I was curious. When there are factory 2nds to order on the website, like on their Wed. sales. They actually have the knives there on hand right? They go through their batch and whatever does not make the grade, gets put in the 2nd batch? Or do they just assume there will be that many factory 2nds when they are done?
S!K Production is like this (same for most companies, actually): they order steel, and that seems to ship to them from the supplier until they can ship it out to be waterjet-cut by their contractor. After cutting, knives go to heavy grinding (another contractor). After grinding, they go to Peter's HT. Then they arrive back in the shop again. Ground blanks are inspected, and those which cannot be salvaged are set aside. Those remaining are surface finished in-house and again inspected before laser-engraving and sharpening (in-house), as well as handle-fitting (they don't just throw slabs onto them, there have been fitment issues with some of the slabs not fitting quite right because they hadn't finished curing before being sent to S!K). Finally, knives are assembled-to-order with the available sheaths (made by a contractor) and inspected once more before being set aside for shipment. At each point of handling by Guy and Ellie (and whomever else they might now have on hand), there is a possibility of finding a Factory 2nd. Here is an image from their Instagram feed, 4/26:
Surface finishing madness this week in the shop. The blades with what will be the US flag side showing are ones I've identified as definite factory seconds during surface finishing. From here the blades go through a more thorough QC, followed by engraving.
What qualifies as a "second" may have to do with cutting (weird thumb notches), surface grinding (e.g. uneven bevels), finishing (odd marks, even small ones), laser-engraving (they brought this in-house specifically to reduce errors), handle fit, etc.
It has been noted that often a S!K 2nd is better F&F than a "first" from just about any other company, and they lose a LOT of money on the 2nds, but they have often resisted calls for increasing their price and instead keep trying to improve production processes (e.g. moving things in-house) to reduce errors in the first place. They did eventually raise prices somewhat, and really they just need to focus on getting orders out as quickly as possible. Lots of folk waiting, myself included
Based on past production, they anticipate a certain percentage of factory 2nds. When they find one, they may set it aside and then not work on it at all, but eventually they want to bring those up to completion as well (again, they find them at varying stages of production) and then get them out of the shop so they aren't an asset sitting around. And yes, they do need to keep bringing in funds to keep the lights on, so working on and selling them in the midst of production of pre-orders and presales.
The above information is gleaned from various posts by Guy and Ellie here and on Instagram, except for the part about their 2nds being as good as a lot of folks' "1sts", that's just opinions from customers. I am currently waiting on my only 2nd, a 4.1, although I have received MANY "firsts" over S!K's short time in existence, and I have a number of pre-order knives that I may not see for a long time as they continue to work on the mass of more popular models (e.g. waiting on a 12 and a 10 that haven't started production yet).
