A few questions we've been asked lately: "are we in the US now?". And "are our knives American made?"
Unfortunately, we are not in the US yet. We are waiting for my wife's resident visa to get approved. I underestimated how long it takes. Its a quicker process if its a fiancée visa, but we've been married for years. Also we are in a country that has a lot of applicants for US visas, so the embassy here is abnormally busy, and it takes much longer in this country than most. We looked into moving there with her under a tourist visa until her resident visa is approved but I guess that can mess up your chances of getting approved for some reason...the government doesn't recommend it. So we wait.
But the process is 3 stages long and we are in the final stage...we are just waiting for the embassy to schedule us an interview. Once approved we will be moving to our property in Alpena, Michigan. I'm really hoping it'll be by the end of the year but it's out of my hands.
#2 "Are our knives American Made?"
By the legal definition, no. The final assembly must be based in the US to qualify for "American Made" or "made in USA". Since I am not physically there, our products do not qualify.
However now that our apprentice moved on, I (an American) am doing all the work myself, and most of our materials come from the US too. Our steel (New Jersey Steel Baron), our kydex, kydex eyelets, paracord, sanding belts, sandpaper, buffing compound, adhesives, etc, etc are all made in the US and imported here by me. About the only material we use regularly that isn't made in the US is our micarta/composite, that is made by us, and stingray skin we import from Thailand...which is where most stingray comes from.
So our products are made by an American, and have a higher content of USA made materials than many USA made goods...however they are not made in the USA. We can't claim that until we move there.