[BobsYourUncle]

So I just had an interesting discussion that is well outside of my area of expertise. A fellow asked me to help him take a prototype of his knife design to the point where it could be mass-produced via CNC machines. I'm not the right person to do that for him, but I said that I would make an effort to help him find the right person.

This fellow feels that his design is so innovative that he is looking to sell it to the military. Also, he is quite worried that his design will be copied before he can get it patented. To be clear, I haven't seen the design and I have no opinion whether it is interesting or not. All I know is that it is a knife.

So lets say you've come up with a design that you think may be of interest to the military. What would you do? Lets say you want to pursue having it mass-produced. Who would you talk to?

Update: I've been ruminating on this. The bottom line is that I can't think of a single military who would care much about a new knife design. I also strongly suspect that the knife-buying market might disagree with this fellow about the value of his design. So I think this fellow is better off partnering with a custom knife-maker to make a small number of knives (like one) and then going from there. He's in a position where he can do some first-hand marketing and see if it builds to something bigger.