EGO Knives
Made in Bulgaria
This model is called the City Rat, made with D2 tool steel and G10 scales (out with me for a spot of fishing!)
I'm always on the look out for new and interesting, quality made knives to get, so I can let everyone who follows BushCampingTools know about them and also the public in general.
To that end, about two weeks ago in my travels, late one night after dinner during a walk I came across something nice in a shop front window, a bunch of all good looking medium sized fixed blades! All looking like they belonged in my place LOL!
But alas the shop was closed, so I had to salivate until the next day when I met the owner of the shop and found out some details of this knife brand called EGO. To be honest, I had never come across this brand before.
Some background:
Bulgaria has a rich culture of hunting, so it is no surprise that one should be able to find quality made hunting and camping knives there.
After some quick intel I arranged to meet up with the owner of the company, Mr Tihomir Miloshevski.
He invited me to come and see his factory which is about 230 m2 (about 2500 square feet).
On the factory walls were some very nice professional photographs of some of his hunting knife models. When I inquired as to who arranged these photographs, he smiled and said he did! I needn't ask any more as this simply told me a lot about Mr Miloshevski's eye for composition and design!
How about after carving hardwoods?
NO- clearly to me they have their heat treatment dialled in!
One of the many tasks a EDC knife gets used on, no good pulling out some great big chopper to do this, you'll look like a fool or Jason from Friday the 13th!Day 2 of fishing and hunting
Zero birds (missed 3!)
one fish and a handful of wild mushrooms!
The Kydex scabbard
Tihomir has been designing and making knives for a bit over ten years and just recently they have released some very new models for 2020 (as seen here, the City Rat being one of them). He has a Degree in Arts and has worked as a jeweller for many years before embarking into knife making and this came as no surprise to me regarding his skill in design from prototyping to the finished products and as I alluded to earlier on, he has a great eye for composition; all important to be capable of designing something with not only function but aesthetics.
All grinding processes are done by hand, there is no CNC milling. I examined several of the same model randomly taken from the production line an amazingly (well not really since the staff are highly skilled) the tolerances (I measured them, they handed me a digital vernier calliper) were within less than 1mm deviation, for example of the hand ground G10 scales (yes that's right not milled out with a CNC mill!), highly skilled staff.
EGO Knives models
There are many knife models available from EGO Knives and way too many to mention here, so I will concentrate upon the factory and this particular knife the EGO knives EDC City Rat, because there will be more to follow as I'm pretty impressed with his products.
Here are some facts about what goes on in the factory.
There are 5 staff members including Tihomir.
Firstly, EGO knives are made in Bulgaria.
The blanks are cut by a factory in Sofia (Capital of Bulgaria) specialised in CNC LASER cutting, then travel up north to the EGO Knives factory.
Every process that follows is done within the factory. There are key staff who specialise in particular aspects of production, such as grinding, profiling, sharpening, handle profiling and assembly and heat treatments.
Heat Treatment
EGO Knives are using a German made D2. D2 in case you've forgotten is a high chromium content tool steel with excellent edge retention and toughness for the industrial manufacture of cutting blades and tooling equipment. The composition of D2 is one of Carbides in a soft ferritic matrix with secondary carbide formation in the form of Chromium and Vanadium carbides.
Heat treatment is done in house using an Argon gas (inert gas) protective atmosphere furnace to prevent oxidation and or decarburization of surfaces, at 1030C°. The D2 blanks are air cooled/hardened under a hydraulic press to ensure total dimensional stability of the heat treated blanks. Double tempering is conducted in an adjacent oven at 190C°.
Castings (for their mainstay hunting lines)
Brass bolsters and guards are all designed by Tihomir and they have a special lost wax casting area and furnace system to manufacture various the designs. He hand carves all of these wax models! They crucible facilities up to 1kg of metal and can perform up to 20 castings at a time.
The scabbards/sheaths
Most of the factory's heavy equipment is made in Germany and this also includes the industrial sewing machines, which have also been modified with special speed controllers to enable custom fine tuning for their particular applications.
The factory also has a millimetre accurate German made Fortuna machine for cutting the various hide thicknesses for scabbards and various leather parts. It was very impressive to see in operation and works by a large rotary cutting band with a deadly sharp edge (sharpened within the machine itself).
Dedicated staff also sew the scabbards. The cow leather is top quality grade, locally sourced and the sewing is all double stitched, last construction with heavy gauge thread. In fact the scabbard quality was excellent.
Another area was dedicated to leather surface finishing.
They also have a custom made (in house design) Kydex press and forming area for all Kydex sheath manufacture.
Most sheaths I saw were multipurpose in terms of carry positions and some even had well made pouches for sharpening stones, danglers and the included option of tradition belt carry and or horizontal carry.
There are various custom designed heated hydraulic presses for leather craft as the factory also produces several (soft) product lines for the hunter, such as cartridge holders to take the popular sporting rounds such as .30-06 (7.62X63mm) but they make pouches for other calibre's. They also make quality leather rifle straps as well!
As for knife production, there were several custom designed grinding stations using in house designed magnetic bevel jigs to obtain perfect edge bevels whilst hand grinding the edges, along with polishing stations, large hydraulic presses, a (mandatory) Rockwell testing rig and other grinding machinery along with abrasive stone surface finishing, sandblasting equipment, and specialist magnetic polishing machinery. Have I left anything out? Yes, plenty but that will have to wait for the production of the video factory tour of EGO Knives!
There are about a dozen new models for 2020 featuring G10 scales, D2 blades heat treated to 58-60. As to the other knife models, they feature beautiful handcrafted hardwoods such as American walnut, European oak, decorated brass guards and handcrafted 925 silver fittings. These blades were hunting orientated and are very popular within the Bulgarian hunting fraternity. There is too much to mention. I just want to whet your appetite by introducing you to this quality brand.
Pending the factory tour, you can register your interests here:
as a new website is in the making.
BCT
