steel – Page 2 – Knife Blog: Pocket Knives With Your Logo

Do Your Company Logo Knives Increase Business?

Dave Navoyosky & Vince Deissroth With a Gift Knife

Do you give pocket knives with your logo to your clients?
Do your clients appreciate your gift?
Does this form of advertising help?
How do you know that company logo knives pay off?

The first 2 questions are easy to answer, but the last 2 can leave you scratching your head. Any form of advertising has to address these questions:

Will it be cost effective?
How will I know the advertising campaign worked?
Will the campaign have long-lasting rewards?
Will the campaign show my company in the image that I want it to show?
Is the success of the advertising campaign “measurable”?

A $50 pocket stainless steel pocket knife with your corporate logo laser engraved will be a good investment. But only if it is cost effective. If that knife brings you an order worth $5,000 or $1,000,000, it is well worth its cost. So quality company logo knives aren’t for a business that gets a lot of small orders.

How will you know it worked? How does Procter and Gamble know that their 30 second commercial last Tuesday worked? You can only guess that all advertising has a cumulative effect on your customer base. There are ways to track effectiveness. We can explore these methods in another post.

Will a gift knife have long-lasting rewards? You bet! So do it now, and not just before you retire.

Image: Choose the style of knife that reflects your company’s image.

Measurable results of this type of advertising: A great topic for next time.

How To Search For the Most Engravable Knives

Searching for Engravable Knives

Fortunately, you don’t have to do the searching yourself. The people that do the engraving look for knife materials that will engrave well. Not all stainless steel is suitable for laser engraving. Some steel is not consistent enough to give good results when you laser engrave it. It may be a great blade or handle component of a knife, as far as durability and appearance. But it might not be suitable for laser engraving.

Here are engravable knives, pocket knives that have been tested for engraving. They all have passed the test for beautiful laser engraving.

Starline Pocket Knives With Your Logo

A Dynamite Advertising Idea–Personalized Knives

A Dynamite Advertising Idea

Impress your workers………Give personalized knives as safety awards.

Personalized knives are engraved knives with a person’s name on each knife. They are designed to be personal custom gifts to each special recipient. Everyone likes to see their name on their possessions. Why not take advantage of this human trait, and advertise your company on the knives, too.

Choose a quality stainless steel knife with an attractive handle.
Order from a reputable online knife company.
Pick out your best, simplified corporate logo.
Prepare a list of your personalized names on an Excel worksheet.
Order a few extra knives without a name, for recipients that pop up in the near future.
Personalized Pocket Knives

Engraved Gerber Knives Can Make You an “Instant Success”

Be a great boss and give your employees the newest Gerber Knives

The New Gerber Instant Knife 752 is designed to be light weight, but big and powerful. If you get your company logo on these engraved Gerber knives, you will be an Instant Success with your employees and customers. Gerber keeps up-to-date with the preferences of knife enthusiasts. This year, they want a tactical design, and the assisted-opening feature. Light-weight handles with cutouts are a big hit, also. The stainless steel blade is in the form of a modified tanto style and 3 1/4″ long. The knife is 4 1/2″ closed, which is a large pocket knife. To keep the weight low, Gerber makes the handle out of a composite material. Can you open this knife with one hand? You bet.

Gerber Instant Knife 752

4 Common Misconceptions About Company Logo Knives

Maxam Pocket Knives

To keep it simple, here are just 4 misconceptions about company logo knives. I’m sure you can think of others.

The best price is what you need.
Knives are just for men.
A color imprint is the best imprint.
Chinese-made knives are junk.

Here are the answers….

This statement is an easy one to figure out. The best price may mean the worst service, or the worst imprint on your company logo knives.
Surprisingly, many females like to carry a pocket knife for protection, and to open boxes, just like men do. My pastor’s wife appreciated the multi-tool I gave her, because she does all the fixing around the house.
A color imprint may look the nicest, but laser engraving is the most permanent imprinting method. Color imprints can scratch off in time, especially if your car keys are rubbing against them in your pocket.
The quality of pocket knives coming from China is very remarkable. They are using good stainless steel, and the workmanship is very good. The price is low because of the low cost of labor in that country. Dako and Gerber and Starline knives are my favorite Chinese-made pocket knives.

3 Reasons It’s Hard to Beat Buck Knives

Moon Munjas, a Buck Knife Lover

Here is the “Unbeatable Buck List”.

All Buck knives can be laser engraved on the blades. This makes them valuable as high quality promotional products and business gifts.
All have a lifetime “buck knife forever warranty“. They are warranted against defects in workmanship and material.
They are made of the best stainless steel, and handle material.
Most are made in the USA.
They are America’s favorite knife. These Buck knives make the top of the popularity list:

Buck® Bantam BBW Camo 284cmo

Buck Folding Hunter Lockback Knife 110

Buck Nobleman Linerlock Knife 327

Buck® Special Knife 119

How Are Personalized Knives Engraved?

Personalized Knives

Pocket knives are very popular as gift items to employees and customers. How are personalized knives made? Rather, how is your logo put on a pocket knife blade or handle? It depends on the material of the handle and it depends on the blade. Here are the answers…

Laser engraving is very popular for stainless steel blades and handles. Also wood handles are able to be laser engraved. Smooth leather sheaths and smooth bone and synthetics, except Zytel, are also able to be laser engraved. This is a permanent imprinting method. It is done by experts who laser engrave all day, every day.
Screen printing is popular with companies that have a color logo, and they want to stick with that color or colors on everything that they have imprinted. This in considered a semi-permanent process. It will scratch off if you put your knife in your pocket with your car keys. One or two colors are possible.
Full color imprinting is a new process developed about 2012. It is like your desktop printer, but better. It is not limited to cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. It can also print white. It prints directly on the handle, etc.
Electro Etching is an electro-chemical process in which the imprint areas are eaten away by acid and electricity. It is a semi-permanent method of imprinting.
Buck-Camo-Knife-Kent Getsee-Dave Navoyosky

However, it is the method of choice by some knife imprinters.
Computerized engraving scratches the imprint mechanically into the metal surface. It is considered permanent.
Color fill of a laser engraving. If you want to add some color to your imprint, one color can be applied to the recessed areas of the laser engraved logo.
Personalization means that each knife is marked with a different person’s name. This is a great gift idea for members of a group. The names are usually laser engraved. If someone misplaces their knife, it is easy to identify.
Serialization. If you want to keep track of each knife in your order, each knife can be marked with a serial number. It would be laser engraved.

The 3 Best USA-Made Barlow Knives

Use Your Barlow Every Day

When people ask me about the barlow knives, I ask them to let me know which “barlow” they want to know about. The word barlow has 2 meanings. The first meaning is the name of an American company that used to make pocket knives, tape measures, and key chains. They were all high quality, and made in America. USA-made items were very popular, and still are. The Barlow company was sold to another company in 2007 approximately. Then that company was sold to a third company shortly after.

The second meaning of “barlow” is a style of pocket knife that dates back to the 1600’s in England. This is the knife that George Washington used. It still gets a ton of Google searches today.

It is these barlow knives that I am showing you today. These have 2 stainless steel blades, a slightly teardrop-shaped handle, and a large metal bolster.

Kutmaster Green Barlow Knife 15-24779gbe

Kutmaster Barlow Knife 15-24789WL

Bear & Son Barlow Stag Bone BC5281

The 3 Most Beautiful Engravable Knives

Knife Show in Ohio

There are thousands of styles of engravable knives, pocket knives, in the world. Each one has its own personality. Collectors are always looking for the newest, latest, most unique pocket knives at all the gun and knife shows across the USA. Factors they look for are the color, material of the blade, shape and material of the scales (handles), and the mechanics of opening and closing them.

These are my choices of the top 3 most beautiful engravable knives in the USA.

The Kershaw Camo Scallion made the short list because of its printed camouflage design. It almost looks 3 dimensional, or glowing. The opening mechanism is Speedsafe assisted-opening system. It works very smoothly. Of course the blade is high quality 420hc stainless steel. Just so you don’t accidentally open the knife, it has a safety lock to keep it closed when not in use. Made in the USA.

Kershaw “Scallion” Knife, Camo 1620

Buck® has many styles of knives, and keeps up with the current tastes of its customers. The most popular style now is the tactical knives. The rich black color of the blade and handle make this a beauty. The openness of the handle makes the weight low. The tanto style blade shape and the serration are both good selling points. Great for an every day carry (EDC), but still a very beautiful pocket knife.

Buck® Black “Bones” Pocket Knife 870-BK

Boker is a fine American company that manufactures knives all over the world. The Boker Leopard Damascus II Knife wins this award on several points. The damascus blade, the blade shape, and the origin of the steel, are all winning points. The steel was forged out of the barrel of the German army tank Leopard I. This gives it the Rockwell hardness of 65-67. The handle has amazing features of its own. It is made of hardcoated 6061-T6 aluminum and it encloses Ziracote wood inserts. This heirloom comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Boker Leopard Damascus II Knife 111054dam

3 Tricks You Can Do With a Fruit Knife

Carved Apple Brothers

How many ideas can you come up with, using a folding fruit knife and some edible sculpture objects? Folding pocket fruit knives can go with you to any party and help you brighten things up. Apples, watermelons, other melons, and pumpkins aren’t the only objects of your artwork. Try mangos, oranges, and pineapples, too.

Carved Watermelon Display

Of course, there is the usual use of a fruit knife….using it to extract a test plug from a melon to test the color and taste of the fruit without having to destroy the whole thing. This is what they do at the fruit warehouses, and in the fields. This picture shows a tester that went a little too far and carved out several “test” plugs. But that’s ok. Someone will volunteer to eat the mistake.

Watermelon Testing Plug

Stainless steel fruit and vegetable knives come with plastic handles or stainless steel handles. Some have serrated blades for use on tougher fruits.

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