With less than 100 knives for our 2015 Club Knife,
I'm hoping to see more knives available to our members for 2016.
These knives are important to me as they reflect the history of AAPK .
We have had great success from Bryan in choosing the best knife possible for our club.
Many thanks for all his hard work.
Why not take pre-orders and pre-payment over a 30-day period and then those that ordered a knife (or knives) receive a knife and those that didn't don't receive a knife. That way the funds needed for a Special Factory Order (SFO) are available up-front and 30-days should give ample time for those casual members to be informed that orders for the club knife are underway. Just my $0.02 for what it's worth. Tom
Prepaying creates its own set of problems, who takes in the money, who keeps track of the money, who has ordered, and who keeps track of who has paid? It has to be an AAPK staff member because of liability issues.
As an administrator I see lots of complaints about people being unable to get in touch with Bryan, or other members of the administrative staff.
We have three administrators on AAPK, we are all three volunteers and two of the three of us have full-time jobs.
And while I am retired I have health issues that prevent me from being as active and involved as I would like to be.
There is a whole other dimension of AAPK that our members don't see, and that is the administrative side of the forums. It's not unusual at all to go into the admin side and see 150 new applicants waiting to be approved for membership into AAPK. Of that 150 probably 130 of them are spammers so one of us has to examine all the details of this applicant to see if they are going to be a potential spammer or a new valued member of AAPK. This is not something you can do in five or 10 minutes either!
Oh yes, there is a third dimension of AAPK that even the administrators do not see and that is the administrative side of the AAPK stores. Bryan has to handle all of that by himself as well as being the technical guru and genius that keeps AAPK up and running. From what little I have seen this is probably a full-time job by itself!
So, even if we did have a staff member who had the time and inclination to take the preorders and prepayments, we don't have anyone who actually has the time to do it! And it's not like we have people beating down our door to volunteer to be an administrator on AAPK, and even if they were it takes a very unique skill set, temperament, personality and technical expertise to do this job. I can think of two dozen people right now who would be great at doing certain duties of an administrator but don't have the necessary skill set to do the whole job. Others have the technical expertise but don't have the right temperament to be an administrator, (and believe me, that's probably the hardest part of the job).
I suspect Bryan will come up with a good choice for a club knife this year as he always does.
I suspect he will pay for it out of his own pocket as he always has because that is his preference, and frankly he probably doesn't have the time to do it any other way.
It is too late in the year now to even begin the discussion of changing the way things have been done.
It’s probably too late to even order a run of knives for this year, I suspect that’s already been done, though I have not talked to Bryan about that.
What might be helpful is everyone who can commit to purchasing a 2016 AAPK knife, post in this topic that you would like a 2016 AAPK club knife.
That way Bryan will have a rough idea of how many knives are spoken for.
But if he holds true to form I am sure he’s already ordered the 2016 knives.
Oh, yes, Bryan has my standing order for the annual AAPK knife of the year.
As always I thank all the AAPK staff for doing the best they can to answer questions and provide a great site for all members.
Please add me to your list for the 2016 Club knife.
I will agree with Jerry's comment, thanks Dale! We take a lot for granted when it comes to the wonderful site. I'll certainly be watchin' for this years knife, I'd hate to miss out .
Treefarmer
A GUN IN THE HAND IS BETTER THAN A COP ON THE PHONE.
Thank you Dale for the kind reminder. Sometimes I take it for granted when I sit down with my morning coffee that all is well in AAPKville automatically and I should know better. Volunteerism comes from the heart and I am genuinely appreciative of the countless hours spent by the administrators and owner of this site.
thanks for the comments and explanations, Dale. I would like to add my name to the list of members interested in purchasing this year's club knife. I have them all to date and would hate to be missing one.
Thanks
Dan
orvet wrote:
What might be helpful is everyone who can commit to purchasing a 2016 AAPK knife, post in this topic that you would like a 2016 AAPK club knife.
We take a lot for granted when it comes to the wonderful site. I'll certainly be watchin' for this years knife, I'd hate to miss out 
.
