Annoying comments

Also heard from one of my friends:

"You use antler on the knife handles? I guess you have heads hanging on the walls of your house!" Uh, no... these are sheds. "Poor deer! I guess you killed the walrus for its ivory too!" Uh, no, that's fossil ivory. The walrus died thousands of years ago. "Poor thing. You should use materials that don't cause you to kill animals." Okay... will do.. (rolling eyes).

- Greg
 
tryppyr said:
"Poor thing. You should use materials that don't cause you to kill animals."
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The best is when comments like that come from someone wearing leather shoes, eating a McRib, etc... Or just reply "How many innocent soy plants had to die for your tofurkey lo-carb wrap, you murderous swine!?!" :D
 
tryppyr said:
Also heard from one of my friends:

"You use antler on the knife handles? I guess you have heads hanging on the walls of your house!" Uh, no... these are sheds. "Poor deer! I guess you killed the walrus for its ivory too!" Uh, no, that's fossil ivory. The walrus died thousands of years ago. "Poor thing. You should use materials that don't cause you to kill animals." Okay... will do.. (rolling eyes).

- Greg
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People are more interested in talking than listening or learning

They've already made up their mind that you killed that poor deer and don't understand what "shed" means.
You have to slow them down and really explain that they lose them every year....

I find that the people that react like that are the one that know the least about the animals.

I take a perverse pleasure in showing them this link too
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/
 
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i dont make a whole lot of knives that are pre-ordered. i do sell alot of knives that i already made. i kind of go with the idea that i make em to suit me. i do make every knife for a certain purpose. and if they buy em fine,if not i have a great x-mas or birthday gift to give. and i guess what makes that possible is the fact that i dont depend on them to support me. but when someone asks me to make a blade for them i ask them what its to be used for. once i know that i kind of steer them into making better choices as to steel and materials. it seems to work pretty good on people who dont know much about what materials are best for what they want. unless they know excatly what they want it made from and are knowledgeable about knives. those people are easy to recognize. but for all those people that want an unrealistic blade that never needs sharpening and can cut anything and are made from files or springs or saw blades. i show em a 3 ring binder full of all different types of steel for what ever is thier ultra blade material. i copied from the net info that shows the diversity of steels that they are sure is the optimum blade material. then explain that saw blades or files or springs have a wide variety of steels used to make each of the different files or springs and such. and that making a blade from an unknown steel will definitly make an inferior blade and that most of the knves made from recycled steel that they have heard of come from exagerrated stories embellished by somebodys grampap and are just a big fish tale that gets better each time it was told. then show them some options that are a good choice for the knife. and let them pick. it seems that when you give them some realistic choices that soothes the blow from when i showed them how impractical the steel from thier pap's stories really is. and when they can pick all the different materials i steered them to gives them thier own story about thier own handmade knife. and the superior materials it was made from. anyway thats how i do it with the uninformed that want thier own "magical blade",,,willy
 
People hold fast to all of this weird disinformation because it comes from trusted sources. I once knew a girl that swore up and down that butterflies came from earthworms.

"isn't this thing ugly? Just think, someday this will be a beautiful butterfly..."

"excuse me, what?"

"This will be a butterfly someday."

"um? no? where did you hear that from"

"My GRAND PAAAAA! What....are you saying my Grandpa's STUPID or something? You don't know everything you know....GAH!"



No matter what super exotic, tested, proven, predictable, superior quality clean steel you use for your knives......to some people, papaw's old saw blade knife tempered in cornbread and buttermilk will always be superior. You absolutely cannot convince them otherwise.

aaaand I feel the Atheist meter rising. I'd better say goodnight:p
 
I think Psycho touched on something. People often hold beliefs as articles of faith. Faith doesn't require understanding, just acceptance. This is not to say that faith can't be augmented by understanding... it just doesn't require it.

The things people hold as articles of faith can range from things grandpa told them to things they read on the internet. I can't tell you how often I get forwarded emails from people I love full of internet "wisdom" on every conceivable topic. I keep telling them "that's a hoax" and pointing them to the truth, and they keep forwarding the garbage, always with the best intentions. "Can't be too safe," they mumble.

Maybe we should leverage that tendency to forward emails and disseminate some internet wisdom that actually is true, but hyped to the max so people will forward it as gospel.

For example, we'll start a message full of dire warnings about buying cheap knives from Pakistan that are made from inferior steel, and will break the first time you use them. We'll recount a tale of some mother trying to open a package and cutting her thumb off, bleeding all over her two year old child, traumatizing her son. We'll tell how the cheap steel, made from sewer manhole covers, was filled with E-coli and gave her a bad case of blood poisoning. We'll follow her to the hospital in an ambulance, where the ambulance driver recounts that this is the third such case he's seen this week... "those cheap knives are to blame", he tells her.

Never mind that making a blade would kill all the bacteria... they won't notice that little discrepancy. Never mind that the story itself is apocryphal. All such internet wisdom relies on those stories.

I know... it's a bad idea... but it is tempting sometimes.

- Greg
 
bikermikearchery said:
"For taking care of people who are unprepared for life."
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That's a standard answer from me for a lot of years now.
People usually just don't grasp the implications.

Same with a flashlight.
"Why do you have a flashlight in your pocket?"
It get's dark EVERY day...

I was at a sporting goods store one evening needing a generator for a lantern.
They had them the week before, and I came back once I knew the model I needed.
They were gone, so I asked the manager where they went.
Well, he says, it's not lantern season.
WTF?
I turned around, pointed outside, and said "Look, it's dark right now!"
He didn't get it.

Same type of guy I think.
 
godspeed said:
A young man said to me,
"You can temper a knife by stickin' it in hot cornbread right out of the oven, and then dippin' it in some cold butter milk."

I was speechless.
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Imagine trying to create a controlled environment to temper your hand-forged steel when you have no electricity. You live in a remote Appalachian mountain hollow where you make your own charcoal to run the forge your grandpa built with bricks they made. Grandma, momma and now yer wife, all bake the best dern cornbread (from meal made at Miller's place) in their wood-fired cook-stoves.

Considering primitive backwoods equipment resources and that cornbread is typically baked at 425-450°F for about half an hour and holds its heat fairly well, in its cast iron skittle, for a little while when removed from the oven, this idea sounds more like genius than nuts too me!

Considering the milk fats (oil) and casein in viscus buttermilk stored in a jug in a cool spring house, perhaps this ain't so farfetched of a likely quenching medium as it sounds.

I'd be careful guys. I sympathize and relate to the group processing that we're doing here about the hogwash and crap folks throw at us. I just don't want to get sucked into reverse prejudiced either. If it weren't for the kind of good ol' fashioned yankee and cracker ingenuity like this young man cited, a lot of our nations settling forebears might have had an even rougher time of it!
 
There ya go Phil, gettin' all serious on us!

I definitely see your point, though.
 
In the vein of the cornbread/buttermilk story, I went to the ABS school in 1995. A piece of wisdom there was dealing with the problem of a knife that is completed, only to discover that it's too hard. The steel being discussed was 5160.

The way to fix that is a baked potato temper, done as follows: Heat a large baking potato to 400 degrees, hold for an hour. Remoive from the oven, stab the blade into it, and let it cool. That will draw the blade back a bit in hardness.

Realistically, I think it would work. Kevin can chime in, but there is enough mass in a big baker to heat the blade without destryoing the fittings or handle.

That was, whether it works or not, taught by one of the mastersmiths at the school. And no, it wasn't Goddard.

Gene
 
Gene Martin said:
In the vein of the cornbread/buttermilk story, I went to the ABS school in 1995. A piece of wisdom there was dealing with the problem of a knife that is completed, only to discover that it's too hard. The steel being discussed was 5160.

The way to fix that is a baked potato temper, done as follows: Heat a large baking potato to 400 degrees, hold for an hour. Remoive from the oven, stab the blade into it, and let it cool. That will draw the blade back a bit in hardness.

Realistically, I think it would work. Kevin can chime in, but there is enough mass in a big baker to heat the blade without destryoing the fittings or handle.

That was, whether it works or not, taught by one of the mastersmiths at the school. And no, it wasn't Goddard.

Gene
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Sounds kinna half baked :)

If I was going to teach that method to others, I'd much rather use a box of sand than a potato...
 
tryppyr said:
Also heard from one of my friends:

"You use antler on the knife handles? I guess you have heads hanging on the walls of your house!" Uh, no... these are sheds. "Poor deer! I guess you killed the walrus for its ivory too!" Uh, no, that's fossil ivory. The walrus died thousands of years ago. "Poor thing. You should use materials that don't cause you to kill animals." Okay... will do.. (rolling eyes).

- Greg
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Use this to your advantage and use dinosaur bone for scales!

There is a huge market for the illegal importation of freshly slayed dino but I'd just lie and tell them you killed it yourself. You need at least .50 caliber for a good triceratops but the horn makes a killer handle.
 
Man, these are too funny! :p
My dad gave me a piece of chromed metal off the back of an office chair he salvaged for me to make knives with (just tyring to help). I had to explain to him the differences in steel, thanked him for it and promised to try to use it around my shop :)
But, he bought me a new sander for grinding knives for Christmas, so it all worked out :thumbup:
 
Gene Martin said:
In the vein of the cornbread/buttermilk story, I went to the ABS school in 1995. A piece of wisdom there was dealing with the problem of a knife that is completed, only to discover that it's too hard. The steel being discussed was 5160.

The way to fix that is a baked potato temper, done as follows: Heat a large baking potato to 400 degrees, hold for an hour. Remoive from the oven, stab the blade into it, and let it cool. That will draw the blade back a bit in hardness.

Realistically, I think it would work. Kevin can chime in, but there is enough mass in a big baker to heat the blade without destryoing the fittings or handle.

That was, whether it works or not, taught by one of the mastersmiths at the school. And no, it wasn't Goddard.

Gene
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There was a thread either here or one of the other forums, that discussed using melons and gourds as quench medium for differential hardening. Apparently it had been used a number of times and worked fairly well. Of course I can't find the thread now, the gist of it was that you heated the blade to critical then chopped lengthwise into a gourd or melon which tempered the blade.....
 
I just got back from Reno, where I met up with some family for my niece's volleyball tournament. I had shown my just finished folder to a relative that I know understands knives. His son showed up, and he asked me to show him. I did and he said "Cool, you should see my new hunting knife, it has a 9" Blade, I got it for 75% off I paid 15 bucks". I asked him what material it was and he said "it is Stainless steel, so I can sharpen it". All I could think was to add was "...a lot" but thanks to you all here, I kept my mouth shut, and my uncle did too.
 
Over the weekend I had somebody politely inform me that what I did for a living was illegal. Apparently, I am an illegal weapons manufacturer. In their World, knives are weapons, weapons are either regulated or prohibited and making them in my garage is no different than someone building pipe-bombs in their basement. This was a seemingly respectable, intelligent adult in her late 40's.

No Joke.

My response?... In the company of about 6-8 other folks (who were all staring at me), I calmly replied "Wow, um... perhaps you should do a little research into that completely asinine statement and let me know how that pans out you. Hmmm... regulated or prohibited? Does the food in your house cut itself?" Her response... "Kitchen knives are regulated by the government. You can't use a kitchen knife in a crime." A quick look to her hubby, who was facepalming himself at the time, started me into uncontrollable laughter... I was no good.

The only thing my wife said as she held me under the arm and guided me away was, "Well, at least you didn't have to hit her husband."


Absolute true story.......

Rick
 
I'm really starting to like you, Rick. Very amusing. Of course, not the best way to turn a critic into a customer, but at least you tell it like it is.
 
Agreed... Unfortunately, I accelerated right past the reasoning/educating phase. At that point, it would have been like debating someone who supports a Flat Earth.
 
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