I'd avoid Horan knives.

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vHiv33

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I'd avoid Horan knives. I ordered and paid for a knife from him back in May of 2011. Six months later, I'm still waiting. He won't answer his phone, although he has responded to emails, but only to assure me that the knife will be finished and sent "next week." I've received three "next week" email responses so far. I'll keep the thread posted if he ever actually sends the knife.
 
vHiv33 said:
I'd avoid Horan knives. I ordered and paid for a knife from him back in May of 2011. Six months later, I'm still waiting. He won't answer his phone, although he has responded to emails, but only to assure me that the knife will be finished and sent "next week." I've received three "next week" email responses so far. I'll keep the thread posted if he ever actually sends the knife.
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Ignore that person. :rolleyes: Tim is still actively making and delivering knives. He's concentrating on orders for our Servicemen and woman first, though. The wait will be worth it for a Horan knife.
 
vHiv33 said:
I'd avoid Horan knives. I ordered and paid for a knife from him back in May of 2011. Six months later, I'm still waiting. He won't answer his phone, although he has responded to emails, but only to assure me that the knife will be finished and sent "next week." I've received three "next week" email responses so far. I'll keep the thread posted if he ever actually sends the knife.
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I see that this is your first post here. Welcome to BF.

You didn't say when he promised delivery. Without that information, how would anyone know if this was a problem by the knifemaker, or a problem by you? Six months is not a long time to wait for a custom knife. I have orders I placed in 2010 and which I will not see until 2012 (or later).

And I am not sure how you know that he "won't answer the phone" as opposed to just not being there when you have called, or even having changed his number (which I just did recently).

If you are going to call out someone like this, I think you should provide a complete set of information - certainly more than you provided here.
 
When someone takes your money, promises that they'll deliver the product within a week (over and over), and then fails to abide by that agreement for more than six months, other potential customers might want to know before deciding to lay out their hard earned money. As a basic issue of full disclosure, if Horan is going to concentrate on a certain set of people for orders, then he needs to make that clear before he asks for payment. For example, when I ordered a tomahawk from RMJ tomahawk, they gave me the courtesy of informing me of a backlog due to prioritizing products to servicemen. If that is Horan's policy, why didn't he bother to mention that in his emails instead of promising to send the knife "next week" over and over? Like most guys on these forums, I'm not made of money. Six months (and counting) between laying out several hundred dollars and receiving a knife is ridiculous.
 
thanks for the welcome. I appreciate it. If you'll read my post, I clearly stated that on three separate occasions he promised the knife would be delivered next week. I've ordered custom knives before and waited a year, but the knifemaker always stated up front to expect a wait. I ordered the knife in May. I asked for an update in June and received the first "you'll receive the knife next week" email. Two more such emails followed. Based on the communication, I'd consider that a knifemaker problem. As for "calling someone out" as you put it, what other information do you think I should have provided?
 
vHiv33 said:
As for "calling someone out" as you put it, what other information do you think I should have provided?
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Again, the information that is critical to me is what he promised when you placed the order and gave him your money. If he told you then it might take a year, then of course the subsequent optimistic e-mails that it would be completed sooner would be disappointing as a buyer, but if he told me at the outset it would take a year, then he has still not breached what he originally promised and what I should have expected when I made my commitment with the order. So I think that is important information I still haven't seen from you. If I have missed that, then I apologize.

And yes, when you post a thumbs down next to a maker's name and tell folks to avoid him, I refer to that as "calling him out." But maybe that is just a local colloquial expression.

BTW, I think I can speak from some experience on this.

I ordered a knife from another maker who has posted here - and paid him upfront like you did - where he told me up front when I sent him the money that the knife would be completed in about a month or so. Many months later he did not deliver my knife and stopped answering my e-mails. I asked for my money back . . . he would not reply. So I went to his web site and saw that he was still taking orders and promising quick deliveries. So I used a different one of my e-mail addresses and contacted him with that e-mail address about placing a new order with him. Just as I expected, he IMMEDIATELY responded to THAT message!! LOL! And again promised he could complete this new order in a month or so. Then I busted him and told him I was the same guy who already had an order from many months ago whose e-mails he was now ignoring, and I demanded that he immediately refund my money (which he did). If you search my posts here you can see that I posted all about this here at BF.

In contrast, there is another maker with whom I placed an order who told me up front that it would be about 18 months. About 10 months later I checked in with him just to see if his schedule had not changed, and he told me that he was grinding my blade in the next 4 weeks. Then I did not hear from the guy again for more than six months. So I checked back and he said that he had just ground my blade and it was off to heat treating. Now did this bother me? Not really, because even though he told me six months ago my blade was going to be ground then, I was still a couple of months under the 18 month timeframe he originally promised when I placed my order.

So I think that the commitment made at the time you placed the order is really critical here. JMO.
 
The Virginian,

You make a valid point, sir. I looked back at my original email chain to Horan Knives. When we discussed the timing of delivery, his words were: "I will get her built very shortly." I did pay him, and, looking back, I can fault myself for not getting an exact timeline, although I don't think most reasonable people would view six months as equivalent to "I will get her built very shortly." I sent emails requesting a status update at the one, three, and five month marks and received one to two line emails in response, usually an excuse, such as "the power was out," and a statement that the knife would ship the following week. If "I will get her built very shortly" is widely accepted as equivalent to "you may be waiting six months or longer" in the knife making world, then indeed this is a case of buyer error. In previous dealings with knifemakers, "shortly" usually has meant within six weeks, not six months. In the end, I will probably end up chalking this whole affair as an expensive "life lesson." I appreciate your comments and insights. Thank you.
 
I got ahold of Tim today and he's checking into this. Don't worry; Tim is a good dude and won't screw you over.
 
I would avoid Tim Horan Knives at all cost! I placed an order of several knives costing several thousand dollars for my charity. I would check in every few months waiting for my knives and I would get the same email many others on the forum received "I will ship them next week"! After 2 YEARS Tim finally completed the order (only because I constantly emailed him to get them done) and I have to say they are far below his normal standards! They are dull, lack luster, plane knives with NOTHING special about them at all!!! It is truly disappointing, normally I don't post negative things but when I am forced to wait two years on knives that were promised to arrive within a month of my ordering them people need to know how horrible his service is! If in the end he had delivered amazing knives I wouldn't be upset enough to post this but these have to be the worst knives I've seen a custom shop produce!
 
If there is anyone here that holds any kind of sway with Tim Horan please PM me. I'm having some of the same issues as the above people and I'm at a loss as to what to do next but I don't want to come on here to destroy Tim's reputation if I can avoid it. I still have all of the original conversations when I placed the order, to when he asked for the payment, to when I was headed back to Afghanistan and was promised to have my Horan custom on my hip when I went. I'm still waiting. I've been patient, but I'm fed up at this point and I need help.
 
No knifemaker has any business taking payment before the knife is ready to ship.

In my opinion, there isn't' a bigger red flag in this business.
 
Quick update. As of about a little over a month ago I received the knife that I had ordered, as well as an extra little apology gift as well. The blades are extremely well made and built like tanks. The WiSK is exactly as I had ordered, complete with a wicked looking hamon. The contours on the handle also make this substantial slab of W2 feel a lot lighter than it actually is. He also included a bonus knife in the form of one of his yakuza tantos that are pictured on his site. Also made out of the same W2 with hamon, only forged and chisel ground for right handed use. The cord wrapped handle is tightly done and it seems like it will hold up to some serious use. If anyone is interested in pics or has any questions, PM me.
In conclusion; If you're looking for a well built, hard use knife, look no further than Tim, but be ready to wait for it. I know that he had a long run of bad luck over the last year or so that made my wait even longer than he had anticipated, but in the end they were well worth the money.
 
As a buyer, unless you set the precadent of obtaining information and contact with the maker you are at fault in my opinion. The makers do not come to you asking you for your business, you go to them not knowing what is going on on their end granted if they are overloaded they should identify that to you or not take on more orders. "I will get her built very shortly" at 6 months may be short dependant on the maker. As already stated by another poster, there are makers backed up several years for customs.

You need to get in writing time lines of delivery, expectations of communication and lastly never pay for a knife fully up front unless you are asking for something so personalized that the maker would not be able to sell it elsewhere.

As a rule of thumb for myself, if the knife is fairly standard in the materials listing, I only pay out around 25% upfront.

Hope Horan works things out for his customers, he makes an excellent product and it would be a shame to tarnish his name with poor communication.
 
kevin1234 said:
Horan isn't focussing on anything but how he can rip more people off!
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Here's his phone number, Kevin: (847)400-6756

I didn't have any trouble calling him a bit ago to let him know you had joined today just so you could trash him......man-up and call him, instead of running around here whining like a little girl. :rolleyes:
 
Dawkind said:
Here's his phone number, Kevin: (847)400-6756

I didn't have any trouble calling him a bit ago to let him know you had joined today just so you could trash him......man-up and call him, instead of running around here whining like a little girl. :rolleyes:
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Ditto to that.
 
Does anyone have a different email for Tim? I am trying to get in touch with him about purchasing one of his knives. I have sent 5 or 6 emails to him requesting info but have failed to receive a reply. I started sending these about mid october.
 
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