Artists or engineers?

So this week I got an addition to my knife collection. It's a yearly edition by probably my favourite designers, A.G. Russell and Phil Gibbs.

Like this....except for this guy's
killer hair/glasses combo.

I sat on the couch with my new knife and was just checking out all the details on it. The little things that make it one of their knives. Small things that just improve the quality on it whilst the casual observer would probably not notice on it. And I was extolling the virtues of some of these features to my wife when she asked me: "So is he an Artist? or an Engineer.

You see a while back I started thinking about what makes some knifemakers able to turn out knife after knife, each the exact same as the last one. Or with only a slight change in colour or shape. And that would blow my mind. Because....well....I can't imagine making the same thing over and over again and still enjoying it.

Dreadlocks are cool though
Maybe I could get away with
those?...nah, would probably
just get stuck in my beltgrinder.

And since me and the missus discuss almost everything we came up
with a reason for me not enjoying making the same thing over and over again....she decided I'm too much of an artist to like that.

Now let me assure you....I ain't no hippy sitting around painting grass and smoking flowers (that's what hippies do right? Or did I get those mixed up?) and hugging trees whilst wearing goat woolen socks and hemp clothing. So I asked her what she meant.

Assembly line work needs
a special kind of person
sometimes.

Well it all has to do with the creative process. Turns out that for me (like for some) the process of creating, of doing NEW things of building experiences is VERY important. This shows itself in the fact that the first time I've ever tried to build knives that look similar was this past year.....and the reason I did it was mainly to see if I could......so in short I tried it for the experience of trying it.

Solution based thinking
if I ever saw it

So I could see the point. So it started me wondering.....what's the opposite of that then? Why do some people work on ONE model knife for so long, tweaking it and perfecting it slowly, building generation after generation of it each one slighly.

After pondering it I realised.....it's because they're more of an engineer. You see an engineer is
someone who works to find solutions. Who leans towards perfection if possible. Who's more occupied with how WELL something works than with the process of building it.

"Now if we move this over there...the toilet will flush
just a tiny bit faster"
"Sounds like it'll be worth the extra $50K, I'm
right on it!"

And engineer can take months of preparation, drawing plans, doing calculations and research before he ever commits to the first spade/brick/piece of concrete etc. And if possible he'll redo the entire thing if he feels he can get an extra 0.001% of performance out of it.

An artist on the other hand will waste as little time as possible and just get cracking as soon as he can. He might make a quick sketch but some will not even do that.

I'm honestly not sure which
should represent
the artist and which
the engineer in this
one. You decide.

Now realise here...I'm not saying any of you knifemakers are a complete artist or a complete engineer.  What I'm saying is that every knifemaker has to be a little bit of a multiple personality version of that. (Not Scizophrenic........Schizophrenia is NOT multiple personality disorder like most people think).

He (she? There's some impressive knifemaking ladies out there) HAS to be. In order for the knife to functional he's got to get in to the science side of things. Learn about materials, learn about construction etc.
In order to make the knife look good he's got to embrace his artistic side. I've seen some very well built knives (functionally and technically) that look like complete crap (to me). So in those cases maybe there's very little artist and a LOT of engineer.

I google "Fantasy Knife" was NOT disappointed

At the same time I've seen many a knife that looks AMAZING.....but then the person starts talking about the materials/construction methods he uses and it turns out it'll probably not work very well at all. Or maybe it'll be very uncomfortable.

Some collectors might prefer artists' knives. They love the aestethics. Others listening to the engineer inside them will prefer more utilitairian looking things.

In the end.....All this doesn't really matter. Some people have a preference for Artists while others prefer Engineers. I try to be a little bit of both.

All of this is just to give you some food for thought. Maybe next time you look at something you see you'll stop and wonder....was this made by an artist? Or by and Engineer.....and why do I like/dislike it?

In closing...enjoy this little clip that made me scratch my head in bafflement.

What is Quality?

This wasn't my school.....butthat
would've been AWESOME!

When I was in uhm.....(what's the english equivalent of a HBO?) college I suppose at one point I had a class
on "Quality". The class started with the teacher asking a simple but very difficult to answer question:

What is quality?

I'll tell you me and my classmates brainstormed for a long time on that question and never really got to a clear cut answer.

A couple of years later I was hired to be a Test Consultant in training. The CEO (Who is an awesome guy) of the company had all trainees in his office on our first day to talk about what we were going to do in our capacity as software testers and just testers in general.

At a certain point during that meeting he held up one of the pens with the company logo to show it to us. Then he gave each of us one of those pens and told us: "Go ahead, test this pen". In our enthusiasm some of us started writing with it, others worked with the balance, some checked the pen for manufacturing flaws and we experimented with it in all sorts of ways for a few minutes. But all the while we got the feeling that we weren't doing it right somehow.

(We may or may not have looked a little like in the video while doing it....I'll never tell)

Worms, full of healthy proteins.

Offcourse the fact that our CEO had a sneaky smile on his face the whole time didn't help. We just knew we were doing something wrong but couldn't put our fingers on it. Then out of nowhere someone in our group came up and figured something out. He asked the CEO "Well.....what do you want it to do?"

And that was exactly the purpose. That was what he'd been angling for.

You see, quality is a tough subject. Because it has so many aspects. Offcourse this is a knife blog so we'll talk about knives here.

Soo.....a good car should always be able to
 withstand a 1000ft drop right?

To some Quality might mean that a knife takes the sharpest edge. To someone else Quality means that there's no flaws in the construction. A third user might not find any of those important but DOES care that it stays sharp for very long during usage. Then the fourth chimes in and says that quality is more about high end materials. A fifth might claim that a quality knife has to LOOK like it's high end. And we could go on and on and on probably for a long time.

You see, determining whether something is a quality piece is dependent on the specifications and the demands placed on that piece.

Gotta take those boxes to the box flattening area first!
Or is there a special box slicing area?

Are you someone who cuts down carboard boxes all day  at work? The specifications for you would then say that something has to be

1. Comfortable to work with for extended periods of time
2. has high edge holding capability (because cardboard is very abrasive and will dull most knives pretty quickly)

Are you more of a woodworker? Then your knife would have to be

1. Comfortable when a lot of force is put into is
2. take a very fine (very sharp) edge and maybe edge retention is important for you too. (Edge retention is important to most people who like knives)

This is what hunters wear right?

Maybe you're someone who hunts and field dresses a lot of animals. In that case:

1. You want something that won't get slippery/is easy to hold on to when it gets wet/bloody
2. Maybe you prefer something that can be easily sharpened

In short, everything in life is pro's and cons. You just have to figure out which ones are more important to you. And it could very well be that in those cases...you'd be willing to spend a little extra to make sure you're getting exactly what your specs were.

And trust me, there's nothing like getting EXACTLY what you wanted. Most knife makers will try to make sure of this. I was recently "accused" of being obsessed with details when I make a knife for someone. Well, that's because I want to make a quality piece and in order to do that I have to make sure that I know what it is you want.

So my advise to you when buying a knife (or spending money on anything that costs a little more or that you'll be using a lot):

Make sure you know what you want.

 Followed closely by:

Be prepared to spend a little extra to make sure it IS what you want.

After all that's why they say "Buy cheap, cry all the time, buy quality cry only once."

Alexander Noot

www.lxblades.com

Here's some gratuitous knife making pictures :-)

What's the best.....?(knife, steel, handle material, brand etc etc etc)

As a Knife maker, Collector  and all around enthusiast I tend to do a lot of reading about knives. Most of my reading takes place on the internet, specifically on the various knife forums and communities that I frequent.

One of the most asked questions that I see generally runs along the lines of: What's the best.... followed by a

Because we all know Daniel San is the best....also
you might want to listen to the song that's now stuck in your head.
...you're welcome.

specific part or construction method or maybe a brand or something.

Sometimes the questions vary a little as in they'll ask...: I have $XX.XX...what's the best knife I can get for that?

I have to admit I've even asked the question myself once. Purely for inspirational purpose on what to buy with all my hard earned pennies. And that's fine I think. We all need a little inspiration every now and then (even though I'd never ask that question that way anymore).

Why would I never ask that anymore though? Don't we all want to know what the best of something is? Offcourse we do! Don't we deserve the very best that our money can buy? (I feel we do). So why NOT ask that question?

Well, because the question isn't complete. Let's take that question and put it in a setting that more people have something in common with. Let's take cars for instance.

Allthough let's be honest...this is clearly the best car EVER!
I mean nothing offroads like this beast!

Let's say you ask someone: "What is the best car ever produced so far?"
You could ask 100 people that question and possibly come up with 100 different answers. I typed it into google and the results I got were mostly, "Best sold cars ever" in which case the best car ever according to Wikipedia it's probably the Toyota Corolla. (Funnily enough the above shown Ford-T ranks pretty darn high as well)

But is the Toyota Corolla really the best car? Can it beat a landrover when it comes to going offroad? Or a Ferrari when it comes to high speeds? Can it fit a lot of people and travel comfortably like a volkswagen hippy van? Or keep on going and being easily repaired like the common army Jeep?

I'm pretty sure the answer to all of those questions is a wholehearted NO.

I'm popupar because I think thumbs up
is still considered cool (I really do)

So we see that the most popular doesn't mean it's the best at something. You see, you can't just say "The
best". Because that question should ALWAYS be followed up by the counter question: "At what?".

So now we're getting somewhere. Now we can start asking direct questions. Like:
What's the best value for money? What's the best steel for low maintenance? What's the best design for skinning? What's the best brand for kitchen knives with long periods in between sharpening?

If we ask questions we need to share with the person we're asking them where the question is going. Are you an avid outdoorsman who's spening 30% of his time in the woods/forrests? Maybe the best knife you should buy might be a little more spendy than for someone who only goes camping 3 days a year (two of those on a campsite with electricity).

A proffessional if I ever saw one.

Are you a proffessional chef? Maybe spending a little more on a good chefs knife might shave a few minutes off prep time in the kitchen for dishes and in the long haul will make your kitchen more efficient.

Are you a hobby chef? Maybe "efficient" isn't that important to you, but maybe you'd love something that just LOOKS good?

Do you do a lot of woodchopping? Maybe you'd like a shock reistant steel in your knife like CPM3V. On the other hand if you'd prefer something that works well in a wet enviroment and keeping it sharp is not much of a priority then 420J might be plenty good for you.

Want something budget friendly? Get something made in china with 8Cr13Mov steel and you'll only spend up to $20 or so. The performance won't be up to par with more expensive blades often. But for a lot of people it'll be just fine.

On the other hand if you want someting unique that'll work really well you'll have to spend a little more.

I've had some customers come to me and ask me: "What's your best knife?" To which I'd have to reply......I don't know. What do you want to do with it? (Because I'd love to make you one)