Heh, I started making knives last millennia! I started back in the late 90's and early 2000's with making knives. SOOOO much has changed! Information is readily available (not all of it is good though!), material is readily available and new material (G10 in colors, carbon fiber materials, acrylics, new blade steels, etc). Back then, people made their own designs and most were quality. People who were dabbling in the field didn't think they were the experts and people worked pretty hard to learn the craft. Lots of hand finishing and people who were doing it generally knew what they were doing and could show people that quality. There was some info starting to get on the web, but it was slow going. Being able to use an online forum to talk to knife makers about stuff versus just reading about it in a book was a game changer for me!
Nowadays, what I see a LOT of is people who call themselves "knifemakers", but don't really know the information on a personal level. They got into it due to Forged in Fire, and are playing around with it. They can google something and spit it out, but don't really understand it. Unfortunately, Google isn't always right, either! I see so many people who have a business declared, t shirts, stickers, a website (often A.I/Chat GPT created), offer their opinions on processes, steel, etc, but have only made a handful of knives, or whose knives look like round 2 knives from FiF! I see people using fancy materials, but with subpar grinds and workmanship. It may look pretty, but not very functional!
Most of the people I see, their product is not that great. Fit and finish is rough, burn marks around pin holes, uneven wonky bevels, thick edges, deep scratches left on a buffed blade, sharp corners on the handle, poor quality heat treating, etc. Others start out and put out a good product, but the website is wonky with A.I and comes across as a spam site and the information isn't accurate, which hurts their credibility. I have seen people giving out bad info online a lot on social media lately that make beautiful knives, but don't know the how or why behind them! Or I see the people who import the knives or blanks from overseas and sell them as their own that are really subpar quality all around. You know the ones when you see them!
Many makers are getting away from actual custom work and focus on "drops" where they make a batch of a knife and post them and let people buy them up instead of doing full customs for a particular person. Other makers are focuing on higher end pieces that are more intricate, beautiful and fancy. So I see the custom knife area expanding into more areas, such as art knives, mid techs, 1 of's etc and having more of a variety around and different niche's to explore! Technology is making fancier knives easier to make and with more precision, so I am interested to see what the next 25 years will bring!
