why are you doing it??

I've been wanting to do this since I was a kid. My only regret so far is that I waited so long to get started. I love knives, always have. I love working with my hands. Been collecting (cheap stuff) so long that I've gotten a bit picky. I like that handle, but not with THAT blade. I like that blade, but hate the gaurd,.....etc.... Now I can make them the way I think they should look.
Plus, theres the therapy angle. I am a therapist. I sit and listen and talk to people for a living. When I get done at the end of the day, I can go home and pound some steel, grind something, finish a knife, and feel like I've got something accomplished. When I finish a knife, its not "less depressed", or "not beating its wife this week...". Its DONE! This is MY therapy......
Ed
 
It is nice to see the above posts. I still build a lot of fishing rods and do a lot of wood working I also use to do black and white photography.
This knife thing just started and I have now forged 3 knives so far. My six year old son came out to the shop today and said " what is all that ping ping ping I hear". Well his eyes got as big as saucers when he saw that hot steel and wanted to hammer it. He is now just hot to be a part of making knives.
Cheers Ron
 
Why do I make knives? Because I have to. Like many of the rest of you I've made all kinds of stuff throughout my life - from macrame placemats to birdhouses to sculpture and jewelry and tools, to homes and clothing. Hell, I always tell people, "you can make anything you want." It's the truth.

But the only thing that I've ever made year after year, and dreamed of making year after year, is knives. I can't lay the inspiration at my grandfather's or my father's feet though they both used knives as naturally as they got their hair cut.

No, my inspiration for making knives is directly from Lloyd Hale and Bob Loveless. The former an artist, the later possibly the single human being who has understood what a knife is for, who has ever lived. I wanted their knives and could not afford to buy them. But I knew I could "make anything I want." Yeah, I was a little overconfident, and the serious learning curve I'm trying every day to negotiate is a mother - but nothing else in my life gives me so much satisfaction as turning raw steel and various materials, into a tool with panache.

Like many said earlier, I also want to leave something behind that others might find valuable enough to keep. There's also furniture, books, "alien" artifacts, etc out there with my name on them but few of them have as much of my soul in them as my knives do. I'm a knife maker. I work for a big company to earn a living, and I give them the best I have, but my personal identification as a human being is that of a knife maker. I don't want to be anything else.

Some would say that I don't work very hard at it - I'm perhaps the least prolific maker there is :) - but my shop time is like going to church for me. My whole soul is in it.
 
jmxcpter said:
Greg Covington and Fred Rowe pretty much got it for me. I've been a knife user, carrier since I was a kid. In Jr. High, I took a metal shop class and the teacher made custome hunters in his spare time. I thought that was too cool. As I progressed through school, I really focused on metal working and eventually went to work as a machinist. I got stuck in a production environment and eventually left the trade by age 21, but always thought that one day, when I retired, I'd build a shop and make some knives.

Fast forward to being 40. At that point, I'd learned a bit about mortality. It's not guatanteed that you will make it to retirement age. If you do, your eyes and co-ordiantion probably won't be any better. I'd also spent two decades in a sales position in the consumer electronics industry where there was no satisfaction for a job well done, just the pursuit of the next sale or purchase order.

I decided that it was time to pursue my life long dream and make some knives. Part of my motivation was to have a creative outlet where I could produce a project, no matter how badly, that had a beginning, a middle and an end (never happens in the sales channel). The other part is that I've come to grips with the idea that I won't last forever, so like Greg alluded to, I'd like to leave a legacy. To make some cool knives that might well survive long after I'm gone and cause someone to wonder, who was John MacDonald? Why did he make knives, and why did he make them this way? I have no illusions of becoming teh next Michael Price, or Bob Loveless, but want to make some stuff anyway.

I don't have kids of my own (do have a step son) so the knives I'm attempting to make are my only legacy to society. Nobody will remember what a great sales rep I was, but perhaps someone will cherish a knife I made enough to inbue it with enough specialness to pass it down to their heirs.

My time in my shop is theraputic on many levels and hopefully one day I'll make something worth talking about.
Click to expand...
Well put John. If this much insight goes into the knives you make, I'm sure someone will cherish them. Fred :thumbup:
 
I can't just come home from work and watch TV. I'm not that person, I have to be doing something until its bedtime.

There are many things I do on my spare time like hunt, taxidermy, fish, chase my girlfriend around the house, make fly rods and a fly or two. None of these things besides for hunting consumes me more than knife making. I guess it is because its fun. It hasn't always been fun but I have tought myself how to keep it fun.

Its fun...
seeing a persons face when they have a look at one of me creations
when you find a better way to get a result you want
using something that you have made to do an important job
having black snot
burnt fingers
scars from blades, grinders, etc...
giving people knives
talking to your friends about knives
letting the process consume you and forgetting about time


My best answer to Dan's question is ... Its fun...

Good questoin!!!
 
I have used knives since I was a kid, both for work and play. I couldn't find a good hunting knife back then. I don't remember even seeing a good fixed blade hunter that would actually hold an edge when I was a youngster. Now, kids grow up with the best of steel available. Growing up using tools helped develop an interest, as well as as much hunting and fishing crowded in as possible. Like you folks, I enjoy the pleasure of seeing my knives appreciated by my customers. I never knew another knife maker until I happened across this wonderful Forum. I have learned a great deal about making since I snuck in here and discovered I wasn't just an island here in backwaters Iowa. Back in '91 when I sold my first knife, I discovered a lot that day about the real world of making custom knives, compared to a "normal" way of life. You guys aren't the normal lifestyle type, being knife makers. You are much better. Group hug, guys.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top