A Conversation About Customizing Knives

[orvet]

I had an interesting conversation with an old fellow at our knife club yesterday. He said; "You know, you have it backward. You take a inexpensive knife (Old Timer) and put a lot of work into it to make it pretty and fancy. But it is still an inexpensive knife, it just looks fancy."

I said; "Well, it usually costs one of my customers about $100 for the work I do on a knife. They send me a $50 knife & I customize it to their specifications. They can carry the knife, and when they pull it out people say 'Wow.' They only have $150 in the knife that is their custom knife."

"If I started with a $300 Remington & did custom work on it, they would have about $400 in the knife, but the value of the old Remington has dropped because it is no longer an original Remington. So now the guy has $400 in his Remington which is now worth about $200 because it isn't original. When they pull it out people say, 'Nice old Remington, too bad it isn't original.'"

The guy said; "You know I had never thought of it that way. I see your point."

Customized factory knives are not everyone's cup of tea, but I like them, carry them, and enjoy doing the work on them.
I thought some of the guys in this forum might be interested in this conversation.

I would like to know how some of you feel about this subject.

Dale

[Hukk]

Pretty much exactly the same. I might add that I do not like to restore a junker to it's original specifications, especially if the junker, if mint would be a highly sought after knife worth $$$. I want to at least deeply stamp or etch my last name on the inside of the liners. HUKKANEN won't be easy to get rid of.

[BIGHEAD]

I FEEL THE SAME, IF YOU GONNA CARRY IT USE A DECENT KNIFE BUT NOTHING THATS GONNA BE WORTH MORE THE WAY SHE CAME.

[4ever3]

I think you hit the nail on the head Dale

[muskrat man]

You said it well Dale. It takes a good quick comeback in this buisness