SWEET Hidden Tang Damascus Mammoth w/ Colored Mosaic Pommel...What should I charge?

I wish you luck in selling your knives. I know that your choice of materials and shapes confuse me. The handle treatment looks a lot like a chef's knife but clunkier, it may be confortable but then again probably not for me.

But what the heck, this is the internet and for every 100 of us going "huh?" there's probably at least 1 person that is in love with what you're doing.
 
Because you appear to want advise, I'll offer some more.

You are a smart 23 year old with a family and a hefty mortgage.
You have three degrees and are working on another.
You have just left the Military.
You are very eager,smart, and talented.


With these factors you need to sit down quietly and think over the path that you need to follow in your careers.

Knifemaking is going to be a hobby....plain and simple. Some make money at it, but only by making dozens of high end, or hundreds of utilitarian knives a year.
You plan on working on a ministry career - great - but you must learn direction for that,too.

If you have expendable funds, and are just playing around with making knives, then no advise or plan is needed. If ,however, you plan on paying any of that mortgage with any knife profits....you need a practical plan.....and some basic knife-work experience.

Making caterpillar knives may be fun, and one might even win an award in the art knife division of a local club show. But if you plan on running with the big boys out there you will starve. Get some copies of the books,"Knives" 2009,2008,2007,etc ( they issue one every year. You will see many of the names you find on this forum in it. If you go to a big show, like Blade next June, you will see and meet the best knifemakers in the world. You will discover by then that your caterpillar knife is cute, and you like it, but it is a can opener compared to Steve Olszewski's art knives. You will also see that the vast majority of knives actually sold are user type knives - Bowies, hunters, kitchen, EDC,etc.

Now, just like in university post grad studies , you will need to understand the basics of the field before you move on to the advances work. Knife making is both a science (sorry Tai Goo, I had to use the word here) and an art. The science makes the art work. The art makes the science beautiful. The basics of all this is in a blend of form and function. Just looking "neat" won't sell a knife. It has to be "neat" for a reason. Learn to make good practical knives. Learn to make them with reliable and repeatable results. I often have a smith who wants to show me how well he/she is doing make a knife. When they have finished it, I have them make the same knife again. They rarely look the same. I point out that they need to get the ability to repeat the same knife and have it come out looking like its partner. Good skills, planning, and practice are the way to do this (mostly the practice part).

For some practical critique on what you have posted so far:

Straighten out the handles. A thumb depression or a single finger groove is not uncommon,but those twisty handles will never work.

Start with plain steel and learn on it. Buying damascus may be fun, but it is an unprofitable way to get started.

Ebay is not the place most knifemakers get their quality supplies (but deals can be found on some things). Dyed mammoth is how sellers get rid of poor grade material. Alabama damascus (I know Brad, the maker, personally) is fun to play with, and cheap, but not necessarily what you want to offer as a quality blade material on knives you are selling as "custom". Buying blades and adding handles does not qualify as "Custom" to most buyers and collectors.

Quit mixing the entire pantry in the cake. One handle material, one guard material, one simple blade......that is how you start. Then as you perfect that, add a bolster, or a butt cap,or an inlay.....but not all techniques and materials on one knife! Also, if you want it to sell, natural materials are more desirable to the bulk of buyers.

Make a blade....an entire finished blade....shape it, sand it, do the HT (yourself or send it out) ,and finish it fully all except the final sharpening....... THEN make the handle. You can't properly fit a guard or handle until the blade and tang are finished.

If you seriously want to enter the knife business, form a plan to sell knives. That starts with a plan on how you will make knifes, how many you can make in a year,how many you can actually sell in a year, and how much you can profit from those sales. The end of many knife business ideas is when the maker sits down with pen and paper (turn the computer off for planning) and realizes that if they make two finished knives a week and sell them for $100 each, with a 50% profit ( and that is a big profit on the bottom line) they would make $5,200 a year......check the math again.....yep $5,200 a year. So I could make twenty knives a week ,lets see..that's about three knives a day (with Sunday off ), with no time off for classes, vacation, getting sick of hurt,etc.....no wait, it takes me about ten to fifteen hours to finish a knife...that won't work....I KNOW, to earn $52,000/yr., I could just charge $1000 a knife, yeah, that is what I'll do.......
Well, you see where this is heading. The knives never get made in the quantity needed, the vast number of high end buyers needed never appear, and the bills for making the knives pile up until the maker says,"Enough, this ain't fun no more".

Not dousing your ardor, but as Phil said, tempering it some with practical planning is the way to go.

All the best to you and your family,
Stacy
 
bladsmth said:
Because you appear to want advise, I'll offer some more.

You are a smart 23 year old with a family and a hefty mortgage.
You have three degrees and are working on another.
You have just left the Military.
You are very eager,smart, and talented.


With these factors you need to sit down quietly and think over the path that you need to follow in your careers.

Knifemaking is going to be a hobby....plain and simple. Some make money at it, but only by making dozens of high end, or hundreds of utilitarian knives a year.
You plan on working on a ministry career - great - but you must learn direction for that,too.

If you have expendable funds, and are just playing around with making knives, then no advise or plan is needed. If ,however, you plan on paying any of that mortgage with any knife profits....you need a practical plan.....and some basic knife-work experience.

Making caterpillar knives may be fun, and one might even win an award in the art knife division of a local club show. But if you plan on running with the big boys out there you will starve. Get some copies of the books,"Knives" 2009,2008,2007,etc ( they issue one every year. You will see many of the names you find on this forum in it. If you go to a big show, like Blade next June, you will see and meet the best knifemakers in the world. You will discover by then that your caterpillar knife is cute, and you like it, but it is a can opener compared to Steve Olszewski's art knives. You will also see that the vast majority of knives actually sold are user type knives - Bowies, hunters, kitchen, EDC,etc.

Now, just like in university post grad studies , you will need to understand the basics of the field before you move on to the advances work. Knife making is both a science (sorry Tai Goo, I had to use the word here) and an art. The science makes the art work. The art makes the science beautiful. The basics of all this is in a blend of form and function. Just looking "neat" won't sell a knife. It has to be "neat" for a reason. Learn to make good practical knives. Learn to make them with reliable and repeatable results. I often have a smith who wants to show me how well he/she is doing make a knife. When they have finished it, I have them make the same knife again. They rarely look the same. I point out that they need to get the ability to repeat the same knife and have it come out looking like its partner. Good skills, planning, and practice are the way to do this (mostly the practice part).

For some practical critique on what you have posted so far:

Straighten out the handles. A thumb depression or a single finger groove is not uncommon,but those twisty handles will never work.

Start with plain steel and learn on it. Buying damascus may be fun, but it is an unprofitable way to get started.

Ebay is not the place most knifemakers get their quality supplies (but deals can be found on some things). Dyed mammoth is how sellers get rid of poor grade material. Alabama damascus (I know Brad, the maker, personally) is fun to play with, and cheap, but not necessarily what you want to offer as a quality blade material on knives you are selling as "custom". Buying blades and adding handles does not qualify as "Custom" to most buyers and collectors.

Quit mixing the entire pantry in the cake. One handle material, one guard material, one simple blade......that is how you start. Then as you perfect that, add a bolster, or a butt cap,or an inlay.....but not all techniques and materials on one knife! Also, if you want it to sell, natural materials are more desirable to the bulk of buyers.

Make a blade....an entire finished blade....shape it, sand it, do the HT (yourself or send it out) ,and finish it fully all except the final sharpening....... THEN make the handle. You can't properly fit a guard or handle until the blade and tang are finished.

If you seriously want to enter the knife business, form a plan to sell knives. That starts with a plan on how you will make knifes, how many you can make in a year,how many you can actually sell in a year, and how much you can profit from those sales. The end of many knife business ideas is when the maker sits down with pen and paper (turn the computer off for planning) and realizes that if they make two finished knives a week and sell them for $100 each, with a 50% profit ( and that is a big profit on the bottom line) they would make $5,200 a year......check the math again.....yep $5,200 a year. So I could make twenty knives a week ,lets see..that's about three knives a day (with Sunday off ), with no time off for classes, vacation, getting sick of hurt,etc.....no wait, it takes me about ten to fifteen hours to finish a knife...that won't work....I KNOW, to earn $52,000/yr., I could just charge $1000 a knife, yeah, that is what I'll do.......
Well, you see where this is heading. The knives never get made in the quantity needed, the vast number of high end buyers needed never appear, and the bills for making the knives pile up until the maker says,"Enough, this ain't fun no more".

Not dousing your ardor, but as Phil said, tempering it some with practical planning is the way to go.

All the best to you and your family,
Stacy
Click to expand...


That ought to be in the sticky
 
I think we need to use Stacey's post to start a "so you want to make knives for a living" sticky thingy.
 
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