Bermuda - Snow

Introducing the Bermuda - a limited run, budget level trainer with bearings and G10 scales that didn't quite go to plan. This is a long one, but we highly recommend reading before making a purchase.

This is a Blemished model - see further details below*

The project scope from the start was to create a budget level balisong trainer that combined great design, smooth yet grippy G10 scales with durable hardened steel blade, oh and it had to have bearings.

'Bearings?' we hear you ask. Yes bearings. From the very first concept we knew we wanted the Bermuda to run bearings. Although there have been a lot of high end bearing trainers over the years, bearings remain a somewhat polarising topic in the balisong community. We wanted to create a well designed budget level bearing trainer that provides the opportunity to at least try bearings and to form an opinion on them.

We knew that the Bermuda also had to be cheap and that we had to make a lot of them. Pretty quickly we figured out that we'd need to outsource the production. We searched high and low and ended up landing on a well known large-scale knife manufacturer based out of China (for legal reasons we can't name any names). 

To further help achieve the lowest sale price possible we also had to compromise on packaging quite a bit. Our standard foam insert cardboard boxes weren't going to cut it, they are expensive, increase the cost of shipping to our warehouses and also end up costing more to store on warehouse shelves. So we decided to utilise our existing custom Glidr zip bags. Being G10 the trainers don't need the added protection of boxes. Zip bags are much cheaper and we can ship more for less. Overall, using zip bags made a significant reduction to the final product price.

*Unfortunately though not everything went quite to plan and we hit a few snags. After we received the final production run we found that there were blemishes on most of the units and that the pivot hardware was T8 rather than the desired T10. We also found that the pivot oil has run into the bag, coating the handles in a layer of oil (this can be wiped off with a rag though). Probably not the worst, but definitely not what we were wanting. Rather than spending the extra to get them all fixed up, we decided to simply reduce the sale price by what it'd have cost us to fix them up thus giving you guys an even more budget trainer.

Overall, we're happy with how the project went and just wish we didn't run into those  issues. We don't plan on doing another production run on these any time soon as the idea was for it to be a one-off limited run.

Also worth a note that bearing driven trainers tend to develop play and tap quicker than those on bushings.

Features:

• G10 scales on hardened steel liners
• Hardened steel blade
• Bearing pivot system
• Black PVD coated blade, liners and screws