Where Aerospace Meets Everyday Carry

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 prototyping firm working on cutting-edge aircraft systems and flight hardware. Sounds like an odd combination? It is. And it’s exactly what makes us different.

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. Mine 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, usually something that flew.

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. The solution? We became our own best customer. We launched Aerocrafted products to design and manufacture the kinds of tools we wanted for ourselves—high-quality, precision-machined EDC gear that’s made right here in our hangar. 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 still just that: a blend of aerospace engineers and machinists building flight hardware during the day and refining pocket tools in the evening. It’s not a gimmick. The titanium knife in your hand might’ve been made on the same CNC that cut a part for a high-performance aircraft just days earlier.

If you’ve ever wondered who we are or how we got here, this is the story. Aerocrafted isn’t a lifestyle brand pretending to be technical. We’re technical people making the lifestyle gear we want to carry.