Bladesmithing as a Career?

O

Ox1

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Aug 1, 2020
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hey guys

im relativley new to this, but i love forging knives. i would like to make it into a career (eventually), but idk what that would look like. whats the average yearly salary of a GOOD bladesmith? and what style, shape, or size of knife should i sell? or should i expand my skills to more than just knives?
 
Good morning, Ox. I'm going to suggest reading the stickies, and then doing a search on this subject using the Bladeforums Custom Search Engine in the stickies...https://bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-custom-search-engine.1313722/ . Repeat the search using different wordings for your subject if nothing comes up.
This topic has been discussed many times in the past. I'll warn you, however, that the only real answer to the questions you asked is: "It depends....."
If you really want to have knifemaking be your sole occupation, I'd suggest expanding your skills and get a regular paying job that gives you enough extra time to build your skills and extra $ to allow you to build up your shop and acquire the necessary tools to turn this into a money making venture.
If I were to do it all over again, and wanted to focus on forging, I'd probably skip college and med school and join a metalworking union and/or become a commercial welder.
 
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As with any self employed tradesman, time is money. Once you find a product and price point, the way you make more money is by doing more work in less time. Backtracking, rework, redundancy, and lack of skills cause many lost hours. All of this applies to me but the self employed part.
Keep your job to feed your body, while you learn the skills of your new trade.
 
The knife industry is so saturated with newbs it’s crazy. Back in the day befor forged in fire it was possible to pull it off. Granted it was very hard work and you did not make a lot if money. But now you have to have a catch. Something that holds you above the rest. Generally this is your name, you work hard making amazing knives for 20 years and your name becomes recognized. But even knife makers that are known and do this full time are generally not rolling in money. What will your Knives be or have that makes them stand out. The sad hard truth is for every one genuinely/reasonable priced blade there are 10 guys out there that will do the same thing for $1/hr. Thy say thy are just doing it for fun so thy don’t care if thy make money. But in a whole it drags down the value of the entire industry.

A good comparison is the diamond industry. Now don't get me wrong I am no expert on stones that would be Stacy. But there is a reason you don’t see diamonds offered crazy cheep. The big guys knew thy had to control the market. It wouldn’t take long for a handful of guys doing it for “fun” so to speak to drag the entire pricing down into the gutter. So it’s controlled by the monster sized group(s) so thy control the price.

Now don’t get your hopes down. Make Knives because you like to make Knives. It’s better to give away a knife for free then charge $20-$50. Your name will spread much faster this way and your not pulling the future value of your own blades down. But the name of the game is time. I did not fully understand it till I was able to grow my business to where it is now. Time is money plain and simple. What’s your time worth and will your skill and equipment allow you to efficiently use your time. What do you need to make per HR to cover your living expenses. Once you know that you can just about bet you'll need to double it to cover taxes, insurance, material, exc. Now how long does it take you to make a good knife? Another important think is your skill lv. You cannot expect your customer to pay more for a knife because your skill lv requires excess time to make up for it.

So basically what I’m saying is make Knives because you enjoy it and have fun. If it grows into something then great. But enjoy the natural progression of this craft.
 
If you plan to start out making a living at it, you’ll probably need to do more than just knives. In my case its knives, trinkets and architectural / decorative smithing, and recent years tapered way back on knife & trinket work.
Some may think its blasphemy. But we made FAR more money selling ’theatrical knives’. That is, representative of historic knives used by vikings, knights, buckskinners and so on.
We can make a truckload of 50$ Theater knives what are great steel and functional. Sell every one of them over a weekend festival in the same amount time it takes to make a few fine knives what would have to sell for hundreds and possibly they sit on display a long time until somebody wants to buy.
There are armys of guys who play act as those historic people.
They happily buy a a couple hundred worth of rudimentry knife, axe, cloak pin, campfire poker, whatever. But only drool on a precision crafted knife and blabber on about how they cant afford it.
 
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If you live in a country and culture that values knives, and you can carve a niche for yourself, probably. I can see some people making a living making traditional Sikh Kirpans, Finnish art puukkos, top end American kinfegeek stuff, or selling knife shaped jewelry to the middle east. Other than that - trying to compete for a market with regular users by being the village blacksmith, fat chance.
 
There's an old saying that goes something like this: If you want to turn knife making into a million dollars, start off with two million and stop when you've spent the first half.

Most makers I know of that are "making a living" making knives are already retired from previous careers, have a spouse with a full time well paying career, and/or already have most of their assets bought and paid for. Most of them are also likely putting in 12 to 16 hour days 6 or 7 days a week. There's another saying: An entrepreneur is somebody who works 80 hours per week just to avoid working 40 for somebody else.

What kind of "salary" do you need to live on? Don't forget overhead, taxes, retirement, and healthcare. Then there's the incidentals like when a car breaks down, or the hot water heater takes a dump. Don't forget to set aside a couple days worth of funds for when you eat that gas station sushi and can't get out of the toilet for 2 days. There's no "sick leave" or "vacation days" or "paid time off" when you work for yourself, unless you pay yourself ahead of time for those days.

Don't get me wrong... there are guys that make it happen, but it's usually after a decade or two of building a name, and I'd wager that it involves a fair amount of luck besides.
 
i wonder how much sam lurquin makes per year on knives.?. another issue is that it will take you years to reach the level of popularity to finally make it worthwhile. and also you may spend years and never reach the level you had hoped for.
 
john april said:
i wonder how much sam lurquin makes per year on knives.?. another issue is that it will take you years to reach the level of popularity to finally make it worthwhile. and also you may spend years and never reach the level you had hoped for.
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good question, I can tell you that speaking to similar level knifemakers/ABS MS, they all say (even at that level) that it's still not a very relaxed profession....
 
Keep in mind that leaving a paid profession also means leaving behind benefits, security, health insurance, pension etc. Hourly income is only a portion of what an employee costs the company. I'm en Engineer that is also a partner in my company so it would be crazy for me to think about walking away from this. As a new maker myself, I've often had the thought in my mind that if in 20-25 years when I retire (damn that's a long ways off) it would be a fun retirement business where you have to rely on it to pay the bills. Just get some extra cash assuming I'm still interested in knife making. The way I thought about it was different though. I'd like to open a high end cutlery store where I sell better quality knives from various makers. I'd have my shop in the back where I could make knives and have a section out front for my own knives. To be honest, the maker portion of the business would simply be a sales tactic. I give this a 0.1% chance of materializing though.
 
Scott - this is exactly what AG Russel knives in Arkansas does. They have a showroom with lots of different name-brand knives in it. Only a small percentage are their own logo knives. Even a smaller percentage are actually made in their shop out back (balance are from Japan I think ... at least the kitchen knives). I don’t know how long it took to get to that point though.

I do wonder ... there are SO MANY store bought knives in awful, awful shape sitting scattered in peoples drawers and blocks. I wonder how effectively one could tap into the market (if it even exists!) for “refurbishing” people’s knives. I think some here have done something like that. Many of the same skills are used , and the time commitment per blade is likely lower...

oh, and Scott ... those 20-25 years go MUCH faster than one would ever suspect. I wish you luck and enjoyment on that journey of yours!
 
Ox1 said:
hey guys

im relativley new to this, but i love forging knives. i would like to make it into a career (eventually), but idk what that would look like.
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It would look like insanity and futility you keep doing the same thing hoping for different results :p but in seriousness from what I see of people here and on YouTube it isn't a hugely profitable thing because ultimately you are an artist and we all know that artist rarely make it big in their lifetime. I don't say this to discourage but expectations must be real or you will ruin the experience for yourself.

Ox1 said:
and what style, shape, or size of knife should i sell? or should i expand my skills to more than just knives?
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What style shape or size knife to sell is a silly question as the market is full of various knives because they all have different purposes and optimal uses so I wouldn't look to limit yourself in very many ways. I would say the general advice is start with and focus on fixed blades first. I would start with size range your comfortable working in but a trick/tip I have seen around here if you start making a larger knife when you make a mistake it is easier to turn it into a smaller knife. I would also look to find what steels your setup can properly shape and harden and focus on mastering a handful of steels and not worrying about variety there many people start with the 1075-1095 series of steels from what I see. Style you could focus on in some ways such as hunting vs kitchen and western vs Japanese style but ultimately I would focus on styles and shapes that you know and enjoy and that you can adequately judge the finished product yourself.

You don't mention this but one other piece to focus on is going to be your fit and finish this is about how well crafted the final knife looks and feels. This will be something you need to have to a certain point before you can realistically expect to sell any knives for any measurable profit. So in many ways all of this is to say first hone your craft to the point you can reliably produce knives worth selling and putting your name on them before looking to even make this a money making hobby let alone a career. Best of luck and share with us your progress and work as you hone your craft.
 
I’m lucky enough to have a great career outside of knifemaking, but it is similar in that I work for myself with no security and no benefits. I work in a niche and nobody really needs what I offer, similar to custom knives. So when I “retire” I plan on making more knives and being “full time” but my lifestyle is built around a different but similar situation And I have realistic expectations .
 
No.
No one needs pretty knives that last for a hundred years.


Start a corner store in a busy area, hire pretty girls to do the counter, flirty, but not too flirty.

Sell cigarettes, coffee, pop, lottery tickets, hot dogs, booze.

It's all gone and they come back the next day for something they can't do without.
 
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