One Piece of Advice...

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SecondGenSmith

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Jul 10, 2015
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If you had could only share one piece of wisdom to a budding bladesmith drawing on your experience as a knife maker/advice you were given that helped you, what would it be?

Subsequently, how do you cope with discouraging times and hiccups (blade breaks, stress fractures, etc.)?

I figured this would be a great way to consolidate volumes worth of advice into a single thread. Thanks for your help!
 
Dealing with issues is essentially all there is to knife making. Not a solitary knife comes out of my shop without hassling me. I deal with it by knowing that I've learned something. The best piece of advice I can give is to relax when trouble starts brewing and take a breather. Think about the issue and reflect on solutions. Hasty decisions usually have bad outcomes.

Also, thin is in and sleek is neat.
 
Go slow. Never get in a hurry. George Herron gave me this bit of advice. " Buy the best belts you can get , use them like they are free"
Overheating an almost finished blade is a heart breaker.
 
sharpeknives said:
Go slow. Never get in a hurry. George Herron gave me this bit of advice. " Buy the best belts you can get , use them like they are free"
Overheating an almost finished blade is a heart breaker.
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Ive heard that before haha, "use belts like theyre free" At first I thought it was crazy to even think that but using fresh belts not only makes things easier, but makes things look so much better.
 
I don't have that much experience but I believe in - buy the best equipment you can afford, particularly if knife making is going to be your livelihood.
 
My one piece of advice...NEVER sacrifice safety for expedience.

As for dealing with the heartache of ultimate FAILURE... my only piece of advice is MAN UP! :D Hey, we all fail. Cope!
 
One of the gentlemen here has in his signature when he posts, "Accuracy beats speed", or something like that. In other words, slow down, make the knife perfect. Don't get in a rush to cut corners.
 
Think about it....every time you made a mistake (or had a shop accident) there was an instant, immediatly before, in wich you knew shit was going to happen! Don't let it happens....and do always a better knife ;)
 
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." — Ira Glass
 
Don't do precision work when you're tired. It's ok to hand sand late, apply handle finish late, etc, but keep the power tools turned off. If you pay attention to yourself, you can start to tell when you're slipping. Stop doing dangerous or important stuff at that point, not after.

You said one, but here's another... Just do it. Don't wait till you have all the right equipment, or till you can make it "just right," or till you have orders, or till you have a shop built, or whatever. Use what you have, make knives, and try to make every one better than the last one. The equipment and quality will come with experience, and you have to "do it" to have the experience.
 
I'd have to say the eyes are about the most important thing, take care of em, of course, but if you wear glasses, put em on. Put on some stronger ones. If you don't wear glasses, put on some magnifiers and really take a look at your work. Look at the file marks, the uneven parts, the scratches you didn't quite sand out.
And just look at a lot of knives and soak in what other people have done. Sure you'll do some imitating, and that's one of the best learning experiences, but it all adds up to your own style over time. The more you look, the bigger library of ideas you have to draw on.
 
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A little more I have on this topic. When I first started I would freak out over a knife warping or something common like that. After making them for a while these beginner issues seem to work their way into your schedule and you deal with them easily. I know how thin I can take a blade before it will warp and I also know when to expect it and how to fix it. It becomes second nature. I just kept fighting it until I figured out a reliable process that turns good results. As for stress fractures or cracks, the. Just bum you out. I lay all my failures on the same wooden stump in my forging shop so I can be reminded of what not to do. I think the best advice is to just make knives, try something different when you get bored. I'll knock out 3 or 4 chef knives and then go kick on the forge and forge a cleaver. It changed everything up and helps broaden your skill sets.
 
12345678910 said:
Funny you should ask, I've been thinking about that for a while and I've got just the thing.



http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...about-getting-started?p=14967090#post14967090
Click to expand...

Phew, that's quite a lot of information to sift through, but I suspect it's all quality, helpful material! Thanks for the advice everyone! It's definitely humbling to see so many with experience willing to help a newbie.

In everyone's opinion, would it be worth just trying to forge a beginner knife out of a random piece of steel or should I try to look for quality steel and just start there?
 
Build in such a way that any single piece of a knife that's a failure, doesn't ruin the knife. Don't hesitate to remake a part if it's not right.


It took me years to get over the "can't stand to start over" syndrome. I'm a perfectionist to a fault. Once I started making pocket knives I had to get over that shit. If any single piece isn't right, I'll make it over, or a third, and so on. I've had numerous pieces where I'd ruin a blade on a knife with finished body, with incredible ivory scales, where I'd simply have to make a new blade and fit it to the existing body. With a slipjoint, this isn't always easy, but you can't hesitate, just do it.


I can't recall the last complete "failure" I had, because I'll remake any component if I have to, until it's right.
 
To kind of answer both questions at once: Learn from every mistake.

It's not really a mistake if it becomes a lesson.

To put it a slightly different way, make every knife better than the last. IOW, no knife is perfect. Find the imperfections and improve on at least one of them on the next knife.
 
SecondGenSmith said:
Phew, that's quite a lot of information to sift through, but I suspect it's all quality, helpful material! Thanks for the advice everyone! It's definitely humbling to see so many with experience willing to help a newbie.

In everyone's opinion, would it be worth just trying to forge a beginner knife out of a random piece of steel or should I try to look for quality steel and just start there?
Click to expand...

It's much better to use a specific steel so you know how to exactly heat treat it. You can get 1084 or 1095 pretty cheap from Aldo or Jantz. An 18" piece of 1095 from Jantz is like $7. 1084 from Aldo is even cheaper, but you have to buy a longer piece (48")
 
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