Joe,

Ordering through a dealer, like me, does shorten the waiting time for the customer, but not the shop's workload.

We dealers are allocated so many spaces for specific date deliveries. If all the spaces are taken up with customer orders and the dealer's own "on demand" inventory, then the potential customer has to wait for the next open space to materialize.

The Shop is labor-intensive, obviously. If three men are out of work due to the flu or some malady, the workload is still there and the schedule is affected.

Right now, the Shop is running two months behind posted delivery dates for dealers orders for cut-down tang knives (model 1, model 2, sporting models, Bowies, etc.) and three months behind posted delivery dates for full-tang knives (model 14, 15, 16, 17, 28, etc.).

The Shop does what it can with its crew. Remember, they lost 3 very fine craftsmen to retirement, 40 years for each man! Show me another line of work where folks are willing to spend twice as many years on the job with such excellence in workmanship.

Some customers like to order directly from the Shop and wait four or five years. Their advantage is being locked into the price in the year they order the knife, and gives them that long to pay off the order.