How We're Handling The Knobs

Due to a fire at Rutland Plywood in 2014, the availability and manufacture of Dymondwood has ceased. We turned our last knob from the material a couple weeks ago and all those knobs are already spoken for. Plus, we're in the red on a few, which has caused our lead times to grow a bit from our standard 1-2 weeks (in which we usually ship within a couple days) to 3-4 weeks.

We tried our best to hold out until Rutland rebuilt, but its not happening.

Our vises were fitted with rosewood knobs from the very beginning, but when Cocobolo was put on the CITES list, we decided to abandon its use and move to Dymondwood. Cost was a factor, but the future instability of the species was the the nail in the coffin. So it's difficult to move from a high-class material like rosewood to anything else. With the loss of Rutland, we were forced to take a closer look at what we wanted to do in the long run. Our goal is getting our vises in customer's hands in a timely manner, and dealing with uncertain materials is an enormous pain for us and frustrating for customers. Who wants any of that?

So here's what we're doing.

From now on all of our M-series vises (Glide M, Tail Vise M) will be fitted with knobs made from acrylic-infused American black cherry. While new cherry knobs might have a similar tonal value to the infused beech knobs of our C-series vises, with UV exposure the cherry will darken nicely. Why cherry? It's abundant and it looks good. The acrylic infusion process renders the wood entirely stable, and incredibly durable.


For a short period while we're tooling up for producing cherry knobs, M-series customers may receive infused beech knobs with their vises. If you are one of those customers, and would like to outfit your vise(s) with cherry knobs once we have them available, drop us an email and we'll sell you a set at a special price. This offer is only for those who received beech knobs with M-series vises. We won't be offering knobs of either species ala carte, or the option of choosing a different species.

UPDATE:  We're ahead of schedule and barring any unforeseen snafus, we won't be shipping any beech with M series vises, all orders will receive the infused cherry.