How it all began: aerospace meets EDC

At Aerocrafted, we design and build tools you can carry every day. However, that’s only part of the story. We’re also an aerospace engineering and manufacturing firm working on aircraft systems and flight hardware. It might seem like an unusual combination, but to us it’s simply two sides of the same shop.

I’m Edward “Tres” Clements, the founder of Aerocrafted. My background is a blend of aviation, precision machining, and a lifelong obsession with making things. I grew up in a family where flight wasn’t just a passion, it was a business. My dad was an A&P/IA mechanic and a pilot, both for airplanes and hot air balloons. My parents ran Frostline Kits, a company that sold outdoor gear sewing kits, and later the Grand Junction Balloon Port, where we sold, maintained, and flew hot air balloons.

Most of my childhood vacations weren’t at the beach or Disneyland; they were at balloon rallies. We’d fly in the morning, work on repairs in the afternoon, and I’d spend every spare minute building, fixing, or modifying something.

That drive to build with precision eventually led me to machining. In high school, I spent my afternoons at the local college campus in a machine shop, learning everything from manual mills to CNC. That path took me to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California where I majored in Manufacturing Engineering and unofficially embedded myself in the Aerospace department. I found myself constantly helping other students turn their ideas into real, machined parts.

After college, I worked in UAV development, then landed my dream job at Scaled Composites in Mojave. Eventually, I returned to San Luis Obispo and started consulting for aerospace companies. But I couldn’t just design, I had to build. So I opened a shop, bought CNC equipment, and got to work.

That’s when things got interesting. Our engineering projects follow a design–build–test–fly cycle, and during the design or test phases, the machines would sit idle. Rather than let that capability sit unused, we started making the tools we wanted for ourselves: high-quality, precision-machined EDC gear using the same materials we rely on for aerospace parts. It kept the machines busy and gave us complete flexibility. If we needed to interrupt a run of pens or carabiners to machine a prototype fuel fitting or an airframe bracket, we could.

Today, Aerocrafted is a blend of aerospace engineers and machinists building flight hardware and machining everyday carry tools under the same roof. The titanium knife in your hand was made by the same machinists using the same equipment used to make aircraft components just days earlier.

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine Aerocrafted becoming anything else. We’re still doing what we’ve always loved: solving problems, building things, and finding better ways to make them.