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Bob DeMarco [00:00:11]:
I'm Bob DeMarco. On this edition of the show, I'm speaking with the man that made Tomahawks EDCs again, Zach Wingard of Wingard Wearables. Zach is a perennial favorite for me as a show host and as a collector of instruments of chaos, a loose term I give knife adjacent weapons and tools. Zach has designed some of the most imaginative, practical, and deadly EDC tools, bridging modern day needs with old world solutions. He knows history. He knows weapons and a lot of other interesting stuff, and it's always a pleasure to talk with him about what he's just cooked up. We'll talk all about it.

Bob DeMarco [00:00:54]:
But first, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, and share the show. Also, if you wanna help support the show, you can do that at the knife junkie.com/patreon. Again, that's the knife junkie.com/patreon.

Announcer [00:01:08]:
Adventure delivered. Your monthly subscription for handpicked outdoor, survival, EDC, and other cool gear from our expert team of outdoor professionals. The knifejunkie.com/battlebox.

Bob DeMarco [00:01:21]:
Zach, welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to see you, sir.

Zac Wingard [00:01:24]:
Hola, Bob, and Knife Junkies. It's fantastic to be great great to be there.

Bob DeMarco [00:01:29]:
So, we bring you on the show periodically, a, because I just think you're fun to talk with. But, also, you you go into deep r and d on a new project, and then you emerge with something super cool. And you have a new product this season. We're gonna talk about it in a minute. But, before we get to that, I wanna congratulate you on, your first blade show.

Zac Wingard [00:01:51]:
Yeah. We survived. That was something. Never done any show like that before, only local knife shows, that then go into Blade. I mean, the scale of it, people have been telling us, you gotta go to Blade show. And, yeah, it was lots of prep. It was a ton of work, but it was pretty amazing. I had a very special experience, definitely meeting, like, so many people, like, first time meeting you face to face.

Bob DeMarco [00:02:19]:
Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:02:20]:
And and just it was fantastic.

Bob DeMarco [00:02:23]:
I mean, I walked in the baller room as it's called and saw your, booth from, well, from the entrance. So from across a crowded room, you could say. And, that big empress tomahawk, over your over your this empress tomahawk Over your display, and then you had all of those, designs, sketchbook drawings, kind of like the da Vinci's notebooks of your different projects, kinda showing the development of them and the drawings and the ideas. What was it like going through all that stuff to set that up?

Zac Wingard [00:02:57]:
Oh, gosh. I mean, that was 1 of the things we had done, a local knife show, Lehigh Valley knife show in, Easton, PA and observed, you know, the tables that were there in our own table. And we knew if Blake's show was many times larger, that we had to do something really distinctive to grab people's attention so that when you're surveying the room with with just so many tables that we'd be able to stand out. So, you know, the wife and I, we're we're huddled together thinking, and we're like, well, what do we do? And, the thought was, hey. Just make a giant tomahawk and have it above the table, suspended over our heads. And I was like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. That sounds like a lot of work. And amazingly, my wife pulled it off.

Zac Wingard [00:03:44]:
She probably spent 20 to 30 hours making this, you know, giant empress tunnel that was 8 feet long, made of polystyrene like construction grade. And so, you know, I I helped her with some aspects of the design so that it could come together, but our car is is not large enough to accommodate that. So it had to be, you know, it was polystyrene, which is, you know, fragile. It had to be disassembleable and and, you know, man carried up down escalators and stuff, and so it was just quite an ordeal. But we we put it together. It worked. It looked like a giant empress tomahawk. Beautiful.

Zac Wingard [00:04:22]:
It it went over our heads, and then it was like, okay. We got this grand, you know, display above our heads. What do we do on the table? Like Yeah. Because 1 of the things that's that's really common that we had done in a previous show was black table cloth. I know this is gonna sound super, boring to most people. They think, oh, black table cloth. You know? But 1 of the things I noticed, like, in our previous experiences is, like, you got crumbs and dandruff and stuff just floats around, and it lands on the table. And, like, it it's super contrast on a black table.

Zac Wingard [00:04:58]:
So you're constantly, like, you know, trying to clean up, you know, the table, you know, because you got these beautiful weapons on this black tablecloth, and then there's these little specks. You don't know if it's like something gross like dead skin or, you know, if it was like me with, like, a leftover bit of donut, you know, flying out. Yeah. And and so, it was like, gosh. How do we, you know, make it look clean and not have to manage, you know, this thing and and be distinctive? And so I have just all my designs that we go through, and it all start with hand sketches, like iteration after iteration after iteration. A lot of them are on engineering paper, you know, sort of grid paper. And these go back to, you know, 2016, and our business launched in 2018. So there was often, like, years of drawings, you know, from 2016 to now.

Zac Wingard [00:05:47]:
So you're talking, gosh, like, 8 years of hand sketches. And so the idea popped in my head, like, what if we just do, you know, a display where it's our products on a clear piece of translucent plastic, and then underneath it is like a collage of what we've already done. Like, it's already you just gotta go through and pick the right sketches and drawings and lay them out, and your display is finished. And 1 of the advantages, we weren't clever enough to think of, but then when I I saw it, like, again, there was lots of crumbs and stuff and, you know, sweat, you know, dripping and everything, you know, because there's hundreds of people going by. You just don't wanna think about this stuff. But when it's a a collage of colors and things, it just blends it away. It's like it's like when you dim the lights at a fancy restaurant, you can't see the roaches crawling, you know, and staying on the waiter's, you know, apron and stuff. So we were really, you know, it was 1 of those things like, oh, man.

Zac Wingard [00:06:46]:
That really worked out because, like, I you know, it made the table look neat because it was already so messy in how many drawings of things that were, how how cluttered it was. But we did have people, like, tell us, like, hey. I hadn't seen a table or anything like that. It was me. And we were able to reference like, when we were talking through our designs, we're able to, like, lift up a back, rip, or a point to the design iterations. We actually had all the pictures, you know, of the hand drawings we went through where we thought we knew what we're doing and we were wrong. We had to iterate, you know? So it was nice to be able to, like, tell a story with the drawing so it wasn't just decoration, you know. And it also showed, you know, the work that you did.

Zac Wingard [00:07:27]:
It wasn't just a cool looking implement on the table. It told the whole story, which is something that we wanted to, you know, go into Blake's show, you know, show the what our brand's about is just thinking through tough problems that people didn't really ask us to solve, but it's like, hey, you gotta obsess about it. You know? Yeah. And so that degree of obsession was very evident. I don't know. Like, some people, you know, you know, got turned off by seeing a giant tomahawk and stuff, and so they didn't even come to the table. And that works by us, because who who would wanna engage such boring people, right, versus the people that see the giant tomahawk and they see all the the drawings stuff. They're like, oh, yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:08:04]:
I gotta check this out. Well, that's our kind of people.

Bob DeMarco [00:08:07]:
That, the way you had it set up, I mean, most people, many people, definitely people who listen to this show like to peek behind the curtain and see how stuff is made, see where it comes from, see what the motivation was. I mean, that's to me as I get older and older. That's what's most interesting to me about things and people is just, well, how and why did it get here? And, like, what led to this? And and that's why I, you know, I I off handedly mentioned da Vinci's notebooks, but I love artists' sketchbooks, and I love seeing in artists' studios, and that kind of thing and see where where the where the sausage is made, so to speak. And so to have that all out there, it was like a full on experience, you know, to see and then to be able to pick up the pick up the implements. So how how were you received?

Zac Wingard [00:08:57]:
I think we were told there was no table like it at blade show. We heard that repeatedly and since there are, like, what, a 1, 000 exhibitors at Blade, I would say Bob well done on being distinctive. 1 of the problems with being distinctive, though, is that you have to tell the whole story. And so, you know, if people see things like quills and Picpix and tomahawks and that sort of thing, they're like, what are these things? You know? They haven't seen anything like, you know, the MicroPike multi tool and that sort of thing. Well, you had to explain it all. And so, if someone came in and was interested, you know, basically, at the end of every day, I lost my voice because you were just talking. You know? And so that was, you know, it's kinda baked in the cake. If you're gonna do distinctive designs that aren't necessarily like, especially something that's unfamiliar, like the the micropipe, you're gonna have to explain what that is, what that capability buys them, like, what's the purpose and thought process behind the design.

Zac Wingard [00:10:02]:
And when you're engaging hundreds of people a day, the voice box can't do it. Yeah. Like, I was even told ahead of time, like, you're gonna lose your voice at play because it's, like, 3 days of show. And then afterwards, you have to pit, you know, where you're supposed to, like, do the networking and be social. And I'm, like, struggling on the introvert extrovert scale, but, like, you know, that was just too many too many people to talk to, you know, really, having to explain, you know, over and over again. And it wasn't that it was monotonous. It was just the wear and tear on your vocal cords. It took me probably, 2 weeks to really get my voice to a turn where it didn't sound horrible.

Zac Wingard [00:10:44]:
So that was like a challenge. But it was never a point where I couldn't actually talk, you know, it didn't get that bad. But, yeah, I think we're it went okay. You know? Sales, I think, were on the lower end of expectation. We're talking to other people at the show, they were saying, you know, people who had been exhibiting at Blade for years, like, I wouldn't, like, prompt them, like, hey. You're having a bad show or anything, but I'd be like, hey. How was your day at Blade? And they were like, this is the first slow Saturday I've ever seen. And these are guys that have been exhibiting for years.

Zac Wingard [00:11:15]:
So I do think there are some, like, macroeconomic pressures. You know, it's never been more expensive to live in America Yeah. That are starting to rein in on purchases that are not, you know, food on the table, or, you know, if you got to prioritize your family's vacation, you know, your wife would use 1 of these implements on you if,

Bob DeMarco [00:11:36]:
you know,

Zac Wingard [00:11:37]:
you blew the family's vacation budget on it, you know? So I think there was a little bit of that that seemed to happen, but we were thrilled with it. You know, it was definitely the best table top show we've ever done. And we intend to be back next year. I'm just gonna pack more, what do you call it, you know, throat lozenges, you know?

Bob DeMarco [00:11:55]:
Oh, yes.

Zac Wingard [00:11:55]:
Yes. And, you know, I also got like a voice steamer. Have you guys heard of that? You put it on your

Bob DeMarco [00:12:00]:
face. Oh, yes. Yeah. So Like an opera singer.

Zac Wingard [00:12:04]:
Yeah. So, yeah, they use that, don't they?

Bob DeMarco [00:12:07]:
Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:12:08]:
Yeah. So I looked up, like, ahead of time. I was doing my homework. I'm like, how do I keep my voice? You know? Because I was losing my voice at the local knife shows. You know? And I'm like, gosh. They had a fraction of the attendees. So I was on that voice steamer thing, which is not, you know, my poor wife, you know, we're in the small hotel room. I have this thing on my face.

Zac Wingard [00:12:26]:
And it's like it's not like that, was it there was a Mad Max remake where the villain has a evil looking mask

Bob DeMarco [00:12:34]:
No. Not not quite that.

Zac Wingard [00:12:35]:
No. It looked lame. It was like purple plastic, and, like, you're holding this thing. We definitely lost some husband capital, but it it it helped with the voice. You know? So

Bob DeMarco [00:12:46]:
We we had a great conversation. You may well, I I came to your, table a couple of times, but, the last time, Fred Perrin was there, and I'm AII have a man, he's so cool. I love that guy. And, Fred Perrin, if you don't know who he is, he's like a a famed retired French commando, basically, turned knifemaker, and he's and and country gentleman, I think, is I think that's part of what he just kinda lives out in the country, walks his dogs, makes knives, and that kind of thing. But it was cool talking with him and you at the same time because both of you have unconventional approaches. Before we get into the the new Sparrowhawk, if someone is listening to this conversation for the first time, and I'm sure your elevator pitch was honed from that blade show experience. But, what what is the approach that the unique approach that Winguard Wearables takes to its product

Zac Wingard [00:13:43]:
design? If you can imagine a handheld tool and implement that gets you a unique capability that isn't already addressed on the market and you can wear it on your person, that's what it's all about. You know? Even if it's as simple as, like, a spike tool, adapting that so it can be gripped in different ways in your hand or worn on your body or if something as large as, like, a Tomahawk, you know, or a large knife, you know, that you can carry on your Bob. Like, taking a look at what's at the market and what capabilities there are and then what capabilities are lacking and trying to figure out those problems. And, really, when it comes to ergonomics, a lot of our products mostly have been on the larger side, like, how do you get a large fixed blade knife worn on the body or, you know, a compact spear? You know, these are, like, challenging problems, but they're very niche. You know? Not many people are, like, looking for that sort of thing. So so far, our brand has been focused on these really niche problems where we're starting to expand into smaller implements. We've seen our, like, small spike pools, and we're also thinking of getting into small fixed blades. And going to Fred Perron, he's like the king of small fixed blade knife designs, and he also makes spikes too.

Zac Wingard [00:15:01]:
And so it was great to see him because I can remember being a freshman in college finally having, like, Ethernet cable access. And instead of, you know, looking up things that a lot, college kids probably did look up, you know, background on the Internet. I was, like, looking up knives, and Fred Parent was on my radar then. So that was, gosh, in 20 2002. You know? He had the LaGriff and some other distinctive small fixed blades. And so I've been following his work for, you know, 22 years. You're never gonna meet him except that blade if you're, you know, a kid from you know, I was in Tennessee at the time. But, yeah, it was it was great to meet him.

Zac Wingard [00:15:42]:
We had been following each other on Instagram. He had actually open l, number 8

Bob DeMarco [00:15:52]:
that he had modified

Zac Wingard [00:15:52]:
to be, like, flippable. Wow. It was like an Opinel, number 8 that he had modified to be, like, flippable. Well, he made a antler tying impact tool that was kinda shaped like the quill, and, also, it was like a ring talon knife that was like a mid tech type production. But you didn't have to do that, you know, sending those to me. It was incredible. And I was like, well, I'm gonna meet him at Blade. I wanna get return the favor and, you know, he picked out a quilt.

Zac Wingard [00:16:20]:
Oh, cool. You know? And so I was really honored to meet him. He came by the table twice. Yep. He got a slint a small black quilt. And, yeah, talking to him the second time he came by, you came by as well. And, yeah, just the the I guess you call it tactical wisdom and perspective he had was just so interesting, you know, especially, like, talking about small spikes and, you know, using those in, like, ground fighting and that sort of thing. It was just really amazing to get, you know, his energy and and his presence, but also just the knowledge that he was laying out was great.

Bob DeMarco [00:16:55]:
It was. I mean, his point about spikes, well, first of all, he he did a very cool move. You know, you go and your head goes. He has a really thick French accent. Steps on my foot and gently but firmly turns my head. You know? And it was just cool to be I don't know. I've been thrown around by some of the best. It was cool to have Fred Perrin lay hand.

Bob DeMarco [00:17:17]:
But what I was gonna say is his point about the spike, defensively, is that it doesn't produce a lot of mess, a lot of blood if you have to stick someone with it. Basically, it's very effective, and it gives you time to get away. It doesn't make a huge mess. And, yeah, he he was very illustrative in telling me that, but I thought that was very cool.

Zac Wingard [00:17:41]:
It was also just, I think, spikes being so thin, you can wear them or conceal them in some ways easier. Like, he was even talking about, you know, tucking, you know, a spike in the shoe, you know, on accessing it, you know, grabbing the heel of your shoe, you know, to access it, index it if you're on the ground. So it's just it's interesting. So the software, okay, I'm not saying we're gonna come out with, like, a shoe spike or something. We have thought about that. I didn't

Bob DeMarco [00:18:09]:
wanna put

Zac Wingard [00:18:10]:
that on the table. Like, I edited so much of what we put on the table. Like, there's so many crazy ideas we had that are never gonna see the light of day. But, shoe spikes, that's not coming out anytime. So

Bob DeMarco [00:18:22]:
Well, it's like back in the old days of film photography. You had 36 exposures, 32. And, if you were serious about photography, you could count on 1 good frame out of those. So that's that's probably a lot how product design goes, and you have to have a real purpose. And there's gotta be a need for the product for you to venture into, that, which brings me to the sparrowhawk, a different kind of design by you, a different kind of tomahawk. And every new tomahawk that you come out with is different in some way. Tell us about this.

Zac Wingard [00:18:56]:
Yeah. This is our first full tang tomahawk. So this is the Sparrowhawk in its, carry system. So you have a blade cover, a spike cover, and then there's a cover down here. These are Kydex covers, connected with shock cord, and so you can wear it under your arm like this. I loop it with a paracord between my shoulder blades and it's accessible very quickly. But this is, my personal Sparrowhawk. Let me show a nice clean new 1, which looks better on camera.

Zac Wingard [00:19:31]:
But, yeah, the Sparrowhawk is our 1st full tank tomahawk, and it is the thickest full tank tomahawk on the market. So it we call this Farrowhawk because it looks like a bird. It even has a a handwoven leather grip wrap, which looks a lot like a bird nest. So it has bird like vibes, but when you turn it you know, the side profile is very distinctive, but when you turn it, this is, it starts out at 5 eighths thick, inches thick at the, chopping region and then tapers down to about, a quarter inch under a quarter inch thick at the base of the handle. So that shifts the center of mass far forward. Most full tank tomahawks on the market are made by stock removal from a set plate thickness. So they'll usually have a constant thickness running through, the part. The 1 exception of that is the Winkler r and d tomahawk from, was it the Jack car series terminal list? Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:20:42]:
So Winkler does, CNC mill that, but that starts out at 3 eighths thick, and then I think it tapers down to, a quarter inch or maybe, just under a quarter inch thick, maybe 3 sixteenths out of base. So they do that tapering, to keep the mass balanced forward, but, you know, 3 eighths thick is not as thick as this. This is over a half inch thick. And so what we found is, we can go really thin in this sorta neck region here, and that can keep the chopping blade projecting further out along with the spike side further out. But the overall length of the head is sub 7 inches, so it can be worn more comfortably under your arm. But it's still really thick, really strong, And that's been really, interesting, you know, using it in batoning, you know, for utility. You have a lot of wide surfaces that you can strike against for splitting through wood. But, yeah, I mean, we came up with this.

Zac Wingard [00:21:46]:
This was probably 2 years ago. I was on a a beach sketching tomahawks. I was probably the only person in the world doing this. Right?

Bob DeMarco [00:21:56]:
At that moment. Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:21:57]:
Yeah. At that moment. And, yeah, I was looking at those medieval hurl bats, like, the Germanic throwing axes from, like,

Bob DeMarco [00:22:07]:
the I

Zac Wingard [00:22:08]:
don't know. They were using them from, like, the late 1300 into the 1500. Like, even into the age of gunfire, they would have these all metal throwing axes that would usually have an axe blade, a top spike, a rear spike, and then the base of the handle was pointed. And, sometimes they even would forge a clip on them like a you know, Spyderco gets credit for the the pocket clip, right, on knives. Well, you know, these medieval Germans had, like, a clip running down the length of the throwing axe so they could tuck these things into their belt or if they were wearing armor, and then they could chuck these things. And there's not a lot of good history on them, but these things, you can look up pearl bat or or medieval throwing axe. You can see them up in museums, but they were all metal for durability, and they would be thrown. And according to the accounts, it would be sometimes thrown by men on horseback at a pipe formation, you know, to disrupt people who are holding, you know, a pipe before a charge, or just use in combat.

Zac Wingard [00:23:11]:
Like, hey. You know, if you don't have a firearm or a posse or something, you just hurl this axe at somebody before you close in. Yeah. Well, those were really interesting but not wearable. Right? Because they're pointy all over, and, yeah, you could tuck this pointing object up against your body. You're clad in armor. You know? It's not a big deal. If you go to, Africa, they have the Hungamunga, so it's a distinctive throwing knives.

Zac Wingard [00:23:39]:
Some of them were even shaped like birds, like, the African hornbill bird. And supposedly, those were used as throwing weapons. Some of them may have been used for, like, currency and trade, but there's definite evidence with all these projected points that, you know, they would throw, they would revolve through flight and stick in the target in many ways. So we're looking at those 2, and we're also looking at, Native American tomahawks. There were examples of all iron tomahawk where the whole tomahawk it wasn't just an iron head on a wooden handle. It was forge welded to an iron, handle. So it was all metal, but it wasn't a full tang tomahawk like you see on the market today. It had no handle scales.

Zac Wingard [00:24:24]:
It was just basically think like a fireman a fireplace poker, except it ended with, like, a small ax head on. And these things were almost always spiked Tomahawks and then usually had a pointed base at the bottom. So I'm looking at all these designs. I'm like, you know, if we're gonna come out with our 1st full Tang Tomahawk, which people have been asking us to do, what's it going to be that's going to be distinctive from what's out there already on the market? What new capabilities is it gonna provide? And this is pretty much what we wound up after many sketches homing in on was something that had a a really a fairly long chopping edge that transitioned to this front point. So when you you could thrust with it and if you threw it, it could stick at greater impact angles. We also want a rear spike on it because spikes are very useful both in combatives and in the throw and in bushcraft. And we wanted a pointed, palm on the base. And, you'll recall our stingray palm hawks, which also have a pointed base of hickory.

Zac Wingard [00:25:32]:
Those, you know, work in the throw very well, but we wanted a metal, tip for this because you can also use it in bushcraft to baton. If you're working with small pieces of wood, you can place this up against it, talking like breaking down pieces of wood, match thick thin, and then use the thick base at the top to baton it because, again, it's very thick at the top. So it it was just a fusion of these designs. You know, hurl bats, hungamungas, all metal tomahawks from America's frontier fused into this design, and we had to figure out how to make it carry. So, basically, when you wear it under the arm, this is facing rearwards. Like, basically, your arm is here, and you got the carry systems covering it all. But you got the blade cover. Sorry.

Zac Wingard [00:26:26]:
I'm positioning myself awkwardly in the kitchen table here in the studio. You got spike cover, and then you got pommel cover at the bottom. You just wear that loop between your shoulders, right, and it hangs comfortably. I've been wearing mine for, gosh, 2 months now every day, and it's been fun. It's very accessible. You can draw it quickly. You can use it for utility cuts. You can throw with it.

Zac Wingard [00:26:52]:
It throws really well because it has so many, angles of impact that it'll stick the target. And it is pretty darn good at chopping. This is the heaviest hamak we've ever made. It weighs just under 18 ounces, because it's so short that it does have because of the weight, it is a little less quick than, like, the Stingray or the back ripper. Mhmm. But recovery is pretty darn good because it's such a short handle. And that was another thing that we picked up on when we were looking at these historic all metal tomahawks. The handles were really short.

Zac Wingard [00:27:28]:
Like, usually, they were overall length 12 inches some of them as short as 10 inches So we definitely think those were short to reduce the weight, and shorter handles tend to throw better. Like, the handle gets out of the way on rotation faster. So, yeah, that's that's the Sparrowhawk.

Bob DeMarco [00:27:47]:
So in a in a combative, use, the blade shape is very interesting because you're talking about the weight and how, because of the weight, which actually 18 ounces still isn't that much. But, with the extra weight, recovery is slower. But that top shape of the blade allows for instead of a returning chop, a returning thrust.

Zac Wingard [00:28:10]:
Yep. And and, also, it extracts really easily. So, like, when you bury this into flesh and bone target, it slides right out. There's no beard to hang off at all. So as far as recovery, like, it chops pretty quick. It's just like, this is a blur. You know? This is just because it's heavier, it takes a little bit more energy to to get it going, but it's still nowhere near as sluggish as, like, a heavier like, think of an R and J tomahawk or a lot of the Winkler tomahawks are pushing north of 20, 24 ounces. You know, 18 ounces is lighter.

Zac Wingard [00:28:45]:
I'm not, you know, crapping on those companies. They make fine quality products or heavy duty tools, like but they're focused a lot on breaching.

Bob DeMarco [00:28:53]:
Yes.

Zac Wingard [00:28:53]:
We do not market these for breaching because I do not have any background in breaching. I don't feel credible to speak to it.

Bob DeMarco [00:29:01]:
For, just for people who might, need the information, just talking with,

Zac Wingard [00:29:09]:
RMJ. What's the gentleman's name? Ryan Johnson?

Bob DeMarco [00:29:11]:
Ryan Johnson. Couple of years back. I asked him, how he got into making tomahawks, and and he had made a few, but then, they got in the hands of some special forces guys, early on in the, in Desert Storm or, Iraqi Freedom.

Zac Wingard [00:29:30]:
Yep.

Bob DeMarco [00:29:30]:
And, peep and the people were using them to, like, break into, house, you know, to breach doors, to breach metal doors, to breach vehicles and destroy stuff to get into stuff.

Zac Wingard [00:29:42]:
Oh, yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:29:43]:
And, so a very kind of, he's a fascinating guy, and it was a great conversation. But a very different, point of view or perspective or angle, of approach than Wingard wearables, which, you know, even including the the the full tank tomahawk in your hand is, building weapons, tomahawks as quick recovery weapons. And by recovery, I mean, you can you can sling them around like they're barely there because they're nice and light.

Zac Wingard [00:30:17]:
Yeah. And I think that's like, you know, different design intents, and that's the big thing. Like, most people, when they think about Tomahawks, they think, oh, you know, they're all similar or, you know, one's just like the other. And really, you know, reviewing Tomahawks closely and what you see on the market today, they're more kinda like swords as a category of weapons. Like, there's not 1 type of sword or 1 method of using a sword. Like, there are swords that were used for hunting, for bushcraft. Right? There are swords that were specialized, like a small sword or a rapier, you know, strictly for combat. And so I look at tomahawks historically and today as just a huge scope of designs with different specialties and applications.

Zac Wingard [00:31:00]:
So, you know, making a tomahawk for breaching, that's probably not something we're ever gonna do because you do need that weight for breaching. Absolutely. There's a reason why they have to go, you know, 20 to push in close to 30 ounces on those designs because it's just a whole lot of it's a whole different animal busting through and trying to chip out a murder hole in a adobe wall versus, you know, chopping wood and throwing, you know, in, combatives or for recreation or for, like, flesh and bone combatives. Like, these tomahawks our tomahawk designs can be a lot wider because we aren't burdening them with breaching capability. We have had customers come back and tell us things they've done, and it's like, well, I didn't design it for that. You know? Just because it made it through, I'm not gonna advertise like, oh, so and so, you know, broke out a door at a, you know, sketchy domestic situation. You know, it's like, so, yeah, I'm I'm staying away from breach. I think that's a capability that is covered, you know, with Ryan at RMJ and also Winkler.

Zac Wingard [00:32:06]:
But, yeah, that's they're they do great work. But, yeah, check these out. These full tank tomahawks, they they don't have to be as heavy as the ones on the you see on the market. Like, if you if you aren't interested in breaching, you're interested in more bushcraft, combatives, and having something you can wear under your arm or keep accessible as a bedside implement, Sparrowhawk, it can cover a lot.

Bob DeMarco [00:32:29]:
I would imagine this was the 1 you were talking about. This could easily take down a door, I think.

Zac Wingard [00:32:35]:
Yeah. Yep.

Bob DeMarco [00:32:38]:
But the the the Sparrowhawk, when when you're holding it up, it's obvious when you look at it, all the tactical applications to it. You got a spiky pommel. You got a big giant spike on the back. You've got that beautiful recurve blade and, and a a point. And by the way, that handle feels so good in hand that that basket. But you were talking about this also, say, in Bushcraft. You mentioned, you know, making a little kindling with the punyo, but, like, how do you how do you see that whole setup? It looks like a lot of tools on the top for a bushcraft scenario.

Zac Wingard [00:33:16]:
So you can definitely chop. This is probably our best chopping taman because it is the heaviest, but it's also very sharp. And so we found, you know, that combination of of high weight and sharp blade, it processes wood and chopping pretty darn good. I'm not saying it's as good as a hatchet, right, because hatchets are a lot heavier and more optimized. But as far as the Tama goes, this just in chopping wood does pretty darn well. You can also grip up here so, like, the edge doesn't go all the way to the handle. It it, blends out here so you can put your your hand underneath. So you can do some knife like, like push cuts and utility cuts.

Zac Wingard [00:33:59]:
But, really, the back end here, this spike, it comes to a chisel tip. It's not, like, needle sharp. Like, it it won't, you know, press up against your body and pierce you. It it pierces through percussive impact. So you can use that to grub the ground or bury into the ground, wiggle it out, and use the flat side to drive a wooden stake into the ground. The stingray does that too. The stingray does it a little bit better because the spike is longer and the flat sides project out more, but the sting, the sparrowhawk still does that pretty darn well. This is like over a 3 inch long spike, so you do pre tap holes for wooden stakes really well.

Zac Wingard [00:34:40]:
And in some ways, you can drive wooden stakes into the ground faster than a hammer pull tomahawk because a hammer pull tomahawk, you're just focusing that, you know, small hammer face into the wooden stake to drive it into the ground. You don't recap a hole. Oftentimes, you miss impacts with a stake or you break the stake with such focused impact. So, you know, using the flat sides of the tomahawk head can be used in percussive impact in that way. But, yeah, the tawning's a big deal. Splitting through wood, the thickness really buys you that because you're over a half inch thick. You know, when you place that blade on a piece of wood and you start batoning through, it has more of a splitting type wedge like you would see in, like, a hatchet or a wood processing ax. So in that way, you know, we didn't have handle scales projected up in this region either.

Zac Wingard [00:35:34]:
It's really streamlined for just splitting through larger pieces of wood.

Bob DeMarco [00:35:39]:
This is a a very, cinematic, I wanted to call it a knife, a very cinematic tomahawk. Like, I could totally see this in, movie like The Raid or something like that.

Zac Wingard [00:35:50]:
I hope I hope that happens. It'll be good for free advertising.

Bob DeMarco [00:35:54]:
The the the 1 thing that I'd have to do is, make it silver so it's easier to see,

Zac Wingard [00:35:59]:
looking through. We'd polish it up for, like, Hollywood. Absolutely.

Bob DeMarco [00:36:04]:
Well, how is it made? I know that your, a lot of your different products are made in different ways, but all here in America. How's this made?

Zac Wingard [00:36:13]:
So this is investment cast, 43.40. And so, our back ripper tomahawks are hand forged w 1 tool steel. Our Empress tomahawks are sand casted, high strength silicon bronze. When we got to the Stingray, we went with investment cast, 5160. 5160 is a very tough steel. It doesn't have large carbides in it. And the stingray was a very complex shape. Like, the inside of the eye has grooves in it and that sort of thing to bite into the wood when you hang it, but the sparrowhawk was even more complex.

Zac Wingard [00:36:52]:
Even though it didn't have an eye and a hole in it, it's much larger, and its geometry is very three-dimensional, And so we could not make that, economically via stock removal. Like, if you were to cut out of 5 eighths, 6 plate of steel, this shape, and you were to try to nest multiples of them in it, I mean, you would be wasting pounds of steel per part. And it would cost you a lot in processing machining time to further remove the material as you're tapering it down, and it gets difficult for machine tools to cut, to mill, smaller projected spikes. Like, if you have any if you're cutting away too much material, you can have the metal bend like the the tool can bite. It's just it's a a nightmare. So we went with investment casting, because we had success with it previously with the, Stingray. But it was pretty complicated. So there are not many edged weapons on the market that are investment cast.

Bob DeMarco [00:38:04]:
What what is what is that problem? Sorry to interrupt you, but you've mentioned it a few times, and I don't know what that is, actually.

Zac Wingard [00:38:09]:
Okay. So if you think, sand casting, they can make a mold, or an impression in sand. Like, you could take this and make an impression of it. Like, you could have a wax mask or even a 3 d printed mask or impress it into a special kind of sand that holds its shape. And you can create 2 halves of that and sandwich it together, and then you have what's called a screw or a runner. It's basically a a channel. And so in that empty cavity, you mix the compounds that make your steel, melt it down, and the molten steel flows in and fills that cavity, and that's sand casting. And when we started with the Sparrowhawk, we initially went with sand casting for the prototype runs, but 1 of the, problems with sand casting is it is prone to surface pores,

Bob DeMarco [00:39:06]:
which

Zac Wingard [00:39:06]:
you can see up here. So this is my prototype. It's sandcasted. It it looks and the pores only show up on the side that's upwards facing. And this is I I put this thing through the ringer. It's a very strong part, but that is unsightly, And casting is an expensive process. Even sand casting, which is more affordable than investment casting, you still have to have a a die to make the parts that make the imprints out. And the die is machined out of c usually CNC'd out of aluminum and cost 1, 000 of dollars.

Zac Wingard [00:39:43]:
Well, with investment cast and that process, you have the dye that makes a wax master part. So all that dye does is makes basically what looks like a wax version of the metal of the spare on of the part. And, that wax is then they they sort of adjoin the screws that the runners that flow the metal to the part. But then you can't just have, like, flow of the molten metal going in. You have to have a sort of gas escape path because there are residues and gases and steam that can come off of the sand casting. Like because you dump this wax part in a in a wet sand mixture to have it dry, and then you melt out the wax. You have the empty cavity, and you flow it in. Does this make sense so far?

Bob DeMarco [00:40:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:40:36]:
Okay. So you can't just have the molten metal flow in in your dump and the part cools. No. It doesn't work out that way. You gotta have, a a gas escape path for hot escaping vapors to run off, and then you have to have I believe they call it a riser. It and it's an excess volume, which could, in some cases, be, you know, a third of your part of the metal in your part. And what that is is sort of the overflow. So they fill up all these cavities in that reservoir in the riser.

Zac Wingard [00:41:09]:
As the part cools, as the molten steel solidifies, there is shrinkage. Right? And the more temperature gradient, the more severe the temperature difference is along the part, the shrinkage can be so great that it causes cracking. And so when they make parts at a foundry, they use what's called solidification models. They actually will, 3 d model up your part, and they'll play around with different locations and sizes of runners and risers and vent holes so that they mitigate against cracking and voids and that sort

Bob DeMarco [00:41:52]:
of thing.

Zac Wingard [00:41:52]:
And these solidification models are, you know, state of the art. They've been around, you know, thanks to advances in computing. But before that, casting had was done just by experience. You know, you try to do your best guess, and we're talking, like, in the, you know, early 1900 to, you know, the mid 20th century, you know, casting would sometimes you would have parts that would have internal voids and and cracks and failures. And to this day, you'll hear people say, well, if the a part is cast, that means it's brittle or it'll be prone prone to failure. And that was probably true in the early 1900 when the law of the, you know, understanding of how the solidification process can go out and how you mitigate against these defects, how you can do that. But now it's pretty well understood. And so they run solidification models on parts at the foundry to try to get you the highest yield of viable parts.

Zac Wingard [00:42:57]:
Now there's still rejections. Right? So, you know, you cast, say you cast 10 sparrowhawks, some portion of them will have rejects even with the solidification models and all the the mitigation they do against defects, defects happen. And so those are fortunately very obvious when you have a void or a a shrink crack, and that's a rejected product. But the ones that, you know, are cast, cooled, solidified, they then get heat treated, and then we receive them and do stock removal. And so thanks to casting, getting this part to near net shape, we wind up removing about an ounce of steel to get it finished. That's the amount of resurfacing and grinding to put the final edge on. Now that's still time consuming. You're going through a lot of belts because it's heat treated steel, but it's still not near the amount of material being removed if it was stock removed.

Zac Wingard [00:44:01]:
The alternative to that would be like, dye or drop forging where you have a piece of metal and it goes through different stages with trying to minimize the number of heats so you have multiple bolt dies that it goes to. If you look up a Von Tool, like, they make a lot of the, cheap patches you see at Lowe's or Home Depot. Mhmm. You can go on, like, how it's made and look up how they work. And, basically, they source 1 piece of steel for just about all their tools, and from that, they form various accents. The the drop forge or the die forge process is limited with the amount of geometric complexity you can get because each stage you go through, you're getting it closer and closer to the final shape. I'm not saying the Sparrowhawk couldn't be made that way, but it would be very difficult to shape, say, a cylinder of steel and have this part come out.

Bob DeMarco [00:44:59]:
Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:44:59]:
There's an advantage of investment casting. It's got higher surface quality over sand casting, but the complexity of it is just you have all this cool you're forming the final material in the part. You

Bob DeMarco [00:45:12]:
know? Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:45:14]:
Every knife we use today started off cast. Right? They cast the ingot, and then they did all this processing to get it into a sheet of steel or plate that then they cut the knife out, you know, or did forge it with the knife. Everything you you you see in steel started out cast. But with the sparrowhawk and with our stingray, the casting process occurs very, very close to get it to near that shape. So in some ways, it's a more streamlined process. It's just very expensive. And I think that's why you don't really see it often in the edge weapon market. There are some steels that are gonna also be less favorable for it.

Zac Wingard [00:45:56]:
40 340 is a very tough steel. They're not, you know, significant carbide structure, so it'll do well. Some of the powder metallurgy steels that are coming out would, if you try to just cast those, probably have enormous carbides and truly be brittle. That's why they went with powder metallurgy where you're melting basically little droplets and having it cool. The carbides can't get huge if you have tiny, tiny little droplets or cool. You know, you then hit it and press it into a building. You know? But powder metal energy costs a lot of money. Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:46:29]:
And the payoff of that is more in pocket knife type application where you want that combination of, like, 60 plus Rockwell c and tough high toughness for that hardness. The 4340, and 4140 are both steels that have really high toughness. That's why you see them so commonly in, like, throwing knives. Like, nothing's more abusive than throwing a knife or or tomahawks, you know, where you need more toughness than you need hardens. Right? Especially a full tang pump. I'll stop rambling. Does any of this make sense, or did it

Bob DeMarco [00:47:04]:
go on? No. No. It all makes sense. I just wanna ask you this before, just part of the the finishing process. You were talking about how you remove an ounce through stock removal. Are you doing the grinding?

Zac Wingard [00:47:15]:
No. I am not. I have a beautiful metal finisher. Oh, I keep looking. It sounds good. If he's listening to this, I I'm not, like, hitting all of that.

Bob DeMarco [00:47:24]:
You're a beautiful guy.

Zac Wingard [00:47:25]:
Oh, yeah. You're yeah. His work is beautiful. But, no. We work with 2 different metal finishers in Pennsylvania. So 1 specializes in bronze, so he resurfaces our sand casted Empress Tomah pads, and sand casting has a rougher texture, so more material to be removed, but bronze is softer than steel. Right? So we were originally gonna work with him to do stock removal or or resurfacing on the Stingray, but he pointed out, like, the hardness of heat treated steel for his grinding setup was just too far. So he recommended a buddy of his that, you know, they kinda adult tag team projects.

Zac Wingard [00:48:04]:
Like, they do a lot of a lot of their work is, like, resurfacing and sprucing up, like, 18 wheelers, like trucks to get them all nice and shiny. Like, when you're up in Pennsylvania, the winter roads just degrade. You know, these surface finish terribly, and these truckers take a lot of pride in their trucks. So that's kinda their bread and butter is is doing, you know, resurfacing on those. But the belts they use, like, you know, typical knife, belt, like, this is 2 by 72, usually, for the belt setup. The belts they are using for these, I wanna say they're 12 feet.

Bob DeMarco [00:48:44]:
Oh my god.

Zac Wingard [00:48:45]:
They're huge. They're huge. And the and the wheels that spin the belt are, like, shaped like a turbine, like a to cool. And so there's no water being run. You're not ruining the heat treat because the the belt surface area is enormous. Like, it's a completely different animal from a 2 by 72 setup in the garage. This is, like, beyond anything I would even consider doing myself. So they have multiple, setups.

Zac Wingard [00:49:14]:
I think they were in a 9 footer, maybe a 12 footer. I may be wrong on the on the lengths of belts, but they were huge. And so, you know, they're able to resurface these parts, which are fairly high surface area, very quickly. So that's been really great. It's still a time consuming process, removing that ounce of of steel, just through grinding, but we've been pleased with the results. They've been great.

Bob DeMarco [00:49:42]:
Part of your process, we've talked about this a lot. Well, your wife is a big part of of your process in terms of, helping you, you know, brainstorming, a, coming up with a quill, idea. And I know she weaves the handles on those, sparrowhawks. So a shout out to your wife. It was very nice meeting her at the, at at your booth and chatting with her a little bit. So every everything that you guys do, you hand finish. Every every Wingard wearable comes through, your shop, and and your hands are all over, and your wife does some stuff too. And, so how how does that work into, like, your brand identity is what I'm I'm trying to get at here.

Zac Wingard [00:50:26]:
That gets tricky because it is like, you know, we're we're not there's a lot of stuff we do that's hands on, but there's a lot of stuff that we outsource. And so, you know, a lot of these guys aren't gonna be comfortable with us coming in with, you know, a microphone and camera and filming them at their workplace. They're not interested in that. They're interested in the revenue from, you know, what they've been contracted to work on. So, that part is, tricky. I mean, we look at it as everything we do is American made. You know, we work with various small businesses. Way early on, we would try to do features with our blacksmiths back when we're working with with 2 blacksmiths, and they were camera shy.

Zac Wingard [00:51:10]:
And it was like, you know, yeah, it wasn't really something that, like, why push someone out of their comfort zone, you know, to feature on social media when it's like, man, all I wanna do is focus on the metal craft. You know?

Bob DeMarco [00:51:23]:
Oh, 0, wait. Wait. Wait. So I

Zac Wingard [00:51:25]:
tricky question.

Bob DeMarco [00:51:26]:
I I think I think I didn't, ask the question right. I wasn't really talking about, your awesome social media, by the way. I love your videos. Yeah. I was talking more about the finishing work that you do on each 1 of your products. You you do the half thing on the tomahawks. Your wife does the weaving of the the basket weave for the handle on the sparrowhawk. They all come through.

Bob DeMarco [00:51:49]:
You do you make the sheaths and such. Yep. And and a lot of r and d goes into that because these require special these are unusual implements. They require special carry carry options. What what I was getting at is how much of that finish work, is is at the core of Wingard wearables, or is that something that, you you would happily outsource also?

Zac Wingard [00:52:11]:
Oh, I would I would happily outsource if I could, but it can't. III do think the Kydex work, is something that can be outsourced. I hate working on Kydex. It is a necessary evil because Kydex is incredible, But I think a lot of knife makers that work on Kydex, that's they'll probably share the same thing. And and every time you open up, like, the news, it's microplastics. You know?

Bob DeMarco [00:52:39]:
So

Zac Wingard [00:52:39]:
I'm like, I I'm probably gonna live forever now or or my body will hang around forever. So we are actually looking into, 3 d printing of carry systems. And so there's actually a Pennsylvania company, g3dprintables. We work with them, for prototyping. Like, when we prototype up a design in CAD, we will get it 3 d printed. Right? We don't even have space in our house for, you know, multiple 3 d printers, and they're really good at it. But 1 of the things that we wanna investigate is additively manufactured carry systems. And we've been testing prototypes, you know, for spikes style carry systems.

Zac Wingard [00:53:23]:
That's a bit simpler than, like, a carry system for, like, a knife sheath.

Bob DeMarco [00:53:27]:
Right.

Zac Wingard [00:53:28]:
But they've been holding up well. And while we were doing that in parallel, Turner CNC actually came out with several 3 d printed carry systems for knives.

Bob DeMarco [00:53:39]:
Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:53:39]:
And they would, like, chuck them on the ground. You know, the technology for additively manufactured plastics has come a long way. They've got some with, like, carbon fiber impregnated, and they they take 100 of pounds of abuse. So we're interested in figuring out how to outsource the carry systems. As far as the handles, I'm you know, handle wraps and the wood handles that hang in the tomahawk heads, I feel like I have to be involved in that because that's something that, you know, I've made hundreds of tomahawks over the years. Each time you get better at it, it, every batch, there's some technique that's done to either improve the processing, the efficiency, or the quality every time. I don't think I could, like, teach somebody how to do that easily. And I certainly couldn't trust someone to outsource it.

Zac Wingard [00:54:27]:
Right? This is such a nice thing.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. It does. Yeah. It does. And and, I mean, part of I know something you take great pride in is how you hang these. I guess this is not the best light, but, this 1 might might come through better. But I mean, with the cross wedging, and, you know, all of the thought that went into, especially this 1, how how the head would fit, in the half.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:52]:
Yep. III can see how that would be, you know, that's a personalized

Zac Wingard [00:54:57]:
Yeah. But what what's acceptable too to, like because everything varies because it's done by hand. But what's within acceptable limits? You know, sort of hard to describe the judgment call that you make as a maker when you've seen and and made dozens and dozens and even hundreds of some of the models. It's like, you know exactly how it needs to be and you know when one's off. So I I think we're always gonna be hands on with every product. It's just the carry systems, Bob, if I had an easy button to outsource that, oh, I would do it. And I don't know if 3 d printing is gonna be the answer. We talk about, like, tooling costs, injection molded sheets.

Zac Wingard [00:55:40]:
Oh, man. I mean, it's easily $20 for a plastic, injection molding hardware.

Bob DeMarco [00:55:46]:
You that's just like the the template, basically?

Zac Wingard [00:55:50]:
Yeah. That's what you would basically melt down the pelleted plastic and inject it into. So when you look at Mora knife, you know, with their handles and sheaths or, you know, a lot of cold steel fixed blades have that sort of injection molded sheet. But you look at the scale, the scope of of how many they're making versus when you're a small business, it's like, yeah. It'd be nice to know that we could sell 1, 000 of these things, but you aren't. Right? Because they're small. Everything's bottlenecks. You're making dozens at a time.

Zac Wingard [00:56:21]:
3 d printing makes sense for me. At some point, if you grow into, like, your Mora knife or cold steel, then, yeah, you gotta adopt these extremely expensive, industrial practices.

Bob DeMarco [00:56:32]:
Because the at scale, they

Zac Wingard [00:56:34]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:56:34]:
But we don't This is a, 3 d printed knuckle duster that I'm always showing off. I love this thing. But, you know, my first introduction to 3 d printing years ago at the library were these beautiful but brittle, little, incredible sculptures. You know? And and having this and being able to whale on something over and over, and with no fear of it breaking is, it's pretty amazing. So it's it's interesting to think that you could streamline your process, through that route. I mean, like what I was saying in my intro, that's part of what I love about your products. Like keep saying. Like, I've been hanging out with my daughters all weekend.

Bob DeMarco [00:57:15]:
The the the reason I love your work so much is that there is that old world, solution. It's a it's a tomahawk, and and it's in those materials, but but there's a lot of modernity that goes into it, especially into the research and the development and figuring out how to wear it in a in a modern.

Zac Wingard [00:57:33]:
Yeah. Oh, and what we're hoping to do this year is improve our processes. Like, 1 of the problems I would say we've had in the previous years is, like, you you get tunnel vision on, like, how do I make this product as perfect as possible, you know, with the processes? But you focus the processes only on that product instead of expanding your scope and being like, hey. How can I improve the processes I'm using now? Like, hand pressing Kydex, that takes a a lot of time, you know, band sawing, hand drilling, and all that stuff. It just takes a ton of time. So 1 of the things we wanna do this year is look at not just new products, but also new processes to streamline the way we make our current products, such as the carry systems and future products. Like, 1 of the things we wanna get into is small fixed blade knives. Like, you know, not everyone can carry, you know, an almost foot long well, everyone could carry this, but, you know, it takes a special kind of person to carry that big knife.

Zac Wingard [00:58:36]:
Right?

Bob DeMarco [00:58:36]:
Yeah.

Zac Wingard [00:58:36]:
Yeah. But small fixed blades are hot, And that was 1 of the advantages of going to Blake's show was seeing so many, people talking about like, oh, this is the thing. It's like, I love small fixed blades. My first knife I ever designed, like, back in 2012 for myself was a small fixed blade. And it's like, alright. How does Wingard Wearables tackle that? Because that's an extremely saturated market. And 1 of the things that's been interesting listening to the interviews you've had, like with Jack Wolf Knives, like them getting into a small fixed blade and the approach they took, kind of making a fixed blade version of a folder was interesting. And we we saw a number of people talking about that as a as a feature.

Zac Wingard [00:59:18]:
Like, oh, we're gonna come out with a folding knife and have fixed blade bleed. And I was like, That's not how I would approach that at all. So you get exposed to these different ways of of of thinking. But small fixed blades are gonna be, it sounds like they're gonna increase in, output as far as what's going on on the market, but they're responding to the demand. Yeah. And we are thinking about getting into that and what processes we can do and designs to make it distinctive and have a unique capability.

Bob DeMarco [00:59:50]:
Oh, as as, as they say, I'm here for it. I love small fixed blades. Obviously, I carry them all the time. A daily carrier of, at at certain times of day, multiple fixed blades. We were talking about the, the how Fred Parent's got all those tiny little knives. I keep 1 on the back of my work ID.

Zac Wingard [01:00:08]:
Oh, yeah.

Bob DeMarco [01:00:09]:
Always got 1.

Zac Wingard [01:00:10]:
But the next small fixed blade. Right? The MicroPipe. Yeah. MicroPipe gen 2. We're coming out with the the the batch. We had a small batch of gen twos at at Blade, but I wanted to show you, this was gen 1 right here, the skinny ugly guy. It was a 1 piece of, o 1 tool steel, and o 1 doesn't like to, move a lot when it's being forged. So, with this, we have 5160, forged welded to mild steel, and we got a much more pronounced, leaf blade.

Zac Wingard [01:00:45]:
But look, it's just a small EBC fixed blade. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's just on a 15 inch steel handle.

Bob DeMarco [01:00:52]:
Love that.

Zac Wingard [01:00:53]:
Like, you know, you can wear it in your pants comfortably, you know, but it's like, well, most people, when they see that, they're like, it's too unfamiliar. Right? You gotta be similar, but different. And that the micropike is just that's out there. There's nothing out there like that. So we'll see. We're gonna have a small batch of those dropping on the site probably in the next week or 2. But yeah. And I I reckon when this video comes out, it'll probably already have been dropped.

Zac Wingard [01:01:19]:
But, yeah, small fixed blades, hopefully smaller than this. You know? Yeah. We'll see. What's your favorite length of fixed blade? I

Bob DeMarco [01:01:27]:
well, I love, I mean, for everyday carry, like, 3.75 to 4 inches, in in blade length. But, you know, but I have some that I like that are smaller. But that's my sweet spot right there.

Zac Wingard [01:01:41]:
What about those, like, little lapel knives, those thumb daggers and and things? Like, when you're talking really small, what length do you like? Yeah. Exactly. Like That's station 9, isn't it?

Bob DeMarco [01:01:52]:
Yeah. It is. Station 9. I'd say about, 3 inches overall with, with a with a 3 quarters inch grip or so. Very strong jumping going, you know, like that.

Zac Wingard [01:02:06]:
You'd say 3 inches is about your bare minimum for you.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:10]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For a lapel, something that I would add a little Bob too and

Zac Wingard [01:02:14]:
Yep. Okay.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:15]:
That covertly. Those are my missions. You know?

Zac Wingard [01:02:17]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:19]:
Well, Zach, we'll keep our eyes peeled for the, small fixed blade, and I have some Wingard wearables. But before, before I let you go, yeah, let's see that 1 more time. Alright. Let me

Zac Wingard [01:02:28]:
try to get this because I'm watching myself on camera trying to get this, on with the lighting, the glare. It's so shiny.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:35]:
It looks great from over here.

Zac Wingard [01:02:37]:
Okay.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:37]:
It's a beautiful sparrowhawk full tang, tomahawk.

Zac Wingard [01:02:41]:
The thickest, girthiest, full tang tomahawk on the mark.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:44]:
Girthiest, full tang tomahawk. You need it for combat. You need it for camp. You need it. Check it out. Alright, Zach. It's such a pleasure always having you on the show, and thanks for coming on and telling us all about your blade show experience in the brand new Sparrowhawk. It's been a pleasure, sir.

Zac Wingard [01:02:59]:
Thank you, Bob and Jim, and you guys have a fantastic night.

Announcer [01:03:02]:
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Bob DeMarco [01:03:23]:
There he goes, ladies and gentlemen. Zach Wingard of Wingard Wearables, on to talk about his blade show experience and the Sparrowhawk. It's always fun talking with Zach. Go over to wing guard wearables.com or check them out on Instagram and, watch these things as they develop. It's always exciting, but also buy these things. Something we didn't talk about. 1 thing that, they do get into are bludgeons as well, and here is their wearable version of the, of a an Indian, war club. So very, very cool.

Bob DeMarco [01:03:56]:
All the stuff they make there, interesting and unique. Alright. Thanks for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. Join us next week for another exciting interview and Wednesday for the midweek supplemental and, of course, Thursday, the Thursday night knives. For Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying until next time. Don't take dull for an answer.

Announcer [01:04:14]:
Thanks for listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at review the podcast.com. For show notes for today's episode, additional resources, and to listen to past episodes, visit our website, the knifejunkie.com. You can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at the knifejunkie.com/youtube. Check out some great knife photos on the knifejunkie.com / instagram, and join our Facebook group at the knifejunkie.com/facebook. And if you have a question or comment, email them to Bob at the knifejunkie.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.