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 What is this project?  

Our project is a high performance folding knife that utilizes the Xross Bar patented locking system designed to give a folding knife the feel and safety of a fixed bladed knife. We are striving to make this line of knives one of the worlds strongest and safest locking folding knives.  

Funding will be generated with Kickstarter, be sure to sign up to receive the launch dates on the home page.

How will the funds bring it to life?  

Previously each knife was crafted by hand but it was necessarily high priced as a result, even as a mid-tech knife the hours to make one can take up to a week or longer.. 

We want more people to enjoy this great knife at a much reduced price and is good reason to manufacture it by a reputable company. Our goal is bench made quality at an affordable price. 

The Launch Get on the list so that you don't miss our launch on Kickstarter. The sign up page is at the bottom of the home page. 

Our latest designs - 

A knife for everyone. We plan to lead out with the Montana "Gentleman's Cowboy EDC". It is a slimmer model with yet another improvement of the lock to prevent any possibility of ramping open under an extreme pressure on the blade. 

Our first real tests of the strength of the lock proved that it takes an extreme amount of force to close the locked blade due to ramping, however we wanted to eliminate any possibility of that happening under any pressure and thanks to the ingenuity of Dan Humes our Solid works engineer we feel we have accomplished that.

The Starfighter has been featured in two separate magazine articles and has received great positive recognition. It is a bit larger knife and yet carries easy in the pocket with the pocket clip. This knife has a unique configuration and was a real joy to design. I want to get this knife manufactured in order that our more tactical friends can afford one, such a our first responders etc.

The Sidekick. This has been my most popular knife and was designed for the EDC crowd as a hunting, fishing and anything else knife. I have carried one for years. This knife has seen different handle configurations and the last series featured anodized titanium liners, clip and bolsters. 

The Brutus is another Workman's family of hard working knives and can also double as a gentleman's EDC. It is the epitome of all of those details in an Every Day Carry hard working platform. This knife will be offered with a variety different blade shapes to accommodate the different tasks encountered by the industries.  

Here is the pitch - we want to bring these knives to the masses in a high quality production version. We will use only materials of the highest integrity and use a manufacturer qualified and working under our strict standards.

The Crew

Dan Perreault has been in manufacturing, ironically, in Quality Engineering, for 30 years making everything from lasers to medical devices. Dan was the original idea man behind this lock and is the patent holder as well. 

Dan Humes is our newest engineer team member and has designed a sleek gentleman's version of the Xross Bar Lock series with a new twist on the lock that we are anxious to test. Dan's expertise is designing folders and bringing things to life with Solidworks and this will greatly help with our efforts to have the folders manufactures to our expectations. 

Dan Erickson is an ABS Journeyman Blade Smith and will be helping me to get badly needed prototypes finished in order to get this project off the ground. Dan also has a good eye for design and will be instrumental in some of our ongoing designs.

Lyle Brunckhorst started making knives in 1976 as Bronk's Knives and later as Bronk's Knifeworks and have covered much ground in the production and design of cutlery. 

Along the way Lyle designed the electric knife makers furnace, created the Professional Knifemakers Association and put on three knife shows. He produced the Double L Hoof Knives for Delta Horseshoe Company until his landlord sold the property that his shop was on. He taught knife making for 20 years and presently has a 5 start knife sharpening business.

He knows what needs to go into a high quality, high performance knife. This team working with a top quality contract manufacturer, will bring a well designed, custom quality product at a reasonable price. 

Lyle is presently working with a Washington based knife manufacturer and waiting for estimates on the several parts of the knife.

Our Knife, Custom to Production   

We don't all have the time or skill to make our own knives. We also don't all have the desire to carry a knife costing hundreds of dollars made by hand from a quality maker. Still, the desire to have a blade that will hold an edge, lock up tight, and cut well is one many of us know well and hold dear.   

I've been making knives Since 1976 to meet that desire for a great working blade. Through lots of experimentation, research and hands on practice with the hammer, grinder and oven working steel I have learned to make the highest performing blades.   

The knives that I have made, by hand, with many man hours of labor, for the past 40 plus years are made from good edge holding steel that I have learned to properly heat treat. I also pay close attention to design and to detail and strive to make a knife that looks as good as it performs.   

When I started making folders, the conventional lock back was arguably the most robust design on the market, proven with over a hundred years of folders out there ... but it was still prone to failure with hard use. Particularly under torque or impact loads. Same with frame locks, liner locks, and many of the others. We need the lock on a folding knife to hold up.   

Which came to a meeting of the minds. Dan Perreault is an engineer who has been looking for solutions to the lock problem for over 30 years. He got his first patent at 19 on a knife lock trying to solve the problem. Tremendously strong, but not very manufacturable and bulky.   

The Xross Bar Lock was a concept created on a napkin when Dan Perreault described his idea with Lyle Brunckhorst over lunch. Lyle took that crude drawing to the shop and the Xross Bar Lock was born.  

Combining my knife making experience with Dan's lock technology was an obvious solution. Working together, we worked out the details of implementing the Xross Bar Lock into a variety of designs, refining the details at every step. Both Dan and I have been carrying Xross Bar Lock folders for years now, testing them every day, in real world settings on all sorts of tasks.   

So to sum it up; Dan and I have worked together to design, develop and patent a world class workman's knife. Although I have been making knives for many years, I can't produce but a few high quality and high dollar knives each year. This can only benefit a few collectors and leaves the majority of the working men without the utilization and benefit of our great folding knife.