We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this Good Old Blades micro podcast. Probably one of the largest investments a knife maker will make in anything that comes out of their shop is the time that they put into whatever it is they're making. And in working in the shop, one of the largest detriments to you is shop inefficiency. And I wanted to talk a little bit about shop efficiency today and some thoughts around that because if you know if time is money and you're spending a lot of time on something, then you're losing money because there is a cap on how much you can charge for your own inefficiency. For instance, if a a fixed blade takes approximately five hours uninterrupted for you to make. However, that same knife takes you personally 11 hours to make, you can't charge an hourly rate easily for the extra time because you're inefficient at what you're doing. Anything from not having the right materials or right abrasives or right uh tools to do jobs for doubling up uses of tools and having to set up and reset up machines to uh do what you want them to, um, from you you know lollygagging or uh diddling around in the shop and not getting things done efficiently, um, thinking about things too long, um, grinding things too slow or too fast, you know, mistakes cause inefficiencies. It's things like that. And over time, if you think about knife making as a linear process from a bar of steel or blacksmithing things, and you get your final product at the end, there are a million little steps from start to finish that probably have some baked-in inefficiency. One of those things might be heat treating, uh, some of that might be hand sanding, some of it might be um bolster fit-up or uh handle fit-up. Uh all those things take time. And knife making is not without risk. Not only the risk of injury, uh, that I think we all know about, but also the risk of things breaking down, things uh not working out the way that you thought they would, you know, things crack, like uh handle materials crack, blades crack in heat tree, and so on and so forth. And it's important to keep all of those things in mind when you're making a knife because all of it contributes towards inefficiency. And what you should be looking at when you are uh tooling your shop and when you are working out processes for things is how do you get to a predictable uh uh process for how you're uh making a knife? Do you know that this particular model is going to take a certain amount of time? Do you know the longest amount of time it takes to do certain operations? For instance, when you're heat treating things, do you just sit around there and look at the uh the thermostat on the oven and wait until everything is done and then you move on to another process? Um, processes are thought of as synchronous and asynchronous. So synchronous processes are things that um they require one step to be done before the next next step can be started. And asynchronous processes are processes that can run at the same time, and you can double up your efficiency through uh through those. For instance, like if I'm doing heat treating, I'll usually have a bunch of other things that I can do while things are being heat treated so that way I don't waste my time waiting on an oven. Um if I am going to grind something, I will grind however many bevels on my blades with the specific abrasive, and then I'll switch the abrasive out. Um I'll go through as many of those uh operations for grinding bevels on the same abrasive so that way I'm not switching out for every single knife that I'm making. Uh I'm going from you know 50 grit all the way up to you know six, eight hundred or micron belts per knife and then switching them out. Like there's an there's an inefficiency to switching out abrasive. That's why sometimes you see makers that they have maybe four, five, or six grinders, because they'll actually just have a single grit per grinder, and they'd rather change out machines than they would change out belts. Um it's it's an idea. Uh, some people will have multiple panographs, multiple milling machines, multiple surface grinders, multiple heat treating ovens in order to be able to handle certain processes so that way they can run asynchronously instead of synchronously. Um there are so many ways that we waste time in the knife shop. And a lot of it we're not getting paid for. Uh, if it if it takes you time uh to make a blade, that's one thing. Uh you know, for the craft and for the type of result you're looking for, some things like certain types of uh fine hand finishes just take that amount of time. Sometimes working with certain fragile materials just takes that amount of time. Like it is what it is. However, there are some ways that you can gain back your life and gain back your time, and as a result, gain back your money by uh trying to find the shortest route to getting something done. It's one of the reasons why uh Bill Ruppel, when he talks about making pocket knives, is uh don't do anything before you have to, because in a lot of time uh situations um you might repeat processes many, many times, and not only is it inefficient, but it also might add risk to you building a knife. For instance, on on slip joints, if you are uh if you are uh flattening or burnishing a s a spring and blade many, many times, you might actually uh take the the blade out of tolerance because of what you're doing. And if you're doing it a few a few times too many, you might destroy the entire uh fit and finish of the blade as a result. Really think about what you're doing in the shop, um, what processes you're following, and ways that you might be able to gain efficiencies. And I think when you figure that out for your shop, and when you look at some of the largest time wasters that you have in your shop, you will become a better knife maker because you will not be sitting and waiting for things to happen in order to make your product. You'll be able to uh organize your time efficiently so that way you see progress, which that's the dopamine response that we all like. We like to see the end product. Sometimes we don't like so much the time wasters or the things that really hurt us or bore bore us in the shop that contribute towards us not wanting to be out there. Um, think about it. Hope it helps. Ask if you have any questions.