Hall Handmade

[bodog]

I'm only posting this to give a heads up. I'm not speaking to any personal or business ethics of the man other than what I list here, as he was very nice through the entire ordeal. He asked no deposit and I lost nothing in the deal other than time and opportunity, and I cannot speak to the quality of his finished knives. It's a shame because the knives made by Ian Hall of Hall Handmade look awesome.

I ordered a custom knife late January with a promised completion date of late February/early March. That timeframe came and went. There were some excuses as to why it wasn't completed yet he was posting multiple knives for sale here on the forum. He pushed the time back to late April. That timeframe came and went. I asked for pictures and/or updates. He was slow to respond if he responded at all. After several emails and pm's here with no response, I sent him an email saying I was canceling the purchase order. He finally responded that the blade had been roughed out and heat treated and that he would send pictures of it. I never received those pictures. He said that it would be done at the end of May. At the end of May with no pictures or uodates of the knife, I told him that I couldn't rely on him getting it done quickly and that I was going to the blade show where I could purchase a knife. He responded again by giving his word that it would be finished by the first week of July and that I could count on him. I retracted my cancelation. At the end of the first week of July he said again that he was having issues and that the knife wasn't complete. I held him to his word and canceled the order.

Things never got hostile and he acted like a gentleman even when I canceled the order. I don't want to unnecessarily or unfairly disparage Ian, but people who may want for him to make a knife for them should be prepared and with their eyes open as to the way he operates. It was a lesson in frustration because he was such a nice guy. Had he been a jerk about things I would've canceled after his 1st or maybe even 2nd delay. I'm sure his knives are high quality, but I couldn't stand it when he gave his word and disregarded it after having missed other prime opportunities to pick up a great knife from a different maker. And it was kind of a slap in the face when during all of this he kept posting other knives for sale here on the forum. I mean no disrespect by posting this.

 

[Sonnydaze]

Thanks for your note. Good info to have.

 

[HallHandmade]

Hi all,

A friend on the forum sent me an email this morning suggesting I come take a look at this. I'll try to keep my reply as short and sweet as possible. Everything the buyer posted is true, I did poorly on this commission, and I sincerely apologize. The buyer was excellent to deal with throughout, and I am shamed that I was not able to complete the blade in a timely enough fashion for him.

This last few months has been a roller coaster. My fiancé and I just bought our first home. The process started about 2.5 months ago, and we moved in on the 5th of this month. I finally got my shop unpacked and set up last week, and today is my first official work day. I did not have the slightest clue how time intensive the homebuying process would be. I was already running late on this commission when this all started, but this was total derailment. I'm still pretty new to this- my shop, and myself, are a work in progress as far as knifemaking goes. I try my best to keep quality the priority, but I'm not always fast enough to follow that rule and still get things done in a timely manner.



I wanted to post some specific details about this commission. It is one of the most challenging designs I've attempted, and incorporated a lot of things that were firsts or at least somewhat firsts for me. These are things outside the range of what I normally do, but was willing to take on for a custom, to push myself and hopefully have something special as a result.

From scratch one-off- This was a new one-off custom design, drawn and made specifically for this customer. This isn't new to me, but it is a time consuming part of every commission of a blade of this type. Producing a brand new design can often be a moving target. We did get the design down fairly quickly as far as number of revisions/drawings, but I still took a good amount of time getting the final design completely approved and ready for work. The overall design of the knife was pretty different from my normal style, so it took me a while to get it to where I was really happy with it aesthetically.

Filework- I don't normally do filework on my blades. I feel my filework is of high quality, but I am very picky with the patterns and don't do it very often, as it is time consuming in itself, and time consuming for me to figure out to satisfaction. Because of this I ended up being somewhat non-committal, which caused more problems.

Rare Blade Steel- Buyer requested Bohler-Udderholm Vanadis 4 Extra, which took me several weeks to find, and another couple weeks to actually get my hands on. The stuff is nearly impossible to get. It was only by sheer luck that I even got it. The buyer did specify it would be Ok if I were to use another high end steel, but I had worked so hard to get it, and he was so excited that I had actually found it, I wanted to do whatever I could to make it happen.

DLC Coating- Buyer requested DLC coating if possible. The DLC coatings are done at high temp, and that must be taken into account as far as the tempering of the blade goes. I contacted several companies, Richardson and a couple others, and made multiple attempts to get a ballpark temp that a blade would experience during the coating, and didn't get any type of useful reply. I used to work at an optical coating system manufacturer, and so I have expertise with dealing in this area. I also contacted my old boss to try and get a good lead, but had no luck.

I didn't feel comfortable sending my first and only piece of this super rare steel, not having any idea what would be happening to it tempering-wise during the coating. I really was looking forward to doing the DLC also, because it is something I would like to start doing on more blades.

Hand cut inlay on scales- Buyer requested a hand cut inlay of the jolly roger on each scale. We went back on forth on several options we thought would work, and this was something I was working on around the time of order cancellation. I have done some inlay work with good result, but it is time consuming whether you are a veteran or a noobie.

There were a couple more problems I didn't even mention to the buyer, as at that time he was already pretty much fed up. The titanium stock that I got for the bolsters ended up being total garbage (porosity), and the very nice piece of all-grey buckeye burl that I had saved for him, ended up having a huge blonde and black knot inside of it, and so was also, garbage (at least for this blade).

I do still have the blade here, I can go into more detail on that end of this if anyone is interested. I am still considering finishing it out, but am torn as you all can probably understand.



I really enjoy commission work, because it is new, and different, and forces me to go outside the box... but at this point I have decided to discontinue taking any further commissions for the forseeable future. When I first started knifemaking, several makers that I made friends with strongly advised me not to take commission work, as this would likely be the result. I actually had intended to post a thread in the knifemaker's forum, about my intention to discontinue commission work, and to discuss my other trials and tribulations as a growing maker.

I completely understand the frustration felt seeing knives get posted when a buyer is waiting for a commission, but that work must happen no matter what; it keeps the lights turned on. Full-custom commissions do not pay well enough to run a business, unless you charge very high prices for them. You'll notice that custom shop work from any of the biggest names is often 2x to 3x the price of a standard design. There is very good reason for this. I've tried to keep my commission prices affordable, so that they aren't significantly harder to get than one of my normal pieces. This both limits the time I can spend on them, and the amount of them I can complete in a given time.

At this point I've come to realize that I need to hone my knifemaking skills at my own slow pace, and work on furthering my abilities without someone waiting on the other end, only for them to be repeatedly disappointed.



Ian

 

[bodog]

Ian, I'm glad you posted that and says everything that needs to be said. I hope it shows to future customers how committed to quality you are. Fair is fair and I will close this thread seeing how both sides have been presented fairly and honorably.