What is YOUR definition of mid-tech?

[Ronlad]

Not meant for anyone in particular, but.... is this a dick measuring contest over. 001? Who'd a thunk it?

[T.Rexford]

Todd: I knew that statement was going to upset someone! You'll notice I prefaced my statement with ..."This is much harder to answer". When I mentioned it was hard to hold 0.001, I was thinking primarily about tolerances in profile-No doubt manual machines can produce thickness tolerances to thousandths or even tenths-That's how I do it in my shop. Good drill jigs with bushings can get you consistent holes. No doubt. There are plenty of fine knives made without CNC's.

But (I think) you would be hard pressed to grind 2 blades that could be pinned together through the pivot hole that had the same profile to within 0.001

Gotcha. That's a better explanation. The way it was stated read like: 'Unless you're running a CNC then your tolerance is not tight'. This is just not true.

On profile, yeah my knives my won't hold .001 from one blade to the next. I profile on my grinder except for flats. No two parts on my knives can be interchanged with other knives. Granted I've done it on accident and with flippers the blades can be interchanged but lockface will not be perfect.

But for my business model I don't really want my knives to be exactly the same profile. This is something that I would rather not have. Each piece is made independent and built exactly for that specific knife by hand. Every part is made for each knife except for the 2-56 screws ( I don't produce those in house, but they are re-machined for concentricity of the head tot he threads).

Anyways I didn't want to jump into the discussion. But I had to state that manual machines can machine some very complex parts to very tight tolerances. Sounds like we are on the same page.

[RJ Martin]

Agreed. Much of the precision in any good knife, even one with CNC'd components, comes from manual machining.

[seven1niner]

Some good info here.. and quite frankly makes me want a RJ Martin and Rexford knives even more. RJ & Todd are your order books open by any chance?

Cheers,
719'er