What do you do with your blemish or b-grade knives?

I am from the team of makers that will set the project aside and come back to it çater - days, months or sometimes years later. Most often, I am able to fix whatever was the problem. I have had my share of blades that can´t be recovered but will fight as much as possible not to scrap good materials even if it is a knife that will remain with me.
My most used kitchen knife is a nakiri I made with a severelly warped blade and a cracked handle and it sees use everyday.
 
Mobius1 said:
I personally have a bin I put them in, for returning to when I am no longer angry at them. On occasion I'll rummage through it and find one where I'm like, "What was wrong with this knife? I can easily fix that!" For example, the last one I tossed in there, it's because it got a puncture in my foil pouch I didn't notice, and I had to thin it down further than I wanted to get below the decarb. It's a perfectly good knife - it's just much thinner than I wanted and I am currently mad at it. Give it a year and I'll be like "Nice! A perfectly good almost finished knife - I'd rather just finish you instead of starting from scratch!"

But most of the time I look at them as an expensive lesson.

I tend to use my rejects for various testing purposes.
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This for sure. Rule #1: Don't work on an "improvement" when you are frustrated. Put that thing down and go to something else. It's almost always a better condition on a new day. Also, 100% agree with the testing option. Ready to scrap it? It's toast? Then go to town and learn something new. You can always make a nice letter opener or garden knife for someone :)

Don't settle with knives you aren't happy with...keep going.
 
A lot of times I can fix things, but if it's early in the process I just toss the blade out. Sometimes it is faster to just start over.

As mentioned, I use some of them for destruction testing. I'm now a HUGE fan of regular destruction tests. I think I've learn more from that than just about anything else.

I think the worst thing you can do is sell it at a discount. It seems when people show your discounted knife to someone else, that's the only thing they see. They'll think all your work is flawed.
 
Ivan Campos said:
I am from the team of makers that will set the project aside and come back to it çater - days, months or sometimes years later. Most often, I am able to fix whatever was the problem. I have had my share of blades that can´t be recovered but will fight as much as possible not to scrap good materials even if it is a knife that will remain with me.
My most used kitchen knife is a nakiri I made with a severelly warped blade and a cracked handle and it sees use everyday.
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Haha, I have the exact same thing! My kitchen knife is one of my rejects that took a warp.

I've also turned some rejects into throwing knives. They also make for perfect etching tests assuming they went through HT. I also recently used a couple to test interrupted quenching times in a faster oil than I have used before.

Sometimes it's also just making a different grind than I initially wanted, but again, I have to come back to it when I am not mad at it.
 
If it's just a cosmetic issue and not functional, then it ends up in my kitchen or shop.

If it's catastrophic failure or bad heat treat, then it ends up in the trash.

Often a larger knife just becomes a smaller knife.

I'm certainly never going to sell a knife that I'm not happy with. In fact, I just finished a san mai paring knife with a totally badass blade, but I'm just not happy with the finished aesthetic overall, so it's staying in my kitchen. I have too many kitchen knives now, but that's just the life of a knifemaker I guess.
 
I give mine to amateur knifemakers and make them happy. For them the heat treat is the choking point so anything hardened is like Christmas. It's like "hey, I have two discards and 4 hours on the grinder for you!". In no time they are here. :)
 
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