Do good knife makers occasionally make bad knives?

golok

golok

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Oct 20, 2000
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There is a saying: Bad knife day. Can this happen to custom knife makers who are consistently good to excellent in their knife making?

What are the chances of this happening to anyone of the reputable makers? I know the best of us in any profession can lose our form, so to speak, at times. Even Tiger Woods loses now and then.

What happens when this happens? How does the knife maker get out of this rut?
 
I screwed up a $900 blade while sharpening it a couple weeks back. I'd say that was a BAD knife day... :)
 
Golok: Sure, it can happen. The solution is very simple. Bad knives don't leave my shop. Never, ever. They do end up in my kitchen drawer, but, not in a customer's hand.
One important lesson I've learned is to hold a knife for a day or two before shipping. It's funny how, everything looks perfect when you first finish up a knife. Going back the next day, with a "new" eye, I'll often find something that I want to touch up before I send it out. And, that's after 20+ years of making knives.
Having a thorough mental checklist of "inspection items" really helps. Customers should learn to look at a knife in a specific way, checking out each item in a specific order, so that, over time, the inspection becomes consistent and routine, and, nothing is overlooked.
A typical checklist for a fixed blade might be:
1) Blade grind height/uniformity
2) Blade grind symmetry
3) Plunge symmetry-This applies to the top grind, too, if the knife has one.
4) Grind- on centerline and straight
5) Point centered on blade and blade straight
6) Blade uniformly finished
7) Solder joint-Perfect?
8) Handle to guard and handle to tang- Smooth and gap free?
9) Handle contouring-Symmetric and scratch free?
10) Bolts and thong hole tube-Smooth and scratch free?
11) Logo application-crisp and clean?
12) Edge-Scary sharp along the entire length?
You get the idea here-you can add more items as appropriate...
Looking at a knife point first will reveal lots of potential flaws that are frequently overlooked.

Hope this helps,

RJ Martin
 
Hi Golock in my shop when that crap starts I try and do something harmless such as make leather, work on the shop, scribe/saw out blades, cut blocks into handle material, ect. But some days may be so bad you have to burn gun powder, wet hooks, take a day off. Usually thats a sign I been to many days without a day out of the shop. Someday maybe I will actually take my day off out of the shop. It just seems magnetic since unless I leave the house I always end up right back in there. I guess I cant help myself. Born on a mountain raised in a cave makeing knives is what I crave. Take care yall GenO
 
Golok,

I guess nobody is perfect. Got a new knife in my collection from a very well regarded maker that has a small mechanical glitch. Nothing against this maker, as I have not corresponded with him (yet). If not for the shipping costs and customs hassles to and fro, I'd send it back for a fix.

BTW I have two other knives from the same maker which are darned close to my definition of perfect and would buy another knife from him without hesitation.

Andrew Limsk
 
Thanks, RJ, your checklist will come in very handy for the present and the future.
 
Same here as the other makers. Sometimes ( beleive it or not ) the stresses of business, take away from the fun of knifemaking, and they get so deep in your brain the day is shot, nothing goes right. Sometimes a new model ( folders esp) take awhile to be right. I had one particular model that I had a loss of 1 in 4 knives, when i started building it ( my normal acceptable is 1 in 10 ). But now its down to the acceptable level( and no, none of the "defects" left the shop, most got dashed against the floor). Sometimes the knife just isnt in the piece of steel, Ive had some blanks that no matter how hard I try refuse to be ground properly. --- Charles
 
Great post. I am new to custom knives. Just bought my first. YOur list is an excellent reference for evaluating. And much to my pleasure, matched my final screening process fairly well. I had narrowed down to two makers based on aesthetics and feel. Then I got down to the nitty gritty of fit and finish. close examination revealed significant differences and made the decision clear cut. I am going to save your post as a reminder for evaluating future purchases.
 
All my knives are perfect! :rolleyes:
Actually, the difference between an amateur and a professional is:
The professional knows how to fix his mistakes.....
And he has made so many that he is very careful to avoid them.
Otherwise.............we're all one!!!
:confused:
 
I am sure that occasionally every maker maker makes a bad knife. The important thing is that those knives never make it out of the shop. I have never run into a maker that will purposely send a bad knife to a customer. Hopefully I never will.
 
What???

I've never been lost... been a might fearsome confused for a couple of months but never lost. :D
(paraphrased from an oldtimer regarding his hiking and hunting experiences)
 
This week I screwed up the grind on FOUR blades. I tossed them aside and am starting over.

There is a popular saying.....$H^T Happens.
 
Hey Barry, you should take those four blades and stack them alternately to match the grinds and forge them into damascus. Call it BGX4 (bad grind X 4) for a pattern. While I was at the ABS school one of the guys burned the crap out of a blade he was working on. It was a huge blade too because he started with 2" X 1/4" stock. He asked me what he should do with it and I told him to cut off the burned part and start over with a smaller blade. He still would have had enough to forge a rather large hunter. Well, after it cooled off he snuck over and dropped the whole hunk in the trash. I saw what he did without him knowing it. And the instructor saw it from inside the school house too. He came out and grabbed that piece of ruined stock and proceeded to kick that old boy that ruined it off of his forge and folded that stock a few times and then forged it into a small hunter pattern. He never said a word and neither did the fellow that burned it. Until the next day in class that is. He he. Sometimes mistakes can be turned into sucess depending on how you look at it.

Bad knife days are pretty common around my place. I'll get into a sticky situation with a knife and just stagnate until I finally lay it down and do something else. Most of the time it just takes day or so before I get back to it and finish it up. Being slow like I am has it's advantages sometimes. I don't get in any big hurry and that saves alot of projects from being scrapped. But the beauty of forging is that there's never a wasted piece of steel. All of my 'scrapped' blades are put in the oops bin and used later when they'll work for another project. I've saved myself alot of time by doing that on occasion.

When I was new at this knifemaking thing I made and sold a few bad knives. The first knife I ever sold was the best worst knife I ever made. It was a knife/sheath/belt/belt buckle set I made for a friend downtown. I thought it was cool at the time and so did my friend. About a year later he brought the knife out to me with a broken bone handle. One side cracked at the rivet and fell off. Oops! Well, I can fix that easy enough. And since I had it in the shop I'd give it a touch-up just because I'm a nice guy and all. He he. The blade was dead soft. You could bend it in your hands. I thought back about when I was making that knife and realized I had never heat treated it. I got so excited about getting it finished and making my first real money that I completely skipped that part. Needless to say I made a new knife to replace that POS. I still have that old knife in my shop as a reminder. It's truly awful.
 
Back in my stock removal days, I used to simply grind old planer blades, (D-2 probably) keep them cool and finish them up.,,A good friend ordered one for his brother in law. Antelope season was only weeks away and I made the knife finishing it the day before they were going hunting. That evening I asked them how the knife worked, he told me it would not even cut the hair on the antelope,I figured it was a joke and laughed, he took the knife out of the sheath and tried to cut his own skin, --- no blood, no cut.

I looked at the blade and noticed I had forgotten to sharpen it. It was a 1/32 inch blunt knife. I tried to take it to my shop to sharpen it, he refused to allow me that pleasure. Stated he would keep forever one of my knives that would not cut. I can't even buy it back!

I kind of do things differently now, they are only signed after the cut test and naturally everything else.
 
Wow, an Ed Fowler knife that won't cut. It must just drive you crazy that that knife is still out there. I'll bet he tells stories around the camp fire about it.
 
The worst case scenario is when the bad knife makes it out of the shop, and the maker is not willing to make it right.

Sucks, but it does happen.
 
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