The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
There is a certain amount of truth in your opinions........but in my own personal case I had to make the decision to invest in about $10,000 to $12,000 in new equipment (sewing machines, finishers, splitter, cutting table, work bench, various new hand tools). Then the commitment to actually use all this stuff after it arrived. Then the time it actually takes to become an overnight success is more like four years as you become better known through word of mouth.
Then you arrive at that point you alluded to, and it's roses from then on ......well not quite. You still have to deliver on a timely basis a quality product that 100% satisfies your customer over and over and over, and for me that's fun.
I imagine the average knife maker has a very similar tale to tell.
Paul
I appear to have given t he wrong impression as to what I meant by real money. I don't mean millions, just relativel speaking. What I am getting at is that when it comes to time pricing, materials costs, and turnaround of completed goods, I assume that making sheaths is faster, lower costs and retail pricing, etc, would be more profitable that for knives, which are more time consuming and costlier to produce, and therefor have a higher retail.
I see both as art, so I know that both are done as much as love, but it just crossed my mind.
I appear to have given t he wrong impression as to what I meant by real money. I don't mean millions, just relativel speaking. What I am getting at is that when it comes to time pricing, materials costs, and turnaround of completed goods, I assume that making sheaths is faster, lower costs and retail pricing, etc, would be more profitable that for knives, which are more time consuming and costlier to produce, and therefor have a higher retail.
I see both as art, so I know that both are done as much as love, but it just crossed my mind.
I think youre right.. there is probably more overhead in knives than in sheaths..
As to leather work, to make a GOOD living at you are most likely going to have to make other items such as holsters, etc. Off the top of my head I can't think of one full-time leather sheath only maker (at least not on the custom end), whose sheath making is their only source of income (i.e. no retirement, no wife working, no investments, etc.)