On the Back Burner

I

ilovekittens

Member
Knives you never finished. Is this a poor habit to get into, starting a build and moving on to something else? I get the juices flowing and come up with other ideas, and before I know it I'm knee deep into another build. Just wondering if this is a common habit for others and if those other builds ever get finished. ILK
 
Yes. Yes. Yes. I've got one I profiled almost a year ago still sitting there. One that needs scales that's been sitting 6 months. One that's pretty much done except for the sheath been sitting for 3 months. Once I slow down on one, it's tough to go back to it.
 
Yep I agree. It's normal. Well, maybe not normal but I think it's a good thing. If you're not motivated to work on a particular knife, it likely won't be your best work anyway. Best to let it sit and come back to it. Or if it gets far enough behind, it becomes a test piece for something, practice, repurposed design.......something like that.

I've got a whole drawer full of them in my shop.
 
There's a few in my shop too! At times you run to a point were you just don't see it anymore and move on to the next one till you do.
 
I guess I'm an oddball. I don't have any unfinished knives in my shop except the two that I'm currently working on.
 
I have a few. Being a total newb- I have all these grandiose notions of making knives for myself. I suppose it's a good problem to have, but customers keep interrupting. I need to sell to keep financing this hobby (full-time job hobby?) and pay for materials. So anything that is non-paid, (a knife intended for me), gets pushed to the back of the line.

I do have one knife that I consider a work in progress. It looked awesome on paper. Oh, man- I was so pumped. Then I profiled it into a blank and held it in my hand...and it immediately looked stupid. So I ground a little here, a little there, and now it's something entirely different. So I cut some scales for it and now I hate the handle shape. So it sits- waiting for a spark of inspiration on how to make it better- or for me to decide that it's consumed enough time, energy, and materials. I need to either finish it in hopes that someone will like it or just toss it and move on with my life.

The last botched knife became a shop knife and I use the daylights out of it. It's pretty much a sharpened blank and performs its job admirably (trimming abrasive sheets on the disc grinder).
 
Last edited:
It's probably more of a newbie phenomenon. We you first start you've got all these ideas flurrying around and things you want to try. As time goes on, you start to narrow your focus and realize some of those newbie ideas weren't so great.
 
I have a unfinished handled blade that just doesn't feel right. I stuck it under my ghetto blaster. It looks good but I am just not feeling it. Its been there for over a year now.
 
There are times when I get "knifemaker block"...... and its usually when I finish a blade, then start the guard/handle. There have been days where I've spent the majority of the day with everything in my handle material cabinet strung out across the shop floor....and just can't make up my mind. I've learned that when this happens, I simply wax up the blade, and put it aside. Then, sometime down the road, inspiration will strike, and I will get that blade and finish out the knife. There have been times in the past when I've had finished blades on the bench, or in a drawer for literally a year or more.....then one day, it just happens, I know exactly what that blade is meant to become. I don't know, but from the rest of the posts it looks like many of us do this......so guess I'm in good company! :)
 
Good to see I'm not the only one out there. I'm sure some of it comes down to fulfilling orders and putting money on the table. It wouldn't be a very good business practice to set someone's order to the side and finish it a year later. ILK
 
Ah ah ah, the forger illness!!!
It is very funny to forge blades, a little less finishing the knives ;)
 
I occasionally get stuck on a project and just can't figure out the appropriate steps to finish it aesthetically. When I hit that point I just put it away and may sometimes do two or three more projects to completion before taking a look at it again. Usually at that point something in my brain fires correctly and I finish the knife and am happy with the results. Sometimes with some projects my brain just needs more time to figure it out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top