"Newbie" status???

[NickWheeler]

So with all this talk about this... just where do you draw the line as to this guy is a newbie and that guy is not?

When I read these threads I'm reminded of something my family always told me. There's a difference between being experienced, and being accomplished. You can do something for 30 years and be experienced...but if you did it poorly for 30 years, it doesn't mean much.

I had a guy come to my shop a few years back bragging that he'd been making knives for 20 years. Guess what! His knives sucked. The grinds were horrendous...nothing about them was even, or crisp, or refined. The guard fit had gaps, the handle was just full of weird gaps and problems. I'd have been embarrassed to admit I'd been doing it that long and still not have anything figured out. But he thought his 20 years doing it gave him all sorts of credit.

If you asked me, he was experienced, but not accomplished.

So where would he fit into all of this? Wouldn't he look like a tool coming in here telling "newbies" how to do stuff?

Is there a newbie officiator that gets to tell me, or you, or Billy Bob when we no longer should feel like we're still working towards being accomplished... and then we're just improving on proven quality?

There are some guys here with an attitude much like that guy that came to my shop.

Then there are guys like Robert Dark that make a knife that's clean as a whistle with real nice lines and he's as humble as they come.


Funny how the world works.... isn't it?

So how does it work here? Does newbie just mean you ask dumb questions? If that's the case, I'm gonna have that status FOREVER!

 

[Keith_H]

Maybe you are not a newbie when you have more answers than questions?
er... I actually have no idea...

 

[James_Terrio]

Nick, my name is James and I'm a newbie

I've worked with guys like that fellow you described... one year of experience, 10 or 20 times over. They're not much fun.

It's a pretty subjective deal. I remember stumbling across a thread about what is/isn't sole authorship and it made my head spin.

But I definitely know I'm a newbie and maybe that's all I should worry about.

 

[atakach]

Personally, from my stand point, I feel I fit the criteria for a "newbie" as you call it. Considering I have alot less then most, when it comes to experience.

I see alot of threads on here I have absolutley no interest in, or they dont pertain to my way of making knives.But there are alot of threads that I find are just full of excellent info, and I try and grasp as much as possible from them, so when I go to my shop, I can try and apply them, as I feel "hands on" is where we gain experience....right?

If when I try something new, and after the 2nd or 3rd time it is still working out for me then I feel I have accomplished that task, as well as aquired some new knowledge about a particular aspect of the trade, thus making me a hair more experienced.

But since I'm me, and things seldom go my way, I am limited in the accomplishment department, and am still working on the hands on experience dept.

I guess to sum it all up Im a newbie!! LONG LIVE THE NEWBIES!!!

andrew

p.s., as far as dumb questions go, I believe I do a fair job of that as well, I got to place an order with Kelly Cupples today, .....very nice fella, and awful patient, as Im pretty sure I gave him more than an ear full of , no so much dumb questions, but more open ended statements, hoping for an educated response, and he did a real good job of helping me out. So:thumbup: to Kelly

 

[NickWheeler]

Just for the record... I also am one of those that dislikes the term "newbie," "noob," "FNG"

Oh wait... FNG I don't mind

Just wanted to add that two cents

 

[James_Terrio]

You sure are picky

 

[Jason Magruder]

When I first started I heard over and over again that if you hadn't been making knives ten years then you were still new. That was about ten years ago now. Hot damn! I'm not a new guy anymore

I think a newbie is anyone who realizes that they have more to learn. I've been banging out blades for ten years now but I still SUCK at some things and haven't had time to learn others. I am a newbie. I help out when I can but I still have questions of my own every now and then. Sometimes even really stupid ones that are obvious to just about everyone else.


I've known guys like the one that came to your shop before. I hope I'm not one of them. Honest self assessment is a pretty tough thing to do.


There are three levels to learning.
The first is when you are just beginning and you know that you don't know anything.
The second is when you think you know it all.
And the third is knowing that you don't know it all.

Some people get stuck on the second level and stay there.




If a guy that's been a stock removal maker for 20 years builds a forge and tries to forge weld with no flux at a dull red heat is he a newbie?

 

[NickWheeler]

It comes with being left handed James! You should know that buddy!

Just for the record... I'd consider myself somebody with a fair amount of theoretical knowledge... which is worthless without application. I've got some application... but YEARS more of it before I'll feel anywhere near accomplished.

There is NOTHING I do in my shop that I don't wish I could do better, faster, bigger, etc.

I guess I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[atakach]

OHHHHH, you are a Lefty Nick.....man that explains so so much!!!

 

[James_Terrio]

So am I. You got a problem with that?

 

[Jason Magruder]

It comes with being left handed James! You should know that buddy!

Just for the record... I'd consider myself somebody with a fair amount of theoretical knowledge... which is worthless without application. I've got some application... but YEARS more of it before I'll feel anywhere near accomplished.

There is NOTHING I do in my shop that I don't wish I could do better, faster, bigger, etc.

I guess I'm just thinking out loud.

I'm right there with you Nick except in my case swap a fair amount for a small amount.


IF there was a special place for newbies to ask questions who would answer? The same new guys who haven't finished their first knife?

To me that is what shoptalk is all about. Most of the more accomplished makers don't come here just to learn or get their ego stroked. They are here to teach the next generation. If all the new and potential knife makers are sent off to play by themselves what is this place here for?



I try to help as many new guys as I can because I feel I owe it to the knife community as a whole to teach anyone that I can what I have learned. The whole knife community and especially the veterans on this forum helped me to grow from a cocky little bastard of a teenager into the man I am today. I would be doing them a disservice if I didn't pass on what was given to me.





Save the Noobs.

 

[Jason Magruder]

Damned lefties.

Hey Nick, that knife that you really really want to make for me will be right hand friendly right? Cuz' my left hand is stupid.

 

[JTknives]

There are three levels to learning.
The first is when you are just beginning and you know that you don't know anything.
The second is when you think you know it all.
And the third is knowing that you don't know it all.

I would have to say I'm in the third stage in that the more i know the more that i realize i don't know.

It is a hard question to answer but i think just because me or another maker still has questions does not make them still a newbie. if we turn to Wikipedia for the answer, it says, and i quote

Newbie is a slang term for a newcomer to online gaming or an Internet activity. It can also be used for any other activity in whose context a somewhat clueless newcomer could exist. It can have derogatory connotations, but is also often used for descriptive purposes only, without a value judgment.

Lets face it we will never know it all but that does not make us "somewhat clueless". I think once you get the basics down and can make a clean and good looking knife you are out of the newbie classification. when i say clean i mean the fit and finish is spot on and has nice lines. I think time has something to do with it also but its near impossible to nail it down as some people are faster learners then others. I think when making a basic clean knife is second nature to you then your out of the newbie classification. Like when i started hallow grinding i was so stressed out about grinding the edge bevels that i was so worried about messing up the knife. Now i don't even think twice about it, it just feels natural and there is no stress and i enjoy it. Also another thing that might tell if you have passed the newbie stage is how you feel about testing your knives. All i can think about when i make a knife for fun is doing a destructive test to see what i can learn or how much it can take. makers new to knife making would have a very hard time wanting to destroy a knife that thy made. I don't know, i find it very fun, maybe I'm just weird . well off to bed to ponder Damascus patterns while i doze off .

 

[Jason Magruder]

Hah! I fall flat on my face when it comes to communicating in writing

I agree with you completely Jarod. What I was trying to point out with my post was that to continue to learn and evolve you have to step outside of your comfort zone and look to new things that you may have NO experience with at all. Like a veteran stock removal maker with his first forge. Or like Nick Wheeler making me a folder. You know you want to Nick


I remember when Michael Kanter joined the forums I was sooo jealous of him. The guy had so much natural talent it was sickening. His FIRST knife was better than I could do after a couple of YEARS! Ultimately it was guys like him and Nick and whole host of others here that pushed me to step it up and expand my personal limits.


I should change the three levels to
You don't have a clue and you know it.
You know what you are doing right but can't see what you are doing wrong.
You know what you are doing right AND where you need to learn more.


In all my defense of newbies though it irritates me to no end when people can't be bothered to spell properly or use punctuation. You don't even have to use the right punctuation. I don't half the time But at least try to make sense.

 

[ddavelarsen]

Jason I know where you're coming from on the grammar/spelling thing! But really, blame schools as much as the writers. Yes, a person can learn to write well without a school pushing him, but schools really do not insist (like they used to) on good grammar and spelling. It does make stuff hard to parse when people don't use punctuation!

Newbies. Hm, when I read the Wikipedia entry, that's pretty much how I'd have tried to sum it up. Clueless and open to learning. You guys who consider someone still learning a newbie, and yourselves newbies, aren't so, in my book. I'm not. Crimeny, I have more to learn that anyone here but I am not a newbie. I've stepped on my whanger enough around here to have earned my bars, and I'm keeping them. That doesn't mean I know spit though. If I was going to define "newbie" for the purposes of this forum, I'd say something like that's someone who's made fewer than three knives. If someone can complete three knives, they're committed and no longer a "newbie." That's not to say they're going to make 300 knives; they may stop at five. But they're not a newbie when they stop. In my book.

I like Nick's example of experience vs accomplishment. That's so true, and I guess we all know people with lots of experience and no discrimination. That can apply to all kinds of stuff! I know a maker whose work - even his best work - is not very good (by my standards). Yet he sells a lot of knives and I think it's because he has so much 'confidence' in his work. I'm the other way: I can see every little flaw and find them all an embarrassment. Well, I take that back; there probably are many things I'm doing wrong that I do not recognize at my skill level. Certainly it's true that the more you learn the less you know you know. I have a hard time really standing up beside my work and being proud of it. I'm just not skilled enough. Probably that's a personality trait and I'll never be skilled enough! So as long as I keep getting better, I'll feel like I'm doing my best and that's what's most important to me. I don't think that makes me a newbie or inexperienced. But I don't know what it does make me. Just a maker, I guess.

 

[Jason Magruder]

Dave, if you saw my first three knives you might change your definition


I sure as hell didn't learn to write, spell, and use the right punctuation in school. I decided to figure it out so I wouldn't look like an idiot when I posted here. Let me know when I get it will ya.


Is it twenty years experience or one year experience twenty times?

As far as what a newbie is in terms of knifemaking ability thats a hard one to pin down. As shown by my example above and the guy Nick pointed out, you can't really go by number of knives made.

A picture is worth a thousand words. How about this: If a crappy picture of one of your knives has nothing obviously wrong with it and appears to have halfway decent fit and finish then you're not a newbie. If a person can point out obvious flaws from a low res photo online then you need to

 

[PIndelicato]

I call myself a newbie because I'm still at that stage where nearly every part of knife making is challenging to me and I have a lot more that I don't know than I do know. I suppose I might soon graduate myself to 'beginner' when some steps start to become faster/easier/more natural, etc.

My signature says 'newbie' because I don't want anyone new to the site to see my KnifeMaker status and assume a level of experience or expertise beyond what is reality (when I first came here, I incorrectly assumed that anyone with that label was a pro with vast experience and accomplishments.) When I offer advice, I want there to be context for the person to receive it.

 

[panch0]

I am as green as they come. I have more questions than answers, but getting a hang of it and getting better. At least I think so. So please, if I ask to many dumb questions just say STFUNB! And I will not feel bad at all.

P.s. Can you make a zombie killer sword out of a lawnmower blade.

 

[James_Terrio]

How do you change your title? Y'know, maybe where mine says knifemaker it should say apprentice or something...

 

[Will Leavitt]

I'm a newbie... I just happen to have made enough knives to know I don't know much

There are people that have 1 year of experience repeated 20 years, there are people whose knowledge grows every day, there are people that fall in between. If you're honest YOU know where you fall on the scale, if you AREN'T honest, people will find you out.