Hey everyone, David C. Andersen here coming at you from the KnifeCenter. And we've got
another new product unveil for you today, this time coming from our good friends up
in New York, Ontario knife company with a couple of new designs. And we got our friend
Matt here to walk us through him. Matt, how are you, sir? I'm great. It's good to see
you again, dude. Yeah, you too. So you've moved a lot location wise from our last interview?
No, I I try to keep it consistent. So I'm sticking with the with the home office for
this. Yeah.
Well, we hope you're you're doing great up there. We've been we've been holding down
the fort down here. Thanks for sending us a couple samples of these to take a look at
what do we got here to show the fine people at home. Yeah, so what we have today, I don't
know how many people have seen them yet or not. We did kind of like our own debut for
these last week or a couple weeks ago. We have the Adirondack series that has made its
way into the 2021 lineup. We have our
Keene Valley hunter
and then we have our high peaks Hunter. So one of the things that you're probably going
to notice right away is our micarta handle. Yeah, that mean that was absolutely the first
thing I noticed. It's a very distinctive looking pattern here. seems almost like a rag like
a compressed rag type of construction almost. Yes. For sure. Looks very neat. Yeah. Yeah,
we're excited about it. It's something brand new for our company we're kind of moving in
a direction where we want to give a little bit more interest instead of just like black
blade black handle. Yeah, it's really neat it like I said it does add something different
very distinctive the same time it's definitely definitely very outdoorsy, of course reminds
me almost of some of the like the proprietary camouflage is out there in a way. Yeah, it's
definitely camo so we wanted to keep the theme pretty pretty hunter Lee or bushcraft or outdoorsman
one of the other things you'll notice is that they come with some high quality leather sheets
brown leather sheets to pair those with a belt loop style leather sheath on the back
there with the app on the front. So we wanted to keep it you know relatively relatively
simple but you know still interesting at the same time.
Well let's start with the with the keen Valley then very broad shape to this particular blade
and fairly decent in the blade stock on both of these I think genre wise for me these are
kind of like cross between survival and hunting knives in a way tell us a little bit about
you know what kind of users were you you kind of seeking out with these designs? Yeah, absolutely.
So you hit the nail on the head so outdoorsman whether you're doing any basic task outdoor,
any kind of cutting application, but mainly these knives are for for your hunters. So
guys who are looking to skin, you know skin, any kind of game field dress, any kind of
game. This one specifically the Keene Valley has that nice deep belly on it. So our our
designers and bradney who A lot of people will probably know from our bushcraft series
knives spec plus Gentoo knives and our agile like kitchen series know that he's an avid
outdoorsman, a great forger, great night designer and, you know, some of his own words were,
this is built for multiple application but big bellied so that you can get any kind of
large game skinning with with this knife. The handle in particular, with that really
nice long finger guard is gonna it's gonna protect you from you know, slipping up words
and cutting any kind of any, you know, any of your hands on, you know, if you hit a bone
or something moving forward, you don't want to hurt yourself to the large button on this
aligns your hand with the blade so that it keeps you keeps you focused on what you're
cutting. Yeah, I mean, there, it feels good there, there's a lot of sweep to that belly.
I mean, it's ready for those long sweeping cuts. It's a little bit long for my hands
to kind of get out near the tip without coming above that, that finger guard a little bit,
but you can certainly get out there. And yeah, it's just ready to sweep. Yeah, 100% and Dan
designed this so that the handle stays really stable in your hand. We gave it the micarta
so that it's got a lot of rigidity to it and a lot of a lot of future use, you know micarta
takes a lot of punishment and keeps moving. So we're excited about that and stay as grippy
when wet or when going out or working out an animal as well. Yeah, you know, if you
get it if you get it wet, if you got any kind of water on your hands or if you have blood
on your hands, you know, it's not gonna move. And then of course, they are removable scales
as well. So for the folks out there that like to kind of undertake some projects, you're
not necessarily limited to this. You can make something custom for yourself as well. Yeah,
yeah. If you look, there's there's a little bit of a like a channel on each side of the
scale. So it's not
You could go in and kind of customize a little bit if you wanted to make it a little bit
more tactical and grippy too.
Alright, so talk to me a little bit more about the blade. We are fairly thick here. We're
about three sixteenths. What are the materials? What's the steel here? Yeah, so we stayed
with the 420, high carbon, stainless steel, because it's probably one of the better ones
that you know, people can use for skinning game, keeping it sharp and not rusting out.
And made in the USA to boot on both of these knives, which I like to Yeah, yeah, 100% made
in USA design in the USA. So one of the things that we you know, we'd like to present to
people, our affordable knives that are making us. So that's another reason why we stuck
with the 420, it's a little bit more of an affordable skill, something that people can
sharpen relatively easily. So if you're new to you know, new to hunting new knives, and
you haven't had a ton of experience, it's one of the easier ones to use. You can get
something you can use, and you don't have to resort to an import to be able to afford
it. So yeah, yes. Yeah, and pairing it with the leather sheets really nice. It gives it
a little bit more value, in our opinion. That's why we're starting to move into that direction
a little bit more.
And then and not to be asked the critical questions, so to speak. But a lot of times
I know just due to a economics of scale, sometimes the sheets have to be outsourced. Where are
the sheets imported? are really able to keep these in the US as well. Yeah, she's are imported,
but everything else, you know, on the knife itself is actually 100% made in the US. Very
cool. Well, it feels really nice. Anyone out there if you bought one of your Old Hickory
hunting knives, it's a very similar feel quality wise on the sheets here. Yeah, the shields
are higher quality, we have a really good maker, somebody that we really trust and care
to make all of our pieces for us. Alright, let's talk about a little bit about the the
slightly narrower knife here. Yeah, so the the high peaks Hunter is obviously it's more
of like a caper style knife. One of the things that Dan mentioned about this in terms of
the handle is that it gives you a little bit more ergonomics on the handle, you can see
there's a little bit of a sweep there to keep your forefinger where it needs to be another
really nice finger guard so that if you're doing any kind of plunging, you know, you're
not going to hurt yourself. And then there's a taper down on the bottom of the actual handle
so that you can do rotation. Obviously with the caper, you're going to be doing rotating
cuts for any kind of game game skinning and stuff like that. So that was the main idea
and main attraction for designing the handle the way that he did. I think in addition to
that, this thing would be a pretty good food prep knife out at Camp as well due to that
kind of upswept tip right there. You got some clearance if you're doing any kind of cutting
board work with it? Yeah, definitely. So obviously, we we try to design knives where you're going
to get more than just one style of use out of them. This can be, you know, it can be
used as a key, excuse me, a paring knife, or a caper, or any kind of, you know, utility
knife. Yeah, very nice. Very nice. And then again, same nice high quality leather sheath
with that as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're gonna find it. Yeah, we're trying to trying
to keep the leather at the forefront for our for our sheets now. Especially for ones catered
more initially towards the outdoors uses as opposed to maybe the tactical or military
uses. I think that's a great, great decision making right there. Yeah, thank you. Yeah,
we appreciate that. We, we've noticed that a lot of people are pretty happy with the
decision, especially with the onset of the Old Hickory outdoor line, when we we kind
of introduced the idea of having all leather sheets for that line. We're doing the same
thing here. Very nice. Yeah, one of the things that not a lot of people know is the Adirondacks
is, you know, Northeastern in New York State. It's got a really long tradition of trapping,
hunting and fishing. And we've kind of wanted to pay homage to, you know, you know, to our
state and having one of the largest, you know, state parks outside of, you know, outside
of Alaska and having really long traditions of being an outdoorsman, and bushcrafting
and supplying, you know, the rest of the country with somewhere to go and not just have like
your typical, you know, oh, go to the Pacific Northwest or anything to go hunting, you can
come to New York State, which is usually not known primarily for, you know, for its wildlife,
or, you know, out anything outside of New York City. We're excited to kind of give people
a little bit of a history lesson when it comes to these blades and the state in general.
Yeah, I think they're really cool. They got some some really nice shapes going on. Again,
I appreciate the American construction, really paired with that that last sentiment that
you just mentioned, as well.
Well, I think they work really nicely together. Yeah. What time? What timeframe? Should we
expect these to to start making their way out to to folks like us? Yeah, sure. So we,
we did a small sprint run for our website, so we could throw them up there and get some
people excited about, you know, grabbing a few before they come out. We're looking probably
around March for a full distribution on that. So you know, about another month or so. Alright,
that sounds good. And price wise, we're looking at. I know, you mentioned before we started
rolling that the Keene Valley here on your guys's site was somewhere above a little bit
above 90. Yeah, you're looking at like, just below $95. And then the, the high peaks, the
caper is right around $90. Which, of course folks watching Keep in mind, that's a full
MSRP coming from Ontario. dealers, like us should have it a little bit cheaper than that,
for you guys to get your hands on.
Yeah, very cool. knives. Thank you, again, like I said, for sending them over to us.
I'm really excited to see more from you guys. I think. I think there's a lot that you guys
bring to the bring to the community, even if some folks aren't always necessarily looking
at you guys. But that's what I'm here to do to get people looking at you guys some more,
because I love it. Well, we appreciate that. Thank you so much. And thank you for giving
us the opportunity again to come and display some of our new pieces for 2021. You know,
we have another full set of other items that that made their debut a couple of weeks ago.
And hopefully, you know, you guys were able to grab a few of those and put them on the
website and get people excited about them to know I'm really looking forward to it.
And hopefully next time we we do one of these just maybe we'll be able to see each other
in person maybe at blade show this year, I would really like that. Yeah, it'd be great
to see everybody again. But for the time being, it's great that we have the technology to
keep in touch. And you know, we're able to continue, you know, talking about, you know
what we have to offer the community and you know where it's gonna go? Absolutely. Well,
Matt, thank you so much for sending this stuff. Thank you so much for taking the time out
of your, your schedule to talk to us about them. folks that are out there that are watching.
Make sure to keep your eyes on this channel as well as our social media outlets when these
are going to be available to start ordering yourself. So Matt, thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. Thanks for having us again. Appreciate it. All right, good deal. We'll see you next
time. All right. Thanks.