I wished I was in a position to buy decent tools to start with, I'm still using a little 1x30 for my belt grinder and a single burner vevor forge, I've managed to sell 6 knives so far but investing a couple of grand into better equipment especially in the current climate just isn't an option.
Hi Jason and Aaron! Thanks for the comment and feedback. I feel for you - it’s not always easy to splash out for the best in its class for every equipment but the point me and Fredrik were trying to out across is (if you are in the market for it) rather than buying a small upgrade, go for the end goal tool so you won’t be wasting money and time on upgrading etc. I hope that helps!
Tooling is a tricky game because unless you come from a metal fab background or some kind of practical engineering history you can get lost a little, there's no point looking at the modern, mass produced cutlery sector either because they've got nothing to do with people hand making knives. Its all dies, presses and robots in there regardless of what their packaging says! Essentially, hand making knives is doing it the hard, archaic way where Time is more valuable than metal, wood, gas, electricity or tools I mean, they're all expensive too. But they're practically all what is known a 'Wear Items' and 'Consumables', meaning at some point a component will wear out because that's essentially the nature of its purpose and design, its not that you're using it wrong or the design is incorrect- like brake pads and clutches in cars. They wear out so something that is actually important doesn't wear out as quickly so you can factor in stuff like anything that moves, slides or revolves into that category. Its going to wear out somewhere, the bearings, bushes, contact surfaces are all going to wear out. Consumables are sometimes your big ticket as well, when you buy a belt grinder, factor in you'll probably be spending about the same cash on actual belts. Depending on your process, defines which belts you use up the most of, for me its 36, 60, 80 and 120's with much less on the 200-600grit range and scotchbrites, I use up to 600 because it saves me TIME during hand sanding processes later on, meaning I can make more for the time spent. There's no real point getting upset about using up belts, sandpaper,, drill bits a nice bit of wood, your metal or gas- its all going to be gone by the end of it so don't hoard it if you can avoid having stockpiles of shit you don't need just lying there. Personally, if you're coming into this. Spend as little as possible on just what you need, because there's going to be some stuff that just doesn't get used much in your process. Plus if you're a hobby maker it can sit there for 3 months being unused while you're working elsewhere so there's not much point in spending $500 on something that you could spend $100 on and probably get the same value out of. It just won't wear out as a hobbyist, plus you may very well end up ditching this and going to play computer games or something later on. So make sure you hunt around to find that good mix of value and cost. Value and Cost are two different things by the way, a machine or tools Value relates to how much work it does, not how shiny or expensive it is. So its up to you to work out that Value-Cost balance. Like some people might find a Lathe or Mill a high value item But if you don't know how to use that high cost item, then its value drops down due to the time spent learning how to use it. Likewise with big ticket items like Presses and Power hammers, figure out just how many knives you will need to make and their average cost over time to make it pay for itself and the answer should be quite horrifying :)
