What is your MTBK (mean time between knives) or, the knife ordering cycle

M

matthew rapaport

Joined
Jun 23, 1999
Messages
1,209
Here's a generic question I don't recall being explored in a while. How long do your typically play with a new knife before the itch to have yet a newer new knife over-powers the desire to play with the last new knife? This is your <b>mean time between knives or MTBK</b> value. To find this value more exactly, take the number of knives you own (you can apply different criterion too. Users are different from art for example) and divide them into the number of years over which you collected them (you can calculate different MTBKs for different time spans too). That is your MTBK. If I bought 25 knives in the last 5 years (60 months), my MTBK for that 60 months is 2.4 (60/25 = 2.4), or on average, I bought a new knife every 2.4 months!

Lets take another extreme. Suppose I have bought 500 knives in the last 5 years. 500 is too big to divide into 60, so you have to go down to days. There are 365 * 5 = 1825 days in 5 years. The leap day doesn't make enough difference to matter. Divide that by 500 and you get (1825/500 = 3.65) an MTBK of a little less than 4 days!

I'm curious about people's MTBKs. Mine seems to be around 6 months. That is, I play with a new knife as long as 6 months before I really want to play with another. This figure seems to apply more to custom knives though. Before, when I was buying mostly in the sub-$100 factory range, my MTBK was around 3 months.

Knowing about your MTBK might be very valuable to knife makers because it might help them plan cycles better. It also has interesting if not always practical value for the knife buyer - particularly of customs. For example, notice that no matter what the waiting period of the people from whom you buy, if you order a new knife once in every MTBK, you will eventually find yourself at the end of a pipeline with knives coming out, on average, every MTBK.

So what are your MTBKs? Do you have to measure them in <b><i>days</i></b>, or are months or even years enough? How to they differ at different price levels or along other lines? Just curious, another something to talk about.


Happy cutting!
 
I think I'm close to horus. What would be a real scary statistic is dollars spent on knives per day.
 
I tend to buy a couple of knives every 5-6 months. These are all custom / handmade - I gave up buying factory knives about 14 months ago.

The cycle does vary depending on the availability of models (and cashflow).

Regards,

Ed
 
Are you kidding? I break out in hives just thinking about NOT having a knife on order. Let's see...right now I have three chef's knives in Talonite coming from Rob Simonich, a couple of Talonite paring knives and two Talonite folders on order from Kit Carson, and a Talonite hunter coming from Ed Schott.

Walt
 
For me, it really depends. There was a stretch were it was running about 5 years, right now, it's 3, plus my first self made, in the last year. The change was discovering customs were somewhat reasonable in price. I don't really collect knives - I USE them
 
Hey nobody said there was going to be any Math questions. :rolleyes:

I buy knives when I have the money. I bought four knives and one mini at Blade Show in June. If my plane had crashed coming back from Atlanta I would have died a happy man. Since then I have received an Anniversary Camillus EDC as a gift. I have some production knives on order (1/2 dozen Kershaw Chives and one Scallion), and I've had some customs on order forever. :(

I just started talking to two makers about two other knives.

What the heck was your question again?
Let's see I got 19 knives last year....now is that 19 divided by 12 or 12 divided 19?

Let's just say I belong to the Knife of the Month Club and leave it at that. :confused:

I hope you're happy you just gave me a splitting headache.
 
I probably do a little bit more than a knife per month if you average it out. But it's more like I'll buy four knives within a month, and then none for three months. They get all bunched up like that.
 
Are you kidding? I break out in hives just thinking about NOT having a knife on order.
Click to expand...

Walt, that is the sort of sentiment I had in mind, the great secret to not having that "can't wait" anticipation about a new order that might be months, or in some cases, even years off! Always having something on order, and always having something just new enough to be still interesting at the same time is an unbeatable combination.

I suspect for a lot of people sometimes purchases come in bunches, especially around shows. So long as the average time between purchases works out about right, it doesn't really matter. What would gum up the works would be having a MTBK of say 3 months, and so having to buy another knife 3 months after having returned from a show with 3 or 4 (or more) new knives! Sometimes catagorizing them differently helps. For example you can have a MTBK for kitchen knives that is completely different from your "utility MTBK", and that differs from your "choppers or survival knives MTBK", or "art knives MTBK", etc.
 
Definitely seems to be Knife of the Month Club sort of thing, since I found BladeForums.
 
I can't really go by the criteria set forth.
In actuality, I buy maybe 1 knife a month. I can't divide knives into time collecting because I have collected in spurts and have settled into the 1 knife per month cycle. I have had times where I bought multiple knives at once such as Bladeshow (4 this year) and when Smoky Mountain has some closeouts on Cold Steel or Spyderco products (I've been known to snag 6 or 7 at a time like that!).
As far as time spent fondling a new knife before I want a new one... maybe 30 minutes to an hour!!!
I also used to buy a lot more than now because I bought a lot of cheap stuff. My tastes have run more selective lately. Now I'm mainly into Busses, MMHW, Benchmade, Microtech, HI, Greco and there are a few Hossoms I want to get. I will occasionally grab some Cold Steels, Ontarios, or Spydercos and I really like the BK&T stuff by Camillus but the rest is mostly higher end stuff and customs so my budget runs shorter. The one knife a month cycle was something I just settled into and not a conscious effort.

Cam
 
This calculation made me realize horrible things about myself! My MTBK is 14.1 days. It is getting longer though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top