How much extra do you charge for "rares"?

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HallHandmade

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I'm stuck on mobile right now so this will be shorter than my average. Anyone who works in high grade koa or ironwood knows that they are just about impossible to get right now.

In fact, at this point I'd probably have more luck getting my hands on yellow cedar burl than the grades of ironwood and koa that I require.

Anyways, what small amount I can find, requires hours and hours of searching per block. In reality, the blocks may seem expensive, but $75-100 is nothing for a single knife block when you've spent 4 hours of shop time looking for it.

For example, if I were to take one of my standard hidden tang hunters in my very best buckeye burl, I might get $300. If I were to use some of my 5a curly koa, I might be able to squeeze $450 out of the same knife, bur that only covers half the cost of finding the wood.

I been to every major koa supplier, and even if I tell them I'm willing to pay $1000/bf, once I show them pictures of what I'm looking for, they either don't reply, or say sorry they can't help me.

Unbelievably, good ironwood burl is worse than koa, which is already terrible by itself. You cant find that pretty much anywhere besides totally nutso prices on ebay.

Obviously nobody is going to share their secret connects here, but what do you do in this situation? The only two solutions I see are stop working in those woods, or charge outrageous prices, but then the knives won't sell at all.
 
Makes me think all the Really Good Stuff is being held back for BLADE....?
 
Well, ironwood has gotten really hot... a couple years ago it was all over the place, and now everyone wants it. Buyers go totally bananas for ironwood these days.

Keep in mind we aren't talking about bothering large suppliers with piddly purchases... I know of someone who offered a big ironwood supplier $3000 to fill a box for them, and basically got told to shove off... and they'd filled an almost identical order last year no problem.

Good koa has been a problem for years, but at least you could still buy it if you had the money... now the crazy good stuff is nowhere to be found, even for insane prices like $2000/bf.
 
I'm in New Mexico and I have dealt with Arizon Ironwood for a number of years...however the last purchase I made was for some large slabs well over a year ago...so I understand
what you are saying is that the actual small purchase for "Exotic" burl is gone?!!! That Sux
 
Call AZ ironwood and tell them you'd like to make a large order for ironwood burl... they might actually laugh at you. A year can be a lifetime as far as the fickle buyers go... next year there may be piles of ironwood burl laying around that nobody wants.

Edit: If you've been buying from them for a while, you may remember they used to have hundreds of blocks and scale sets on their site?

A few months ago, their site was essentially empty, and now you can find a few dozen mid-grade pieces listed here and there.

If you call, they'll just say "look on our site".

I know a material supplier who bough thousands worth from them, almost 400 premium scale sets and blocks, with no problem last year, they have been turned away a couple times in the last few months when trying to buy from them.
 
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I may just hit the desert in search of some old trees and dig up the root stock I know of a few isolated areas where they might be....:eek:;)

I figured as long as it was available and already sawn to clean it up what use would it be to hunt for it....I have hunted through an area where they cleared
a bunch of old Mesquite and only found a few big root balls with so so burl I think someone beat me to the big good root stock...:(
 
Beginning of 2014 Mark Farley of Burl Source had koa to die for. Maybe he saved some for you. :)
 
If someone wants something specific, ask them to buy it and have it shipped to you. They can search for days if they like. I offer what I have in stock, or make suggestions where to look for certain types of wood.
 
This time of year, a lot of the knife suppliers do start holding back good stuff for the Blade Show.


FWIW, I'm mostly an Ivory nut, buy very little wood, except ironwood. Last year at Blade, there was almost no decent ivory(especially compared to the previous year), but there was tons of great Ironwood. 3 or 4 suppliers had boxes and boxes of good to excellent grade scales.


You really need to see it in person IMHO to make a good valuation of the actual quality anyway.


All this is to say, that if you haven't been, or aren't yet going to the show, you should. Even if you're not there to sell. It's the best networking, resources, and time to be had as a knifemaker thus far. Only surpassed by the ICCE show in Sept I think. ;)
 
one Australian hardwood that is very similar in appearance to curly koa is ringed gidgee , this may be another option if your chasing high grade timber.

GidgeeRinged_zps3879d76b.jpg
 
It been hard to find a reliable source for anything good lately . When something good does finally show up its gone in a hour.
 
hang on to the good stuff until you can get $1000 + for the knife. I know several knifemakers that do just that. They would never put their best stuff on a knife only going for $450.

Sure if you put a super grade of wood it will help sell quickly for a few hundred but that is exhausting your resource for when you do need that high grade of wood on that $1500 blade.
 
Yes, Ringed Gidgee is a good alternative to Koa. They are both in the Acacia famiy and can have a similar look. There are still some pieces left at the Timber Joint in Oz. The prices are reasonable but shipping will be expensive.
 
Mark's products have apparently gotten very popular. A year or two ago you could regularly shop for stuff on his website, even the very exotic like the curly koa and Honduran rosewood burl. Now, it seems like when he posts ANY product at 9 or 10 at night Pacific time and sends out e-mail to customers,everything is gone by mid-morning Eastern time the next day.
ev13wt said:
Beginning of 2014 Mark Farley of Burl Source had koa to die for. Maybe he saved some for you. :)
Click to expand...
 
Buy Gidgee, shop Ebay, go to shows, or visit knife supply houses directly to hand pick your premium handle materials.

Otherwise, I can't offer much more help. I've noticed that the regular suppliers don't have detailed lots of some of the more desirable materials listed on their sites anymore.

After all, Ironwood is a protected species, and sambar stag hasn't been imported for years. Reasons like this make it understandable that it is hard tom obtain the better pieces of various handle materials.

Mike L.
 
Bob Merz was giving a folder class at Johnny Stout's hammer in last month and he said something that was so on-point. He said, "If you find something you like, buy the crap out of it because I guarantee you it wont be available for long". I'm still pretty new in knifemaking and I've already seen it many times over, the good stuff goes very quickly. I will mention specifically for Ian, networking goes a long way. I get out to knifemaker meetings, shows and whatever else, and it has paid off in some great connections. I also agree with Warren's take on this, they can choose from my stock or pick it out of a catalog or they can provide the material. I also try to make sure I charge what the material is worth on todays market, not what I paid for it a year ago.

Bob
 
John Katt said:
So I'm probably way off base here, which is normal, but would this piece of koa work for scales? ripped in half it would make 6-1/2" book mark scales $40 bucks plus free shipping

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hawaiian-KO...Domain_0&hash=item19fca565f1&autorefresh=true
Click to expand...

John, if you look close at that wood there doesn't seem to be much figure in that wood. As far as buying your wood and having it stabilized by K&G, that's always a good choice if you've got plenty of wood. Just a small piece of wood is usually pretty expensive to have stabilized, but if you've got 10 lb or so it becomes more reasonable priced.

Oh, here's a way to make a short link to ebay items: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111612880369?

See how I checked the link? You can also do a similar thing with Amazon links.

Ken H>
 
RangerBobTX said:
Bob Merz was giving a folder class at Johnny Stout's hammer in last month and he said something that was so on-point. He said, "If you find something you like, buy the crap out of it because I guarantee you it wont be available for long".
Click to expand...

That's wisdom, right there.
 
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