Natural Progression

[tomcrx]

STR, I noticed that the majority of knives you mention that you carry are production folders.

I have noticed as have grown older that I have sold off my customs, Walker, Lightfoot, Crawford, Emerson etc and am now carrying slippies, SAKS and cheap framelocks, i.e. Kershaw Storm II, BM Monochrome etc. I find that I am tinkering, modifying and abusing them more. I probably spend as much on knives now as I did when I was buying customs, go figure.

I will still occasionally will buy a custom, examine it, compare it mentally to what has went before then sell it. Am I burning out?

 

[STR]

I buy customs but rarely since I can make my own to my specs if I really wanted to. However I do have several and do carry them. Being easily bored though I have to stick with what I can afford to entertain myself with so productions are the ticket.

STR

 

[STR]

And I doubt its burn out. Productions offer a lot of custom collaborations and variety as well as some pretty good consistancy from the big five, ie Kershaw, Kabar, Buck, Gerber, Taylor, and the smaller ones, ie Spyderco, BenchMade, Emerson, and the distributors like A.G. Russell and Cold Steel among others. A.G. is just now branching into some of his own by starting off his own production company to make knives in house so that will be rather exciting too.

These days its very hard to find a quality made custom folder for under $300 and many are much more expensive than this so its not burn out so much as it is the cost prohibitive to entertain yourself a lot with custom makers knives. Shoot some of the higher end productions can run more than that anymore though.

I have often thought to myself that one of the reasons so many folks contact someone like me to customize their production is because they want a custom but don't want to spend the money or can't so this is a good alternative giving them a custom level folder for much less money but not so much they are afraid to put it to work.

STR

 

[dalefuller]

Tomcrx & STR...

Interesting statement, tomcrx. I have actually thought about this quite a bit because I don't have any custom knives... by choice. I could afford them if they fit my criteria for what I want to acquire but they never have.

I think the reason they don't fit is that I view knives as tools and my interest is in tools that are well made, well designed for their intended function, and available to anyone who needs or wants them... in other words, higher end factory knives like Spyderco, Benchmade, Al-Mar, etc. or semi-production knives like CRK, Strider, William Henry, et al.

I play Martin and Yairi guitars for the same reason... they are well designed, fitted, and hand tested instruments, but they are machine cut and factory produced, so they are more readily and reasonably available to most people who really want one. Besides... nothing on earth sounds like a well played D-28 .

The reason I have some of my production knives modded is because they are so-o-o-o close to what I would design if I were designing that particular knife and they only need one or two more things to make them a perfect fit for me.

The only semiproduction type knives that I have ever been able to generate an interest in having are from a knifemaker in Berlin named Kevin Wilkins. He has an upcoming collaboration with Spyderco, IIRC. I'm interested in seeing how that turns out. I don't think I'm interested in the Leafstorm that they're working on, but he has a couple of other models that do "float my boat".

Sorry for the long ramble, but the original statement just caught my eye and I had .02 left over from my last paycheck .