Ssshhhhh!! Please don’t tell anyone you’ve been given access to this project. As a special Patron of Smarter Every Day, we’ve decided to slowly launch a test of a product we’ve been working on in secret. As you know, I’ve been working on the Smarter Every Day Manufacturing series. I’ve been working in secret for the last 4 years to make a 100% Made in America Product. For years, I've wanted to MAKE A HIGH QUALITY PRODUCT IN AMERICA to prove it can be done and compete with overseas manufacturing. We’re currently calling the product “THE ULTIMATE GRILL BRUSH”. The U.S. Patent was issued TODAY, April 2, 2024 so we can now officially talk about it. Unfortunately, we' have a very limited supply of our prototypes, and we wanted to only sell them to people who would be willing to provide us with engineering/product usage feedback.

Our goal is simple:

to make THE ULTIMATE GRILL BRUSH

and do it here in the USA.

After 4 years, we think we’ve finally done it. I’m going to make a video on Smarter Every Day about using American manufacturing to build something here in the USA… but for now we need to make sure the product is good!

Background Story

For a long time, I’ve had a burden for American Manufacturing. My Mom and Dad worked at an automotive parts manufacturer when I was a kid. I’ve slowly watched manufacturing jobs leave America one plant at a time. As an engineer who has worked in manufacturing in the past, I knew I wanted to try to make a product in America to see what that process was like, and to see how much of our manufacturing capabilities we’ve lost due to the knowledgeable craftsmen retiring. A friend of mine, John Youngblood owns a Grill accessories company called JJGeorge. We were introduced to each other because John had a great idea, but he didn’t know how to make it. John’s idea was to use chain mail in a grill scrubber, to eliminate the potential for dangerous wire bristles to end up in your food prepared on the grill. John and I had some initial meetings and I decided to start Engineering The Ultimate Grill Brush. You can imagine my surprise when I approached an injection molding company about making the molds for the interchangeable head and they told me “We don’t make injection molds in America… we’re not good at it. We have it done in China.” I thought they were joking… but they weren’t. This concerned me, and so we spent about a year learning how to use a CNC mill, and we build the injection molds ourselves. The Stainless steel handle took several iterations to perfect. The brush head is removeable and has integrated finger grooves so it can be used by hand on cast iron and pots and pans. The head uses welded chain mail instead of bristles. We strength tested several manufacturers and selected this particular chain mail for its size and resiliency. Here are some background photos of us building the thing.