In the beginning of this year, sometime before mid-February (I don't have email records of this trade older than this)I listed my first trade on Bladeforums. This trade was not a happy one. In fact, though every other deal I've done on this board has been pleasant as can be, this deal has come back to **** me over in some small way or another probably twelve or thirteen times since I answered that damn email from Alan Folts.
I had listed a nearly-new Mini-disc player that was just collecting dust in the cupboard with my cameras for trade on the gadget forum and a Spyderco Police in Stainless on the knife forum. One of the people to respond was Alan, who offered me what I thought was a pretty sweet deal - a custom knife, made by him, a William Henry Lancet and some cash to cover the deficit.
I sent off my stuff and waited for a while. A longish while. So long, in fact, that I sent Alan two or three emails, about one a week to find out how my custom (hardly a custom, by the way - I didn't know that a handmade knife that a maker had lying around didn't fit the definition of "custom knife") and such was coming.
About a month after we'd initiated this deal, the package gets to my house and I open it up. Well, the lancet was in there (but more on that as we get closer in the story to the present), and it looked beautiful. NIB as promised, I thought. The custom, though...I may have been a knife newbie, but I am not and never have been a complete goddam' idiot. It had a bias of about eleven degrees to the right - the blade bent away from the handle sideways, is what I mean in case there's any confusion - and there were huge scratches all up and down the blade.
I wasn't terribly happy with this, as you can imagine. I sent off an email to Alan, who insisted that the blade was fine when it left his workshop. Now, having hung around here a bit and seen this story play out a few times, I'm realizing that he actually intended to screw me in the deal, figuring I was some kind of pissant young'n who wouldn't know the difference. In any case, Alan agreed to take another look at the knife, which I sent back to him. I waited for a response for a while, emailed, got insistance that it hadn't shown up. I was in the wrong here. I'd forgotten to pay for the package at the Mailboxes Etc in my haste to get to class.
It arrived, he mailed me back and said he was sorry, the scratches and the bias must have happened when he was fitting the kydex. I know that kydex does scratch blades, and I was half-aware of it then, but I still don't know how fitting a kydex sheath to a short, strong hunk of metal can bend it like that. If it's possible, fine. Strike this portion of my argument.
Alan sent in return for that blade a small kiridashi and a small dagger by way of apology. It might have been better appreciated if he hadn't taken two months making them - and before you protest, I saw the blades for them before the two months elapsed, and I save my emails until long after the deal is concluded. I still have the kiridashi, and I like it very much. Of all of the pieces I came out of this affair with, it's the only one that doesn't seem somehow tainted with bad karma. The dagger, interestingly enough, snapped at the tip under questionable circumstances. I put it in a block of wood, picked up the small block of wood and pulled straight out. Tip stayed in. I'm aware that this occasionally happens. In this case it was just icing on the cake.
Fast forward to today. I was going over the specifications on the "NIB William Henry Lancet" on William Henry's web site in preparation for offering it as a trade item for something else. I looked up the model number on the box - T12-CF. Funny, I thought. That doesn't LOOK like my knife. I clicked through a few pages and found that, wonder of wonders, T10 -CF is the model number for the William Henry Lancet. The box I had was for a different knife, a larger one (golly, that must be why the knife was padded in the box so well!). Great. Now I can't offer it NIB, I have to retract the email I just sent out.
First, though, I'm gonna make sure everyone knows the death of a thousand cuts that is a deal with Alan Folts. You don't lie outright, mister. You tell lots of little half-truths. That doesn't change the sacrifice of your personal honor inherent in repeatedly screwing a self-confessed knife newbie in what is for him a fairly major and expensive deal. I'm sure you've dealt honestly and honorably with many forumites, and I'm willing to bet that it was because you knew you couldn't get away with half-assing it. I'm also sure you don't even make the effort when you don't think it'll get noticed.
I sent twelve emails between the end of January and the beginning of March. Twelve. That doesn't count the ones that I don't have saved as a record of the beginnng of the deal. The only time I've ever sent twelve emails during a deal since then has been back-and-forthing with Lanny Shay, and that was because I genuinely like talking to him and I can rely on him to respond to the damn things. Folts, I'm calling you out. As far as I'm concerned, you're a shabby person, no-one I'd want to have in the lifeboat when the ship went down. Tell your side of the story or let this stand.
Edited to add:
I've cooled off a bit from my initial frustration, and I have to say, I don't think Alan is an inherently dishonorable man. But I think he took the lazy way out in this particular deal. As I said above, I'm sure he has done many honorable deals - knifemakers don't stay in business long if they don't. I think this deal was a unique combination of bad circumstances and taking the easy way out, and while I was and am frustrated as hell, I retract all of the name-calling. I think there were questionable actions performed, I don't think Alan Folts is a questionable person. I'm doing the edit here because I don't believe in editing posts for content after the fact.
I had listed a nearly-new Mini-disc player that was just collecting dust in the cupboard with my cameras for trade on the gadget forum and a Spyderco Police in Stainless on the knife forum. One of the people to respond was Alan, who offered me what I thought was a pretty sweet deal - a custom knife, made by him, a William Henry Lancet and some cash to cover the deficit.
I sent off my stuff and waited for a while. A longish while. So long, in fact, that I sent Alan two or three emails, about one a week to find out how my custom (hardly a custom, by the way - I didn't know that a handmade knife that a maker had lying around didn't fit the definition of "custom knife") and such was coming.
About a month after we'd initiated this deal, the package gets to my house and I open it up. Well, the lancet was in there (but more on that as we get closer in the story to the present), and it looked beautiful. NIB as promised, I thought. The custom, though...I may have been a knife newbie, but I am not and never have been a complete goddam' idiot. It had a bias of about eleven degrees to the right - the blade bent away from the handle sideways, is what I mean in case there's any confusion - and there were huge scratches all up and down the blade.
I wasn't terribly happy with this, as you can imagine. I sent off an email to Alan, who insisted that the blade was fine when it left his workshop. Now, having hung around here a bit and seen this story play out a few times, I'm realizing that he actually intended to screw me in the deal, figuring I was some kind of pissant young'n who wouldn't know the difference. In any case, Alan agreed to take another look at the knife, which I sent back to him. I waited for a response for a while, emailed, got insistance that it hadn't shown up. I was in the wrong here. I'd forgotten to pay for the package at the Mailboxes Etc in my haste to get to class.
It arrived, he mailed me back and said he was sorry, the scratches and the bias must have happened when he was fitting the kydex. I know that kydex does scratch blades, and I was half-aware of it then, but I still don't know how fitting a kydex sheath to a short, strong hunk of metal can bend it like that. If it's possible, fine. Strike this portion of my argument.
Alan sent in return for that blade a small kiridashi and a small dagger by way of apology. It might have been better appreciated if he hadn't taken two months making them - and before you protest, I saw the blades for them before the two months elapsed, and I save my emails until long after the deal is concluded. I still have the kiridashi, and I like it very much. Of all of the pieces I came out of this affair with, it's the only one that doesn't seem somehow tainted with bad karma. The dagger, interestingly enough, snapped at the tip under questionable circumstances. I put it in a block of wood, picked up the small block of wood and pulled straight out. Tip stayed in. I'm aware that this occasionally happens. In this case it was just icing on the cake.
Fast forward to today. I was going over the specifications on the "NIB William Henry Lancet" on William Henry's web site in preparation for offering it as a trade item for something else. I looked up the model number on the box - T12-CF. Funny, I thought. That doesn't LOOK like my knife. I clicked through a few pages and found that, wonder of wonders, T10 -CF is the model number for the William Henry Lancet. The box I had was for a different knife, a larger one (golly, that must be why the knife was padded in the box so well!). Great. Now I can't offer it NIB, I have to retract the email I just sent out.
First, though, I'm gonna make sure everyone knows the death of a thousand cuts that is a deal with Alan Folts. You don't lie outright, mister. You tell lots of little half-truths. That doesn't change the sacrifice of your personal honor inherent in repeatedly screwing a self-confessed knife newbie in what is for him a fairly major and expensive deal. I'm sure you've dealt honestly and honorably with many forumites, and I'm willing to bet that it was because you knew you couldn't get away with half-assing it. I'm also sure you don't even make the effort when you don't think it'll get noticed.
I sent twelve emails between the end of January and the beginning of March. Twelve. That doesn't count the ones that I don't have saved as a record of the beginnng of the deal. The only time I've ever sent twelve emails during a deal since then has been back-and-forthing with Lanny Shay, and that was because I genuinely like talking to him and I can rely on him to respond to the damn things. Folts, I'm calling you out. As far as I'm concerned, you're a shabby person, no-one I'd want to have in the lifeboat when the ship went down. Tell your side of the story or let this stand.
Edited to add:
I've cooled off a bit from my initial frustration, and I have to say, I don't think Alan is an inherently dishonorable man. But I think he took the lazy way out in this particular deal. As I said above, I'm sure he has done many honorable deals - knifemakers don't stay in business long if they don't. I think this deal was a unique combination of bad circumstances and taking the easy way out, and while I was and am frustrated as hell, I retract all of the name-calling. I think there were questionable actions performed, I don't think Alan Folts is a questionable person. I'm doing the edit here because I don't believe in editing posts for content after the fact.
