- Joined
- Sep 9, 2003
- Messages
- 2,361
It comes down to two options- give the customer what he wants or refuse the order. I have made plenty of blades that I would not have chosen for myself, however as my waiting list hangs so heavily over me that I am no longer able to take any new orders, I will only make what I think is best when I get to make a spec order. I have however simply turned orders away when it was a knife that didnt want to put my name on.
If a customer told me he wanted a skinner out of 1084, I would ask if he wanted the best skinner I could do or a compromise if he wanted the best skinner I would make it around 62 HRC and really fine edged, and then explain that it is a specialized tool that he needs to treat properly, if he came back with damage after chopping on nails to impress his friends, I would simply inform him that it is too bad that he decided to throw away his investment. But then you have the twit bad mouthing you and other makers shamelessly pandering to that imbecilic attitude pointing out how that knife should have stood up better than that. If you use your new Remington shotgun to pound in a fence post and it gets damaged is it Remingtons fault for not making a better shotgun???? To avoid all of this most of us account for the idiot factor and make a skinner that will do all kinds of things in a lackluster way including skinning.
Recently I read a post here where a fellow made a nice sharp knife for a guy only to see him later digging worms with it; that is exactly what I am talking about! As custom smiths we are supposed to make better knives than you can buy on the Home Shopping Network but if people are going to dig worms with them regardless of how much they pay, why bother? And if another maker thinks you should stand behind the skinning knife that was used to dig worms, they are more of a problem than the worm digger.
Very often when I am drawing back a knife to below 61 HRC that has O1 in it I am saddened at the loss of a real performer in order to account for the idiot factor, but I think of how the end user will do all sorts of stupid things with it and then say I am great, instead of ruining a really good knife and calling me a hack. We thump our chests that a customer could bend our blades back a forth multiple times and that they can easily sharpen it, instead of making a blade you could stand on without bending and rarely needs sharpening. There is no need to pile on me to remind me I am a minority in this opinion, I am painfully aware of that fact, and it saddens me.
You know I am going to stop now, for some reason I am in a mood today and this topic is at the heart of a lot of the problems in our business. I am not angry about this just very sad and for some reason folks think I am a nice guy so since I am using more invective adjectives than I normally would I believe it may be time to put my head back in the sand and think of other things.
