Your thoughts when someone modifies your knife and then it looks like crap! Happened

I hope he buys another knife from you and keeps repeating the process until he realizes how to care for a tool.
 
Here are the "after" pics of three of them...the 4th was so screwed up by the grinder I didn't have the heart to post it. Love that bed liner material.....now you see why I was so upset to still have my logo on the knives?
catastrophe.jpg
 
It could be worse. They could be pink. :)

I reserve the right to mod any knife I buy (in any way I see fit). You take pride in your work and that's understandable, but once its in the customers hands....

As for piss poor sharpening ruining blades, just charge them appropriately to fix it...

I do understand your pain. It would be like if I sold my car (which has considerable amounts of my time invested in it) and seeing it with hello kitty seat covers.

Some things are out of our control though...
 
Hello kitty seatcovers....dear god.

Godogs, I promise you that if you keep doing this for long, you will see much worse. For what it's worth, your blades still look great even after being pimped with such wisdom. This is why you take his money...

-AWL-
 
I suppose I understand the irritation, but I also look at it this way:

If a knife I make leaves my ownership (whether I sell it for full price, half price, or give it away) then I figure I got what I want for it. The moment the sale or "gift" is complete, then my time, efforts, and materials have been compensated, and the knife is now the receiver's to do with as they please.

As for becoming a source of "bad advertising"... Your work should be able to speak for itself. If you consistenly put out quality blades, then the customers and reputation will follow, despite ther being a handful of "used and abused" pieces out there.

Chances are, next to nobody is ever going to see what your buddy did to them anyway, but if they're a customer worth having, they likely have enough sense to see that the knife once had a very skilled maker standing behind it.
 
knife to a gunfight said:
I suppose I understand the irritation, but I also look at it this way:

If a knife I make leaves my ownership (whether I sell it for full price, half price, or give it away) then I figure I got what I want for it. The moment the sale or "gift" is complete, then my time, efforts, and materials have been compensated, and the knife is now the receiver's to do with as they please.

As for becoming a source of "bad advertising"... Your work should be able to speak for itself. If you consistenly put out quality blades, then the customers and reputation will follow, despite ther being a handful of "used and abused" pieces out there.

Chances are, next to nobody is ever going to see what your buddy did to them anyway, but if they're a customer worth having, they likely have enough sense to see that the knife once had a very skilled maker standing behind it.
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Yeah, while I can understand your irritation as well, I don't feel like it should be a problem for you as far as reputation goes.

If I met a guy who had a Bob Loveless custom drop point in the bottom of a tackle box covered with rust, with a neglected edge and a tattered sheath......I wouldn't assume that Bob Loveless was an idiot.....just that the owner of the knife was! ;)
 
knife to a gunfight said:
Chances are, next to nobody is ever going to see what your buddy did to them anyway, but if they're a customer worth having, they likely have enough sense to see that the knife once had a very skilled maker standing behind it.
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This is what I would think.

I wouldn't worry as much about what the customer does with his knife.
 
You can't sell it and keep it as well. BTW, I'm pretty confident that your reputation is not in the hands of one man - unless that man is you.

Charge what they are worth, or give them away. You will sleep better.
 
godogs57 said:
to me four times with one friend/customer. This has me infuriated beyond belief. My elk hunting buddy requested four of my "skeleton" knives to take out west this fall. You know what I am talking about, all steel, no handle so it will pack easier and take up less space, holes for lighter weight. He is the type of guy who is never satisfied with anything.....he gripes and moans about a piece of equipment, including these knives.

He took my knives and dipped the handles in pickup truck bedliner goop thinking he could get a better grip on them....they look like TOTAL CRAP now and they have my logo on them. Now folks think I was the one that dreamed up this crap and applied to my knives! I am sick over this. Like you fine folks, our knives are our "advertisement" and well, I'm embarrassed to see my work looking like this. I begged him not to ruin the knives like this but he didn't listen to me. Now he thinks I'm crazy because I want to bead blast my logo off the knives so on one will make a connection to my work. My knives had a bead blast finish originally...

To add insult to injury, after he got back from this fall's elk hunt he asked me to resharpen his knives, which I don't really have a problem with obviously, but some joker helping him at the ranch there had ground the edges with a grinder, in an attempt to sharpen the blades!!! One of the blades has a patent pending triple bevel on it now! he basically ruined it and it was virtually impossible to re-establish the grinds on the cutting edge. Now the knife only has a so-so edge...I can't get it any sharper because grinder boy took the edge clean up into the hollow grind if you know what I mean.

They are his knives...he paid for them....but don't I have a right to be ticked off in this case??? I believe I do.

Here is the type of knife I am referring to...

Skeletonhandledknife.jpg


hhskeletonknives.jpg
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This has not happened to me but I think you should not let it get you down. Everyone can see from your pictures that you make a nice functional and attractive knife. Almost anyone would spot the crude modification immediatley and it would not reflect on you. Don't worry. People will see the quality and this will never come up or be a problem.. worry about somethng you can control like making an excellent knife which you already do. Relax. Sell the guy as many knives as he wants and use the money to continue your art and you craft. That's my humble opinion. For every guy like this there be a dozen who praise you for your talent and taste. Larry
 
I have just starting in knife makin so can't speak of what your going through regarding a knife, but doing custom firearms work for the past 12 or so years can relate to the same thing happening to some of my custom gun work. I've had a couple customers monkey up my work only to bring it back to get it straightened out after there experiments. When they ask how much $$ the damage is I just smile and say well I got to charge you a stupid tax .........................
 
I feel you are in the right to feel upset. But I also I agree when you sell/gift a knife its the new owners and they are able to do what they want with it. No matter how silly it is. I just dont see why if he was going to do that anyway why not just ask you to put some 1/8 scales on it or something. Or after using the knife some come back to you and ask for some scale options. I personally have never found a bare knife comfortable for anything more then light cutting. Great looking knives , keep up the good work. :thumbup:
 
I don't like it myself!!! :grumpy:

I know that most folks follow the thought of, "They paid for it, they can do as they please." But I have never felt like it's that simple.

YES, folks work hard for their money. If they are willing to spend it on a custom knife that is awesome and I wouldn't want to tell them what to do with their tools/toys. Heck, I have modified most of my shop tools...

BUT.... the difference with a custom knife is that it has one individual maker's name on it. And there is a chance that 100 people will see that knife, but never see another of yours. So in a perfect world, everyone will see it the way you envisioned, constructed, and finished it.

But, it's not a perfect world... so sometimes we are gonna get pissed off about this happening.

One thing that IMHO gives me a little more room to be irritated about this, is I always tell customers that if there's something about the knife they don't like... would they PLEASE contact me about it first so I can try to make it right.

I have seen some insane hack jobs on knives, which make the plasti-dip job here look totally professional! So if it makes you feel any better, just keep in mind that it could be a L----O----T worse! ;) LOL
 
venmm73 said:
I just dont see why if he was going to do that anyway why not just ask you to put some 1/8 scales on it or something.
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When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Apparently, when you have a can of plasti-dip, everything ends up with a coat of ugly goop on it. :D
 
As a farmer - rancher myself I just have to speak up for some.

In my experience farmers who have been at it for a while - use knives for many tasks on a daily basis. Agriculture has been the major testing ground for knives since time began.

It does not take much of a knife to dress out an animal, cutting a field of grain is another story and puts knives to much more sever tasks. Agriculture has been a challenge for knives from the time grain was cut by hand and still is today, especially when equipment breaks down.

When a farmer or task suggests a knife design, I listen and have learned a lot, both from personal experience and that of friends.
 
You bought a knife. Its your knife. But it is still my brand name. I had a handle shape changed at the ricasso area to make a little 'seat' for a person's thumb. The knife got photoed during several threads, then sold. I still get folks asking me to do this again. I think if you mod a custom knife, it should be yours for life. Selling it again is when I have an ethical problem with it. The second owner of the knife contacted me about the scratches on the blade caused by adding this depression. (Dremmel tool.) It wasn't fixable without destroying the knife. I told him exactly where to send the knife. I copied the person who caused the damage/did the mod and explained what I had told the current owner and why I thought the alteration was poor judgement. I also offered to make the current owner a replacement and give him a credit in the amount he paid for the altered POS. He declined because I refused to put the divot in the handle. Go figure.
 
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