I just came back from visiting the factory and now have a much better idea of how everything operates. The biggest delay has really been in getting the blade right. Normally, these are all hand-made, but doing the blood-grooves consistently was difficult, so we opted for a custom mold to produce the forged blade. But... the grooves were made a bit thinner, hoping that during polishing and grinding, they would match the original. But, unfortunately, when the new blade was finished, the grooves were still a bit narrower than the original. So, for the sake of accuracy, I requested a new mold to be made, from scratch again as well tweaking a few finer points. I understand these delays are getting annoying, but I really don't want to release a "good enough" product, if we can spend a bit more time and money to get it that much closer to what we want.
So, at this point, we're probably looking at another month to get the new blade finished. Once that is done, we'll make a final prototype for approval and, if all is good (finally), then full production begins immediately and product will start shipping in another 1-2 months.
Kind regards,
Indy