Do you consider Bark River knives handmade?

midnight flyer said:
....To me, it isn't custom knife making if you buy blanks and attach scales to them. As a craftsman in another discipline for about 40 years, I don't split hairs with my fellow craftsman to define the nature of their work. So to me, for example (realizing this goes against the group) if someone designs a blade to his specs, prescribes the steel he wants, works out cutting parameters with a water jet company, contracts said water jet company, pays to have the work performed to his specifications, and does his own quality control on acceptable blanks, I don't think that short changes the customer in getting a custom knife as the maker was in charge of every aspect of the blade blank except running the machine. Seems more than a few makers feel that way.
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I tend to agree that a knife made from a blank is not a custom knife, but it is still a handmade knife.
 
22-rimfire said:
I tend to agree that a knife made from a blank is not a custom knife, but it is still a handmade knife.
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Not really, because the blank was cut by a machine. I know it is nitpicking, but at the end of the day a knife form was cut out by a mill not by a guy cutting it by working a piece of flat stock and cutting the shape by hand. But, it does not take anything away from the quality of the knife as long as the rest of the work is excellent, ie., handles, finishing and heat treat.
 
Seems to me the definitions as I learned them, and I learned them over time and observation, roll out like this:

Hand-made: is made completely by hand. Though the phrase is often miss-used in my opinion to describe something produced using the below processes.

Custom: is something thought of and made using hand and possibly with the use of machines. Not a lot of restrictions there. Or something previously made by either method and improved by another step after it was originally complete.

Handmade Custom: can be used to describe a commercial knife with a handmade blade or the other way around though.

Commercial production: is only briefly held and/or inspected by hand, otherwise created and completed by some sort of industrial process using raw materials fed into some sort of mechanical contrivance.

........... Just the way I see it. Your opinions may vary.
 
Completely "handmade and custom " to me implies your start with some steel and forge it etc etc according to some specific design made especially for one particular customer's specifications / drawings . Anything short of that should have some qualifiers . :rolleyes:

I'm skeptical unless I can see some videos / pics of these unique creations being made . Because ...why not ? If I did something like that , I'd be proud and want to share . :)

These terms have become so pliable and overused as to become almost useless marketing terms , unless further defined and documented . :(
 
Cobalt said:
Not really, because the blank was cut by a machine. I know it is nitpicking, but at the end of the day a knife form was cut out by a mill not by a guy cutting it by working a piece of flat stock and cutting the shape by hand. But, it does not take anything away from the quality of the knife as long as the rest of the work is excellent, ie., handles, finishing and heat treat.
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You see, I don't really see any significant difference between a company or knife maker who uses a more efficient cutting method to create the blade blank versus some individual knife maker who can't afford the more efficient machinery to cut blanks. Ultimately, the blanks are cut and the knife making process is mostly hand made from that point on.

People buy blade blanks all the time and fashion a knife from it. They might even call it custom, but it is certainly handmade. But how were those off the shelf blanks created in the first place?

Forged steel is a different beastie in terms of making knives.
 
Handmade can still be to no specs and it does not need to be forged. It can be cut from flat stock with a drawn out design on the steel with a marker. However, at more than 40k knives a year, these knives are stamped out or cut out by cnc mills. Where are the mills? Either in a part of the building not seen or outsourced.
 
22-rimfire said:
You see, I don't really see any significant difference between a company or knife maker who uses a more efficient cutting method to create the blade blank versus some individual knife maker who can't afford the more efficient machinery to cut blanks. Ultimately, the blanks are cut and the knife making process is mostly hand made from that point on.
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I understand what you are saying, but I don't think the rest of the knife community agrees that a machine made blank is a hand made knife. Maybe I am wrong. But that has been my understanding. Again nothing wrong with using CNC mills. Just not hand made. Hand finished or hand assembled, maybe, but not hand made.
 
Cobalt said:
Handmade can still be to no specs and it does not need to be forged. It can be cut from flat stock with a drawn out design on the steel with a marker. However, at more than 40k knives a year, these knives are stamped out or cut out by cnc mills. Where are the mills? Either in a part of the building not seen or outsourced.
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I watched that video and there wasn't any mention of the blank creation. Maybe "benchmade" is a good term as mentioned above.??

Knife makers who use the powdered steels which are often hard probably can't be stamped . They may make say 100 of one pattern.... still called handmade. I think the block here is that Bark River produces a lot of knives annually and for that reason they can't be handmade. They are certainly hand finished. They make their handles no different than anyone else.

You see I don't have this big mental block (bias perhaps) against Bark River regardless of past history. I just look at their knives and most are really nicely made.

Fiddleback Forge make both handmade and production versions of the same pattern.

How does Randall cut their blanks? They are often called semi-custom.
 
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I've watched a few of their videos and it appears that they outsource the cutting of blanks then they grind the blade contours and so forth by hand. A custom maker using stock removal would cut the blank out of flat stock and shape it himself. I don't think outsourcing this step influences whether the blades are handmade. If we start to get picky like that then we could extend it to say that only blades that are forged to shape and then ground are truly handmade.
 
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22-rimfire said:
You see I don't have this big mental block (bias perhaps) against Bark River regardless of past history.
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IIRC the OP requested, that forum members refrain from dissing BRK and MS. I assume, that goes for the opposite as well;)

22-rimfire said:
I just look at their knives and most are really nicely made.
.
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Now that you bring it up, I dont. Many bland/generic designs, several unimaginative models copied from other designs (the latter which IMO looks better), often knives have blurry grind lines. Then there were the knives in a different steel, than they were marketed as.
 
What if the heat treat step is outsourced? Does that affect the description of the knife in terms of production?
 
22-rimfire said:
What if the heat treat step is outsourced? Does that affect the description of the knife in terms of production?
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A lot of custom makers outsource their HT. Pretty sure they all consider their knives hand made.
 
GEC has a factory and folks that like their knives consider them to be of near custom quality, but are factory made. I guess the distinction is the cutting of the blanks that makes the difference as well as having different people doing different steps in the process as opposed one or a couple people making the entire knife.

I don't care about that as long as the knife is well made.
 
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