Definition of a Custom Knifemaker?

Ken Williams said:
I like words, and I strive to have sufficient command of language such that I can select the most appropriate words to express myself. The body of words used uniquely in a given field such as knives is called a lexicon. A fully developed lexicon is a sign of passion and literacy, and helps enrich the experience of participants.

We could use "this thingy" or "that thingy" to describe a choil or a swedge, but that would be awkward and degrading. To say that Richard Petty is a just driver like me is really is equally deficient and colorless. In my obituary there will be no mention that I was a driver because to say that would have as much descriptive power as saying that I was human. But you better believe that Petty's obit will chronicle every stage of his rise to NASCAR status, retirement, and election to the Hall of Fame. Does the distinction between the two of us and the cars we drove matter? If you love car racing the distinction is everything. If not, who cares.

Distinctions in categories of makers is important in the knife world. ALL makers who make handmade knives are custom makers. I could be wrong, but it seems to me there are 3 classes of custom makers: (1) the generic maker who takes orders and will build just about anything you are willing to pay for; (2) the selective maker who takes orders but sticks pretty much to the his model line; (3) the speculator who does not take orders and builds what he wishes and sells anyway he wishes. Other distinctions are: (1) hobbyist (part time) or pros (full time); (2) stock removers or forgers; and (3) folders or fixed blade. The quantity or quality of knives made have no direct bearing on categorizing makers.

The avid collector knows these categories by heart and does not need to spell them out because they make it their business to know the select makers from whom they purchase their knives. The neophytes and prospective knife nuts would find a diagram of maker categories and definitions interesting and instructive I think.

Lastly, that we use terms that connote distinctions like bowies, fighters, choppers, camp knives but have have absolutely no coherent meaning is pure lunacy. I know the language is rich enough to do it; the question is when will the protagonists do it or will they be content to use descriptor words with no meaning always. Just assemble a panel of experts and makers and arbitrarily set the parameters. Of course there would be outrage, but eventually the protesters will croak, the terms will canonize, and the new blood will follow like popcorn on a string. Maybe ABS could do it.

Ken
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Great points Ken.

I would not necessarily agree with categorizing "part time" makers as hobbyist as many are better knifemakers and take the profession more seriously than some "full time" makers.

An accepted and recognized definition of certain terms (mentioned in your final paragraph) will be one of the first projects taken on by the new Custom Knife Collector's Association (CKCA).
 
I'll bet you are the first person to mention Barry Manilow in a knife thread!
My hat is off to you!
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Now that's funny!

I dont think we should worry a lot about the words, but realize that we (Americans) are rather "lazy" with our language.

One thing I always think about when this subject comes up. There are different "degrees", if you will, of Custom Makers. For instance: If a client decides to have three different makers make a particular knife by the same drawing, he will probably get a little different look, if not quality of F&F. All are Custom Makers, but the quality and options available to the client are different.

Even if all three knives are indistinguishable, one or two of the makers may be having to stretch their skills to build the knife to the specs, while the third is quite capable of building a much more complicated knife. All are Custom Maker's, just to different degrees of skill.

Prices for each is a whole different thread.

Lin
 
ABS Mastersmith..
Journeyman..

The only issue there is stock removal is left out, right?

As for me, when i go to ebay and punch in "custom knife", whatever comes up that is a custom knife.
David
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
That's just the difference be "factory" and "Hand made".
As makers we make "spec" knives and we make "Custom Knives".
We make all kinds of knives.
I spent 30 years in the home building industry. There was no confusion between a "Spec" home and a "Custom Home". A "Custmom" home was when the customer, the supplier, the archtect and the builder got together and built a home according to the customer's specifications.
You can get a "custom" paint job done on your Harley.
You can get a "custom" gun built.
You can have a pair of handmade "Custom" cowboy boots fit to your feet.
Why is it that this industry has a difficulty with a common English word?
I would suggest that if anyone had difficulty with that word to simply pull out your dictionary and look it up! My World Book says, "made specially for individual customers; made to order."
No more complex than that.
Custom does not mean that you have just done something creative.
I feel so honored to be amongst such a specialized and esteemed group of individuals/makers/collectors/enthusiasts.
I could go down the entire list and feel humbled.
Roger, Kevin, Les, Murray, etc., etc.
Now, you guys, ARE "CUSTOM COLLECTORS"! You choose each and every knife and the maker and decide how you go about the business end of the transaction and how it is accomplished, etc.
I will be proud when I can make YOU each your own "CUSTOM KNIFE"!
Until then, maybe someday you'll see one of my "spec" knives that you like.
I have made countless "Custom" knives. It is somewhat of a challenge, and is rather restrictive, to be honest. As a knife artisan, I prefer the freedom of making what I designed laying in the bathtub one night.
You bet, it's Man's oldest tool. Certainly no dispute there. I don't think that's in question here at all. Hardly anything we do can be said to be a new idea. That even further removes it from the "Custom" category!
I'm proud to make Man's oldest tool, and hope they serve my clients well.
There's a Hall of Fame-er who once said "We're in the knife handle business".
Just about all the blades are the same, with only a few differences here and there.
You guys are a great bunch of guys and I'm proud to have my name on the same page.
Here's to the Knife Business.
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Actually that analogy falls apart a bit when talking about the guns and boots. You, the customer, do not normally design the action of the gun nor do you "design" the barrel. The gun is fitted to you frame and it may have some decoration that you like and materials that you requested. Same with the boots. While you may pick the type of leather/skins and the color, you are not deisigning the boot......unless you have come up with some weird new boot that has the heels on the front or something like that:D That is why I mentioned the term "bespoke" to define a product that has pretty much already been designed but has been "altered" to fit you or to meet your specifications. Even a custom home can fallinot this category. While you and your architect may come up with some new and exciting design (not bloody likely these days) it still must meet code and use generally accepted engineering principles and available materials.:D Maybe we should just call ourselves knife artists. The Jerry Fisk analogy is just like comparing Rembrandt or Monet to some modern portrait painter. They are not equals, but they are all still artists.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
That's just the difference be "factory" and "Hand made".
As makers we make "spec" knives and we make "Custom Knives".
We make all kinds of knives.
I spent 30 years in the home building industry. There was no confusion between a "Spec" home and a "Custom Home". A "Custmom" home was when the customer, the supplier, the archtect and the builder got together and built a home according to the customer's specifications.
You can get a "custom" paint job done on your Harley.
You can get a "custom" gun built.
You can have a pair of handmade "Custom" cowboy boots fit to your feet.
Why is it that this industry has a difficulty with a common English word?
I would suggest that if anyone had difficulty with that word to simply pull out your dictionary and look it up! My World Book says, "made specially for individual customers; made to order."
No more complex than that.
Custom does not mean that you have just done something creative.
I feel so honored to be amongst such a specialized and esteemed group of individuals/makers/collectors/enthusiasts.
I could go down the entire list and feel humbled.
Roger, Kevin, Les, Murray, etc., etc.
Now, you guys, ARE "CUSTOM COLLECTORS"! You choose each and every knife and the maker and decide how you go about the business end of the transaction and how it is accomplished, etc.
I will be proud when I can make YOU each your own "CUSTOM KNIFE"!
Until then, maybe someday you'll see one of my "spec" knives that you like.
I have made countless "Custom" knives. It is somewhat of a challenge, and is rather restrictive, to be honest. As a knife artisan, I prefer the freedom of making what I designed laying in the bathtub one night.
You bet, it's Man's oldest tool. Certainly no dispute there. I don't think that's in question here at all. Hardly anything we do can be said to be a new idea. That even further removes it from the "Custom" category!
I'm proud to make Man's oldest tool, and hope they serve my clients well.
There's a Hall of Fame-er who once said "We're in the knife handle business".
Just about all the blades are the same, with only a few differences here and there.
You guys are a great bunch of guys and I'm proud to have my name on the same page.
Here's to the Knife Business.
Click to expand...

I'm not talking guns, boots, home renovations or Harleys. I'm talking knives. "Hand made" is an even more problematic distinction - I've seen a bunch of knives being made and done two myself and never have I seen or even heard of a knife made by hand without the use of a tool. And I've never seen a tool make a knife all by itself without the assistane of somebody's hand. So then we embark upon that dark, twisting path to determine which tools are acceptable for a knife to be "hand made" - files, grinders, power hammers, milling machines, CNC..... - somebody will be bitching at any given step of the way. No thanks.

I have a bunch of knives. All were made by a single artisan, start to finish. I had significant design input for a few, moderate design input for many and zero design input for some. They are all custom knives.

I can read a dictionary well enough, but words can take on different meanings when used in a particular context.

Roger
 
I think what has happened in the world of knife making is that the word "custom" has been used as a definitive for "hand made", and as such has crept into a new zone of usage, thus this thread.....
I consider myself a professional knife maker ( ie I subsist on the sales of the knives I make)

I do custom work if the customer's ideas appeal to my design paradigm and are within the realm of my skill set and ability.

my personal proclivities are usage of pre-20th century methods, ie I try to stay away from power tools propane etc as such some customers are attracted to my work while others are not. this however is a personal preference that influences MY market, not a defining characteristic of what being a knife maker entails.
 
jdm61 said:
Actually that analogy falls apart a bit when talking about the guns and boots. You, the customer, do not normally design the action of the gun nor do you "design" the barrel. The gun is fitted to you frame and it may have some decoration that you like and materials that you requested. Same with the boots. While you may pick the type of leather/skins and the color, you are not deisigning the boot......unless you have come up with some weird new boot that has the heels on the front or something like that:D That is why I mentioned the term "bespoke" to define a product that has pretty much already been designed but has been "altered" to fit you or to meet your specifications. Even a custom home can fallinot this category. While you and your architect may come up with some new and exciting design (not bloody likely these days) it still must meet code and use generally accepted engineering principles and available materials.:D Maybe we should just call ourselves knife artists. The Jerry Fisk analogy is just like comparing Rembrandt or Monet to some modern portrait painter. They are not equals, but they are all still artists.
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But, you don't understand my tastes in guns!
I want a "Custom" one!
You see, that gun smith goes to a lot of gun shows, but normally takes his every day stuff, and has a full rack of guns that he has made on his wall at his store.
But, they don't suit me, so I want a "custom" one!
I like Wildcat cartridges - specially made calibers. Of course, the barrel will need to be special length and because of this, I want the rate of twist a littel slower than most. Of course it will be a Bull barrel and Magna Ported, but then again, I'm a freak so I want a few EXTRA ports.
I want the trigger pull to be extra heavy with a trigger made from the steel from one of my Grandfather's old shovels. The stock will be fit to my shoulder, but it's made from the apple tree cut down in my back yard in '68.
That's a Custom rifle.
Then I go to that book maker for a pair of Custom boots. He has all sorts of boots on the rack, but I had Polio as a child, so I have one foot smaller than the other with a little tweak in it - that's why I require "custom" boots.
the leather, of course, comes from one of my Uncle's prize bulls that was butchered right after the County Fair! That leather will never be available again. And the stitching was from that last remnant of my Grandmother's shawl that I inherited after her funeral.
It's all gone now.
That's a pair of custom boots.
 
Ken Williams said:
Lastly, that we use terms that connote distinctions like bowies, fighters, choppers, camp knives but have have absolutely no coherent meaning is pure lunacy. I know the language is rich enough to do it; the question is when will the protagonists do it or will they be content to use descriptor words with no meaning always. Just assemble a panel of experts and makers and arbitrarily set the parameters. Of course there would be outrage, but eventually the protesters will croak, the terms will canonize, and the new blood will follow like popcorn on a string. Maybe ABS could do it.

Ken
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I am confronted almost daily with examples of pure lunacy, and for the life of me, I can't conceive of flexible descriptive terms for categories of knives as falling into that category.

Furthermore - a rigid but arbitrary definition is arguably less meaningful than a flexible one. Sure, some panel could come together and say that a bowie knife MUST have a blade length no less than 10" and no greater than 11", MUST have a clip point blade with the point centered in the blade, MUST have a double-guard etc., but what would that accomplish? Well, for one, it would (if accepted) quite effectively stifle the rich diversity within the genre. We'd have a working definition all right - and we'd also have a bunch of bowies that all pretty much look the same. Is anybody going to give me a hip-hip-hooray for that?

And what would such a definition really mean? None of these esteemed providers-of-definitive-clarity will have actually laid eyes on Jim Bowie's knife. If arbitrariness is an acceptable foundation for legitimacy, they could just as validly define a "bowie" to be almost anything at all, providing that they were sufficiently precise in their definition.

I have substantial sympathy with Anthony's view. I know a bowie when I see one and don't need the overweening guidance of a panel of experts to help me make sense of it all. I manage quite well to cope with the "lunacy" of imprecise and accomodating descriptive terms - which may or may not say something about my sanity. ;) If someone uses the term to describe a knife that I don't think fits the bill, well, my world remains pretty much unshaken.

Roger
 
Kevin Jones said:
Very true. And there's the problem.
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I don't see it as a problem. We can whip ourselves up into a righteous frenzy wringing our hands about the woeful imprecision of the terms used, but guess what? That's only a problem for the frenzied hand-wringers.

By and large, I don't think people attending a custom knife show are expecting to see tables full of knives made to the precise specifications of individual customers. I also don't perceive them to be in any great distress over any lack of clarity in the term.

"Golly gee Martha - sign says this here is a custom knife show. Dang, that could mean anything! Best not go in."

Roger
 
To me, there is no distinction between a custom (or handmade) knifemaker and a knifemaking hobbyist, at least in terms of quantity of output. I think that anyone who grinds a blade by hand or forges a blade is a knifemaker, no matter how few knives they make.

Doesn't Michael Walker make less than 6-7 pieces a year now? Does that make him a hobbyist?

To me, the distinction between "custom knifemaker" and "knifemaking hobbyist" has more to do with what they do, rather than how much they do. Like I mentioned before, I would consider anyone who grinds or forges their blades themselves to be a custom knifemaker. However, someone who only customizes existing knives, such as putting new handles on previously built pieces, without creating their own blades, would qualify more as a hobbyist in my opinion.
 
RogerP said:
I don't see it as a problem. We can whip ourselves up into a righteous frenzy wringing our hands about the woeful imprecision of the terms used, but guess what? That's only a problem for the frenzied hand-wringers.

By and large, I don't think people attending a custom knife show are expecting to see tables full of knives made to the precise specifications of individual customers. I also don't perceive them to be in any great distress over any lack of clarity in the term.

"Golly gee Martha - sign says this here is a custom knife show. Dang, that could mean anything! Best not go in."

Roger
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I see confusion as a potential problem. :confused::eek:;)
But seriously, when two knowledgeable people are discussing a subject and both have entirely different definitions as to subject matter; if not a problem it can certainly be counter productive.

Bowie? Integral? Custom? Handmade? etc. etc. etc. :confused:
 
I just wanted to say that I really like Ken's command of the language and hope he starts posting here more often. It's always a joy to read what he has to say.

I don't even think I would have to agree with him, and I'd enjoy his writing! :)
 
RogerP said:
Furthermore - a rigid but arbitrary definition is arguably less meaningful than a flexible one.
Roger
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Roger said this concerning the definition of the types of fixed blades. I feel it pertains to the heart of this thread, also. Firm boundaries are hard to set.

- Joe
 
NickWheeler said:
I just wanted to say that I really like Ken's command of the language and hope he starts posting here more often. It's always a joy to read what he has to say.

I don't even think I would have to agree with him, and I'd enjoy his writing! :)
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I agree Nick, as it's very refreshing compared to my and some other's rough and laymanish verbiage. :eek: :thumbup:

(laymanish: ? good example, as I doubt if Webster's has gotten to that one yet. ;):D:D)

Would like for Ken to share his knife preferences as to styles and makers, perhaps some photos of his pieces.
 
Kevin I have not read other than your first post at this writing so forgive if its repeated information.

Personally I do not think quantity has a thing to do with it. Some art makers that are the best of the best only make a handful of knives a year. Sword makers? Some make one a year maybe two.

I am a knifemaker whether I be a hobbyist or not, whether I do shows or not because I make knives from scratch of my own from time to time. I do not take custom orders per say for someone elses designs or ideas. I did at one time but to me that was just not fun and ended up more trouble than it was worth. So that would be what I'd call a 'custom knife maker'. That to me indicates he or she is someone that is open to working with customers to make one of a kind knives for them based on their ideas and collaboration.

Perhaps we all do that to some extent by modifying a blade like Gene Baskett is doing currently for one of his folders that I got in a trade. Gene is a knife maker but making one custom Wharncliffe blade for a folder I don't have much use for with the blade currently in it. I don't consider this to fall into the custom maker category if its sporatic once in a while activity but in this case just a friend working with a friend to please him. Thats just my opinion on it though and how I'd see it.

We could expand on this further by asking what makes a knife handmade and really start up something. How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? :eek:

STR
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
I'll bet you are the first person to mention Barry Manilow in a knife thread!
My hat is off to you!
Click to expand...

well then let me be the first to throw in a random mention of Engelbert Humperdinck!

my definition: if the person who's name appears on the blade made the knife, it's a custom

RL
 
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