How many knives did you make before selling

I'll leave it up, because this is a question related to many folks here. As long as the question is addressed from the point of experience, it should be knife making related.
Please lets not talk about selling, prices, and values, though.

In the future, posting this type of question should be in ARG.
That alone is a good reason to become at least a Basic Menber level.
 
Yes I'm planning to buy a knifemakers membership but im still learning alot mostly thanks to bf. I hope in the future to be able to sell some knives here. Thanks bladsmth
 
About 20-25. That took a solid year. I've been selling for 6 months.

For an answer like this to make sense, you probably have to look at the maker's work and understand how much experience with related materials and methods they had before reaching the point of public sales. That, plus the complexity of your style will likely govern how much grinding you'll do before you think you're ready.
 
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I think I sold the fifth or sixth knife I made and every one since. Not that I've sold a ton...quite the contrary.
 
I've sold every knife I've made except my first, and a couple others I made for myself. Like watercrawl I haven't sold a ton of knives either (about 30 or 40) in the short time that I've been making knives. I do have a lot of woodworking and related experience, and come from a mechanical engineering background, which I think made it a lot easier for me.
 
Also, you have to determine what "Selling Knives" means. I understand that any knife you receive money for was "sold", but there are degrees of that transaction.

In many cases, all the knives a person made for their first several years are sold to friends and family...often for about the material cost. Nothing wrong with that.
On the other end of the scale is the folks who go to shows, have websites, and sell commercially. These people most likely would not be able to sell the knives that they made those first years to their customers.

Most start as A, and if they learn the craft well, grown to B.
 
I have made about 30 and still dont feel experienced enough to sell. I have had people buy the materials for me to make a knife for them but still have not made money off of a knife. I have 4 more knives in the works and was thinking of selling one, but who knows :-). Also i have been making knives for almost 3 years now. Wish i had more time to make knives but being in the navy with two kids and a wife makes it a little hard.
 
I gave away many of the knives I made my first few years of seriously making them to friends who I knew were going to use them hard and told them to give them back to me if they failed for any reason. after about 5 years I sold knives at biker swap meets and such, by then I had been several years without a failed blade coming back for any reason. Shortly after that I started forging knives instead of stock removal, and didn't sell any until I was confident that they were going to be at least as reliable as my stock removal blades had been

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I've made nearly 20 knives since I started about a year ago. Still haven't put one up for sale yet but hope to soon. There are some things I still struggle with and I want to get a grip on them before I sell a knife with my name on it. Having said that, most of the knives I've made so far have been given away as presents or "just because". I had a guy stop by this morning and wanted to know what I would sell one of my cleavers for and I told him I couldn't do it. One of my friends recently purchased a billet of Alabama Damascus so I can make him a knife from it. Word gets around!

Now, I also buy "custom" knives from various makers to judge my knives against. Not only in fit and finish, but performance as well. These are typically utility/edc/hunter type blades. Most are in the price range that I intend to sell my knives for. Let me tell you, there is a wide range of quality in that price range!

Just make 'em and don't worry about selling them. If you're thinking about getting into this hobby to make money, don't. There are other hobbies you can do to make money from and that are more profitable!
 
I estimated that I probably started as many as 50 and maybe as many as 75, depending on how you count them (I still have a few bars of old stock with partial blade shaped ends forged into them) before I had one that I felt was suitable for public consumption and It was pretty good looking by that point. I still have some of the 10-15 "shop knives" that survived long enough to have a handle put on them. The turning point for me was when I told myself that I was not going to try to "fix" any more mistakes. (the old joke about starting off making a Musso bowie and ending up with a neck knife) That made me slow down and get it right the first time.
 
Knifemaking is expensive and time consuming to really get to the point where you can do it for some serious income.
 
First off, don't get me wrong... You can sell the very first knife you ever make... as long as you are upfront about it.

I made about 20-30 fully completed knives and destroyed 80+ knife shaped objects while testing heat treat, geometry and materials. I would make 5-6 at a time. That was in 2007. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity(aka, handsom severance package and goverment self employment benefit program) to dive into knifemaking, fulltime for an entire year. I still test new materials and geometries from time to time. Making a decent looking knife wasn't the hard part. After 10-12 blades I had the look/style that I desired. The hard part, both technically and intellectually, was being sure that the knives performed to the best of my abilities.... and to constantly hone/improve those abilities to meet my expectations of a good knife. You have to be honest with yourself and your craft.
 
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When I first started making knives when I was 17, I sold most of them not knowing what I know now, and looking back, I wish I hadn't(and probably shouldn't have) sold a lot of them. But at the same time the money I made off of those knives is what allowed me to further pursue knife-making. Even now today almost all of the money I make from selling knives goes right back into making more knives.
 
I sold the second knife I made. With a toolmaker background I was confident about heat-treat so I knew it would hold up. The blade was horribly thick, I made it on a Bridgeport mill. I didn't even know there was such thing as a grinder just for knives. Any way if a person sees something they like and they know you're a rookie....then so be it. Nobody's judging you that early in the game. Just don't promote yourself as something you're not. I have no regrets about a single knife I have sold. The expectations of my customers only go up. I will say don't play this game for the money....chances are most likely you will be on the bench for a while.
 
el0147 said:
Yes I'm not planning on making much money...but I don't want to loose too much money:p
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It is better to lose "too much money" early on than to have a bunch of crummy crap out there with your name on it dogging you for the rest of your career

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Like JBS Toolmaker, everything after my first knife is/will be sold. The first knife is a "show and tell" model.
I understand that the great majority of knifemakers make a bunch of knives before selling. I don't have much knifemaking experience under my belt, but I've spent the majority of my life tinkering, woodworking, doing a tiny bit of gunsmithing, and other stuff. Having said that, I don't do my own heat treat (I use Peters) other than with some O1. If I did my own heat treat I'd be testing a bunch of knives before anything was sold. It also took over a week (excluding time spent away from me for heat treat) to make my first knife. I don't rush anything; I work on it slowly until I get it right and after that I'll develop speed.

You can take a week to make 9 practice knives and the 10th will be good enough quality to sell or you can take a week to make just one knife that is good enough to sell. Everybody's different.

I'll be buying a knifemaker's membership in the near future :)
Here's my first knife btw:
http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/s720x720/561062_10100772463708449_2139117327_n.jpg
 
cbr900son said:
Knifemaking is expensive and time consuming to really get to the point where you can do it for some serious income.
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This is the truth. I just got past the point of forging my knives in to finishing and sharpening and it's a lot more challenging and expensive than I could have ever imagined.
 
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