Our Manufacturing

Fly Class knives are our collector grade knives.

Here, we introduce our highest-end products with all our innovations. Our Fly Class knives are where we focus our energy on making engineering breakthroughs and ensuring precision machining excellence. This is where we blend the arts and sciences of knife making to create knives which are a cut above the rest. In essence, it cannot be mass produced making the knives inherently rare.

 

 

We source the highest-grade materials that machine well and offer the features & benefits expected from a premium knife. For instance, we use materials such as Grade 5 titanium for our frames because it has amazing tensile strength and is extremely light weight. For reference, even the mars rover uses Grade 5 titanium.
 

Water Jet
Waterjet cutting of the raw components allows for Avian Knives to be more efficient in the early steps of production. Waterjet is essentially cutting rough parts from big sheets of material like steel and titanium so that individual parts can be produced faster. The components are cut slightly oversized so that every part can be precision cut in the later stages of production.

  

Prior to heat treat, we machine critical junctions and areas onto the blade. Afterwards, all blades are Every batch goes through our in-house heat treat process with a focus on optimal performance for each steel material. We do an HRC test on all blades to ensure that optimal blade hardness has been achieved.

  

At Avian Knives, we maximize precision & efficiency by using CNC machines. With the level of complexity of our designs, CNC machining is needed to ensure that every component is exact, and the tolerances are as tight as possible. This takes the guess work out of hand work and places emphasis on perfection. For instance, all blades are surface ground to ensure that blades are perfectly flat. We also liquid cool our surface grinding jig to ensure that the blade steel does not prematurely heat up.

   

At Avian Knives, we are obsessed about consistency and perfection. That is why unlike most makers, we create jigs for every process of knife making. This includes the tuning of the lock bar, detent insertion, etc. This is an extremely costly process for us for the benefit of our customers. With the use of jigs, we can ensure that every knife will be tuned the same way so that everyone receives the perfect knife. As part of the finishing process, we send our blades to be hand ground by a local custom knife maker (Miki Knives) which ensures the sweet swooping hollow grinds that cannot be done with a CNC machine.

  

Prior to shipping, we perform our proprietary 17 step quality control test to ensure that fitment, finishing, and tuning is perfect as intended. This test is so difficult that many multi thousand-dollar custom knives that our founder tested failed to score a perfect 17/17.

  

We proudly manufacture all fly class knives in Thailand using the highest end machines and operators to ensure that we produce best quality knives.

 

 

Glide Class knives are our user grade knives.

We designed this series specifically to be used, carried and cut. We put a laser focus on making sure that these will serve our customers well in everyday life situations. Our user grade knives will be more readily available than our Fly Class knives.

 

 

Our design team sets priorities for each model. Focusing on weight, utility, or aesthetics depending on the model. Generally speaking, everyday carry ease & practicality are paramount for each model, taking priority over everything else. CAD designs allow us to visualize the design and see how all the parts will fit together.

 

Once the CAD renderings are finalized, we must create a technical engineering drawing to ensure that each component is made within the tight tolerances that we require. Measuring everything down to a thousandth of an inch so that every part can be mated together by hand to fit and function together is essential to the success of producing a world-class EDC tool. Essentially, and engineering drawing is a process to finalize the dimensions of every single part in detail so that the manufacturer can make the knife in spec.

 

Prototyping is bringing the technical drawings to life to test whether a concept on paper would actually be feasible once it is on the real model. This stage is critical to all knife production because every prototype is handled and tested by our team members to catch any small details that may have been missed in the technical stages and test whether the physics works as intended. No amount of pre-thought or engineering can catch every little detail that someone looks for when physically touching or carrying a knife. Each prototype is carried, used before final authorization so you can be sure that these pieces will be subjected to harsh use and abuse beyond what a typical owned knife may subjected to. This ensures that we will still get the highest quality available whichever OEM we use.

 

After precision machining of each component, every part is carefully cleaned up to remove tool marks and smooth out any rough areas created by the machining process, then each blade is carefully ground and heat treated. Final assembly and finishing are done carefully to ensure the perfect final product. We will perform spot checks on our final product as part of our QC to ensure they are ready for action.