Knives have been my hobby and passion all my life, and I've made and sold a few -- for about enough to pay for the materials in em.
That's okay by me, I don't try to make a living at it, and it makes me feel very good that someone is willing to part with any of their hard-earned money for something I made.
But now I'm making a few knives on request, and that's changed. Suddenly I'd like to get paid for my time too. I don't expect to, or more accurately I expect my time to be worth about $3 a day, and I'm still enjoying working on the knives. But you know what? I'm looking at my output, thinking how much faster and I think cheaper in belts it would be to be using a "real" grinder.
Part of this is surely fantasy, because I know good tools won't make a mediocre craftsman a better one, and part of it is clearly the tool jones at work; but part too is that I really believe I could do better at some functions with 4 or 5 times the horsepower and a platen I could get to the way I want -- in the same amount of time.
I've always subscribed to the notion one should use the best tools he can afford (whether it's a hammer or a banjo) to do his work, just because it lets his best come through more fully. Maybe knifemaking is less so than other endeavors, because you can in fact get the same results from files and paper you can from a machine shop. But given all those great and powerful tools, the vision to employ them creatively, and the patience and pride to do real craftsmanship, a knifemaker will create a whole lot more joy in his career than he would have with files and paper. It all comes down to time. Better tools make more time, and that's about all they can do. Just my simple opinion.
Now it's my turn to stir things up: Where do you draw the line with "sole authorship?" Philisophically I like the idea of doing all the work on a knife myself, but where does that start? Do I mine my own ore? You see the problem; sole authorship is kind of a misnomer, since no one can really do it "all."
This springs from a conversation with another metal worker (a sculptor, not a knifemaker), who maintains that he's better off buying everything he can right up to final finish than doing it himself, since his time is worth so much (to him) and since design and finish are all that anyone can "see." Everything else is just work.
This is an interesting idea to me, but my money is more precious to me than my time, so I'm still doing most of my own work.
I'm curious as to other opinions.
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Dave Larsen
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The greatest prayer is patience
-Buddha
