I have to explain to some one nearly every day what I do and what custom knife making is. Tell someone you make coffee mugs, work on hot rod cars, gunsmith, build bird houses, collect butterfly's, anything… and they connect the dots. Tell them you make knives (or sell knife making supplies) their eyes glaze over and you now have to go through the 20 question and answer game. When you finally get done with that, they still don't have it figured out. Anyone not in the knife business can't believe knives can be hand crafted. They think only big knife companies can make knives. It's amazing. Bless their hearts.
I don't have any solid data on how many full time and part time makers there are but we all know it's just not that many. There are more farriers than knife makers. Find out how many farriers there are and we’ll have a good number to start estimating the knife maker head count. My guess (today, and it changes every day) is there are maybe an average of 400 knife makers per state for around 20,000. There is maybe another 400 or so that are very casual makers or that have made a couple knives from kits or files or saw blades. That makes 40,000 knifemakers which isn't many in a country of 300 million. Again, just a kind of a wild guess.
Why isn't there more? Up until the turn of the last century, metallurgy, specifically weapons metallurgy, was a closely guarded secret. You didn't want your enemies to have good knives or swords so you didn't share that knowledge. The only other avenue to advance knife making for was blacksmiths and they weren't telling either. Blacksmiths faded away and you are left with just a few people that have the knowledge. To know a Knifemaker a 100 years ago was even more rare than today. Try and name a knife maker prior to 1950 and you can't, other than the guy that made the Jim Bowie knife and they can't be sure about that. I still can't remember that guys name. You can probably name a few Japanese sword maker but they weren't telling anyone how to do it either.
Go back fifty years to Ron Loveless (and a few others of course) and his completely open approach to sharing his hard earned knowledge. A hand full of guys early into the custom knife making scene changed the entire mind set about sharing knife and sword making knowledge. Today that knowledge sharing is a keystone of knife making and a big part of its success..
If we continue to share with others and grow our community at some point, some day when you tell someone you make knives someone just might say “I've heard of that” or “I know another guy that makes knives” and you get those twenty minutes back…
I don't have any solid data on how many full time and part time makers there are but we all know it's just not that many. There are more farriers than knife makers. Find out how many farriers there are and we’ll have a good number to start estimating the knife maker head count. My guess (today, and it changes every day) is there are maybe an average of 400 knife makers per state for around 20,000. There is maybe another 400 or so that are very casual makers or that have made a couple knives from kits or files or saw blades. That makes 40,000 knifemakers which isn't many in a country of 300 million. Again, just a kind of a wild guess.
Why isn't there more? Up until the turn of the last century, metallurgy, specifically weapons metallurgy, was a closely guarded secret. You didn't want your enemies to have good knives or swords so you didn't share that knowledge. The only other avenue to advance knife making for was blacksmiths and they weren't telling either. Blacksmiths faded away and you are left with just a few people that have the knowledge. To know a Knifemaker a 100 years ago was even more rare than today. Try and name a knife maker prior to 1950 and you can't, other than the guy that made the Jim Bowie knife and they can't be sure about that. I still can't remember that guys name. You can probably name a few Japanese sword maker but they weren't telling anyone how to do it either.
Go back fifty years to Ron Loveless (and a few others of course) and his completely open approach to sharing his hard earned knowledge. A hand full of guys early into the custom knife making scene changed the entire mind set about sharing knife and sword making knowledge. Today that knowledge sharing is a keystone of knife making and a big part of its success..
If we continue to share with others and grow our community at some point, some day when you tell someone you make knives someone just might say “I've heard of that” or “I know another guy that makes knives” and you get those twenty minutes back…