J. Doyle
Dealer - Purveyor
I'll give my take on mosaic pins, as I have pretty extensive experience with them. Something many of you may not know about me: before I started making my own knives, I spent a couple years re-handling/changing/upgrading handles for a pretty major production knife company that did an enormous amount of business every year and had a HUGE secondary market trade. It may be safe to say that I've changed more scales and replaced more pins than any average 30 makers combined. At one time, I had close to 100 knives AT ONCE in my shop awaiting new handles.
That said, I've used a LOT of mosaic pins. I think the perspectives of this thread are pretty much spot on. In my experiences, mosaic pins most definitely do sell buyers on a knife IN A CERTAIN PRICE POINT. The flip side to that is, above a certain price point, I echo what Ed said in the fact that there is a group of collectors that view them as 'cheap' 'gaudy' and/or 'gimmicky'. That doesn't make them necessarily right, but it IS a real viewpoint.
Me personally, I don't get much call for them on most of my knives.
I still love how a lot of them look but there is one inherent problem with (many/most of) them that makes them a no go for me and I haven't seen it mentioned here. More times than I can count I've seen knives a few months or more after they were made and the mosaic pins were standing really proud of the handle materials and in many cases, in a really rough and irregular way that made the pins feel super rough and even sharp to the touch.
With all the little tiny parts and different shapes and different materials, the pins expand and contract at different rates with the surrounding handle material, the outer wall of the pin and even the internal components themselves, resulting in a really rough and irregular feel. Additionally, with the more complex patterns especially, there just isn't very much space for epoxy to grab and hold all the pieces. When cheap epoxy is used besides, which is often the case, it too, shrinks and cracks and even falls out allowing the interior pieces to rattle around in the casing or even fall out completely. I've seen that happen more than a few times.
I've changed quite a few handles for guys that wanted their knife 'upgraded' to mosaic pins originally, then had those same knives back to get rid of the mosaic pins because of the above issues.
Have any of you guys seen your old knives that had mosaics months or more after they were completed? Just curious if any of you have noticed these things.
It doesn't mean anyone should stop using them, and they will still sell a LOT of knives, at least initially. And many people won't care about the issues even if they do happen. Personally, they're not something I want to mess with anymore.
One last thing....if you are going to use mosaic pins, you should really consider 'clocking' or 'timing' them so that they are all oriented the same way in the handle. In my opinion, it looks pretty disruptive visually when I see mosaic pins randomly put in a handle with no thought or regard to how the pins are oriented.
That said, I've used a LOT of mosaic pins. I think the perspectives of this thread are pretty much spot on. In my experiences, mosaic pins most definitely do sell buyers on a knife IN A CERTAIN PRICE POINT. The flip side to that is, above a certain price point, I echo what Ed said in the fact that there is a group of collectors that view them as 'cheap' 'gaudy' and/or 'gimmicky'. That doesn't make them necessarily right, but it IS a real viewpoint.
Me personally, I don't get much call for them on most of my knives.
I still love how a lot of them look but there is one inherent problem with (many/most of) them that makes them a no go for me and I haven't seen it mentioned here. More times than I can count I've seen knives a few months or more after they were made and the mosaic pins were standing really proud of the handle materials and in many cases, in a really rough and irregular way that made the pins feel super rough and even sharp to the touch.
With all the little tiny parts and different shapes and different materials, the pins expand and contract at different rates with the surrounding handle material, the outer wall of the pin and even the internal components themselves, resulting in a really rough and irregular feel. Additionally, with the more complex patterns especially, there just isn't very much space for epoxy to grab and hold all the pieces. When cheap epoxy is used besides, which is often the case, it too, shrinks and cracks and even falls out allowing the interior pieces to rattle around in the casing or even fall out completely. I've seen that happen more than a few times.
I've changed quite a few handles for guys that wanted their knife 'upgraded' to mosaic pins originally, then had those same knives back to get rid of the mosaic pins because of the above issues.
Have any of you guys seen your old knives that had mosaics months or more after they were completed? Just curious if any of you have noticed these things.
It doesn't mean anyone should stop using them, and they will still sell a LOT of knives, at least initially. And many people won't care about the issues even if they do happen. Personally, they're not something I want to mess with anymore.
One last thing....if you are going to use mosaic pins, you should really consider 'clocking' or 'timing' them so that they are all oriented the same way in the handle. In my opinion, it looks pretty disruptive visually when I see mosaic pins randomly put in a handle with no thought or regard to how the pins are oriented.
