how many hours?

[James_Terrio]

"Don't try to be fast, just learn to be good and the speed will come all on its own." That has prove to be the case in everything I do.

Yes sir! Another way to put it (and this too comes from years of abusing guitars...) is: "Slow is accurate. Accurate is smooth. Smooth is fast."

There are no timeclocks in my shop.

Mine either. The only time I really watch the clock is when it's getting close to dinner. I spent too many years in factories, hating the rigid schedules and frustrating delays that almost always compromised quality. A colleague once told me, "We have three options: high quality, quick turnaround, and low cost. Pick any two."

Don't worry about how long something takes, it will get done when its done.

Well, we can all take a quick look at Bruce's knives and decide for ourselves if whatever amount of time he spent on it was worth it Mr. Bump's work is simply and elegantly outstanding, regardless of the field he's in. I agree with NStricker, that superlative quality, and the demand that springs from it, are hard to define but impossible to overlook. Damn few of us would be making knives the ways we do, if we didn't have the guts to say, "I can make it better than the stuff on the shelves."

 

[Kevin Cross]

Profiling and grinding steel--couple of hours, maybe three
Making bolsters/guards, pining and soldering--at least a couple of more hours
Selecting handle material, glue. bolts shaping sanding and finishing--another three

Ignoring the hours wasted on the first three blades that did not work, the guards that I over filed the slots and the handles where the spacers slipped, I gouged the wood or the ivory cracked......timeless.

A knife is like a baby....it's done when it's done.