What has changed...

[cilohaefink]

I think region or geography has something to do with knife culture. Here case is king; I'll bet anything 9 out of 10 people are carrying a case knife. I see more younger people carrying traditional knives. Every hardware, feed, sporting good, or department store always has a great selection of case knives. Plus, we have at least 12 local knife dealers in town who sell nothing but traditional knives. Our local sporting good store sells every type of knife possible. They said they sold over a 100 cases during the holidays and not one modern knife. Everyone here is either blue collar or in agriculture that hunts and fishes so that may have something to do with why everybody carries traditional.

Wow that's encouraging news for Case!! Mind if I ask which state you live in?

 

[LeatherMan64]

Sad to see the way things are trending. I've got next to nothing to add, as most of the worthwhile information and opinions have already been voiced, but I will say that my generation (I'm 17) is being raised to fear people who have and use knives (referred to as 'wielders'), and even to fear the knives themselves. There's no concept of the knife as a useful and benign everyday tool, it's simply viewed as a weapon. Thanks, videogames . Sorry this didn't pertain to the realm of customs, but more the culture in general.

Edan

 

[sunandsteel]

I'll say this much,I just sold off most of my tacticals and am moving back to traditionals. I am 42 and grew up with traditionals. My friends and co-workers are doing the same. For myself,I am tired of every knife looking the same. I find myself longing for the personality of wood and bone and stag on my knives,not the bland sameness of g10 or micarta or titanium. Cost is a big hit for me too. I can pick up 4 or more very nice traditional knives for the cost of one good made in the USA tactical knife these days. Plus the traditionals are more "public friendly" Nobody likes the Dad who whips out a big assisted opening or flipper tactical at the Girl Scout meeting,or just about anywhere else in public these days,to handle some minor cutting task. When I pull out an nice traditional,regardless of blade length,I often get compliments on my "pretty knife" instead of gasps and exclamations of "what the hell!!" I guess it's all in getting a little older. Many of the guys I hang out with want to relive the days of youth when Dad or Grandpa or Uncle handed them a great traditional pocket knife. Now that we are the Dads and Uncles and Grandpas we want to share that with the kids in our lives. It is hard to responsibly hand an 8 year old a modern tactical folder,but a Case peanut or GEC bareheaded boy's knife fits just right and it's a memory we create,hoping that someday they will share that memory with the kids in their lives,and maybe,remember us in the process.

Although I'm not married I see your point, but still like to have 1 or 3 quality moderns in my arsenal.

 

[singin50]

I personally wouldn't give 5 bucks for a newer Case junker. Unless you buy a Bose made one or some of the Tested XX knives, the rest are junk.

 

[silenthunterstudios]

Yes farmkid, where are you located?

singin, the SS knives could be considered subpar, but the regular Bose collaborations (both CV and SS), and regular CV models just seem to have tighter tolerances in my opinion. Not as good as Queen or GEC, but still far and above the regular SS Case patterns.

 

[sunandsteel]

I personally wouldn't give 5 bucks for a newer Case junker. Unless you buy a Bose made one or some of the Tested XX knives, the rest are junk.

I humbly disagree. My 1 year old Case Peanut CV Chestnut bone is a scalpel and it looks good to boot.

 

[singin50]

Well to each his own but I wouldn't own one. Yes Dan, this is what I was talking about.

 

[Double Ott]

Well said Rick! I am in the same boat with ya, my grandfather who fought in WW1 gave me my first pocket knife, I think it was an Imperial fishing style toothpick. Yellow handles ya know the knife, anyway he was the first to introduce me to patterns like barlows, stockman's and sowbellies.

The first folder I bought myself around 50 years ago was the very same knife. I still have it. The blades still have a nice snap to them. I'll have to get some pictures of it soon.

A friend of mine turned me on to GEC. It is the first quality traditional folder I've found in the last 20+ years. This year I made up for lost time and have bought 20+ of them. I'm slowing down and thinking of thinning the herd. I must have 100 folders and love them all. I've also been snapping up UAS Schrades that were beyond my $ as a young lad. Now with around 100 folders, just how many many can a guy rotate?
Tom

 

[singin50]

Not that many but I understand totally. When you see quality, it's hard to not jump on it.

 

[silenthunterstudios]

There are dozens of available antique/vintage manufactured traditional knives at gun and knife shows, in varying degrees of wear and tear. To the OP, how is the custom market? Are older custom slipjoints as prevalent? More of the custom fixed blades, as in theater knives and actual custom/one off knives? Does the aftermarket, especially vintage knives, hinder or help the new market for factory and custom.

 

[Bo T]

For most knife owners, the number of knives that they own exceed the number that they will wear out in their lifetime. In this regard, the market is saturated. My father used his case whittler almost daily and if hadn't broken the clip blade he would have had it for a couple af decades longer than he did. The whittler was his only edc. We got him a new one for his birthday. The old timers that I grew up with would laugh at me. They would say,"Why do you need 6 pocket knives?" And it is true. At my current rate of use I figure that I am good for about 300 years.
Kitchen knives? We had three that I remember; a small and medium butcher and a paring knife. these were the old softer carbon knives. They lasted for 15 years before I was born and for at least another 20 after I was born. My brother in law did some custom butchering and last I saw one of the butcher knives look more like a fillet knife so they probably got wore out. I'm probably good for 300 years on kitchen knives. Maybe more.
Hunting knives? Even my old Buck 110 with its loose blade would probably work for another couple of decades. All told I could probably go for another 1000 years without needing another knife.
That leaves collectors. Knives are small and easy to collect so this market is still viable but due to reasons mentioned earlier probably on the decline.
Custom knives? The saying,"The best way to make a million dollars as a knife maker is to start with two million dollars." is quoted often on the knife makers forum. A few custom makers are in demand but most makers are struggling to make it.
I used to watch a Tuesday and Friday night knife show. It is off the air now. Sales did not justify the expense.
I bought a SAK @ 40 years ago. A similar SAK costs the same today.
But, does it matter? Most collectors would loose money if they tried to sell their collections today. I'd guess the joy of having the collection outweighs the negatives.

 

[quattromori]

I will add my two cents, focusing on the custom knifemaking market, and expressing my opinion (I understand that I stand and see things from a different point of view for obvious geographic reasons).
Even in the smartphone era, a pocket knife is a useful tool, not a necessary one maybe, but still a useful one; a jackknife and a smartphone can live together in harmony in any pocket. I think it's our "duty", as knife enthusiasts, to spread this message and show that Elliott's post still has a value, instead of feeding a wrong image of pocket knives and their use (and, hard as it is to accept it, it happens too often nowadays).
Most knife enthusiasts tend towards modern knives; taste is taste, yet a share of them will try a traditional folder, and some of them will love slipjoints and eventually become a regular of this forum aside from personal choices, taste and needs, I think the whole "knife crowd" should work better to bring back the concept that a knife is (still) a useful tool...it's up to us.
Besides, I don't think that the market for traditional knives is dying anytime soon, and I bet that the selling numbers, and the number of slipjoint enthusiasts, have increased in the last ten years, although I have no data to support that.
As for custom makers, I don't think their business is in trouble; maybe their knives are sold through different channels, or commissioned, but I don't think they're doing bad, and many of them have quite a long waiting list. Personally, I took the "custom route" for the very first time this year, and I feel like I'm not going back...but that's just me of course. Also, the recent raise of interest for slipjoints will, in the long run, feed the custom market as well.
Allow me a little sidenote about Sardinian cutlery. I do believe there's a whole market that hasn't been approached yet. The big names of Sardinian knifemaking have waiting lists of years, their business is strong as ever, and the local (regional/national) market demands more than they can produce. Instead, some new knifemakers struggle to sell their knives (or sometimes choose the wrong path, lowering quality to lower prices, instead of focusing on a high quality product); in both cases, I feel that a decent website in English and a bit of international marketing could help their business quite much.
I'm happy to hunt for resolzas for members of this subforum; I've done it a few times, and I'm hunting for more at the moment. I love doing it, and see it as a way to contribute to this forum that has given me so much. Yet........last winter I was able to contact a US based knifemaker and get a knife from him; I don't see why a US based customer shouldn't be able to do the same with a Sardinian cutler, and the latter cannot assume that everyone speaks Italian. Someone once told me I should start doing this as a part time job...instead, I decided that I will try stimulating some young maker to do it on his own, and hopefully contribute indirectly to custom knife making, an art that must be preserved and nourished.

Fausto

 

[Woodrow F Call]

I personally wouldn't give 5 bucks for a newer Case junker. Unless you buy a Bose made one or some of the Tested XX knives, the rest are junk.

Wow. You really think so? I've been pretty happy with most of my Case knives. The ones that I wasn't happy with, Case made right. GEC is usually a little better, but I've sent a couple of them back too.

 

[MrVandercar]

Wow. You really think so? I've been pretty happy with most of my Case knives. The ones that I wasn't happy with, Case made right. GEC is usually a little better, but I've sent a couple of them back too.

I agree with you on this. I picked up my medium stockman a few years ago and it worth every penny of the forty or so dollars I put down I on it.

 

[singin50]

Like I said before, if that's what you want to spend your hard earned money on that's fine.

 

[FarmKid]

I live in virginia right on the Tennessee border.

 

[jc57]

My tastes in knives are probably not as sophisticated as some others, but I'm satisfied with the majority of my Case knife purchases, many of which are current production. I'd probably have to sit beside Singin50 and have him look them over to point out what I'm missing.

The original topic was regarding custom traditional knives. I am not a potential customer for those so I can't comment on what may have changed in that market.

In general, though, I was chatting with one of the few remaining Platinum-level Case dealers in my area a few months ago. He told me that the bottom dropped out of his knife business with the 2008 recession and has never recovered. Of the other two Case Platinum dealers within driving distance, one has gotten out of the knife business completely and another seems to be cutting back on their Case knives and shifting over to some of the lower priced new Schrade and Boker lines, as well as carrying more modern folders.

So I guess more than anything else, economic forces are playing the biggest role.

 

[B.F.U]

I personally wouldn't give 5 bucks for a newer Case junker. Unless you buy a Bose made one or some of the Tested XX knives, the rest are junk.

I would like to know exactly why you think this, because I was looking to buy some current production case knives.

 

[singin50]

Ok, again not referring to the Tony Bose line or the Tested XX line. Only discussing the regular production line of Case knives. I have handled several recent Case knives (within the last 10 years) and the quality is nothing near the 1970s Case 10 dot series knives for example. That's the simplest way to describe it. If you held one of each of these knives in your hand it would not take you long to feel the differences in quality. I'm not talking about weight or shape or even looks. Just talking quality. There is nothing wrong with collecting these or any other knives that you want to collect frankly, just not my cup of tea.

 

[LEOGREG]

I'm inclined to agree with singin 50 on this issue. Because the area in which I live is a knife store desert (NorCal). I have virtually no opportunity to sample the knives before buying, it's extremely important that I can shop based on the maker's reputation. For me new Case knives have been squeezed entirely out of consideration by RR and Colt from below and Great Eastern from above. If I'm willing to settle for a stainless blade I'll take an RR Razor Sharp (and indeed they are) at $10 over a True Sharp at $50.
Ironically it has been comments by Case enthusiasts themselves that has soured me on this brand. "Proud springs".. "sunken springs" , .."mismatched scales".."rough bolsters"..."poor dye jobs on the bone"...."uneven edge grinds"...."gaps in the frame".....and "significant blade wobble on a brand new knife out of the box"!!! Most amazing to me is that these Case fans will defend the brand with remarks like "Sure there's a little gap in the back springs but you can't read a newspaper through it." (Okay, just made that one up.)
Why on Earth would I pay $50 for a Case peanut with blade wobble when I can get a GEC #55 for $75?