November 2007

11/17/07
Welcome back...your dreams were your ticket out...sorry. In any event, welcome to the NEWLY revised OlliN website. And it's been a long time coming. Much of the navigation is similar to the old site, but we've clean up the pages, restructured a lot of the backend features to make it easier for updates, and added some new custom projects. Below is a pic of the last one we finshed, the Type Xa. Click on the pic to see more pictures and information on the Custom Shop page.

Speaking of custom projects, we've got lots of custom projects in house at the moment and are working to get them out of house and into our customer's hands as quickly as we can. Plus we're approaching the holiday season, which always means thing are festive in the shop. We'll see what OlliN goodies we can get out to the site.

 

October 2007

10/18/07 We're back and rested from the 1st annual Promethean Arms Summit. Click the link to the right for more info and pictures from the event. So many thoughts and pictures, such a good time...click to the pic and read more about it! Matt

September 2007

9/9/07 What have we been up to? You've missed our updates? The wait is over because we've been working on something very special for you. OlliN Sword Design and The Guilde of St. Michael are hosting the 1st annual Promethean Arms Summit. Click the link to the right for more info and to sign up to attend this event. GSM will be giving a lecture on Infantry combat weapons/medical demo. They will also have the impressive cache of weapons on display. OlliN will be there to talk about custom design today. We'll also have much of our inventory there on display. Sign up today! In other news, we've got more pieces hitting our custom shop pages over the next couple of weeks. Mark also has the designs worked out for a NEW classic design. The waxes are off at the iron caster's right now and we should be getting them back early next week.When they come in I'll try to snap a pic for the news page. More planning, more things coming, more ZDC additions, more, more, more. Oh yes, there will be more!!! Matt

 

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July 2007

7/19/07
Hola troops! Things in the shop kick into high gear with a new heat treater under our belt. I would stay tuned to the OlliN site over the next couple of weeks. We're going to have a bunch of custom pieces being added to our Custom Shop. And to kick things off we are happy to add Draco's Reaper to our custom shop page. This is the 2nd project we've worked on with Grant. This piece is very much in the same vein as his Draco's Razor piece we worked on with him last year. Thanks big thanks to Grant for working with us again.

We got some pommel casts back this week for a sword design that Mark and I collaborated on. I excited to see that we're still making some progress in between all of the custom work we've got going on. I'll try and snap some pics of the pommel for the news page over the next week. I really think you're going to like the new design!

Matt

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June 2007

6/24/07
Mark is back from the Shane Allee's Indian Gathering and it sounds like it was a great success! I was unable to attend this as I had other plans that conflicted with this meeting so Mark was flying solo on this event. Mark said that it was an intimate gathering, there were swords aplenty. Big thank you goes out to Shane for inviting us to attend. Additional info and photos can be found on his site at (www.ironagearmoury.com/Gathering.htm).

In other news, we've settled on a new heat treater. We received the sample blade back from them a couple of weeks ago and began deconstructive testing. It we were really happy with the results. The blade was at 53 rockwell (which we shoot for 50 to 52 generally) and it was insanely flexible. It was so flexible we couldn't break it even after it was flexed past 80 degrees. The best part of working with this vendor has been the communication. They've been very responsive to all of my emails and phone calls. About two weeks ago we sent them a batch of blades for heat treat and after our last conversation they should be shipping back to us this Friday. We're all very excited to see the results on a wider variety of pieces.

Lastly, we are finally ready to release our Z3 Field Machete, the newest addition to our Zombie Defense Collection. This model is a little more sporty then our Riley's Defense machete yet it shares exceptional strength and durability. We're proud to add it to our collection!

Matt

6/1/07

Ok, we just got this pic in from one of our clients and it must be shared immediately! Here is Grant in his Draco Armor. And what is that he's holding there??? Why yes that is his very own custom order from OlliN Draco's Razor. He hand made much of the armor himself and shared that it's made from 7 - 8 oz leather scales over a 7 - 8 oz leather backing. The helmet and pauldrons are made from 11 - 13 oz leather that was cut, stitched and molded to look like the dragon heads. The teeth were very carefully painted after dyeing the heads. It was too cool to wait until I had the shots of the NEW ZDC machete of which I should be posting up the new piece this weekend. In other news, it looks like we are just about finalized on a new heat treater. We've actually got two places that look like they are working out. That should really help us keep things moving through the pipeline at a much more predictable rate. Plus, their offering lots of great communication at the onset, so we're feeling like we've got a good fit. I'm going to post more about this when it is a done deal as I think it would be good to go into some more details. That's all for now. More updates to follow shortly. Matt

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May 2007

5/22/07
We're back from the Janesville Ren Faire! What a great time. This was the first official exhibiting that we've done since we've opened shop and the experience could not have been more positive. We got there on Friday night to pick up our packet information and check out the tent we were barrowing. We met up with Chris Last from The Guilde of Saint Michael-Bristol who was one of the organizers for the faire. The next day we headed back to Janesville and started setting up. All of us had been hard at work making various signage, displays, and materials for our booth. It was great to be able to see it up and out on display. Our friend Al Hart also manned the booth with us and offered his services for the weekend.

We had on display many of our pieces from our production collections along with brochures, email signs, and our Guess the Links contest. We had a chain mail shirt that Mark made in college up on display and asked people to guess the number of links. Speaking of which...we have to announce the winner. The shirt was made up of 38,800 links and the winner of the contest who was the closest without going over was...Lonnie Stoker with a guess of 35,000. Congrads Lonnie, you've won! We'll be contacting you via email to claim your prize.

We got to meet a lot of wonderful people some of which had heard of our work from our postings on different forums and some who didn't know of us at all. Everyone was extremely kind and complementary of the craftsmanship of work. And there seemed to be a lot of interest in our Hart Sword, Evolution Blade, and Talon III pieces from our collections. Those who stopped by the booth also got a chance to check out the newest addition to our Zombie Defense Collection. It is so new that we don't even have it named or priced yet. Pictures and pricing our NEW machete will be posted on our website shortly.

All and all it was a great time! The folks who organized the faire did a great job! We met a lot of people from the The Guilde of Saint Michael-Bristol group who were very kind to us. Big thanks to Chris, Tom, and Rich! I've posted below some different shots from over the weekend. We're look forward to our next exhibiting experience. Nothing is officially planned as of yet, but you'll be the first to know when we set a date.

April 2007

4/16/07
Looking for something a little different from OlliN? We're here for you. We've got a new product available in our Sculpture Collection. We are proud to have available the OlliN Dragonesque Fibula. Because this piece is cast, we have a small cash of them currently available in both bronze and steel. Once we are sold out, we'll take orders for the next round of casting. To read and see more about the OlliN Dragonesque Fibula click on the picture below.

In other news, we're gearing up for the Janesville Renaissance Faire. This will be our 1st official outing as vendor since we've opened shop. Everyone at OlliN is lending a hand to help prep for the big event. There will be plenty of pictures along the way showing off what is in store. Stay tuned.

Matt

4/10/07
Attention. Attention please. OlliN is excited to announce that we will be a vendor at the Janesville Renaissance Faire at Traxler Park in Janesville, WI on May 19-20, 2007.

Here is your chance to see first hand many of the products available form OlliN! In addition to our fine product lines, we will also have on display some working production examples of molds, waxes, and blades in different stages of production. See our collections, learn how we do it, talk shop with us about your custom order ideas. Better yet, being along your ideas for your custom order and we'll chat with you one-on-one about your design. We are very excited to be a part of the faire and look forward to seeing you there!

Would you like to set up a specific time to meet with us when we are at the faire? Not a problem! We'd be happy to work that out with you. Send me an email at matthew@ollinsworddesign.com and we'll set up the meeting.

Matt

March 2007

3/22/2007
Busy in the shop is one way to say it. Hee haw! My goodness do we have the custom orders right now. It is great to busy. Which also means that we are going to have more pieces finishing up to put up on the site for you. I was really hoping by this post I would have a coolieo pic of the new ZDC piece we are working on. The good news is that we are making progress on it. Hopefully soon we'll have a nice pic or dare I say maybe even the finished piece up for sale. It could happen.

Right now in the shop we're working out the particulars with some new vendors. We outsource our heat treating of the blades and for complicated guards and pommels we send them out for casting. It's been a busy last 3 weeks getting things all lined up, however I think we have some new favorite, best friends. They should be able to help us out with speeding up the turn around.

As for all things OlliN we've been getting some people using the 'Connect with OlliN'/sign up on our email list as 'ask OlliN'. As I'm the one who checks that email, it is no problem. But then that got me wondering, would it be worth us setting us a cgi form on the website that might make it easier for people to fire off questions to us? I don't know...but it did give me something to think about. Email me if you have an opinion about that. I always want to know what you think.

Also...I've had an idea for another tshirt concept. Something with the OlliN logo, but with a banner around it. Something a little different they what we have now. I'll also shoot that one out to you too. What would you like to see on the next OlliN tshirt?

Matt

February 2007

2/17/07
Hello, hello! It's February already. Where is the time going? We are moving along into 07 with plenty of things going on. First of, we've updated our Custom Shop page with a new piece. Check out the Lison Custom Saber. This one was a little different for us as we where contracted to work on making a bare blade and assembly. Did you know that you can order bare blades from us? That's right you can. As always if you have questions on that, let me know and we'll talk! We've had a handful of bare blade projects over the last year or so. I don't have a great spot on the site to put them yet, but we're thinking about adding something soon.

With all of the custom work as of late some of our ideas for some production pieces have been put on the back burner. As we have some breaks in the production flow, Mark and I are finding some time to work on some of those designs again. I can't say a lot about it right now, but some fun things are coming out hopefully early Spring. As for things in the land of the ZDC, we're still working on our machete designs, but may have a NEW piece hitting the pages soon. I don't want to give a way too much, but it is HUGE and way cool. Once we are a little further along I'll post up some pictures.

I also thought this would be a good spot to talk about something that we've been getting some emails about as of late regarding our "back log of work". I'm not going to lie to you and say that we only get one order in at a time and that is all we work on until it is done. We don't. What we do is work with you to understand when you want to have the final piece shipped and work form there. Once we've agreed upon a ship date, that's when we ship. There have been very, very few expectations. I would say is that if you are thinking about placing an order for either production or custom piece and you need it by a certain deadline, let us know. More times then not we are able to work it out so that you have it when you want it. Or if time is not an issue for you (and for some people it is not) we are more then happy to fit in the project as time allows. The long and short of it is that we want to work with you to give you the best service possible as you quest for the sword you've always wanted. It is as simple as that.

Matt

January 2007

1/20/07
This has turned out to be quite the busy month. We decided to hold a contest for a custom project that we are working on and had a great turn out. It went so well that we even added another prize. A huge thanks to all those that participated. If you would like to see the details of the contest you can view them here. This will defiantly not be the last contest we hold. WOO HOO!

In other news we are working with our caster to get some samples completed before we send them the guard to The Reaver. We have been very cautious about sending this piece out for casting because of the amount of time and detail in the wax. The good news is that we think our caster is onboard for the challenge. I'll absolutely keep you posted on the progress of The Reaver as I know there are a lot of you out there waiting for that to hit the production line.

And those water cooler rumors where correct. We did add a new piece to the Custom Shop the Type X Sandeherred. Pics and specs can be found in our Custom Shop. It was a real pleasure working with Geoff on this piece and we wish him all the best.

Matt

1/4/07
Welcome to the New Year! 2007. It sounds so futuristic, doesn't it? And with a new year comes new things from OlliN. To start with, you have to check out our new Collections page. We've move things around; changed things up. Closed some collections, added a new one. And with all of that gave our collection icons a much needed overhaul. I think it looks SO much better then it did. And if anything, I think it is much easier to see what is in each collection and that is a good thing.

Next on the list of fun, we've got another custom order to show off. This one is quite a looker too. It is called the Ansuz Sword. You can find a nice spread of pics of this new beauty on in our Custom Shop. Mark is working on his Project Notes for this piece and I should be updating them soon. A big thank you to James and Karrie. It was such a pleasure getting a chance to work with them on this piece.

Matt