What is the Grimsmo Norseman considered? Mid-Tech, Production, Custom?

What is the Norseman?

  • Production

    Votes: 26 31.0%

  • Mid-Tech

    Votes: 41 48.8%

  • Custom

    Votes: 17 20.2%
  • Total voters
    84
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T

TW-Knife

Joined
Aug 31, 2001
Messages
144
I've always considered them mid-tech at best. Sure the makers run their CNC machines and code but that doesn't mean it's not a mid-tech correct?
 
If you design and make all of the knife components from raw materials (sans the bearings), wouldn't that be considered custom regardless if cnc is involved?
 
coiledwire said:
I agree custom is a loaded word.

Just for discussion sakes, if a knife is made without a specific buyer's direction, is it no longer a custom?
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In my opinion, a custom is something that is made to fit one person's specific wants and needs, to be used exclusively by said person.

If I, as a buyer, seek input from a maker to reach a certain design, or even hand the reigns over entirely to the maker to reach my, the buyer's, vision, it is still a custom.
 
W. Anderson said:
In my opinion, a custom is something that is made to fit one person's specific wants and needs, to be used exclusively by said person.

If I, as a buyer, seek input from a maker to reach a certain design, or even hand the reigns over entirely to the maker to reach my, the buyer's, vision, it is still a custom.
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This I understand. But there's still a buyer identified.

Name any blue-chip custom maker. Consider if they made a knife just because they wanted to make a knife, not because anyone asked for one to be made. Then, at the end of this fun endeavor for the maker, they decide to sell it. Now, does this buyer have a custom knife?

Again, this is just for the sake of discussion. I'm not arguing a certain position.
 
coiledwire said:
This I understand. But there's still a buyer identified.

Name any blue-chip custom maker. Consider if they made a knife just because they wanted to make a knife, not because anyone asked for one to be made. Then, at the end of this fun endeavor for the maker, they decide to sell it. Now, does this buyer have a custom knife?

Again, this is just for the sake of discussion. I'm not arguing a certain position.
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If it's a one-off, yes. More than that, I suppose he's put it into production, albeit limited production.
 
The terms "custom" and "midtech" are both loaded words, with quite a bit of ambiguity and a whole lot of marketing.

As with all things, know exactly what you're buying and how much was done by the maker vs done by machine. Relying on terms to put things in neat little boxes is a lazy coping mechanism that we use to save time (myself included). Nothing wrong with that if you have no intention of buying, but once you're thinking about putting down some money, it's the buyers responsibility to wade through the fog.

I see Grimsmo and other CNC machinists as more than production... to what extent and at what price? Highly subjective to each individual buyer.
 
Charlie Mike said:
I absolutely detest "marketing" and have learned to RUN if I get the slightest inclination that someone is trying to "sell" me on something.
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Impossible to avoid. Whether you're trying to entice a buyer, convince a coworker that they're an idiot, or persuade your significant other ;), everything is some form of selling or marketing. Life teaches us to fine tune the BS meter as we get older and wiser.
 
I'm with Les George on this one. These terms are meaningless and should be abandoned. If makers want to convey something meaningful about their knives, they should make specific claims like "hand ground blade" or "produced start-to-finish in our 4-person workshop" or "forged by Bob's own hand over 6 months from a lump of vintage bulat" or what have you.

The "mid-tech" distinction is the least meaningful. I'll lump it in with "bespoke" and "artisanal" and other terms that mean I should be wearing a trucker cap ironically while paying double.
 
coiledwire said:
Name any blue-chip custom maker. Consider if they made a knife just because they wanted to make a knife, not because anyone asked for one to be made. Then, at the end of this fun endeavor for the maker, they decide to sell it. Now, does this buyer have a custom knife?
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If this was in Randall's workshop 50 years ago, and we're asking whether a present-day auctioneer would call it custom, I'd say definitely not. But things are different if this is a Curtiss F3, which isn't in the history books yet (and who knows, might not ever be, we don't know!) and there's no actual scholarship about it, so it all boils down to Skelton breathlessly calling it a "full custom" and people repeating that. Things that belong to the present moment, with value that's still being ascertained on the scale of history, wind up described using excited and imprecise language, and that's just the way it is. But if someone wants to beat that trend, I'd welcome it.
 
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