now. All right. We have thousands upon thousands
of them. And you know, I wanna, so this was Ulti clip. They brought
this to, to the design that. So you can
shorten it to inch and a half, bring it down, it'll fit over a 2
inch belt and you can loosen it and cant it at a 45.
That was their thing. Like, man, that's brilliant. Guys, I absolutely
am just blown away with the clip. I use them on.
We, you know, we make the tactical suspenders and I use that clip because it's
so low profile, so stout on those. I use them on.
Wait, you make tactical suspenders? I didn't know this. You didn't
know we're not going to get naked. But they, you see, I'm wearing them now,
you can't even tell. But they, they clip under your belt
from the inside. So the only thing that's showing is the front part of this.
So I wanted to be able to carry heavy stuff and
they take 15 pounds of weight, so there's a cross piece, and then
they're really commercial grade elastic, so
they'll pick up £15. So you can completely loosen your belt and have
heavy iron. So a 1911 style pistol, all of the
nerdy stuff that us EDC guys like to carry. Keys,
wallet, flashlights. But you're not sagging, so when you bend over,
you're not showing everybody your exposed rear.
But it really keeps everything compact and tight. And I didn't want something
because suspenders are, you know, 1950s
big red, wide things, but I wanted something that you could keep really clandestine.
So you can't even see them there. Yeah, they're super. They're
really popular in tactical communities. A lot of officers, a lot of
military guys order them, and even CCW concealed carry,
because you can. You don't have to have that belt cinched down so tight that
it's cutting off the circulation to your hips. Yes, I. Okay, I'm. This
is just a little moment I'm having. I'm gonna have to check these out
and figure out how I can integrate. Integrate them into
my stylish daily wear. Which is not so stocky. Yeah, you
gotta. You gotta roll untucked, Mr. Demar.
That's the issue. You can actually kind of clip them and tuck stuff in behind
them, but you'll still see the little part.
But you can tuck your shirt in about 2 inches behind them. So it's pretty
neat. Well, I know that. That, you know, real fine gentlemen who wear like
real nice suits and stuff like that. Suspenders have never gone out of style
in. In that. In that way, because you got the jacket. So I could
see some sort of a tactical GQ crossover here, but this is
something I got to think of. Yeah, you know, John Wick with a blazer, of
course. Yeah, exactly. That's the marketing angle. I need to call Kiana.
We're good friends. Not at all. That's a lie. Not at all.
So, yeah, so we've covered this, this clip and these badger
cloth sheets. Which. Which brings me to. And you've mentioned
Melissa Backwoods, her knife collaboration. Tomas,
alas. And his collaboration. My collaboration with you.
What. What do you love? And. And you've done these awesome
double oh seven. Agent Double oh seven with the Japanese
wrap with auxiliary manufacturing. Tell me about
what you get out of these collaborations, besides awesome products.
Right. Well, and one, we'll focus
mainly on the agent series. That
design was brilliant. That was the first as a predecessor.
You know, you kind of served up this Incredibly beautiful design on a
silver platter. And when we initially started talking about it,
I was like, man, I've really been trying to nail down that
bird beak style blade and I don't want to do what everybody else is doing.
I made minor tweaks to the handle. You had already
designed it around our platform, lengthwise, the narrow grips.
I made a few tweaks. I changed the blade. The only change I made to
blades, put my name on it, that was it. And figured out how to machine
the thing. And out of that has been born every
agent series and it is our most popular knife collaboration.
So kind of backing into that
when somebody of your prowess,
you've touched more knives than I have different types of knives. Your martial
arts background is more extensive and in a different discipline than my own.
So I can listen and gain feedback. And if you like our stuff enough,
that's hugely valuable to me. It's a different perspective, it's a
different subset of thought, of ideas, of vision.
And I really like pulling from these different stuff and
making cool blades. Yeah, I, I, I think
you've got a lot of,
I think to be open enough. And first of all, thank you for those kind
words. I, I really appreciate it. It was because, you know, the night,
the night stalker is what really inspired this. The length of the
night, you know, this is the length of the night stalker. The blade is the
same length, you know, almost exactly.
And because I was carrying that so much, it's such a great knife.
I was thinking, okay, this is doable. You know, carrying a fixed
blade knife in on my waistband, outside
of the waistband, and still have a shirt to cover it easily is
totally doable. So I mean, you know, right
back at you. Like, I was so thrilled that that was something you wanted to
do. In my line of work, collaboration is absolutely
essential and you get the best stuff. When you're asking
your cameraman, what do you think we should do here? Or what do you think
the lights should be like? And, and you get all this input that
that's what really makes, you know, good stuff great.
And I feel like you and I hit a nice stride with that. It,
it can be hard sometimes collaborating if people,
if people's egos are too,
yeah. Too involved. Let me that in this collab it was
super easy. I mean, for me, I mean I
just was, I just made a few changes and
it was easy. Well, Jim just brought up your
webpage and first of all, which is beautiful. And he is scrolling
and we just scrolled by, casually scrolled by
the adversary. I mean, the combatant folder.
Let's, let's talk about the combatant folder. This is like a
revolutionary thing, not just for TKL knives, but
for the folder industry. And you're not really known so much
as a folder guy yet. Let's talk at all.
We have been on this quest for probably three years or more to
get a folder that would stand up to heavy
duty use, be light enough to carry, be comfortable.
And I'm not a folder guy,
so I, I didn't know anything about. You can't use this
lock because so and so says you can't. And you can't do this because that's
not allowed. And this is what's standard in here. And all that stuff would frustrate.
Like, I just want to make something cool. And why doesn't anybody do
fill in the blank. So I tried to design them
on my own. I'm not super good at that. And then Emory, who you and
I both know, introduced me to a friend of his that he learned knife making
from V. Cornich, and Vance is out of Colorado.
And he's like, hey, I got some ideas. I've got this
really cool crossbar style lock. I
didn't know what that was. I didn't know what an axis lock was. I didn't
know what an Omega spring was. I didn't know that because this company
came up with it. I couldn't use it because I thought it was cool. So
I really pushed Vance in the have. I want modularity.
This the first one. I'm like, this is so hard to take apart. Like, why
do we, can't we just do this, this, this and this?
And Vance is, he says he's lazy,
but I think he's crazy enough to go, yeah, I think we can figure that
out. And he, he came up with this modular
design on a crossbar that you can just drop
blades in and pull them out. And then I'm like, hey, I want bearings. I
want something that just snaps open. I want to be able to hold it in
reverse, which is not a crossbar thing at all. And I'm
like, why don't we do that? Like, well, they're hard to take apart. So then
he brings me, after a couple of years,
some very close to this man. Now you
figured it out. So then we, we tried to make, we pocketed the
bearing so that you can do, if you've seen the video, you can do a
blade change in just 15, 20 seconds, which is crazy
for a crossbar. But the handles just Pull off two
screws, you pull the pivot, drop the axis, the blade falls, you throw the new
one in and you have the whole. This is a universal piece,
the handle without the blade. So that allows us to make
other blades that we can drop straight into it. And along that same
vein, I wanted to use these spring style clips because I love the aph.
The clip we were just talking about. But there's an aftermarket support
for these clips that all these people make.
Titanium clips, deep carry, they make metal clips, colorful clips,
pla. You know, the aftermarket support for this clip pattern
is huge. And I'm like, hey, you're talking about the spring. Some people don't like
clips. Right, right. So there's, I mean like Lynch
Northwest makes one, there's a bunch of other people that make. I thought I had
one laying here. I don't. But if you don't like a wire
clip, you can just pull this off and get one from Amazon
that's metal and full and deep carry. So there's so many different
options. And I
wanted, of course we do interchangeable grips. And I thought how cool would it be
if you could just get one frame and then buy
all the blades and just swap it out? Or you can take in 10 seconds,
change a grip out, or in just less than a minute, change blade out.
I really think what we've come up with is very unique.
And the other, the last feature I think that's unique is that this
backspacer and the liner is a two piece design,
but that's your stop. So you have this big quarter inch chunk of
metal that is a stop and gives the support for the
blade and then a hardened steel bar between that and
the actual blade. It's incredibly strong. And it's not,
it's not been done that way. And I really like modularity.
But that is, is, is. That's interesting because that's kind
of like a traditional slip joint. How a slip joint stops.
This is where. Okay, so this knife coming from, a folder guy
is unique in a number of different ways. First of all,
axis lock style knives with omega springs are notoriously
up just a bit pain in the ass to open up and to put
back together. I hate it. I've only done it a couple of times and I
never want to do it again. B, you have
a knife that you can change the blade legitimately, change the blades
without it having some sort of a cheesy arm and a cheesy sort of
razor style blade that you. I've seen that before. Right but this is different.
This is a totally stout and solid
regular blade that you can switch out maybe an
adversary and a combatant. And I think you have a sheep's foot style
blade coming in there. And yeah, see, doesn't pull that one because
she loves. And then you've got. That's cool. And then you've got this
sort of the stopping system that's like a slip joint. I mean, this is
very unlike
folders in general. I mean, I haven't heard of a folder that does
any of these things, let alone all three of them
at once. And then also it's an, it's a, it's an unusual
business move to make something universal like that. Instead of saying
you got to buy the whole new knife, you like this other blade, you got
to get the whole new knife. That's what we did with our other stuff too.
People like, you should just make a G10 in
black and sell 50 of them. It's stupid business move to make all your
stuff interchangeable. Like. But I'm a. I value my money.
I work really hard for it. So why not give a guy the ability to
swap his grips out? I don't understand that. Yeah,
it just, it just made sense to me across the board. So,
yeah, it's dumb business wise, but I think value to the
consumer and it's neat. So how I'm, I'm
holding up my combatant right now. How different is
the size between what you're holding in your hand and what I have in my
hand? So I'll do them side by each. Oh, yeah,
they're, they're very, very similar. To get the pivots and everything in the
right spot, we only had the length in it
just like three, eight of an inch. Put it real close to the camera, Tim.
Let's see if we can turn her. Oh, there we go. There we
go. Let's see if I can get it to stay this
way. So they're, they're very, very similar. The handle platform is the same,
but we just had to push it slightly forward. But the geometry, so you see
these scoops and everything are the same. So we just had to kick this
back. Oh, we lost it. There it is. I think
that's just over a quarter of an inch so that we could get each blade
to tuck into the handle where there'd be no issues to make it modular.
So I can't zoom it in. I do need to send you one so you
can play with it. Oh, I'm not going to say no to that. You know,
people are going to love this because probably if. If
there is any criticism of the combatant or the adversary, you might
have guys with giant meat hooks saying that the handle is too short,
which they can remedy with a sentry grip, obviously, but.
Right, but this is going to extend the handle by a
quarter inch, so it's going to make it even more. Even better in
hand. Yeah. So you've got a lot more of a grip than you do on
the standard combatants. That one stops, just
passed, and then the combatant tucks in a decent amount
more. So. But extra half inch really makes a big difference,
and we will be in the future. We've already got the rings
designed for this series and the next, so
we're gonna try to make it completely modular. You mean the, the aftermarket.
I'm holding up the sentry grip for. For my
night stalker there. Right. Yeah, that. That thing works
great. So. So people who buy this folder can get the. The ring
also. That is the plan. Quick,
quick question about the bearings in this. You have bearings at the
pivot and they're sitting in a pocket. What. What stops
them from just falling out of the pocket? Is there something there or.
It's just the frame, so if I can get it.
Nope, it doesn't. All this fancy.
You know, this guy Bob recommended this camera to me. There
it is. Got it. It likes my face.
So they're just held in here
and with pressure from the pivot. Okay. And
what keeps the frame together is this
crossbar has a shoulder so
that threads on. And that's how we can make it modular,
so that everything just slides and tucks in. For the bearings to come
out, you'd physically have to slide the blade out.
Okay. And they're standard bearings, so you
can get them anywhere. Same with the springs. The pivots are all standard,
so it'll be really easy for people to, if they want,
upgrade bearings, upgrade their own bearings or to replace any of the parts. I wanted
it to be easy to tune
or to add different stuff. I mean, that your. Your whole philosophy
of modularity and your. Your requirement for modularity is
very definitely speaks of your Marine
Corps background. Yep, I think so.
I mean, one piece of kit, one pistol, all the.
Everything needs to fit so that you can easily change with your
environment and that. I don't know why that seems
like such a revolutionary contract or concept in this
industry. And it just made sense to me.
Well, I think people want to sell as much as they possibly can. You know,
I think that's why it's kind of revolutionary or
interesting. What's the production schedule on that? What can, when can we
expect those to, to come out? And is Nick, is
NCC working on those? No, that's actually vcc,
Vance Court, Customs. So he's in Colorado
and then Nick is in the northeast. So
we are thinking through something. If you haven't seen
Nick Chupin's Boulders, his automatic, all that,
they're just, I mean they are premium and
I would love to be able to commission a premium line of automatics with
Nick because I think he's one of the best in the industry at that. He's
innovated his stuff. Each one of his springs is custom
made. I mean the guy is, he's, he's a freak of nature. And
maybe one day we'll come out with that super high end automatic with Nick as
well. But we keep him really busy with the fixed blades right now.
I don't think he wants to make competition for himself because
he's pretty well known for his folders. Oh, that's true, that's true. Yeah,
that makes sense. Okay, let's, let's move
on to the sapper. So slash. Well, tell us about what's
going on with the sapper. Now before you do, let me just gush about it
for a second. This has long been one
of my very, very favorites from tel knives
and it is a collaboration with Emory Morgan Stern and it is
a big knife. It's a recurve. To me it's a
fighting knife but you know, combat style fighting knife.
But it also I have learned excels in the back 40.
Mine is nowhere near 40 but you know, you can,
you can delimb and you can do all manner of work with this.
So tell me about the evolution of this knife which started as
the sapper. A sapper is a
demolition expert in the military. So a guy who searches and
destructs and makes minds inert. So
there's a very specific set of tools that they use. And this blade
was designed to be
able to effectively do that. It was never
supposed to be a combat style blade or a brush
clearing blade. And I brought that to the
table. I really wanted to make it multifunctional
and Emory actually took it to
the tracking school TTLs and they loved it. And there's
a couple search that I ran into at Cancon when we were
exhibiting there and this guy did ser
training for the military and he got one of the blades and then the feedback
from him was man, you're Ms. Marketing this knife. This Thing is
incredible for that, that environment.
So I felt like we were really
pigeonholing the blade and anybody that bought it, they use a
hey man, what's this line for? And I'm like, well, that's the probe for landmines.
Like I live in Maryland. I don't. I don't. That's not here.
It's like, you know, or we're delimming stuff. We're not. That doesn't exist.
So a lot of people shied away from it and the feedback kept coming
in that this was a great Bushcraft backwoods kind
of multi combat rule style blade. So I talked with
Emery and I'm like, man, you know, I think we need to rebrand it.
And it was a lot of discussion around that. So
we didn't really make any changes other than we pulled the line off.
We still left Emery's logo because he and I were co designers on the blade.
And we made it available in all the colors and multiple steels to not
pigeonhole it because I think the blade deserves a different light. I
think more people accept it. And we just
did the drop Monday and we sold probably three times more than
we normally do just from showing people those
additional feature sets. So this is now called the Outrider.
You can still get a sapper if you want a sapper, but
you have taken the line. When you're talking about the line, if people don't know
there, there is on the original sapper a line going from
the very tip of the blade coming straight down the blade. That. That
line up with all three handle screws. And as
Emory was talking about it when he was on the show, it.
It is integral with the, with the design
of the pommel, which is meant to fit in the palm of the hand
and to kind of align all the way with your forearm. And that
is for when you're searching in the sand for a landmine and
gingerly kind of poking around. That line
shows you exactly where the tip is when the tip is buried in the sand.
So you can know exactly where what your. Where the. Where
your probe is. Basically that's important that you don't get
any small misses. A landline? Yeah, I would imagine
not. And so I always thought the line was cool and,
and it would never stop me from buying a knife. You know,
I think it's just added coolness. But from, from a
knife company owner's perspective, marketing is a big part of it.
And if people are start thinking that it's a more of a
specialized blade than it actually is then you'll
have people turning their back on it. But you made the
choil larger, it seems, for this
kind of bushcraft kind of grip, you know, carving and
that kind of thing. So just a couple of little tweaks. Yeah,
very minor tweaks. The first sapper didn't have jimping at all. The
outrider does. We did open that channel up. I think
they're an excellent sheath and people are responding well.
You know, you kind of have to teach people in
anything that you do, and if you want to stay in your lane and be
like, well, this is what it is, then that's fine, you can do that. But
I think I use tools for many purposes.
I felt like these little tweaks and then pushing it into a different
community would let more people enjoy the blade because people that
bought them were using them for these use cases.
Not many people were telling me, hey, man, I did a great job searching for
mines and I kept my legs, so thanks. But everybody was like, hey, I
carried on the ranch and I did a lot of cool stuff. Yeah. I
have a solo camping weekend coming up. It was.
Was gonna be this weekend. It's been delayed. And that's gonna be
one of many knives that comes. But that's the one that I'm gonna have on
my belt, I think, is the Outrider, because it's. It's
got. It's got everything I like. It's got a very aggressive stance, but it's
actually quite a practical knife. It's the thickest blade we make
too. It's 3 16, so it's. It's thicker than anything else. So it's. It's
durable. So just to get back to collaborations for a minute,
two also very successful collaborations you've done with Tomas, Alas
of Tactical Tavern and Melissa Backwoods.
Those. Those are also
very popular collaborations. Are you expecting
to do more runs of those coming up? Yeah, we
actually have some of both coming this year. The
007 collab,
really, it's just we. Minor tweaks to a blade that we had already
designed based on some of Tomas's feedback.
So not a whole lot of changes from its original to his
feedback on that blade, but he wanted
in different steel. So we're going to do someone S35V actually those were made. We're
going to do those. We're also going to do some
CTs XHPs in Melissa's blades later this year. And we
also have some more carbon steel because,
you know, she pushes more into the outdoors. So ADC
RV2 made sense for that blade. So we're going to kind of do
EDC and that and then the.
I hope to get both of those to market this year. We have a really
full schedule up until November
and this is only our second release of the
01s. And with the new features
that we've added to that, I really want to highlight that blade because
it's what started, I think, a movement. I mean, people
love the entire Agent series and I think that we. It can stand alone.
That's just an incredible blade. Yeah. And so I. You have been
generous with me and you sent me
the three. This is the three, right? Yeah, I believe
the three and the two and Agents from the Agent series.
I, I have slacked. I need to. I need to get back on and as
soon as the 7 comes out, I definitely need a 007.
I love. I'd love to get it in that auxiliary manufacturing handle wrap.
But these are incredibly useful blades too. It's. So I'm
pretty impressed by how you took the original
001 and ran with it. You know, the,
the tweaks you made to the handle made it so incredibly comfortable. I look at
the. My original drawing and. And I can just tell it would
not have been a very comfortable grip. It kind of looked cool,
but that was, that was where I was coming from. It also had the
bird's beak utility, but. But you really actually
made it an ergonomic masterpiece. And then adding blades
is just. Just makes sense here. Yeah, that's my style.
You know, like the, the. The three is the Nightstalker blade. So I
was like. That kind of pays homage to the beginnings of the entire
Agent series. So. And that. That's a unique blade. I think
I have actually seen that blade style popping up across the industry
in the last year or so, which makes sense. That's our best seller, that
blade shape. So it just made sense to do that and bring the
wharncliffe. We already did. And then there's the. The four and the
five that I don't think you have. I don't yet.
We. We need to rectify that because the four
is very Puukko
Chevy. So it's a little mini puukko
sub. 3 inches still. 165 super stout
tip. And this little guy is
absolutely nasty. So this is the new four that we
haven't sent yet. And then the five. I don't even have one
completed from Heat treat yet. It's. It's a little clip point
look. I, I modeled it after a folder, but it's the same
footprint as the 01 blade, but
the grind is completely different. Single edge swedge, high grind.
And the thinner steel. Oh, cool. Is it the same profile as the
one? Yeah. It was an accident. When I ordered the steel, I
didn't pay attention and they sent it to me at 125.
And you can't even tell when you look at
the. The five, but it is. So I just made it a.
I swedged it all the way up and a single grind. And you'll
recognize it when you see it. But I need to get that out to you
also because it's. I mean, it's born from this plate. On accident, the steel came
in and I'm like, what in the hell did you do? This is the wrong
thickness. And he's like, did you see your po? And I'm like, no.
I'm like, what the hell are we going to do? So I was like, well,
knife makers make knives. So I just. I made lemons
from lemonade and we turned them into the five. The 005, which is.
It's a neat. It's. A lot of people love it. It cuts like a steak
knife because it's. That would make a great steak knife. Get a. A fancy
handle on it and. Yeah, that's a good
idea. Is there a 6?
Well, here's the funny story that what is the
007 was the 006. I had designed it.
You can look at that blade and tell that it came from the Nighthawk design
and the Ops Hawk design. I just. I wanted it to be more
aggressive in its styling because the Agent series is
really slim. So I had already designed it
well before the. The colab came about for the 007.
And it was actually Tomas's idea. Like, hey, man, can we please call it the
007? I'm like, that's pretty rad.
I guess. So we never backed into the six. So six is
open. It's like we skipped it. So we have 1 through 5
TBA on the 6, which I actually.
Dave Everett, OG Blade reviews,
he is really wanting me to put a troop call
on that handle platform. And I like where his head's going with it, but I
want to make sure we separate it from the O1 because the 01
does double duty in. In my opinion, due to the. Due to the
double edge. It has that back cut. But I. I know where
Dave's going with it. I'm sure he wants that. That fruit
knife shape, which would be. Yeah, it
is. The trailing point is much more aggressive on that thing. Yeah,
Dave is a great guy. I, I'm always talking about.
And he, he, he really knows his stuff too with the martial arts. He
does, he trained with, he certainly does. He was actually texting me about
like, are we ever gonna do this? Man, it's
been a crazy year. You know, we, we took some serious manufacturing losses.
We've done incredibly well this year to rebound from that. And I was
like, hey, we just kind of had to pause that. I would really like to
get back to that. And then there's another design that the knife
junkie, I don't know if you've heard of it. Oh, that guy, super good dude.
You check his podcast out too. He's got some great guests on there.
There's another design that I'm working with ibon, if you, you
should look him up. Oh man, that, that thing is cool.
I, you know, you gave me, I don't know, maybe about a year ago. The,
the print, the 3D print of it. I absolutely of that in
the smaller version that you came up with. I absolutely love it.
You know, and, and this is, this is the sort of thing where you can't
be impatient about it because, you know,
I have no idea what it's like running a knife company. And
someday when, when that has gotten to, and
that fighter is, is in the works, it's going to be such
an exciting thing. But you know, I, I, I just tell myself,
well, I'm not a nice company. I don't know what, it's what it takes to
run. And you've got all of these different blades that have to come out.
You just mentioned manufacturing loss
which, without getting too deep into that, like, how did you rebound from
that? It's the support of our community. That's it. I mean,
we have historically sold blades at an alarming
rate. If you do the mathematics side of that. From six years
ago, almost where I got my business license
to now, we've grown 3,850%,
which is absolutely astonishing. And
yeah, I'm like, this is crazy. So we've just been chasing this thing
and the support of the community and people being really
excited about what we're doing differently in the industry
that's, that's allowed us to be able to carry on.
I mean it's, we're talking almost a half million dollars
and we are a cash based company. It is there,
there, it's been a slog. But our customers have
really continued to buy our blades and
supported us As a company. And it's, it's been, it's great to see,
I mean, without getting in the weeds like you said. It's
really inspirational to me and CW just kind of step back, like, man, this is
crazy. Against all odds, it shouldn't work. A cash based company should
not be able to weather that. And because of the support of the industry in
the community we have. Well, I also think you're being maybe a little
bit humble and I, you know, I believe what you're saying, but also you
have been able to, I'm going to use a corporate term that, that
grosses me out, but you've been able to pivot very nicely. When you've
been, when you've received blade blanks that
have not lived up to your expectations, you've been able to
actually turn them into great kind of new ish
versions. And I'm thinking of, of the FLN for instance.
Right, right. What did you do with that? We had
originally designed the FLN with Jared from Neve
Knives. And then I think for
his use case, I didn't hit the mark. I did what I wanted to
do, but I didn't do a Jared wanted. So we backed in, tried to make
a new one. And when we got them back from the same company, they
were wrong. So we sent them out to Dan
Hosen of Precision Knife Works in California and had
a hollow grind put into those things. And those are coming
on the 5th, the 1st, I think maybe
alongside October 1st. I don't know, I can't remember,
I can't even keep up. But we just reground those blades into that to
make them an incredible blade. Just
you have to pivot. You've got to listen to the community. And you can't just
let you know, 1600 blades
that are jacked up sit on your shelf and cry and go home and make
winches. You gotta do something, you know.
Well, and also in doing that in, in taking those
wind chime blades and fixing them, I am
imagining it's closer to Jared's vision. I mean,
I know how much Jared values edge geometry,
you know, very thin edge geometry. Well, now it's hollow ground and thin. And I
know some of his designs that he's had made by W.E. knife Co. And other
companies feature a very thin hollow ground blade.
So kind of, you know, in a sense you were able to,
to dry your tears and make something maybe
that you weren't even expecting would be so good.
Yeah, and it's, it's wicked, man, it's wicked.
It's so cool. I mean I, I have the first. I'm holding up the, the
original FLN and it is by far the, the
best karambit I have. I don't have too many karambits,
but in terms of grip, in terms of being able to make a
natural fist, this thing is awesome.
And that's if I can get this thing to cooperate with me.
This is the 2.0 without the hollow. This is the thick
version. Now it doesn't. Anyway, it's same flavor, just a
little bit slice here and if you
recognize it, that's the Piranha grip platform. So
again we used the Piranha grip because I like it. It's small, it's
compact, but you get a lot of grip so that I don't have to invent
a new handle. And I thought it worked already. So
we also use that for Melissa's blade. Again, back to modularity.
Love that. So it didn't start life as a karambit. And then
some of the experts are like, what is this thing? I'm like, well this is
not at all what Jared said he wanted. But I said let's how about
this? We'll get the same functionality and it ended up being this
micro compact, nasty little
karambati blade and that.
Yeah, when you get one of these, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll get it. It is
a cut. Yeah, man, this thing, this thing is sweet. And, and actually now that
I'm holding it, it needs one of these wire clips. The wire, the, your
wire clip that you've been, that you sent me would be perfect for
the fln. I had the, I had trouble with how to mount this,
how to carry it. For me, I think it works best with lace
in the belt and just tug it. But so well
this, this is a prototype of the sheath. We're working with
MKM on this. So it's leather, it's going to have three holes,
they'll be black and the, it's a
magnet style sheath so it has the same amount of
retention as a standard Kydex sheath.
And we, we got super strong magnets and it's also
ambidextrous so you could actually put this blade in this way. But they're going to
come in black only with that aph. It'll allow you to
IWB tuck this and it will be completely ambi and you can
put a DCC clip and it'll be, they'll be in black leather and
these will work on the existing FLNs also
because it's the same blade profile. So we should
have those back. The guys at
mkm, that's the Italian knife company, They've.
They've been great to work with. Lorenzo, he's
just a good dude. A phenom
on the foosball table, by the way. Don't try that. Don't try that.
I'm telling you, Tim, we are. We're. We're up against our hour.
Let's just tell everyone. I know people who are watching this,
know you probably. But for those who. Who don't know you so well,
tell them the. Tell our audience the best way to keep up with
you and what you've got going on right
now. Because we were canceled on Patreon last week.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We appealed twice and that's it. So
we got the news yesterday that we. No more Patreon for us.
Our newsletter to the website is going to be the best way. We also have
a YouTube community tab. That's really
our newsletter. There's a lot of people, we try to push information through there a
lot. Our live streams on Sundays that you can ask
a question that's. Typically, we go 10 to 12 Eastern on Sunday
mornings to midday to try to keep everybody up
to date on everything. So those three. Between those three, you should be able to
get all the information that you need. Unreal. Well, thank you so much, Tim, for
coming on. It's always a pleasure, man. I love talking with you. I love your
knives. And we have some pretty good phone.
Phone conversations too, like. Yeah, yeah.
So aside from the industry, great to be a friend of yours.
Right back at you. Thank you, Tim. Thanks, pal.
There he goes. Ladies and gentlemen, Tim Kell of Tkel Knives. One of the best
out there. And, man, it really sickens me that they've been
kicked off a Patreon. That's absolutely absurd. I know. They had a thriving
community there, but they do have a thriving community on YouTube
10 to 12 on Sundays Eastern standard time. Check them out there. That's a
great show. Also, if you want to order one of those awesome
teal knives that you saw, we have a great affiliate link.
You just have to use the coupon code Knife Junkie. At sign out,
they get a sale, you get 10% off. And I get a little something too.
So it works for all of us. All right. For Jim working his magic behind
the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying, until next time, don't take dull
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