Wood Working

The Ka-Bar Breech Display Case is a design I came up with out of necessity, I just thought it was time for a change.

I lost my original Ka-Bar somewhere between here and 1983, where exactly it went, I do not know, I just lost track of it after I got out of the Marines.

About 2 years ago I ordered a new custom engraved Ka-Bar from Sgt Grit and wanted to display it. I looked around on the internet for a nice display case and wouldn’t you know it, I found nothing that I liked. All the display cases were the same, Square, with glass or the 2 pieces of wood which held the blade at both ends, Blaa boring . . . .
I decided that seeing how wood working was my thing, I would come up with something new, I’d been working with this metal inlay techniques and thought it might be cool to incorporate that into a new Ka-Bar case. however, the first order of business was to get away from the usual square design you see everywhere, and logic dictated if the design is not square then it is round, enter the cylinder.
“Into the Breech once again”.

The design you saw above was hand carved and inlay-ed with Pewter, I built this the hard way with a router and chisel just to get a solid idea of the design concept inch by inch. The engraving was done with a Dremel and by hand with carving knives, however my Mrs suggested I drop this idea for the production run as cnc milling would leave cleaner lines. Where would I be without my little lady….

Right now the custom engravings offered for the case display are simple, however, in the future I will offer new concepts like having your division emblem engraved in the top along with your branch name, or various combinations.

This is my design folks, an original, I came up with it, as of today I see no other design like this being made. I am sure others will follow because this thing looks bad ass, I guess that is a form of flattery, but for right now This is my baby

The Story of the table “Ironsides” goes back to my Marine Corps days in the 80’s. The original idea was to build a coffee table for my man cave with a Bandolier of M60 rounds set in the center covered by a plain of glass. Needless to say the bullets were a bit extreme for the 80’s and a bit harder to get passed the guards at the front gate, so the concept of my table sat for the next 30 years.

Years later a Corps buddy of mine asked me to build a table for him as a shadow box to display his military swag. I thought back to my original idea of the “man cave table” but realized design was too dated and I needed something better. This is when I started on the design for Ironsides.
(written 2011)

The original cost of Ironsides was around $2400, that was in large part due to the custom iron work required to ornament the design, believe it or not forging iron is expensive and the forges in my area are incredibly high end. To reduce the cost I decided to use an iron powder inlay process for the Division emblems and the table edge strips, originally these features were proud of the wood surface 1/8th of an inch. The new profiles became flush with the wood faces, but the cost factor was worth it. Another design change I decided to go with was powder coated steel for the ornamental edge protectors, this update looks just as great as the original and was so much more cost effective.

The redesign of the table cuts the price almost in half and keeps the original concept intact. As far as structural design changes go, I changed the 20degree arch in the leg design to a flat plane,and the changing of the magazine shelf from iron to being made out of wood.
These changes looked great and cut the cost of the Table down to around 1250$, minus the cost of the Bronze Plaque.

The redesigning of Ironsides was the catalyst for the entire company relaunch. I decided that the Breech and Ironsides introduction would be enough warrant a new marketing campaign and website redesign.