Why buy a handmade that is not really a made by hand?

Originally posted by Megalobyte
This has been a thought provoking thread.

In fact, the robot could even be programmed to have slight variations in fit and finish to mimmic a human and thus, we even have the "human touch". Would you want those knives? Why not, they're the maker's design, theyre identical to his knives in materials and design, the only difference is that theyre superior in quality, function, and completely consistant knife to knife.
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Mega I disagree with
only difference is that they're superior in quality

it doesn't have to be that way and in many cases not that way
man is the one that made the machines, as a tool and die maker long ago,, I/we had to hand scrape columns of Surface grinders
we made, to bring
them into accuracy on every one of them, the machines
could not do this.
we can do a better job then the Machines but the time involved is the
problem do we want to spend time and does the customer
want to pay the
bill this is the dilemma here, other than is it hand made:)
 
Originally posted by Les Robertson

There is no such thing as a hand made knife. As all knife makers use machines. The only difference is the quality, types and sophistications of those machines.
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I just wanted to bring up something here. There are makers that using a crucible, make their own steel. These makers use no electricity in the making of their knives and the materials they use for handles are ones that they took of animals they hunted for or raised or from trees they cut down. Some of these makers use only files to make their knives and some have treadle driven grinders. Quite a few of these makers hang out on the Primal Fires forum. The problem is that that forum seems to be closed to the general public as of late. Too bad really, there were some interesting things to see on that forum. It seems a few trolls spoiled it for everyone.

Now, I know these makers didn't dig the ore themselves or plant the trees or for that matter cut down the trees with their teeth, but I think the knives they make go a long way towards being able to be called truely handmade.

I have seen knives made this way that look truely exceptional. The only folders I have seen done this way are friction folders.
 
It seems that the common thought here is that the Quality is there, going with technology is a natural progression and its all about the end product. Why not just buy custom collaborations then??? Benchmade has great QC and there customer service is top notch. I can get awesome designs from great custom makers and they still use pretty good materials. All this for about $300 + less than a model straight from the maker. I have had pretty good luck with Benchmade. Never had any blade play in the models I have owned, fit and finish has always been top notch, and as mentioned the price is right.

Why even get a "Custom"? To me, its all about the feeling I get with the knife in my hand knowing it was hand crafted, hand ground and every detail was addressed by the maker.

To me that justifies paying a $400+ price tag. And I don't think I would get that same feeling knowing the knife had been laser cut and machined.

As for heat treating "Out of House". It really doesn't bother me. I consider that a process that needs "special equipment" and although it very well be the most important part of the process of making a knife, I don't consider part of the craftsmanship that goes into a knife. It's more of a treatment to me.


Megalobyte here is in the fossil business. Pristine ancient fossils. I imagine some of them go for big bucks!!! I also imagine with today’s technology that it is possible to replicate those fossils exactly and the quality may even be able to be matched. However I doubt many would want to computer generated machined fossil.

I am having a hard time putting my thoughts into words:confused:

OK, I think I can sum up my feelings with one sentence.

"I would like a hand ground blade with my custom please!":)
 
Originally posted by TheBadGuy

OK, I think I can sum up my feelings with one sentence.

"I would like a hand ground blade with my custom please!":)
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One thing that always comes out of these threads is that a person can get a knife made just about any way they want. If you don't want laser, water or CNC cut blades, you can easily find knives that are not made this way. If you like the advantages provided by modern technology, then that technology is available in spades in many of today's custom knives.

You truely can, have it your way.
 
Originally posted by Keith Montgomery


You truely can, have it your way.
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That's very true Keith and one of the great thing about having a custom made for you. However I would have never of know thatsome of the makers listed here used these methods without reading this thread. Another good reason to get to know and working with the maker huh? :)
 
BG's analogy is really quite accurate. I do sell 10 million year old, fossilized teeth from the extinct giant white shark Megalodon, and some of them are incredibly attractive, some have perfect, razor sharp serrated edges after all those millions of years and all sorts of colors in the enamel from the fossilization process, they can be very beautiful, now, before you think im plugging my business, i'll make my point that BG made so well, if there really is a machine that can duplicate one of these teeth, with the best color, perfect serrations, everything you would ever want in a fossil Meg tooth, why on EARTH would anybody want the damn thing? It has no history, theres nothing special about it, nothing rare or precious, its a few days old, not 10 million, unless the tooth is genuine, it has really no value. And i guess its the same with custom knives, sure, maybe some day a machine can build you a perfect "custom" knife, a knife thats better than a knife made by a person, but why would you want it? Its just a knife, theres nothing special, rare or interesting about it, no history, for it to have those things, it needed to be made by a HUMAN and i think thats the appeal of "handmade" items, they possess a passion, sentimentality, a feel that is decidedly and ONLY human, something a machine can never acheive.

By the way, the creature in my Avatar is a Trilobite, and is 500 million years old! That's pretty freakin old, dont you think? :)
 
Originally posted by Megalobyte

By the way, the creature in my Avatar is a Trilobite, and is 500 million years old! That's pretty freakin old, dont you think? :)
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Wow, that's almost as old as Andy Rooney! That is impressive.

Sorry, off topic.:p
 
Since we're off topic: Hey, Megalobyte!
"We are billion year-old carbon..."---CSN&Y
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That's Joni Mitchell too. Woodstock is her's; CS & N just covered it.

back on topic;

Are machine-made knives really better? If so, what do they do better?
Maybe they are more exact for some things, but is there no mystery, no art, no touch left? I suspect there is. I suspect a little asymmetry or inexactitude is actually desirable. It is in some cultures. Nothing more boring than an uninteresting hamon or grain in a traditional japanese knife. Is Robbie the Robot closer to the ideal than Masamune or Moran? That's when i start collecting something else
 
When a robot can make a knife as good or better than Kit, No I don't want the knife. I want the robot.
 
How did this thread start talking about robots? My CNC executes whatever program I write for it-good, bad or indifferent. It doesn't create tool plates or fixtures on its own, nor does it clamp or remove stock from those plates.
Whatever work that machine does, and, whether that work is correct or incorrect,(read: parts or scrap) is the direct result of my effort. And, since I don't have a toolchanger yet, I still have considerable input to that machine as it runs.

And then, after the CNC is done, I take those parts and apply those finishing touches that only I can
 
I once went to the museum and saw furniture that was built in days before there were such things as table saws and milling machines and was completely blown away. The workmanship was outstanding; fit and finish was deserving of a place in a museum. Especially when this work was hewn with hands and some hand tools.

The big difference is time.

Back in the old days, there was lots and lots of time. You didn't have the situation we have today with what it takes to make a living.

Today, we have handmade objects amplified with technology that affords a maker to produce a quality item that also allows for a fair profit in order for the maker to earn a living doing this work. This technology cannot do it of it's own accord. It takes skill on the part of the maker governing what the machine does. Then, the maker adds his or her own handiwork to finess everything into designs of the maker's own. The end result is still a creation made by the maker into a product we can buy at a reasonable price and enjoy all the good aspects that hand-made custom knives afford us.

If we were in the olden days, with a lot of time and little money worries, makers would make do with whatever technology was available at the time and put out stuff they would be proud of and us buyers would be proud to own.

It's making do with what's available at the moment. Should we not send rockets into space because our forebears sat on their butts and stared into space wondering what it would be like to be there, for lack of the technology to do so?
 
Originally posted by Boink

The big difference is time.

Back in the old days, there was lots and lots of time. You didn't have the situation we have today with what it takes to make a living.
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I think that you are 100% mistaken. The big difference is money and tools. Nowadays, many, many more people can afford custom work than in the past, because we produce so much more wealth. Paralelly, modern techniques allow folks who cannot afford pure custom to get good quality production, and in fact you can find all the increments from the factory piece from the pure 1-of-a-kind.

In the past, it's true that everything was custom, one-of--kind. But it's also a fact that most people couldn't afford them. So they just went without.

The average quality of products we all enjoy is infinitely superioir to what our ancestors had, when you factor in the fact that most had nothing at all.
 
I was referring to time on the maker's side and the cost of living back then, coupled with the available tools - not whether anyone could afford to buy what they were making. Excuse me in the event I was not clear enough.
 
The more we discuss the differences between custom and production knives, the more the arguement begins to sounds like the arguement for banning "assault" rifles. There are people who truely believe and want to see a distinction where there is none. It doesn't matter how a knife comes to be. What matters is the soundness of the design and the perfection achieved in implementing that design.

The process is an insignificant part of the equation. Those who were unable to write using a typewriter, would do little better using a wordprocessor, while Shakespeare would be Shakespeare irrespectively.

Life eventually steals vigor from all of us. The eyes begin to fail, and the hands become a little less steady. If tools and machines can extend the careers of our talented makers and provide them with a means to continue to perfect their creativity then what could possibly be wrong with that?

In the end we are left with the knife sitting before us. Does it strike the eye and appeal to our aesthetics? Does it fit our hands comfortably, and function with a smooth flawlessness? Can I afford it and will it deliver and perform to my expectations? For now, we must rely on the dextrous hands of talented artist to produce the best in knives; our machines are simply not yet up to the task. Benchmade and others have raised the bar on quality, but they are still not at the level of CRKs, and certainly well below our better knifemakers. But, if at some point this equation reverses itself, the artisan with the simple hand tools will be left behind as an anachronism. The more we argue the merits of a handmade custom knife, the more our arguement falls on the merits of that specific knife; it is the product which we buy, and not the means by which it may have been produced.

n2s
 
Originally posted by not2sharp

In the end we are left with the knife sitting before us. Does it strike the eye and appeal to our aesthetics? Does it fit our hands comfortably, and function with a smooth flawlessness? Can I afford it and will it deliver and perform to my expectations? For now, we must rely on the dextrous hands of talented artist to produce the best in knives; our machines are simply not yet up to the task. Benchmade and others have raised the bar on quality, but they are still not at the level of CRKs, and certainly well below our better knifemakers. But, if at some point this equation reverses itself, the artisan with the simple hand tools will be left behind as an anachronism. The more we argue the merits of a handmade custom knife, the more our arguement falls on the merits of that specific knife; it is the product which we buy, and not the means by which it may have been produced.

n2s
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Very true in many cases, but certainly not all. A big part of my purchasing decision is based on how the knife was made. It is not just how they look and feel that is important to me, but that they must also have been forged. I also don't believe that if (and that's a big if) production knife quality becomes better than that of custom knives, that the artisan that works with hand tools will be left behind. It is my belief that there will always be a place for these makers.

Edited to correct a typo.
 
Remember what "custom" and "handmade" actually mean.



cus·tom
adj.

1. Made to order.

hand·made
adj.

Made or prepared by hand rather than by machine.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition


So (leaving aside issue of false or misleading advertising claims) what is a "custom" or "handmade" knife?

By definition a "custom" knife is one that is made to the customer's specifcation; this excludes all premade, batchmade, production etc. knives. In short if the customer did not specify the features of the knife to the maker before the knife was made it is not a "custom" knife.

Handmade is a little harder to pin down. What knife is really compleatly "handmade"? Some would say that even a flint knife produced by throwing a chunk of flint against anther stone and thus spalling off a sharp flake would not qualify since the chunk of flint and the other stone are in some sense a "machine". Others would say that a blade produced entirely by a robotic machine would qualify since the machine requires human instruction to produces the knife and thus the knife is "handmade" in some sense. I would say that the term "handmade" is too vague to have any real meaning and so the maker should simply describe the production technique to the customer. In short the term "handmade" is in almost all cases so vague that it is misleading to the customer.
 
I want one of those CNC machines where you just start MS Word, type in "Make me a cool folding knife" and drink beer until it's ready... Isn't that how it works? ;-)
 
Originally posted by Kevin Wilkins
I want one of those CNC machines where you just start MS Word, type in "Make me a cool folding knife" and drink beer until it's ready... Isn't that how it works? ;-)
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Yup...., and if it made popcorn too I wouldn't have to read this thread.... :)

Good stuff guys...
 
It is said that a machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men, but that no machine can do the work of 1 extraordinary man.
I have always felt that as important as tangibles are, it is the intangibles are more important. I own an Outdoor edge Magna and it is a reasonably good knife. At last years' Blade show I had the priviledge to meet and speak with Kit Carson. I told him at that time that I had seen many photos of his knives, but that I had never actually seen one of his knives in person. Kit was kind enough to show me several of his knives. The Magna is a production copy of Kit's Model 4. There was clearly very little room for comparison between the two. The overall presentation of Kit's knife was stunning and the OE Magna, which looked ok on it's own, looks like a knife-shaped-object, by comparison. Now materials aside, the eye and the hand of a true craftsman in not replicapable by any machine. I am sure that in this group, many of us have picked up two objects that were alike, made by the same machine, and would probably mike out the same, but one feels better in the hand than the other.
Machines can hold to tiny, tiny tolerances, but the intangible plus that is added by a human maker is the something extra that you rich guys buy when you buy customs. I would if I could.
BTW- I enjoyed meeting you Kit. You are a real Gentleman.
 
Yes, i too had never actually handled on of Kit's knives before, until i finally bought one a few months ago, M4, Stellite/CF/Ti, well, everything i had heard is true, they are as good as it gets, i couldnt ask for a smoother, better put together tactical folder. The precision with which it operates is as fine as i have seen, cant find a flaw on it, and i usually can on most knives, regardless of price. I urge you all to get one if you can.
 
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