The Knife Junkie Podcast is the place for knife newbies and knife junkies to learn about knives and knife collecting. Twice per week Bob DeMarco talks knives. Email Bob at theknifejunkie@gmail.com; visit https://theknifejunkie.com.
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Announcer [00:00:03]:
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 DeMarco

Bob DeMarco [00:00:14]:
Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DeMarco. On this edition of the show, I'm speaking with with Mike Wharton of Northern Knives. Mike, a longtime Thursday night knives contributor, is the proprietor of Northern Knives, Anchorage, Alaska's premier knife retailer, and the largest full service knife shop West Of The Mississippi. Northern Knives not only sells a full roster of top knife brands, but also offers customization services, vintage pieces, pre owned blades, and their very own brand of in house handmade knives, offering six different models hailed to be the toughest things in Alaska since bears. We'll catch up with Mike and find out everything about Northern Knives, but first, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, and download the show to your favorite podcast app. Also, if you wanna help support the show, you can do so by sending the show to a friend.

Bob DeMarco [00:01:10]:
That goes a long, long way. Or go to Patreon and check out, what you stand to gain over there. Quickest way to do that is to head over to the knifejunkie.com/patreon. Again, that's the knifejunkie.com/patreon.

Announcer [00:01:25]:
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Bob DeMarco [00:01:46]:
Mike, welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast, sir. It's a pleasure to have you.

Mike Wertin [00:01:50]:
Hey. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be, join in more than just, comments on a Thursday.

Bob DeMarco [00:01:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. And, actually, some might remember you did come on a Thursday night night, so we're giving away a colorful filth collaboration. We'll talk about

Mike Wertin [00:02:04]:
That was the Paul, that was the the Paul Munco colorful filth collaboration. We did the, the demo. Right? Yeah. And the Demco eighteen twenty point five.

Bob DeMarco [00:02:13]:
Yes. So if you're just listening, I gotta say, Mike is coming to us from the ultimate man cave. It's a really beautiful space. Before we started, he was zoomed out, and we could see his full room full of, cool manly stuff. But, yeah, really, really nice space there.

Mike Wertin [00:02:31]:
Yeah. We, we do a live stream with a local guy up here, and, he's a lot bigger channel than we are. And when we did it the first time from the studio, somebody called it Canadian Wayne's World. So that's our, that's actually our Wi Fi network down here. It's called Canadian Wayne's World.

Bob DeMarco [00:02:48]:
Nice. So, Mike, you know, I sort of teed up Northern Knives, the the shop, the retailer, etcetera. Before we get into that, tell me how you got into knives in the first place.

Mike Wertin [00:03:01]:
Well, professionally, I got into it back in, like, 2011. And it was a guy I grew up with back in, Missouri. He him and his family moved up here to Alaska, and his father started Northern Isles. And he contacted me one day and said, my dad's thinking of retiring. Do you wanna buy his half? And I said yes and moved up here, and that's kinda where where my professional career at knives started.

Bob DeMarco [00:03:28]:
So were you were you always a knife knife guy?

Mike Wertin [00:03:33]:
I always appreciated a good knife. I didn't have a big collection or anything, but the few things I did, I mean, I did have some nice stuff. Had a few cool, Japanese cold steel knives back in the day and, you know, nice kitchen knives, things like that. I never really I didn't, you know, I didn't carry, like, a a $15 Home Depot special or anything like that.

Bob DeMarco [00:03:51]:
Alright. Okay. So so going up to Alaska from Missouri, I've I've never been to Alaska, and it's been many, many years since I've been to Missouri, but they seem like, you know, pretty different environments. What was that like?

Mike Wertin [00:04:05]:
Yeah. Well, honestly, I didn't go from Missouri. I knew him while I was in Missouri, but I moved from there in '94. I moved to Phoenix, in Arizona. So I lived there for from '94 until 2011. And so I went from, actually, from the desert in Arizona to the wilds of Alaska. And it was, my my wife came with me too. She was born and raised, and she never even visited.

Mike Wertin [00:04:29]:
And it was I had visited here a couple of times, but it's, it's it it really tests you to move and live here. It's it's you have to be committed to it. Why? Well, for the most part, just getting here is not easy unless you wanna throw, you know, tens of thousands of dollars at upgrading your life just to come up here. It's not an easy task. Basically, I basically had to sell off everything I owned that wouldn't fit on a four by four pallet, And then you can bring that, and then that's about it. You kinda have to start over to get up here.

Bob DeMarco [00:05:02]:
So, is it is it true? I mean, down here in the contiguous 48, people like to claim that people go to Alaska because they're running from something or running to something. Yeah. Did you say that's the case up there?

Mike Wertin [00:05:15]:
Yeah. Up here, we call it the three m's. So it's military, money, or mischief. So you're either running from the law, running to money, or your military moved you up here.

Bob DeMarco [00:05:24]:
That's pretty good.

Mike Wertin [00:05:25]:
Yeah. It's it's a pretty common saying up here for sure.

Bob DeMarco [00:05:29]:
So for you, it's money. We'll just say

Mike Wertin [00:05:31]:
Yeah. For me, it was money. It was, you know, it it, it was risky, you know, since you're just kinda jumping into, you know, being your own boss in a certain way. But I I was self employed for most of my life, so it wasn't and I didn't really I thought I had kind of reached a point in my life in Arizona that, I I didn't like where I just wanted to change. I didn't like where it was going.

Bob DeMarco [00:05:59]:
Well, what what line of work was that? Have you always been a businessman? Or Well, I was

Mike Wertin [00:06:04]:
so I was in the car business for many years. I was, I was a I worked at a wholesale dealership. So we didn't sell cars to people. We sold cars to other businesses. Like, we sold cars to other dealerships.

Bob DeMarco [00:06:16]:
Okay. It's

Mike Wertin [00:06:16]:
a job that really shouldn't exist because, basically, what it is is when you trade in a car, they would call somebody like me and say ask me what I would buy it for them. You know? What will you give me for this car? I'll give you $10. So then they'll offer you 8, and then that car will sit there, and they refuse to sell it. And they don't want it. They refuse to sell it to other dealerships because they all wanna be in competition. So middleman's jumps in and buys it from one dealership and takes it from the other.

Bob DeMarco [00:06:40]:
Oh, wow. So what was the transition like going from that kind of work, to, you know, you moved up to Alaska. I know culturally that's a big, change for you. But what was it like jumping into a knife business, especially one that was already going?

Mike Wertin [00:06:55]:
It was a lot of learning. You know, it was, especially, like, with a functional shop. It's there's a lot of stuff you have to learn that, you know, it's you can't the the quality level of work has to be real high because you're dealing with, you know, sometimes some very expensive stuff, and it's customers. And, you know, reviews are a thing. You have to be very cognizant of that. So it's like, I think I had, a year of practice. So couple hundred hours on the grinder before I would before I could sharpen and work on customers. Not it was just practice, practice, practice.

Mike Wertin [00:07:27]:
And the business side of it, you know, I I was a little bit more familiar with that, so it was a little bit less of a learning curve. And then, but it was mainly the, hell, yeah, it was mainly just the skill set, developing the skill set to be good enough to, to kinda carry your weight.

Bob DeMarco [00:07:48]:
That's interesting. Because you you walked into a situation or or bought into a situation that's not just a retailer of knives. You also make knives. You have a line of knives called three dog knife, which I love. I like the name. I like the band from back in the day. But but, what was first? What came first?

Mike Wertin [00:08:09]:
Three d k was actually developed, believe it or not, while we were when I moved up here about a year after I moved up here, we're we're being scouted for a reality television show.

Bob DeMarco [00:08:20]:
Oh.

Mike Wertin [00:08:21]:
And so they bring out, you know, producers and cameramen and sound guys, and they, you know, they basically film a short episode. And in the run up to that, we wanted to kind of expand the knife the the shop part of it. So it's more exciting. You can throw sparks and, you know, things like that. It's just more things you can add. And so that kind of pushed us to add a couple of grinders and, you know, add a heat treat oven and all this stuff so we could make them in house because that was part of the premise of the show. So I don't know if anybody knows that reality TV shows are basically fake. So they just make it all up and then you film it.

Mike Wertin [00:08:55]:
Yeah. They just call it reality show so that they don't have to give you don't have to get a SAG card and they don't have to pay you an either wage.

Bob DeMarco [00:09:01]:
Right. I don't know if they want to call it.

Mike Wertin [00:09:04]:
Yeah. So so and then, the they shop the show around, you know, and it it didn't get it ended up not getting picked up, but we had already expanded. So we just kinda ran well. We kinda ran with it. It was something we wanted to do anyway. This was kinda the this was just the kind of the impetus that kinda pushed us. And so because we always you know, it's always like you you sell you sell so many knives to people, and you hear the same complaints over and over. Well, what can I get one with this, and can I get one with this, and can I get one with this? It's like, there's not a knife that has all three of those aspects.

Mike Wertin [00:09:33]:
And so we kind of just well, why don't we solve that problem first? So the the main knife we made, that is basically the the the bread and butter, so to speak, of three d k is our hunting knife, which is called the Mac. But the knife we made before that was actually the severance, which so I designed it for a drug interdiction team in Hawaii. And so what these guys do is they helicopter in to these illegal pot growing fields, and they pack it all down, and then they fly out. And so I made this kind of, 18 inch recurve machete thing. And we designed it and made a whole bunch of them for them. And then we started making those, but they're difficult to make. They take a long time. You can't crank them out very fast.

Mike Wertin [00:10:17]:
And so at the time, our probably our best selling hunting knife was the Fawniven f one. And it's because it comes with a convex grind. It's big enough to do big game, but it's small enough to be manageable. But it only came with the rubber handle, you know, and so everybody's like, well, I like the convex grind. I like the side size, but can I get a moose handle? Can I get a something other? Can I get an ivory handle? It's like, yeah. No. You can't. And so we kinda took I I took a little inspiration, we'll say, from the f one, and also from the the the, the bravo one from, from Bark River.

Bob DeMarco [00:10:55]:
Oh, yeah.

Mike Wertin [00:10:56]:
And, tried to make it at a price point that's easy for someone who's, you know not all hunters are knife guys. You know? Yeah. So you gotta make it at a price point. It's, like, easy to swallow, and that was not something you could find up here in Alaska at the time.

Bob DeMarco [00:11:10]:
That's that's pretty interesting. I mean, the the concept of, creating a service where you can listen to what customers are saying when it comes to buying a commercially produced knife. And I like x, y, and z, but can I just have it without the cheesy rubber handle? Not that the the f one is cheesy, but you know what I'm saying.

Mike Wertin [00:11:31]:
Yeah. I think it's a great knife. It's, yeah, it's a great knife. It just like I said, it it's not it doesn't feel special when you come up here. And, you know, people want something they buy in Alaska. They want it to feel special, and a rubber handle f one is not that.

Bob DeMarco [00:11:47]:
So who was leading the charge in terms of, actually making the knives? Was someone or or was it you, or was there someone else already grinding stuff?

Mike Wertin [00:11:56]:
No. We actually brought in a guy for the show to make them on the show. His name was Don. He's a maker up here. And we brought him in. I I did all the, so we we brought in a CNC. We brought in I brought in a maker. And so I would do all the machining.

Mike Wertin [00:12:11]:
So I would do I would do machining out the blanks. I mean, because, you know, profiling it was consistency is what we're looking for and trying to streamline the process. So if you cut the if you cut the blanks on a CNC, if you cut the handles on a CNC, they basically are within, you know, fraction of a millimeter of fitting right up. So minimal minimal finish work. You just gotta take you gotta take the marks out of the spine where the, either the laser or the water jet cuts it. And then it's, you know, it just makes it it takes basically, you just try to figure out all the bottlenecks, of making a knife. And then you, one by one, take out, okay, what's our biggest bottleneck? And then you solve that one. And then another one pops up.

Mike Wertin [00:12:50]:
And then it's like, okay. So and then you basically get it down to where you can make a custom, but you don't have to charge someone $700 for it. You can you can basically sell them a what in essence becomes a mid tech knife. But you get you know, but every single one, like, I'm still to this day, almost every single three d k knife that's ever been produced has been hand sharpened by me. Wow. And so and, you know, and and it's like, I think there's maybe a couple that haven't been, but maybe it was my day off or something. And it's, but trying to make a consistent product because we you know? And and that's the thing too. It's like, if you wanna be competitive in knives, a lifetime warranty is a given.

Mike Wertin [00:13:26]:
I have to have that. And since, you know, it's we don't have, like, a parts bin. We just swap out parts. Like, we have to sit and custom fix or anything that goes wrong with it. We have to take care of it. And you don't wanna go spend all your time going back over work you've already done. So it's basically making the toughest thing that you possibly can. And that's, you know, that's where we kinda came that that's I came up with the the toughest thing out of Alaska since bears.

Mike Wertin [00:13:51]:
Kind of as a joke of that we put on the look, like, probably nine or ten years ago, something like that. And just we just we never really had a slogan or anything, so we just kinda default to that. But and that's the point, you know, is but, like, I don't wanna bash anybody else's product, but, like, you know, we use so here's a severance. Like right? So that's the severance.

Bob DeMarco [00:14:11]:
Oh, that is so cool.

Mike Wertin [00:14:13]:
And it's all titanium. So you can lash it to a pole. That's why all the titanium pins are all passed in the barrel. But, like, if you take a bus seat, they use the same kind of method that they use steel. We use titanium because there's lots of saltwater in Alaska. But if you drill out those barrels on a bussey, the handles come off, and ours don't. So, you know, we can take ours you can drill all the titanium out of it, and it'll still take a chisel to get the handle off of off of the blade. And we do that we do that on purpose.

Mike Wertin [00:14:45]:
It's the the whole point is to make it so inconceivably tough that if you can manage to damage it, you you will probably also get damaged too.

Bob DeMarco [00:14:54]:
But can you hold that back up, Mike, so we can take a look at it? So so are you saying that the handle itself is, like, epoxied on or something like that? And then

Mike Wertin [00:15:03]:
It's we don't really discuss how we do it, but in essence, yes. But but epoxy, no. And I'll tell you the reason why is because epoxy is messy and slow and it gets everywhere and adds a lot to the workload. So you have to find a way to streamline that process so that you can do you know, there's days where I would just spend, all day with piles of these g 10 handles that I had spent the week machining, and it's applying, you know, applying the the special kind of adhesive that we use. And it's just all day. You just put on headphones and sit in the workshop and just apply, you know, this kind of, adhesive that we use on our handles. And and so that, you know, it's you try to we try to batch everything. So it's like, if you're only doing one task in a day, yes, it's boring, but you get very good at it and you make very few mistakes.

Mike Wertin [00:15:53]:
And it allows and it it it allows it allows us to make the knife faster and cheaper without having to sacrifice any any quality in the overall product. If if if if we can do something, and the process gets faster and cheaper and the the overall end product does not change, that's the number one that's the number one criteria. If the end product does not change, then we'll do it. And so we've all we've all had to raise the price raise our prices one one time in thirteen years.

Mike Wertin [00:16:26]:
And our warranty actually states yeah. I'm I'm the ethereal ghost. Our warranty actually states that if you manage to break it, we really want a sound bite from you because it's just an awesome story to put on a warranty because you did something that either one, it catastrophically failed and hurt you because you're putting it way beyond the limits, or two, you're defending yourself. And and both of those are great stories that we wanna hear. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Wertin [00:16:52]:
We we have very, very few warranty claims. We had on a muck, that a friend of ours is a fire jumper, and he stuck it in a tree and then had to evacuate. And so it went through a forest fire. He actually went back and was able to find it. And, you know, the handles are all melted off and everything. And luckily, there was enough carbon left in it that we were able to reheat treat it. So we completely redid that one, made him a one off. No way.

Mike Wertin [00:17:18]:
And, but other than that, it's all little stuff. Like, the filets, it's there. They go through a lot of salt water and a lot of abuse, and they're in water all the time. We get some handles pulling away, but it's all warranty stuff we cover. But Max, I've never had a severance come back for warranty. I've never had an muck come back for warranty. I've never had a I don't think I've ever had a riot come back for warranty. And Max occasionally here and there, maybe three over the last couple of years, maybe over the last eight years.

Bob DeMarco [00:17:42]:
The Mac is your EDC kind of fixed point?

Mike Wertin [00:17:44]:
That's the that's the one we sell the most of. That's our our hunting knife, basically. It's well, like I said, overall size is the overall size is about the size of a Fawnhaven f one. It looks a little more akin to, like I said, a Bravo one, but yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:17:58]:
So you designed the severance, you said, for drug interdiction in Hawaii, was it?

Mike Wertin [00:18:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had a friend that will

Bob DeMarco [00:18:06]:
you're you're up there in Alaska, and you're designing a knife for work in Hawaii. How like, how different

Mike Wertin [00:18:12]:
Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:18:12]:
Did you have to consider the materials and that kind of thing?

Mike Wertin [00:18:16]:
Not to be honest, not much because of what they wanted it for. So you do a lot of bushwhacking in Alaska. You know, we, it's not uncommon for somebody to own a couple of machetes up here. So I'm just making a a nicer, more durable, more efficient machete. It was surprisingly not different. In fact, I used my severance to trim the trees in my front yard that hung over the sidewalk.

Bob DeMarco [00:18:41]:
Okay. So and we're so we're talking about, actually, two, environments that have a lot of saltwater, have a lot of, moisture in general, I would imagine. So so Yeah.

Mike Wertin [00:18:51]:
And a lot of and a lot of and a lot of rush, a lot of growth. So Yeah. It was for because they were so specific in what they were doing, it was surprising. It was shockingly similar.

Bob DeMarco [00:19:01]:
One more time. Hold up that severance, and I wanna ask you about the pommel. You have a large, amount of, blade tang on the pommel extending, and that looks kinda combative. What what was that for?

Mike Wertin [00:19:14]:
So that was for, it was if the helicopter goes down. It was to kind of, let's say, attack the fuselage if, they needed to I

Mike Wertin [00:19:24]:
got you.

Mike Wertin [00:19:25]:
Or something like that. Also, it serves as a counterweight. So, it it it helps stop fatigue. So when you're swinging this all day, a little bit of weight out the ass helps stop with fatigue. So it gives it more balance. So you're not you're not trying to stop and start this blade out front. You've got a little counterweight, and it helps it helps if you're gonna be doing it all that.

Bob DeMarco [00:19:46]:
Similar to, like, an old school like a broadsword where it has a big heavy bobble and you can

Mike Wertin [00:19:51]:
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. That's cool.

Bob DeMarco [00:19:53]:
That's cool. And then the the point, to to sort of, smash glass or whatever the canopy is to get yourself out of a a craft.

Mike Wertin [00:20:03]:
Yeah. Exactly. Cool. That was at request. So, I mean, they had some things. They had some points they wanted me to hit, and then I just tried to find a design that would satisfy what they needed but also look good. You know? I just want I just got my name on it. I don't want something to hide shit.

Bob DeMarco [00:20:18]:
Yeah. It's gotta look good. So you mentioned the Amok before, and that's that's, I I watched a review that was actually linked from your website, from a hunter up there in Alaska talking about it. But, do you have an amuck handy? I I don't think this is kinda one of your flagships.

Mike Wertin [00:20:34]:
I think we I think Dakota's looking for one right now. I think we might have one here off camera.

Bob DeMarco [00:20:40]:
So so it's an it's an unlikely, outdoors knife. It it looks to me like a fighting knife, maybe a little bit beefier than a fighting knife, but it's kinda like a recurve tanto almost. Yeah. Tell

Mike Wertin [00:20:52]:
me tell

Bob DeMarco [00:20:52]:
me about this design.

Mike Wertin [00:20:55]:
So that's the, that's the Amok. You can see it has a strike saw across the top, like like a kind of a stylized version of what'd be on the Thom Browne tracker. The recurve tanto, I I it's just something that I really like, and it's become kind of a design language that we've adopted. This was the first knife that I actually took no and I took no criticism on. Like, you know, it was always like when when I did the severance. You're working with, you're working with guys. So it's always like, okay. Here's five or six different handles.

Mike Wertin [00:21:27]:
We'll make prototypes out of don't make them out. You know, we didn't full manage. We make prototypes. It was like, how does this feel in the hand, get everybody's input? We do that with everything. There was a couple iterations of the Mac that we went through, and I changed the front, the, hilt a couple of times before we settled on one. It was always like, you know, what do you think? What do you think? But I mean, Mike was the first one that I had in my head that was like, I don't care what anybody else thinks. I'm gonna make it for me. And so that's where that one came from.

Bob DeMarco [00:21:54]:
So on the on the spine, you called it a strike saw. What is that?

Mike Wertin [00:21:58]:
Yeah. So maybe you wanted to cut through something larger. Right? And And instead of just hacking at it with your blade and dulling it, you flip it around and you would rake it, and it would remove material without dulling the edge of the knife. That's what the back of a Thom Browne tracker is. It's the strike saw. This is just a bit more aggressive.

Bob DeMarco [00:22:16]:
Okay. Is that is that for would you use that for bone or something? I'm not a hunter, though. But I'd like to I

Mike Wertin [00:22:22]:
personally I personally wouldn't, I I wouldn't really go through bone in the field, necessarily. Maybe butchering, but, generally, you take it apart at the joints just because it's the point of least resistance. Okay. Alright. That's another thing that we try to make our knives, you know, a little thicker and a little tougher than they generally need to be. So it's a lot of times because if you wanna pry a moose shoulder apart, it's not easy work. So you need something tough.

Bob DeMarco [00:22:48]:
I can imagine those steps.

Mike Wertin [00:22:49]:
Yeah. Dakota, are you chiming in again? Sorry. The the

Mike Wertin [00:22:53]:
the strike saw is more for, like, limbing trees. So it's designed to slowly wear away at the fibers and, like, the green sapling or something like that. So if you're in a survival situation, you can easily get stakes and holes and etcetera to build shelter for whatever you're doing without sacrificing your razor sharp edge.

Mike Wertin [00:23:10]:
Don't say razor sharp. Don't don't say razor sharp.

Mike Wertin [00:23:13]:
Working sharp edge.

Mike Wertin [00:23:14]:
It's a realistic sharp edge. Razors don't go quickly. Don't say razor sharp.

Bob DeMarco [00:23:19]:
Well, what is it about the recurve top, though, that you like so much? I mean, obviously, it looks wicked. But

Mike Wertin [00:23:24]:
Yeah. Well, for the for the severance specifically, it's the same thought as a Cougree. It's called, you know, like a 200% cut. So if you hit something like this, it's there's not a lot of resistance to it slipping off the blades. You don't get a lot damage done, but when you go this, it has to go down it has to go down and and crush the the turn the corner. So you get a lot more you get a lot more cut per swing out of it generally. So it makes it a good it makes it a good working design. It makes it terrible having to resharpen.

Mike Wertin [00:23:57]:
But we sharpen them free for life, so I don't generally apologize for that.

Bob DeMarco [00:24:02]:
So that okay. First of all, that's really nice that you sharpen for life. But I I have a I have a little pet peeve, and that is, people who don't like recurves because they're hard to sharpen because, really, they're not. If you have the right tool, you know, if you're if you're working with a with a stone that's five inches wide, yeah, it's gonna be difficult. But if you get a rod or or something that's a little more thin, they're no more difficult to sharpen than anything else. I'm a huge recurve fan and, the recurve tanto, to me is is especially cool, because it's kind of a combination of of a couple of different blades. And, but I I really don't think it's, murderous to re sharpen.

Mike Wertin [00:24:43]:
And I I agree, which is why which, I mean, which is why I have I have three nines with this recurved tanto on it. And, I I I but that's another thing too is I don't use a stone. I use a ceramic rod when I'm driving these, and I I don't find it difficult. But I will say I did fold to peer pressure, and so our folder prototypes, the tanto variant does not have a recur.

Bob DeMarco [00:25:08]:
Wait. Wait. No. I did not know that you were working on folders.

Mike Wertin [00:25:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you

Bob DeMarco [00:25:13]:
have anything handy you could show off, or is this

Mike Wertin [00:25:15]:
No. I don't. Unfortunately, no. I don't. I have a plexiglass model of it is all I have. I'm waiting to get So in Alaska, we have to outsource a bit more than a lot of places do, like heat treat. The I have a heat treat up and it fits a dozen knives, and I I don't know anybody personally up here who has a larger one. But for the kind of volume we do, that would mean that I would have to do a heat treat cycle almost every single day, which is I don't know if you've ever heat treated knives, but heat treating a dozen knives every day is terrible work.

Mike Wertin [00:25:48]:
It's it'll it'll you know? So we have to send it down to the Lower 48 because that's the only place we can get it done. And so but then when you do that, it's like, there's restrictions on what you can get done. There's you gotta worry about, you know like, I have to randomly rock well everything when it comes back. I have to take batches and randomly rock well it to make sure that we're getting consistent product and making sure we're staying on top of it. And there's also minimums. I have to send him two I have to send 200 blanks to be able to they don't even even talk to me. You know? Otherwise, it's saying, if you don't meet the minimum, they just won't. They just won't do here's the minimum.

Mike Wertin [00:26:23]:
We have no shortage of people who will meet that minimum by kid, whatever.

Bob DeMarco [00:26:28]:
Yeah. And and a lot of those places, or the big places aren't just heat treating, knives. They're heat treating, you know, blades for turbine engines and all sorts of other crap. So so, you know, they could they could probably say no to the knife industry without any pain.

Mike Wertin [00:26:42]:
Yeah. Exactly. The, the the guy who does our heat treat, I had to sign an NDA to, tour his facility, because, there was two different blades there, folder blades, from very famous makers, and very, very two very I really wish I could tell you, but they're staggeringly popular knives that were at this guy's facility. And so once I saw that, I was like, oh, okay. We'll we'll use this guy.

Bob DeMarco [00:27:13]:
Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Well, that's a great endorsement. You see a staggeringly famous, knife maker.

Mike Wertin [00:27:20]:
I'll I'll say this. The two blades I saw, of each of those knives, I've owned no less than four of one and two or three of the other. I personally owned If I said the names to you right now, you I wouldn't even have to tell you the maker. You just know.

Mike Wertin [00:27:36]:
I personally owned two so far of one of them, I believe, and I'm not a knife snob. Like, that's big for this.

Bob DeMarco [00:27:43]:
So yeah. And and, on Thursday night nights, you you usually chime in during the pocket check, and you're almost carrying something sweet. So I'm I'm starting to do the math, and I think that I'm not gonna say what I think it is, but, maybe after we stop rolling, I'll ask. But Off camera, I'll tell you. Yeah. Yeah. But, that's so that's that's really cool and encouraging, I'm sure, when you're, outsourcing your work to someone because, ultimately, like you said, it's coming back. You're putting your name on it.

Mike Wertin [00:28:11]:
Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:28:11]:
And you wanna make sure that it's, you know, it's good to go. So you you not only sell and and you not only make and sell three dog knife knives, you have a really awesome catalog of knives that you sell. When you started in 2011 up there, was that catalog already built up, or or did you how did that work?

Mike Wertin [00:28:35]:
To a to a certain extent, I've expanded the shop a little bit. I've probably expanded the retail floor by by 50% since then, and the workshop, I've expanded by, like, four or five fold. We're we're we're basically limited it out in our building right now. And we've added a few, like, you know, we were we were a Chris Reeve dealer. Well, not anymore, but we we added Chris Reeve. We added Hinderer. We added we added Microtech. But we were a pretty big Benchmade, dealer even at the time.

Mike Wertin [00:29:13]:
I mean, it was I mean, I remember at certain points, Benchmade would be 20% of our gross sales for the year would be strictly Benchmade. But we always did, you know, there's certain brands I've tried. I've I've I've I was I was big into ZTs kinda back in the day. Not so much anymore, but, when they switched to s 35, they they lost it. But, but and I I and I've and I've tried and tried. Like, I even had a z you know, my my Kershaw rep just happens to be she's not even a rep. She just happens to be the lady that answered the phone when I called down there one day. So she just ended up being my rep.

Mike Wertin [00:29:51]:
And I and and a a tall you know, I I had a a ZT rep come in the store one time, and I have a, you know, a all of our display boards where all of our tolling knives are. They have we have, you know, company logos painted in behind them. And there's one with a ZT section that has, like, three or four shelves. And I just told them. I said, I will I wanna fill these shelves. Like, let's let's go. And, like, just goes to me. Never heard back.

Mike Wertin [00:30:13]:
So it it's kinda weird being Alaska. We get some people who are really excited to work with us and and work with this state and come up here. And other people are just like, it's it's Alaska. We don't need it.

Bob DeMarco [00:30:22]:
Yeah. You know, Alaska, not too big. You know, no one uses knives up there. Like, what? I don't know why you would turn your back on Alaska. I mean, I I I get it. It's far away. But, a, what a great excuse to go up to a beautiful place. And, b, I would imagine I mean, in my imagination, anyway, everyone up in Alaska has and needs and uses knives.

Mike Wertin [00:30:44]:
It it's actually odd when you meet someone that either doesn't have or has some kind of an aversion to a bucket knife. It's it's really uncommon up here. Like, it's it's I mean, just about well, I mean, I could say everybody I know, but that's a stupid statement because of the world that I live in. But Right. I mean, just any regular old person. Like, just the amount of people who wanna come in and buy a night, but it's like, oh, but I kinda need it a little understated because I you know, when I go to work, you know, they just they just carry a pocket in the office. When I lived in Phoenix, that wasn't a thing. Mhmm.

Bob DeMarco [00:31:18]:
Yeah. I've I've been working my damnedest to make that a thing where I am. And I I am in the most domesticated part of the country. So I've been working hard and and, I've made a lot of knife junkies around me. I've created I've created, you know, people around me who like the knives and, yeah. So in terms of the the knives you sell, you mentioned Benchmade, huge. Benchmade is just huge in general, especially among, law enforcement and military. And I I I don't like Benchmade enough.

Bob DeMarco [00:31:52]:
I I I like them because they're an American company and, I like a couple of their knives. Like, I love the Bugout and, you know, the Sibbert designs I love and and, you know, they're they're some great knives from from them. But in general, they leave me a little bit cold. And I always felt like if those military people and those law enforcement, especially, who seem to love, Benchmade just had their eyes opened to other brands, they they might think, well, you know, Benchmade's great, but so are these. What what do you think those brands might be?

Mike Wertin [00:32:29]:
Generally, someone who comes in and specifically is looking for a bench paint, a, either owned them for many years or, b, has, like, a cursory knowledge of good knives, and that's the one that's the most popular one. I mean, it's the largest American knife company, so it's the one that everybody knows. I mean, they run commercials during football games, for Grayson. You know? But it's to be honest, moving people over from I I I move people over to well, any more, the new manual stuff that Microtech is doing and for the price point you can get it for. I mean, it's like, here's a mini bug out for a hundred and $70.

Mike Wertin [00:33:12]:
Preach.

Mike Wertin [00:33:13]:
And here's an MSI for a hundred and 77 that has I mean, they both polymer handle. You know? But if you lay those two knives on the counter, like, is unless size is a major consideration, nobody pays them on that. You know? The the stuff for Microtech has been has been I I I'm I'm not sure. I I I'm almost curious as if they're doing a little bit of, like, a not necessarily losing money on some of their manual stuff, but they're they're eating a little bit of their margin a bit just to hit that really impressive price point. You know? And especially the the m three ninety m k they're using Yeah. Is been, I am I did not you know, I just thought, okay. M three ninety m k. It's a marketing thing.

Mike Wertin [00:34:01]:
It's impressive. It really is. I've had really good experience with it. I have I've had three nines with m three ninety m k so far.

Bob DeMarco [00:34:10]:
Or What's what's the difference?

Mike Wertin [00:34:12]:
I don't know. They won't tell you. You know, it's kinda like, you know, that's part of it. They don't say what their special formulation is.

Mike Wertin [00:34:19]:
Some university with a spectrometer has to be willing to throw a blade in there and have it vaporized

Mike Wertin [00:34:24]:
and see

Mike Wertin [00:34:24]:
what the difference is.

Bob DeMarco [00:34:26]:
Okay. Alright. Yeah. I mean, I I'm with you. The amphibian and the stitch are two of my absolute favorites, and I got them, I I guess, 2023, the end of twenty twenty three or maybe early twenty twenty four. Man, I love those knives. And I want to love the MSI. I just don't.

Bob DeMarco [00:34:43]:
Like, I'm not crazy about the blade, but I love that it exists. I love I love it like, you know, the the red headed stepchild. But it's just not my personal favorite. But I love that it's also being sold, like you said, at at, Spyderco Benchmade prices because before that, you know, you you couldn't get a Microtech under $350 or something like that.

Mike Wertin [00:35:06]:
Yeah. And and especially Benchmade, they did a, pricing structure. Across all dealers. There was a pricing structure change in the way they formulated it. So as of January year, it was always Benchmade has a wholesale cost, then they have a map, a minimum advertised price. You are not allowed to have a Benchmade on your website for less than x amount of dollars. That's why you see all those websites do the add to cart to see your real price because that's technically not an advertised price. And then you would go to Benchmade, and you would have, MSRP, manufactured suggested retail price, which is generally 18 to 20% above what the MAP price would be.

Mike Wertin [00:35:46]:
So it was basically so that Benchmade Direct doesn't compete with their dealers. You know? You get it from a dealer for a hundred 80. You get it from Benchmade for 200. Well, they went they did away with that in January. So now so instead of bringing MSRP down to MAT, they brought all MAT prices up to MSRP. So most Benchmade nines went through an almost 20% price increase in January. I don't know, and I don't know how aware people are of that yet, but it's gonna start you know, as time goes on, it'll start people start realizing that Benchmade pricing is now is now normalized across all of their dealers and across their their home website.

Bob DeMarco [00:36:28]:
Since I don't pay too much attention to Benchmade, I I didn't really necessarily notice that. But when new models come out, you know, at the new model year I remember last year, actually, thinking like, damn. Prices have really gone up, and they, they released that, that titanium the Narrows. The Narrows?

Mike Wertin [00:36:49]:
The Narrows? The all titanium one?

Bob DeMarco [00:36:51]:
Oh my god. It was so expensive. I couldn't believe it. It was like

Mike Wertin [00:36:55]:
poker 500 map?

Mike Wertin [00:36:57]:
Yeah. Five twenty, I think.

Mike Wertin [00:36:59]:
It was five twenty map.

Mike Wertin [00:36:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. The SRP was almost 600. Yeah. The new PSK. They just came out with the new PSK. I think that's it's in the same range. I don't remember exactly

Mike Wertin [00:37:10]:
But you can still get the Groverie crew wear shootout for around $300. Yeah. So, like, they still have some SKUs that make sense.

Mike Wertin [00:37:18]:
Some yeah. Some others still had a massive pricing increase and some didn't. Insane.

Bob DeMarco [00:37:22]:
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so even even to the casual observer, I noticed that. Oh, what are what are some of the brands that you that you love besides, besides Microtech and, like, what what are the

Mike Wertin [00:37:36]:
ones that you carry?

Bob DeMarco [00:37:37]:
I see that you have Half Face Blades.

Mike Wertin [00:37:39]:
I'm

Bob DeMarco [00:37:40]:
very interested in them.

Mike Wertin [00:37:42]:
Andy is, the owner of Half Face. He's a really cool guy. He comes up to Alaska quite often. He does a moose on almost every year, but and he's a alright. Yeah. Well, there's not he doesn't have very many dealers. There's not a lot of us. There's probably only about four, I think.

Mike Wertin [00:37:58]:
But, you know and his stuff is so sought after. It's not exactly easy to get. Even being a dealer, it's like it's not like I have some kind of special access. You know? It's like Lori knows him. My business partner, Lori, she she knows him better than I do. And, it's not like we get some kind of special, you know, access to anything. It's basically, here's a promo code that basically, my promo code gets me wholesale cost off anything I wanna buy, but I gotta fight it out with everybody else on the website. Like, I don't get I don't get advanced anything.

Mike Wertin [00:38:34]:
We don't get special. Nothing. In fact, the we are working with we're we're doing a kind of a half collab with him right now to do a bunch of customs for the us that we will be the only ones who'll have access to. So what we did is, we sent him down, like, probably 60 or 70 pounds of, like, ivory and whalebone and caribou, reindeer, all bunch a bunch of Alaskan stuff, stellar sea cow, walrus jawbone, that all that kind of stuff that we use. Some nice and and so we'll get a custom line out of that. And that'll be the only thing. But other than that, it's like it's, you know, it's fun stuff to get when you can get it.

Bob DeMarco [00:39:14]:
He's, the perfect guy to send that stuff to you because his handles, and his use of natural materials is so, you know, refined. I love his I love the way he, I love his handles, basically.

Mike Wertin [00:39:27]:
Yeah. It's not something we would have considered doing with just about anybody else, except Grant.

Bob DeMarco [00:39:32]:
So you you mentioned collabs, collaborations, this one with, Half Faced Blades. You've done others. We mentioned it right up front, with Paul Munco and and, Colorful Filth, I was about to say. Yeah. Dirty dirty filthy designs. Colorful filth design.

Mike Wertin [00:39:50]:
You would be thrilled about that description.

Mike Wertin [00:39:52]:
Yeah. People, when he

Mike Wertin [00:39:54]:
was a teenager, people called his art colorful filth, and that became his moniker.

Mike Wertin [00:39:59]:
That's right. His stuff. Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:40:01]:
He's such a great guy, and his, his stuff is beautiful. So what's it like working with him? And what what is it like in general doing these kind of collaborations?

Mike Wertin [00:40:10]:
He's great to work with. I mean, he's, like, yeah. He's he's professional. He knows what he's doing. He he's very thorough. He overproduces. And, like, I'm always real, I'm always real careful to not give artists pointers. Like, it's like, oh, draw me this.

Mike Wertin [00:40:29]:
I mean, that's not how artists work. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm kind of thinking something like this kind of theme or possibility, and it's like, just run with it. You know what I mean? And, like, when it comes back, when I'm like, well, I don't like this. Change this. Change that. It's like, he's the artist. We're not. You know? So he's but he's great to work with.

Mike Wertin [00:40:45]:
He, he I always like his designs. You know? He's he, he tries you can tell he puts a lot of, like, he puts a lot of effort and thought into all the things he does. And I like that. It's it's, it's it's fun to work with something like that.

Bob DeMarco [00:41:00]:
You were generous enough to send us here at the Knifejunkie podcast, a, an all titanium eight, Demco eighty twenty point five, Oh. With his really cool artwork, it looked like kind of, 20,000 leagues under the sea, like, early twentieth century sci fi illustration on it, all with an underwater menacing underwater theme. So cool. And then also the pry bar, that we gave away that that time also. Do you guys up there at Northern Knives do all the anodizing?

Mike Wertin [00:41:32]:
Yeah. So, Lori does all the Sarika work, and I do all the anodizing. And so it's basically, we have to we have to I'd use a there's some other people. It's taken a while, but there's some other people doing it now. So somebody else because I, you know, I will give little hints and drop little nuggets about how I do it, but nobody else was doing it. And so it's like, I don't care if somebody else does it, but I had to figure it out, so you gotta figure it out yourself. So there's a couple other guys who have figured it out now, and there's a couple other people who are doing it. I think there's a guy out of Michigan who's doing it now too.

Mike Wertin [00:42:04]:
But

Bob DeMarco [00:42:05]:
So what exactly are you saying? I'm sorry. Figured out how to, what, anodize in such a way that you're actually drawing a picture?

Mike Wertin [00:42:11]:
Exactly. Exactly. Because before so the method before, I started using a laser, the method before was, vinyl tape. So you use a vinyl tape plotter and you cut out a design and then you stick it to whatever you're anodizing and then you anodize it and then you peel the tape off and then you re anodize it and whatever was under the tape will anodize a different color. And so what I I developed a way to you split the color into all the different colors of the titanium anodizing spectrum, which ranges from 10 volts to basically a 15 volts. And some colors repeat. And what you do is so what I do is you take the highest number first, and you anodize everything in the picture that's that color. Then you go to the next step and you remove the next color.

Mike Wertin [00:43:01]:
Only the part of the picture that you want that is the next color down the voltage spectrum, and you remove everything that's gonna be that color. You put it back in the back. And anything higher than that voltage won't be affected. Only what's only what's lower than that voltage. So say say you wanted to do something blue, but you wanted the middle of it to be pink. So what you do is you just you do the whole thing, then you make it blue, then you put it on the laser, and you remove the part that you want to be pink, and you put it back in the bath, and you change the voltage, and there you go. Now you have a two color picture. And before you had to do that with vinyl, and it was doing stuff that's as intricate as we do.

Mike Wertin [00:43:40]:
Like, I mean, when I do my stuff, you know those stupid engineering lights that are basically like a circular light and you have a magnifying glass in the middle? Yes. That one right there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, basically, what I do is when we do the prototypes is, you know, I I'll do one run I'll do, like, the first layer and then you anodize it. And then I'll do a second layer. And, you know, usually our pictures are anywhere from five to 16 layers depending.

Mike Wertin [00:44:05]:
And, then I'll take it, and you go underneath that. And you check out all the little because, you know, the amount of detail he puts into it is more than I can produce. And it takes the the tolerances on the laser and just the fact that you're burning it off, you know, it has a certain amount of splay to it. So it's not as accurate as you really want it to be. Right. And so I'll take it, and I will just tweak little I mean, little settings. I there's a setting on there that it is literally I'm adjusting a tenth of a a tenth or a hundredth of a millimeter at a time. And I would just dial it in to where I can get the amount of detail that I think is justifiable for the amount of work you put into it.

Mike Wertin [00:44:46]:
And then, at at what point have is it you know, it's diminishing returns. Right? And so I always wanna make sure to do as much as I can to preserve all the work you put into it. But at a certain point, it's like, I either can't do it or or it's it it it just wouldn't or it'll add so much to the time because it's like because and so when you change one little thing so it's like, okay. I wanna change this screw. Normally, it's black, but let's make it titanium and let's make it green. Okay. We can do that. But over the course of an entire project, that has now added two days of work that is nothing but changing the color on one screw.

Mike Wertin [00:45:31]:
That's gonna take me two days to do that over the course of an entire project. So you have to kinda pitch your battles because that also adds that's now you have to pay somebody for two days, and generally, it's me to, you know, 350 screws. That's a pain in the butt. And so it it it it drives the cost up. And we we we always try to keep these as cheap as we possibly can just because I don't want them to be something that I want everybody that is willing to spend a reasonable amount of money on a good knife can attain can get. You know what I mean? It's like Attainable. Attainable. Unattainable.

Mike Wertin [00:46:06]:
Yeah. So it's like, I kinda consider a hinderer the breaking point. Right? $425 is pretty easily attainable hinderer money and could, you know, knife guys, which let's be honest. Most of the people who are buying these prototypes are knife guys, girls, and girls too. And those people will spend $425 on a hinderer. Okay. So that's, like, that's the bar. So now try to come in as low under that as possible, and then it it just makes it easier and easy.

Bob DeMarco [00:46:37]:
It also sounds like you're taking, when when we're talking about these, sort of picoral anodizing projects on on knives, I'm presuming that you're scaling things down too. You're taking a large, larger detailed illustration and shrinking it down to fit onto a knife blade. There's gonna be a bunch of detail you're gonna lose. This whole process reminds me of, old school intaglio color printmaking, you know, when when when they would make a big book and they would have, you know, illustrations at the beginning of each, chapter, you know, color printing was difficult, and they would have to, run the zinc plate over and over with the different colors and then build it up. I think that's how they used to be comic books way back.

Mike Wertin [00:47:20]:
So yeah. So, actually, if you know so, I've I've my first job when I was in, middle school, I used to ride my skateboard to a print shop, and I would, you know, take out the trash and that kind of stuff. And so and it was a physical print shop with massive printers. And I don't know if you know on physical printing like that, they have these they have tick marks in the corners, and that's how you line them up. And I use those tick marks on all of the masking pictures and so so that's how I line up all the anodized. Because once you make all the layers, right, but then you have to warp them and change them to get them to fit the knife design. And you can't do it all, you know, and and then you have to stack them. And they have to be I mean, it's amazing.

Mike Wertin [00:48:06]:
I I never really realized how small of a difference the human eye can pick up. You know? You think soft by a tenth of a millimeter. Nobody will notice. Yes. They were a % will notice that. Like, a tenth of a millimeter is huge. So I get if you have if this is supposed to be orange and this is supposed to be blue, you have a little green line down the middle, everybody sees that. And everybody you know? So it's like, you have to scrap entire ones because it was off just I mean, visually, you'd never be able to know.

Mike Wertin [00:48:31]:
You know? What that seeing that it was off. But once you run that color, it it so it's like it it how precise you have to be. And so, like, I have to use I have to use all these I have to use all these alignment marks on the on the outside edges of the images to make sure they're all lined up perfectly, to make sure that there's no tenth of a millimeter off. And a little bit of green shows through here, and a little bit of pink shows through here. It's it's, sometimes it's infuriating.

Bob DeMarco [00:48:57]:
I bet. But like you said, you gotta stay, true to the artwork, and you have to you have to do it justice so it's worth that work. Let me ask you. You also do so a sort of customizing there. Right? I mean you mentioned, Lori, does Cerakote? So does this that, someone could knife to you and you can make it special for them?

Mike Wertin [00:49:18]:
For sure. We do it. I mean, in fact, I'm going down to Oregon in a couple of weeks to be Cerakote certified as well because our Cerakote is just so it's always so busy. It's never caught up. It's kind of the same thing with all of our laser stuff too. So yeah. Cerakote is like yeah. It's like powder coating, but it's lower heat, and it's, the the tolerance isn't much like, you could do the reason you can't powder coat a gun slide is because powder coat is so thick.

Mike Wertin [00:49:49]:
The tolerances won't work and won't cycle. It's not the case with Cerakote. Cerakote is real thin. And it's so it's got a ceramic, like, powder embedded in it. So it's really tough. I mean, to the point where and and it's real, you can do so much with it. Like, a thing that I like what's that?

Bob DeMarco [00:50:08]:
It's like smoother and smoother to the to

Mike Wertin [00:50:10]:
the touch. Yeah. It is. I like to tell people that, you can do such fine work with Cerakote. You could literally Cerakote a piece of paper. Like, that's how low temp and fine you can get it to be.

Bob DeMarco [00:50:22]:
So this is a big, big part of your customizing services and your

Mike Wertin [00:50:26]:
Yeah. We, we initial so just like everything else, we initially started it with, like, the reason we even bought a laser is because there used to be this thing when makers would put their when you put your logo on a knife, you have these little you have these little, like, transparencies they used to use on overhead projectors when old people like me were in school. Right?

Bob DeMarco [00:50:48]:
Yeah.

Mike Wertin [00:50:48]:
And, you would take this and, you would tape it to your knife, and then you would take this electro this, like, a little electrical buzzing thing, and you dip it in a solution and you put it on there. And it would only burn the part that's that's, like, clear on this, like, transparency. And that would burn your logo into the knife. But sometimes it would leak, and it would get in other places, and you'd have to, you know, you have then you got blemishes on knives. And so I thought, alright. Well, I don't know anything about lasers, but I can get this laser for $3,000. And I can build a jig, and we can put our name on our knives, but we're kinda rolling the dice. And so I was like, okay.

Mike Wertin [00:51:23]:
Well, let's try it because I'm sick of screwing up knives with this. And then it's the last thing you're doing, put the logo on. Oh, it's

Bob DeMarco [00:51:30]:
a beautiful edge. Yes. Yes. That's right. That's right.

Mike Wertin [00:51:33]:
You get a beautiful knife you spent all this time on, and now it's got a blemish on the blade. You know? So we bought this laser, and now it's, I mean, it's we had to buy a second one. And it's I think there's it it just so, like, there's probably eight or nine jobs up, that need to be onto the laser right now. And then we never even we didn't wanna do we didn't, you know, we we had a local engraver that messed up a couple of our jobs. I was like, hey. You know, a second thing is if we wanna do our own engraving, we don't have to worry about them messing it up. And now we we have a nonstop engraving process. And it was the same thing with Serato.

Mike Wertin [00:52:06]:
I would like to do some black blades. Let's have some black blade knives. We did a my buddy, Mark. So all these bark all these books are all written by, Mark. He, has a what's up? Yeah. Mark Cameron. Right. I mean, it's all over the books.

Mike Wertin [00:52:22]:
Mark Cameron. Anyway, so the severance is in this book and I believe this book, and then the riot is in the rest of it. And I think the MAC is in yeah. The MAC is in these four. I think he actually kills the guy with a MAC in that one. Anyway, I'm getting I'm getting I'm getting away from myself. But, now now I lost track of where I was going.

Bob DeMarco [00:52:45]:
Oh, you said, black blades?

Mike Wertin [00:52:46]:
Oh, yeah. So we wanna do black blades. And then, I was like, since, the the main character carries a riot of one of these, we can do a black cerakota blade. We can do a limited edition. It's called the Jericho Quinn edition, and, we can sell that. And it's like, just because we wanted to do our own stuff. And it's like Cerakote is it's not something I mean, you could probably teach yourself over YouTube, but it's not a good idea. And Cerakote is it's not expensive, to be honest.

Mike Wertin [00:53:12]:
It's I think for two people, it's $1,700. But it's like, your certification is for life. It's a one time fee. And, so I was like, hey, Laurie. You wanna go k. If you go get certified, we can do BlackBlades. That'll be cool. We'll be just like ZT.

Mike Wertin [00:53:28]:
And so, we got it for our own stuff. And now it's like we have so many Cerakoting jobs. It's I mean, it's there's probably, without exaggeration, easily 30 to 35 jobs just sitting off camera waiting to be done. And it's just Laurie. You know? And she you know, we have limited time. And so I'm going down to get certified here in a couple of weeks so that I can help, so we can get caught up. Nice.

Bob DeMarco [00:53:52]:
Well, before I let you go, I wanna find out what what you have, in the offering or what what kind of designs, specifically three dog knife designs, you're thinking of in the future? What kind of stuff are you looking to create that you haven't made yet?

Mike Wertin [00:54:07]:
Yeah. So the the folder is what we're working on now, but like I said, there's, some stuff has to be outsourced. And so I had a machinist up here because I am I'm a machinist, but I am a shade tree machinist. So I'm not making that kind of, like, intricate stuff. So had a guy I was working with. It kinda fell through. So I have a guy making me some parts in the lower 48 that I can't make. So we're just waiting on those to show up for prototypes.

Mike Wertin [00:54:28]:
So then the folders will come. But I've got so as far as folder designs, I have nine folder designs completed. We are trying to launch number one right now, but it'll be prototyping. It's the same thing we do with all of our knives. We build prototypes. We're gonna beat the shit out of them for a while and find out if there's any problems. And then if we all approve, then we'll move on with those.

Mike Wertin [00:54:50]:
What is the magical feel you're gonna use

Mike Wertin [00:54:52]:
for prototypes? Our prototypes so our our prototypes will be CPM s one twenty five v, which was they stopped making that a long time ago. Now you can get Russian knockoffs of it, but I have actual one twenty five v from Crucible. And so our our 10 prototypes will all be CPM one twenty five v. Wow.

Bob DeMarco [00:55:11]:
Alright. So I know that you don't have them to show, but what is the overriding philosophy or if you could describe the, describe the designs?

Mike Wertin [00:55:20]:
So overall overall length open is almost identical to a Shaman, which, I only know that because I found out afterwards. You know? I I gotta you know, when you're designing something, there's no excuse there's no excuse for not having it in your hand. You know? There's no substitution. And so it's like I gotta figure out the overall length and then go out onto the retail floor and find something. So overall length is about the size of the Shaman. It uses a similar design language as you can see in a lot of my knives as they have a very pronounced hilt. So and, it's simplicity. So, internal stop pin, so there's no visible stop pin in the back.

Mike Wertin [00:55:54]:
I want it to I want it to look incredibly, like, elegantly simple design on the outside, but not sacrifice a lot of the other things that I think it should have. So I have the luxury of having thousands of knives upstairs at my disposal. And so I can go through all the little things that I think every knife should have, but you can't get them on one knife. Same thing we do with the hunting knife. And so to the point where it won't double clutch. So when you break the blade and go to drop, it will drop the whole way without double clutching on the. Bolt.

Bob DeMarco [00:56:26]:
So we're talking about a, frame lock then?

Mike Wertin [00:56:29]:
Yeah. Frame lock. Frame lock, ceramic bearings, metal guides in the titanium so it's smoother. It, it's flipper flip flipper titanium frame lock, but, yeah. Three blade shapes, drop point, tanto, wharncliffe. Everything is identical except for if you want a wharncliffe blade, you have to swap out the backspace.

Bob DeMarco [00:56:53]:
Okay. That makes sense. Probably a a straight backspacer as opposed to a curved one.

Mike Wertin [00:56:57]:
And and only so, like, I could have done it the other way, but it just makes the blade shorter. And then that's inefficiency really bothers me. And so it's like so, you know, it's it's little things you never think of. But when you're doing, like, a folder, folders get to be very expensive, and I don't want the the market doesn't need another $700 folder. The market needs You know what I mean? The market needs a tough knife that's been well thought out that you can sell for $3.99, which is exactly what ours is gonna go for. And I picked that price on purpose. You know? Because that's there's two breaking points with tourists I've noticed over the years. One is 400, the other is 600.

Mike Wertin [00:57:33]:
So at $400 and over, you lose about 75% of people. And then over $600, you lose about 90% of who's left. So over $700 is a very small percentage of the population that will pay that kind of money. But if you can get basically one of only two folders made in Alaska, the other one is 950, and you can never get one. And then there's hours for $400. It's, I think for what for what we're offering, I mean, it's $25 less than a less than a, hinderer. It's, it'll be nearly the same thickness. It'll be, you know, titanium lock point titanium show side just like Chris Reeve.

Mike Wertin [00:58:16]:
And so it'll you know, like I said, I've I've I've taken all the things I like about all my favorite knives over the years, and I've tried to incorporate them all into this one knife because, a, it's gonna have my name on it, and, two, I mean, I'm gonna be carrying it. So it better be something that I want, better be something that I like, and I'm spoiled. I can have you know, like I said, my collection is my collection is a 3,000 square foot retail store. You know?

Bob DeMarco [00:58:43]:
Well, hopefully hopefully, when these come out, two things. Hopefully, you'll come on Thursday night knives or back on this show and show them off and talk about them, and and, I'll help you get people excited about them. They sound awesome.

Mike Wertin [00:58:55]:
Appreciate that.

Bob DeMarco [00:58:56]:
But, also, I'm already thinking of a special edition with some of that walrus tooth or or those exotic materials that you sent to have face blades.

Mike Wertin [00:59:05]:
I have a, I have a design that allows for an inlay. Okay. So they will be so the first run won't be that, but, eventually, there will be inlay versions that will have mammoth ivory, walrus, walrus ivory, all that kind of cool stuff. Mammoth too, maybe.

Bob DeMarco [00:59:23]:
Mammoth stuff. Yes. Yes. Bring it. We're here for it. Mike Wharton of Northern Knives and Three Dog Knife, thank you so much for coming on the Knife Junkie podcast. It's been a real pleasure, especially considering most of our interaction besides that one time, have just been in comments, man. It's really nice to have you in front of me.

Mike Wertin [00:59:41]:
I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Bob DeMarco [00:59:43]:
Alrighty, man. Take care. Yeah.

Announcer [00:59:45]:
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Bob DeMarco [01:00:16]:
There he goes, ladies and gentlemen. Mike Wharton of Northern Knives, and the disembodied voice you heard, was Dakota, also a great guy. He's he's also helped out, when, Mike came on Thursday night knives. So, Dakota, thank you also for, for being a part of this show. We greatly appreciate it. Someday, I will make it up to Anchorage. Actually, I mentioned to my family before this interview that I was talking to someone in Anchorage, and we all decided, that we wanna go up sometime. So, Alaska bound, we just might be.

Bob DeMarco [01:00:46]:
Alright. For Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying, until next time, don't take dull for an answer.

Announcer [01:00:53]:
Thanks for listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at reviewthepodcast.com. For show notes for today's episode, additional resources, and to listen to past episodes, visit our website, theknifejunkie.com. You can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at theknifejunkie.com/youtube. Check out some great knife photos on theknifejunkie.com/Instagram, and join our Facebook group at theknifejunkie.com/Facebook. And if you have a question or comment, email them to bob@theknifejunkie.com, or call our 247 listener line at (724) 466-4487. And you may hear your comment or question answered on an upcoming episode of the Knife Junkie podcast.