The barter system

rasret01

rasret01

Joined
Mar 31, 2009
Messages
153
...is alive and well. I have a young friend who is into midevil fantasy gaming who wanted a short sword to complete his avitar and hang on the wall. Mike has no money, but he does possess the basic carpentry and landscaping skills necessary to tackle the chores that my arthritic bones no longer enjoy. Sooo.... This guy is 18.5 OAL in 3/8" O1, brass and cocobolo with blue micarta liners and inset blue tiger eye stones.


I have another friend who raises Scottish Highland Cattle. The little Sgian Dubh was worth about 30 lbs of steak and hamburger. It's O1 and maple.

I wish I had better pics, but I'm posting these hoping to see what other successful bartering is going on...

Dick
 

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There's a fairly recent thread from Grizzly Bear on a trade he's got going on with Del Ealy, fabric for damascus. Check that out. Its really cool. In that thread I'd mentioned some tradin' I'd done in the past year. However on reflection I forgot some things and didn't really mention the details. So here we go: a good 6 yr old black baldy cow (Black Angus Hereford cross, generally gives ya a black bodied cow with a white face. I have a small commercial cow herd and prefer black baldies). She's already given me a good calf which will go to sale soon. At last weeks prices I'll get about $650 for this young steer. I gave 2 pair of chinks (chinks are short below the knee chap like leggins worn by cowboys) I made and 2 small kit knives with sheaths for the cow. I'll get a lot more calves out of her too.

I traded a flap holster I made and a kitchen knife (kit blade again) for 2 chunks of mammoth ivory tusk that once cut up yielded 9 sets of scales.

For several desert ironwood log chunks I traded two kit knives. This guy likes to wander the internet and he picks the blades and has them dropped shipped to me to handle and build a sheath for. One was from Alabama Damascus and the other from Two Fingers. This ironwood is not the burl commonly seen but still great stuff. Very dark with lighter highlights and more depth than most of the burl I've worked with. Its old with lots of small cracks to work around but still. Once it was cut up I've got a large box full of 3/8" thick slices. Guy didn't have to search hard for it it was in his firewood pile. And more coming.

Buying a horse from my son for the wife. Partial payment will be in trade. He buckaroos on a large ranch in OR, out on the high desert. This horse is an EXTREMELY well bred Quarter Horse that he is training. We'll get the horse in May. He wants 3 of those Jantz VG 10 folders. Those ones with handles only on one side. Many of those buckaroos don't wear belts and this knife is really popular with em. These are for his "war bag". All working cowboys/buckaroos have a bag of gear for trading. Lots of $$ involved in this horse deal but some tradin too.

Traded a 3 knife kitchen set all handled in Zircote for a box scraper for the tractor. Roads were getting kinda rough out on the ranch.

Moved, back in May. A guy I know owns a tow truck company. I called him to move one of those portable 8'x12' sheds we've got that we use as a tack/saddle room. He hooked up to it and drug it right up on his flatbed and off we go. It took him a couple of hours cause even though the new place is in sight of the old place, where the tackroom was going required alot of block and tackle jimming to get er done. He wouldn't take money but wanted a knife for his tackle box and a kitchen knife for his wife. My son was down over the holidays and his truck broke down. Needed to get towed from by the ranch to a shop in town. Again my buddy wouldn't take any money but his wife wants a paring knife. Be starting that soon.

A good buddy and partner in the ranch wanted a misery whip saw steel knife. He bought a 6.5' saw off of EBay. Built him a scandi ground knife from his design out of this steel. Knocked the rust off the steel but didn't try to polish it, he wanted the "character" left in the old steel. Did a mustard patina and handled it in oak burl from our ranch. Built 2 others of a different design at the same time and the same way and sold em right away, literally overnight. His knife was for nothing of course just a buddy deal but since I was now making money off of his saw I figured I owed him. So we settled on him paying for the leather and I'll make him a pair of shotgun chaps and I get the rest of the saw.

Trading in the cowboy world is very common, often preferred. Once at The Californios (a show) I'd just finished trading some wildrags for a mecate and a rawhide hondo with probably the premier mecate maker of em all. He made a substantial offer on my then girlfriend now wife. Ernie Morris, a premier western artist said "Naw, keep her Dave she's too pretty to trade off."
 
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I'm waiting to tell a maker it's good to ship off a knife he made in exchange for some handle material, and may get more knives from the same box. I got my stamps and holder from my brother in exchange for a set of knives to advertise his company. I traded my second knife (an ulu) for massage therapy textbooks before starting the program. That's about all for me so far, other than trading hard earned cash for beautiful wood.
 
Ive traded one of my basic skinners to a teenager in the neighborhood who wanted to give it to his dad for a gift in exhange for weedeating my yard for the summer.
 
Got some blades going to Darrin Sanders for heat treating. I'm doing a traditional Japanese tsukamaki wrap and a kydex sheath on one of his blades for that. Awesome deal for a guy like me who has no heat treating skill/equipment.
 
Fantastic stuff here, I'm glad to see more bartering taking place. While receiving cash for something is nice, if both parties can benefit from items or services...it's win/win situation.

This is the trade I did with Delbert Ealy (my box arrived today, btw...at my aunt's and I'm going first thing in the morning to get it!):

4 boxes containing 83lbs of material ranging from solids, to prints to project panels in cotton, polyester, canvas, etc. This was out of my mom's stash of material she cut quilt blocks from. I had this lot in storage in my house after she passed and was going to take it and give it to some women who work with my fiance, if they wanted it. Otherwise, it was probably going in the trash. I hate to do that to things I think people may have use of...but, I'm moving into a smaller place and there's things I just can't take with me.

This picture shows all the material, not the project pieces...stacked over the top of my dining room chair:
fabric.jpg



In trade for, as Stacy put it "enough material to sew shirts for an entire village", I'm getting this:
resizeddamascus.jpg


4 bars of his custom damascus. 2 ground and heat treated blades that will be polished and etched for me to handle, sharpen and make sheaths for. And the top piece, a piece of his meteorite damascus...not a pattern, this is real damascus made with a nickel-iron meteorite. He is going to forge this piece out into a blade for me and ship it in the next couple of weeks.

This is such an awesome trade! If it wasn't freezing and storming right now, I'd be on the road to go get my box! :)

Thanks again Del!

Keep up the posts guys, love to see this stuff.
 
From the Moderator:

I had an inquiry about trade/swap related threads.
If the thread is an offer for a trade/swap/sale, it is not allowed in Shop Talk. It will be removed
If it is a knife making related post about a trade/swap that you did, it is OK to post your great deal, just don't make any offers for other swaps.

There is a section in The Exchange for trades and such.

Photos of the knife related things you got or exchanged in the trade, as well as the knife project plans you have for these items will keep it on topic for this forum.

Nothing wrong with sharing your joy over a good deal!
We are all one big ( and sometimes dysfunctional) family here on Shop Talk...... and family shares both their joys and sorrows with each other. Such discussions are healthy for this place.
 
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A few years ago I traded a little hunting knife for an old wood stove,which now heats my shop.The knife was one of my early ones made from leaf spring and the stove was collecting dust in my buddy's garage.Win-win:thumbup:
 
One of my fellow guild members gave me a nice section of railroad track in Exchange for a knife. Still need to make the knife thouh
 
My second knife was a trade for the labor to make the file jig that I started off with, and one other trade. I have given a few away, I think I am at 8 now that I have just given away because I liked the person or they really liked the knife and I looked at it as a way to get a little more exposure.
 
This weekend I traded a block each of Koa/curly walnut/redwood for a paring knife and $30. I have wanted a knife by the maker (Ed Storch) because he has been a great influence on my early knifemaking endeavors, and in the 20 or so years I've known him I've never seen him treat a 4 year old any differently than a 50 year old exuding money. His knives aren't really my style, but I thought a paring knife would be a good sample of his work. Wouldn't pay the price he was asking, but more than happy to trade material for it, and when he ends up paying ME in th end it just felt right. Okay, felt odd to have a maker give me money to take a good knife, so I dropped the price $5. I am really glad that I could get the knife and not have to part with cash.
 
I traded an unfired M1A that I bought at an estate auction this spring for a nice snap-on tool box with stainless work top a couple weeks ago. I'm very pleased with the trade, and I think the other guy is too.

M1A.jpgsnap on.jpg
 
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