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Marko Tsourkan

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I might be getting some help in the shop very soon.

In the past few months I have been looking to hire a person to help me in the shop. Prep work, particularly in wood-workiing, takes a great deal of my time and my time could be better spent doing more skilled work.

Also, I have been looking to produce leather rolls for knives, stones, utensils in-house, and though I would like to be in control of the production, I would prefer to train somebody and concentrate on knives instead.

After interviewing and trying a few people, I finally settled on a person who has what it takes to work alongside me. He has an experience of wood-working, leather-working and shows a good aptitude for learning new things.

This couldn't come at a better time, as I am trying to develop a line of new products, and joggling that with custom orders has been very challenging.

If all goes well, I will resume custom work for handles, sayas and once I get a good hold on custom orders, knives.

Very excited!
 
Congrats Marko. That should really let you become more productive and focused.
 
Tentative start date is November 1st.

As of November, I will resume taking custom orders for sayas, handles and cutting boards.

Also, orders for magnetic strips and knife stands (coming soon) will be fulfilled sooner.

M
 
Great to know that the demand for your quality work requires you to grow.
 
Fantastic news. Hopefully this gives you the flexibility and productivity you need.

Absolutely. It will free my hands for doing new/experimental work, as well as improve efficiency of my current work. It might not seem obvious, but preparing/fitting/milling/flattening/squaring/gluing takes an awful amount of time, and if this can be done in parallel of me grinding,carving, shaping, finishing, designing, testing, the efficiency has to improve.

All work that requires skill will still be done by me, so custom work will still be custom work, but having help will allow me to organize my time better and improve my delivery time and shorten wait time.

Thanks for the wishes, I am very excited, as for some time now, I have been getting quite desperate to turn things around.

I am currently planning some November specials, so stay tuned. Just to to remind you, I will be offering custom handle/saya/thinning and refinishing work as of November 1st. A few new products will be following soon thereafter.

M
 
This must be how all of those other quarterbacks felt when Favre came out of retirement. :D Just kidding (sort of). Congrats on the new page. We all know how great your work is, and I'll be happy to be seeing more of it.
 
Marko,

That is great news. Finding good employees is not easy. Too many High Schools have dropped their shop classes thinking everyone has the aptitude, money, or desire to go to college. The reality is that Tradesmen/women are needed and can make a decent living if they will work hard and are honest.
As an Electrical Contractor I have to go through about 5 guys to find someone that is worth keeping. The flood or illegal immigrants is not helping either since it artificially drives down wages making it herder when your skills are not has developed.
 
In my case it is the other way around college ->trade, but I agree that finding somebody who can get on same page as you is not easy. I can see why it is attractive for some makers to stay small and do all the work oneself, but my goal is to develop a line of knife related products, so I won't be able to pull it off by myself and I am not interested to subcontract any work, even if it makes most business sense.

M
 
If you are going to run a business at least some college is a necessity, otherwise the paperwork will overwhelm you. I have found that a lot of people that went out of business was not for the lack of work, but a lack of organization and not staying on top of the paperwork.
 
Great news. I hope the cutting boards are back in production soon...
 
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