It is a delicate balancing act. Custom makers are craftsman, with a lot of experience and talent. Thus, to insist on a knife being made in precisely a certain manner may be risky. There may be flaws in your design which are not apparent to you, but are to the maker. Further, if a maker is not happy with the piece he is making, you run the risk of him not being entirely absorbed in the project and not exercising all his creativity.
On the other hand, it is YOUR knife, and you should be able to specify what you want; you are paying for it, after all. It is a big step to order your first custom knife, and you have every right to be happy with it.
I tend to suggest in fairly broad terms what I want, and let the maker interpert my suggestions in his style.
There are times when I have to go against the grain with a maker, but I tend to do this infrequently and with with trepidation. Darrel Ralph, for example, tends to have a style which I consider somewhat flashy. I ordered a custom folder from him, and had to insist on it being somewhat more plain than he wanted to make it. Purple anodized scales just weren't what I wanted (OK, he was joking about that, but the situation was similar to what I described). I got a beautiful knife of which I am very proud.
I ordered a drop point hunter from Tom Mayo; the Talonite (r) blank was 10" long, and I thought a five inch blade would be about right. Here is what Tom said:
one thing...and i know this is hard to do....ive
been there many many times......but the drop point has been refined for
about a million years....and theres a reason for keeping the blade just
under four inches.....i am not going to twist your arm about this...you are
the customer.....and its a waste to cut off and inch or inch and a half of
that stuff...but thats my recommendation.....you can make the choice. tom
Tom eventually decided to make the blade about five inches long, since grinding off one and one half inches of expensive Talonite (r) seemed a waste; I sent him a Mad Dog Mako, emphasizing that I didn't want a copy, it was just to use as a rough starting point; it is a drop point with a blade of about five inches, so he would have an idea of what I had in mind. I should mention that I have bought two knives of Tom's which were his design entirely, and they are wonderful.
Kit Carson is a wonderful knife maker with whom to do business. He will make you nearly anything you want, but his selection of models is such that you are nearly sure to find what you want from his stock list. One exception is kitchen knives. He is making me two paring knives out of Talonite (r), one three inch and one four inch, both for my darling daughter ('Dark Mistress' on the Forum). These are of his design, but he has made only one or two before, one for Tim Flanagan's wife, IIRC.
Rob Simonich is a maker who will throw himself wholeheartedly into a new project; his kitchen knife of Talonite (r) is a good example of that. He sent it to two professional chefs for evaluation and suggestions for improvements. The final improved design is going (you guessed it) to my darling daughter for Christmas... That is Christmas, 2000, Rob!!
So, ordering a custom knife is a lot of fun, but you should be expecting to reach a compromise which contains the best of your ideas and design with the best of the maker's experience and talent.
Walt (Certified Spec Sheet Guru)
[This message has been edited by Walt Welch (edited 07-19-2000).]
