Production Samples - Sweeeeet
about 7 years ago – Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 10:09:04 PM

The first run production samples are here and are AWESOME!!!!!!!

We are so excited. We sent some samples to our marketing partner and are testing others. Most of the time it only takes one or two sparks to light a Tinder Quik, a cotton ball or the nested jute. We are thrilled with how this little wonder is sparking. Here are some other comments on the rest of it.

COATING  

The Titanium (Ti) coating is awesome. Talk about durable. This coating blows away the electromagnetic powder coating we tried initially. We are very impressed and think you will be also.

SCREWDRIVER TIP

The screwdriver on the last round of samples was a little too thick. The factory honed it down and these are perfect. The tip easily handles a slotted screw and will work on some of the most common Phillips screws as well.

UTILITY BLADE

This little blade rocks! It is plenty sharp and well concealed in the recess by the bottle opener so you won’t accidentally cut anything or yourself. But, it is easily accessible and ready to use. I even used it with runaway threads on a dress shirt and my daughter’s dress. You have permission to use this indoors in the event a hero is needed. From fishing line to seatbelts to errant threads... Bring it on!

BOTTLE OPENER

What can I say except that it works. This is a great backup to ensure you never go without the ability to pop open a cold one.

HANG SLOTS

These are holes. Nothing fancy, just well thought out additions to a wonderful little tool. Easily clip on a vial or attach a split ring of keys, or whatever. Very handy, sized right and positioned well.

WIRE GATES

The spring in these is excellent! They are pretty easy to open but yet stay closed nice and tight. All were within a very nice range between being easy to open and staying closed. The factory did a great job achieving a good balance.

LASER ETCHING

The laser etching looks best on the Blue and Silver. The factory will work with the subcontractor and adjust the etching on the Black, Multi and Gold colors. They all look great, we just wanted to fine tune them for clarity and visibility. The etching factory believes it will be no problem to adjust the darkness of the etching to make it nice and visible.

SPARK WHEEL

The Everspark wheel and ferro rod work flawlessly together to provide excellent sparks. Man is this thing fun to play with, but it is not a toy (lawyers make us say that). I used the mini screwdriver from the Accessory Kit to take out the set screw and spring and replace the ferro rod without any issues. You do need to be careful to not lose the screw or spring, but the mini screwdriver worked like a charm. The screw, spring and ferro rod all fit nicely, no issues at all. I love when it all comes together into an awesome finished product.

PACKAGING

The packaging looks great, except one minor thing. I blew it. The little blister holding the extra replacement ferro rods is awesome, but we totally missed telling you what is inside the blister. You can see the rods easily enough, but may not recognize them for what they are, especially if you didn’t even know the ferro rod was replaceable. We should have put some text telling you what was inside the little blister. We will take care of that the next round of production. The rest of the packaging all looks great and is strong and sturdy. Other than missing the extra ferro rod callout, we are very happy with it.

TENSILE STRENGTH

We are still waiting for final results on the tensile testing. The original testing labs didn’t have machines to test beyond 200 lbs, which surprised me. So, we sent over some contacts to get these tested at other labs and are now waiting for their results. Otherwise I will be hooking up my son’s weight set to do some home testing (my wife might not like that so well).

MULTICOLOR (aka Red/Blue or RBM)

We are finding out that the coating process for the multicolor is as much an art for as it is science. In this picture, you can see both ends of the range we have accepted. At one end, there is less green, more red and blue and some yellow. At the other end, there is more green, less red and blue and hardly any yellow. We are favoring the more red/blue & less green end, but each piece will be somewhere in that range and will be unique like a fingerprint or fine artwork. We love the way they are turning out and hope you will as well.

VIALS

These are great as well – exactly what we wanted. The laser etching also turned out great.

DELIVERY

And now for the biggest question: When are you getting them??!!

We did not want to make any other promises that we can’t keep so we are working with the vendor on a daily basis and are requiring them to send us weekly updates. They have over 14K of these to make! They have completed all the subcomponents thus far and have made all of the bodies. They are on schedule now to have everything completed, Ti plated, assembled, packaged and shipped by the end of the month! They will be placed on a boat, from China…likely powered by paddle ores with only the stars to guide them. It will kill us while we wait, knowing that some camping and outdoor trips may be missed. We will keep you posted at every step. Once they arrive we will pick, pack and send packages out as soon as possible.

In other news:

For those of you who opted for the Kodiak Survival Braid, we upped and refined our game. We increased the Rockwell Hardness for the striker plate on the buckle from 39 to the just over 50! The harder material means better sparks. We also got a better mirror finish just in case you need to do some emergency signaling…sometimes it’s the little things that matter.

Thanks so much for your patience and all your feedback. You have helped make a good product great. We are very grateful for each one of you.

- Mike and Joe

Packaged Production Samples - Yeah!
about 7 years ago – Sat, Mar 04, 2017 at 10:41:03 PM

We have our first set of fully packaged actual production run samples on their way to us. We will hopefully get them early next week and will continue to test and review. They look great.

Production is well under way. Some aspects of production are taking the factory a little longer than expected, but they are working out how to be more efficient as I write this. The wire-gate bending proved to be a little more of a challenge than expected. We thought that would be easy, but we have high standards and the factory is very willing to help us achieve those standards.

Along with the packaged samples, we are getting a bunch of components sent to us as well so we can start playing around a little more with our new products in development. That is the fun part.

You can see in the picture the extra ferro rods packaged on the card in the tiny blister. The factory did a great job working with their printer and other suppliers to make it look great. We are working on getting higher-res pics but should have the actual products in our hands within a few days and we can then take pictures ourselves.

See the Red/Blue Metallic color. The factory has started referring to this as multi-color since it is very difficult to precisely control the titanium PVD coating process and achieve just red and blue. As you can see, these still have some green color, but a little less than before. This is not exactly what we were expecting, but think the samples look awesome. We hope you like this color choice as much as we do. I can’t wait to see the actual samples in a few days. This will be the one I carry around. And, this titanium PVD coating is awesome. The finishes look great and are super durable.

We are still working on getting these tensile-tested higher than 200 lbs. We don’t yet have an accurate break strength, but suffice it to say it will be greater than 200 lbs. We will still place a 50 lbs limit on our packaging for liability reasons (thank you to our litigious society). Once we get the samples, one of the first things I want to do is try them out with my hammock. Weighing in at 180 lbs, I should not have a problem using two Firebiners. I will post results and hopefully I won’t come crashing down.

As stated, the factory is working on their efficiency and still targeting to have the whole initial order ready by the end of the month. Then we have over a month in transit and we can start shipping after tax season is over and just in time to take advantage of warming weather here in the Rocky Mountains (sorry to all our friends down under and other parts of the southern hemisphere where it will be turning chillier).

Thanks again to everyone for your support and patience. We are very excited to get the Firebiner into your hands as soon as we can. Then we will launch our next new product, hopefully in May.

- Joe & Mike

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Supplier Meeting in Vegas
about 7 years ago – Wed, Feb 08, 2017 at 11:16:56 PM

Mike and I flew down to Vegas for the day during the SHOT show to meet with our suppliers who were in town. We had a great meeting. The factories are still on Chinese New Year holiday, so we have another week or so before we can pick things up with production. We should be just about ready to start full production when the factories reopen.

We did get some good news. We will keep the official rating of the Firebiner at 50lbs for liability reasons, but so far they are testing at least 200 lbs in tensile strength. The pictures and video below show the factory's simple testing, but their tensile tester only goes up to 200 lbs. We will push for an official test report to show us a maximum tensile strength, but it looks like it will exceed 200 lbs.

You can see the Blue/Red Metallic color coating on the Firebiner in the picture above. Unfortunately, the samples had too much green in them for our liking, as you can see in these pictures below.

As soon as the coating factory is back from holiday, we will have them coat more samples to hopefully get closer to the red/blue that was shown on our color chips and in the center section of the below sample.

 The green is not a bad color, it is just not what we were expecting and what we want.

We are getting so close to fulfillment time. It is very exciting. We can't wait to get the Firebiner and other product into your hands and then we can launch our next item right away. Thanks for being awesome backers. You all are the best.

Now for some quick housekeeping. There are still a handful of you out there that have not filled out your surveys. Please get that done ASAP so we know what and where to ship. If you aren't sure or if you lost your survey link, you can always click here for the survey recovery page.

We are still planning on shipping the goods late March or early April and will continue to push the factory to finish production as early as possible.

Thanks,

Mike & Joe

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Tooling Delay
over 7 years ago – Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 08:50:26 PM

Hey Everyone,

We have been working closely with the factory on the tooling and it is just about done. We are very excited, despite this being later than we anticipated. We will be meeting up with some of the factory guys at the SHOT show in Vegas this week and they will have some of the first production samples. Exciting! We will update you afterwards.

With the delay in tooling, the factory will not be able to ship out before Chinese New Year (Jan 28, 2017). So, our fulfillment is now pushed back to late March or early April, depending on how much gets done before the holiday and how quickly the factory can ramp up afterwards. The factory will be shut down from late January to the middle of February. We are working closely with the factory to get as much done before the holiday so they can ship as soon as possible after the factory reopens. We are bummed about the delay, but excited about the quality we are seeing thus far.

Here is a little collage of the Firebiner mold with samples of the Screwdriver/Reflector Tool:

We also sent over final artwork for the packaging. Thanks everyone for your previous input. Here is the fold-over backer card artwork:

On a separate note, there are still 113 backers who have not filled out your survey. Please get that done asap so we can ship your reward. If in doubt, you can check by clicking here.

Thanks,

Joe & Mike

 

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Merry Christmas!
over 7 years ago – Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 08:47:31 PM

 I know I am a day late, but wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Mike is on the road with his family and I have been having too much fun with my family. I hope everyone, wherever you are, is having a wonderful season.

Mike has been posting some fun pictures on Instagram. Check out his creative ornament and hot cocoa making by clicking here. Just to tease Mike, let me ask you all a question. Do you put the hot cocoa powder in the cup first and add water or do you put the hot water in first and then add the cocoa?

As for production progress, the Reflector/Screwdriver Tool mold is mostly done. We have seen the initial samples from the tool and they work great. The mold still needs some final tweaks to smooth out a small bump and such, but we are very pleased. Yes, the tool will have a hole to hang it on the Firebiner with the vial, no worries there.

 The Firebiner mold should be done next week. We were hoping to have it done this week, but we would rather have it done right than rushed. We will keep you posted. As soon as the mold is completed we can then see samples in all the colors, including the red/blue metallic which we all want to see.

Everything else is right on track. Supplies and materials are rolling in. We are as anxious as you all to get these in everyone's hands. As soon as we fulfill this campaign we will launch our next one. Exciting stuff.

What if you have an address change?

Well, the Backerkit survey is the place to make address changes. Click here.

We have had several questions from those who have moved or will soon be moving. The survey is "closed" for product choices, but still "open" for address corrections, up until just before we actually ship. So, in February I will send out a final address change call before closing the surveys completely.

Have a great holiday season everyone. Take time to enjoy. Poor Mike had to travel all the way to Texas to get his fill of Blue Bell ice cream. Good thing he has plenty of family there.

 

Thanks everyone.

Joe & Mike