Knife making / thoughts / level / what are you building

I have stayed away for a while from this thread but I have to say I love the results this this thread is now generating! It shows that knife making is full of types of makers. Those who are doing it for a living, those who need an outlet and those who are looking for a hobby, etc. etc.! I also think that explains the driving force of each of us! I also am seeing what I said about being my own worst critic tends to run with the profession from comments made by others.
Some of you who I don't know a lot about or what kind of work you do I have looked at your facebook pages and websites if you have one listed and I must say there is a lot of you who sell yourselves short, the workmanship I am seeing is great!

To add another layer in this discussion I have to say one of my biggest struggles is trying to decide what a piece/knife is worth. If it is a piece, is something that I really like when I get it finished I usually ask a little more!:biggrin: However like some I have talked too they say they are still giving pieces away. Which is admirable however some of the work I am seeing is really good!
While I think a lot of us started that way, giving away completed knives. When you finally sell a piece it makes you feel like maybe you have arrived, and in my case it made me pay even that much more attention to detail, I didn't want anything that had my name attached to it, going out that was not top shelf material! However that is also where I began to struggle with "how much"! Honestly to date I can't say I have always even broke even on some of the knives I have sold! :what!:

But there in lies the rub as far as I am concerned. Per definition a custom knife is just that. A customized piece, whether it was made to customers specifications or as a lot of mine are made speculation, or more so (something I just really wanted to build)!

This is a theoretical knife I am speaking of here, a speculation piece so too speak, because if it is a custom order the price is set before hand!......................

So now I have completed this particular knife and I think it turned out about as well as I can do, (in other words I feel it has no flaws). So now I have to come up with a price for the knife.
I sit down and look at materials I have in this knife and the sheath, I consider the time but I don't think that can be locked in stone because I am still learning and if it took me three tries to get some part of the knife right, well, I figure that time is on my back!
The sheath too me is just as important as the knife and I try to get the sheath to looks good enough that if first catches your eye and now you have got to see the knife, materials and time are factors in its cost.
Then the last part of the equation for me is I generally have to look at comparable pieces that are out there for sale! Sometimes that is really hard because I hope that there is nothing exactly like mine out there, and this also makes me factor in who the maker of anything is that is comparable. Because I am a nobody in the world of knife making and if the only thing I can find to compare mine to was made my a MS who has 15-20 years in the business,.....................well then mine must sell for less I figure.

So there it is in a nut shell, kind of the formula so to speak I use in pricing out a knife. So how do you do it???????????
 
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The filework shouldn't be that hard to duplicate with a drillpress, protractor, a scribe, and a small triagular file. If you save the picture, you can then enlarge it about 50% before it starts to blur and get a very good idea how its done if you done filework before.


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On pricing:
start where any business would. List all materials and their costs. the steel, the handles, pins, adhesive, belts, electricity, propane,
here is a post about pricing: http://knifedogs.com/showthread.php?33167-Knifemaking-abrasive-costs pretty long thread, got several folks to join in. i figure material costs, time spent on the knife(here i would use average time for related blades, keep a log and track time for all knives. i made 10 4"beetle slicers and it took 15 hours, 1.5 hours per knife @$25 per hour or $38 per blade), shipping and whatever other costs you can think of . Now you have a bottom line, break even price.
steel: $5 handle materials: $5 belts:$10 utilities/misc/equipment depreciation:$2 time:$38 breakeven price:$60. if you got 60 for this make believe knife, that would be reasonable in my mind, $25/hr is decent money. wont go any further here although it might be a good thread to start. and it should be clear that for 1.5mh/knife we are doing batch work whenever possible and not counting idle time like waiting for epoxy to dry or blades to temper.
we got pretty in depth in the abrasive cost. should be a start for you.
I was very surprised to see that steel was one of the smaller costs. I am currently using 8" or 12" wide O1 from eBay or Amazon,so steel works out to less than $3 per blade.
Kevin Cashen has some notes he has shared here a little on a presentation "Knife Making on the Cheap."
 
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