Fellow GEC Collectors and Sunfish/ Elephant Toenail fans,

I spoke with Chris Tucker, she's the sales director at GEC, about special ordering custom spec knives. Their minimum order for a custom knife production is 50 pieces and they have a three to four month turnaround time. So I proposed that GEC price out a Northfield #36 Sunfish all steel with smooth shiny all deep black buffalo horn handles, big black and shiny like a grand piano! The full and formal specs are the following:

GE Northfield UN-X-LD Sunfish #36 all steel, two blade polished 1095 Carbon spear point with the UN-X-LD stamped into the main blade and a double pull, steel liners, bolsters and pins, with pure smooth black (no lighter inclusions) buffalo horn handles and the "cloud" shaped plain shield, non serialized, with a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Christine Tucker, packed in the Northfield tube.

I have now received a formal sales quote from GEC and the pricing will be as follows. If we order 50 knives total, our price per unit will be $114.73 plus $10.00 FedEx shipping added at time of shipment. The $10.00 FedEx shipping is good for up to 6 knives that will fit in a box without getting too heavy! So when we do make it to the minimum order of fifty knives the final cost will be $124.73 for the first knife and $114.73 for each additional knife up to the limit of six knives delivered within the continental USA. Overseas international shipments will cost more and will have to be arranged on an individual basis. Now if we have enough people who sign up and we make it to 100 knives ordered the GEC workshop set up fee surcharge will be dropped and our price per unit will drop to $104.73 plus FedEx shipping added at time of shipment same as outlined above, so final pricing would be $114.73 for the first knife and $104.73 for each additional knife up to the limit of six delivered within the continental USA. GEC will be accepting payment for the knives ordered by credit card, money order, cashiers check, and even personal check, either mailed, emailed, or even phoned in personally, now that's personal service!

But wait! Please do not jump the gun and send in any payments to GEC just yet. I will be acting as the consolidator for GEC for these special order GEC Northfield #36 all steel buffalo horn handled knives and you must contact me, Luca Vignelli, at iKC on either my page here (http://www.iknifecollector.com/profile/LucaVignelli) or on the GEC Group page on iKC (http://www.iknifecollector.com/group/greateasterncutlery) in order to get your name on the list to purchase this knife. Once we hit the magic number of fifty or more orders, I will send final instructions out so that we can all finalize our purchasing of this custom GEC knife directly through Chris Tucker at GEC. When you do contact me please send me all of your contact information so that I may present Chris Tucker with the full list that will include your full name, address, and telephone number all of which are necessary to ensure that your knife will be made and delivered to you by FedEx. Please remember that FedEx will not deliver to P.O. boxes, so you must give either a residential or business address and telephone number.

What am I getting out of this effort you may ask yourself? The knife I want from a company whose work I admire at a price I can afford and some like minded people to share the experience with.

After posting a call for orders on the GEC group page on iKC (http://www.iknifecollector.com/group/greateasterncutlery), and I encourage you all to join us there since that's where I'll be consolidating the orders, as well as on Greg Holmes's TSA GEC Knives Blog (http://blog.tsaknives.com/2011/03/01/a-special-peice-of-gecikc-hist...), and on the GEC Forum on the GEC website we have now reached 26 orders out of the minimum 50 needed to have this knife made for us by GEC. Let's get 25 or even 75 more people to sign on and we'll all be able to own one of these especially beautiful and limited run knives! Sign on and tell your friends!

A special thanks to Chris Tucker at GEC, and by extension also Ken Daniels and William L. Howard, for making this special project custom #36 Sunfish possible. I would also like to thank Ken Mundhenk, a GEC distributor and fan, and Jan Carter, a huge GEC fan, for helping to make this project possible on their iKC GEC Group page, and to Greg Holmes, another fine GEC distributor and supporter, for allowing us to post this project announcement on his blog.

Let's get this done together, all for one and one for all!

Luca