Lipstick on a pig

tryppyr

tryppyr

Joined
Feb 5, 2010
Messages
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Last night while cleaning up the raven blade a neighbor came over with a box in hand. A friend of his had bought a knife on eBay and wasn't happy with one or two aspects of the knife. He said the friend wanted the knife cleaned up so he could give it as a gift.

The knife was a large Bowie style, made of some oddball kind of damascus. It had a brass guard, and stag handles, with some mystery material between the antler and the brass. He said the guy paid $60 for it on eBay.

I told him it looked like an Indian or Pakistani product, made of mystery metals, and whipped together quickly with little attention to detail. He told me the guy just wanted the "burr" in the handle cleaned up. By that he meant that the tang had not been sanded down to the level of the antler, leaving a rough ridge (that was polished to a mirror shine).

I pointed out to him that the blade was already showing signs of rust, the mystery material in the handle was cracked in two places, the antler was poorly shaped, and the bevels on the blade were, in a word, pathetic.

He asked if I wanted to just fix the "burr" in the handle. I told him I didn't think I could stop at just that. If I was going to work on it at all, I'd try to clean up some of the other problems too. He said he'd explain that to his friend, but he expected his friend liked the knife as it was, apart from the "burr".

Frankly, I wasn't really put off by the notion of just fixing the handle, but I really didn't feel like investing the time for something that half-assed to begin with.

Was I wrong to turn the knife away? I want to be helpful to friends and neighbors, but for some reason I just didn't see the upside of putting lipstick on the pig.
 
Don't be so snooty, smooth out the handle for the guy. :D It might lead to him and his friend getting more interested in proper craftsmanship. I wouldn't go overboard and redo the whole thing though, I agree with you on that.
 
Don't consider it "lip stick" consider it Gravy...:D

I had an old finger hole skinner with rainbow dymondwood scales from that Frost company that I purchased when I was 14. I ground that thing down and ripped off the scales before I ever thought about making knives. Clean her up even the ugly girls want to go to prom!
 
Okay, I guess I was being a bit snobbish. And gravy (or BBQ sauce) does sound better than lipstick, for sure.
 
12345678910 said:
If you spend $60 of labour & supplies fixing a $60 make in Pak knife, it's still not worth $120
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That ^, and you have your reputation/name to think about as well. Who says this guy won't flaunt it as a blade you helped make (clean up, were involved in, whatever). I certainly don't want to be associated with made in Pak/China/etc knives.

On the other hand though, this could lead to some new business, as James and RyanW said...
 
12345678910 said:
If you spend $60 of labour & supplies fixing a $60 make in Pak knife, it's still not worth $60
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Fixed that for ya...

Jeepers guys, the fellow's asking him to grind the tang flush for a buddy, not put in a week's work and stamp his name on it. It's a two-minute job for pete's sake.
 
james terrio said:
Fixed that for ya...

Jeepers guys, the fellow's asking him to grind the tang flush for a buddy, not put in a week's work and stamp his name on it. It's a two-minute job for pete's sake.
Click to expand...

But Trypper does it all by hand right?

Grinding down a hardened tang by grinder or by hand are 2 different things.
 
I'd smooth out the handle for him, but I wouldn't do anything that took more than 10 minutes.

Who knows, you might be able to get him interested in quality knives.
 
In retrospect, it occurred to me to wonder if smoothing the handle would actually do any good. Consider that the original maker probably DID smooth the handle out when it was originally made... likely that the reason there is a hanging edge now is because the scales shrank. I'd be VERY surprised if the foreign maker cared enough to use seasoned materials for the handle. That shrinkage might also explain why the mystery material on the handle cracked in two places. Just a thought.
 
I'd tell him that I would clean up the handle after it stops shrinking. This would get him interested in what I mean. Then he can ask questions which will be answered, giving him much more knowledge than he started with, leading to more questions, which will lead to the realizion that he has bought a pos...Or he says whatever and goes somewhere else to get it fixed.

That is what I call a win-win.
 
He should send it back to maker for repair. Why reward them with sale of such shoddy products.
 
tedinatl said:
That ^, and you have your reputation/name to think about as well. Who says this guy won't flaunt it as a blade you helped make (clean up, were involved in, whatever). I certainly don't want to be associated with made in Pak/China/etc knives.

On the other hand though, this could lead to some new business, as James and RyanW said...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I completely agree. You'd be providing a SERVICE. Not a knife. If you can do a good job and make it look good, then that shows your talent/skill all the more. It's not your fault if the knife is crap steel or falls apart after he uses it once or twice. But if you can fix the handle, blade grinds, or whatever, then that's where the credit will likely go. Now, if you try to fix it and it still looks like crap, THEN you may be losing credibility. ;)

Eitherway, it's up to you whether or not you invest time, labor, or even a little money in it.
 
Like a few others I have in the past, got caught up in such problems. Once you start trying to make one correction you seem to fall into another. Will the handle shrink again when it is sent back out? Will the customer claim you did too much work on it and of course why was the charge so much? I feel it is best as you did to turn away poor work rather than try to rebuild it and create more problems. It always seem to take at least three times as much in time as well and of course a downer for me. The last one involved the sharpening of a new bought big knife. I was told "they never come sharp, you Know." It must have been made from soup cans it was so poor quality metal. I didn't charge him but that became the last of those sort of efforts. Frank
 
Lipstick, not an extreme makeover.

It's a $60 junker and a 2-minute clean-up! Good Lord, gentlemen, anyone stumbling across this thread would think we're re-inventing the wheel or something. :rolleyes:

Screw it Trypper, tell your neighbor to go to heck. Heaven forbid he should want a little touch-up on his friend's wall-hanger! Such a project might bring knifemaking as we know it to a screeching halt :D
 
I regularly tell people who bring me these turds that they are not worth the effort, usually they ask me to sharpen them, I tell them that the amount of labor involved will cost them an hour at my standard shop rate and it will likely be a waste of money because it still will not keep that edge, usually that charge is more than they just paid for the knife, every once in a while someone still decides to pay it. I will not modify a pakistani turd for love nor money.

-Page
 
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