Curious... What's the hive mind's "hard no" point for purchasing a CNC'd knife with minimal hand finishing as compared to something almost entirely handmade.

Example, for fixed blades you're looking at $300 and $500 for a Schwarz Overland or Gough Resolute. Folding wise, a Grimsmo Norseman is over a grand, with artificially-inflated scarcity (seriously this "drop" exclusivity should die a painful death). They're all CNC'd with minimal hand finishing.

Compared to other batch made production knives where do you draw the line?

IMO, a Norseman is nothing more than an art piece for people who want to say they spent a grand on one. They're functionally close to useless except as a poorly designed box cutter. Not something I'd ever consider purchasing after having handled several. You want options, price is even higher. An Overland, yep, reasonable at the top end of a CNC'd, Magnacut, G10 or micarta options, and the design is useful. TJ Schwarz offers a pretty significant set of customizations without a cost increase unless you want some leather or different kydex options, the options that take more manual labor. A Gough Resolute might as well be an Esee with some fancy pants on it. I've handled them, the "fit and finish" isn't worth the $200 extra in my mind. It's nothing revolutionary, in fact it's pretty bog standard. Common blade profile, A2, G10 scales. That's about it.

I understand small scale production, but if you're gonna be paying custom money for a knife, in my mind you're paying for the skill and labor of the maker, not the financing on their CNC and their ability to use Fusion. Don't get my wrong, I hope they're all wildly successful, but where's your personal stopping point? Again, this in an opinion thing.

Knives are tools.  I buy them, uses them, break them, get a new one. 75-125 max.

I agree with first post. I will never spend over 200 dollars on a knife made in a factory or with CNC machining/computer-driven grinding.

I use them, break or damage them, then they either get refinished or replaced.

I have yet to be disappointed by my cheap Mora's. And I don't have my heart broken if they get damaged or lost.

I get advertisements all the time for Toor knives. CNC cut, computer driven grind and design, and they want $225 dollars for a tiny fucking "shank" style knife . It's nothing more than designer steel (CPM154, Kershaw uses the same steel for 1/4th the price) with G10 scales. "A fool and his money..." I suppose.

Explain this?

I'm already hard pressed to spend over 200$ on a knife, and have no preference for hand done or CNC'd, as long as everything looks and functions to the bare minimum of what I expect for the price.
Hell, I just returned a Spartan Blades Formido as it had pretty asymmetric bevels and was probably the dullest knife I've personally bought, and those are reportedly handmade to some degree. While cheaper blades like my Southern Grind Grandaddy and all the Ka-Bar/Beckers I've owned have been shaving sharp out of the box, and any issues with the bevels were either non existent or minor enough to not be a problem.

Im good with sub $200 folding knives - I do have issue with this statement

I listen to thw business of machining podcast every Friday with John Grimsmo and John Saunders. The scarcity isn't manufactured, they are running at max capacity every week. They have one Kern 5 axis that ALL of the knives run across, and while it is running nearly 24/7 - 4 - 8 knives a day is all they can produce.

Throw in in house heat treating and anodizing and I think your "minimal hand finishing" statement needs to be investigated.

eta: crazy amount of typos

Bingo.  Like anyone is idling that kind of machinery on purpose.

I bought my wife a Saga; it's a nifty pen and if indicative of the quality of the knifes I'd say they might be under pricing them if demand exceeds supply.

4-8 knives a day, max capacity every week, but can only throw up what, their "12 staff picks this is what you get and it's $1200?" 24/7 and that's all they get means they have incredibly poor process for a machine ship... I've seen the shop, I've seen the interviews, listened to the podcasts, seen the youtube series, etc. Take issue with it all you want, either they're horrible at running a machine shop, or they're not manufacturing knives, they're manufacturing scarcity. Apparently they've turned poor cycle times into a commodity!

Oh, and you don't get to pick what they make. If your number comes up and what you want isn't there, or they only made one and someone clicked faster, tough shit. Yeah, that's manufactured scarcity. One-man shops outproduce them, especially the one-man CNC shops. Plenty of other guys heat treat and anodize in-house too, and plenty of guys don't and still have "ultra premium" quality. They're choosing not to maximize output because then the supply/demand curve wouldn't swing in their favor. I get it, if you could go into any reasonable knife store (I'll at least give them enough credit to stay away from the shopping mall katanas) and have a choice of what you wanted off the shelf, nobody would be paying what they're charging.

When you buy a Grimsmo knife, you're paying a premium for manufactured exclusivity, there really isn't a good argument against that fact. Great that they can make money doing this, even if they're dirty north of the border commie pinkos. Doesn't mean I have to buy into it. You (they) want to tell me I have to wait and pay $1200 for the privilege of not even getting a choice at which program the op punched into the CNC? Nah, not for me. Like I said, great that they can, but IMO a waste of money if you're looking for an actual useful piece of gear. Which is what this thread is about, where do you guys draw the line? (I think mine is obvious, I'm not paying a damn canuck that much to pop some g-code)

With the amount of times my "number" has come up, they can't have too many people interested or my lone shot would have been over years ago (and not once a month). My point is, when you pay $1000 or $1200 for a Grimsmo, you're not paying for $1200 worth of "ultra premium" knife, you're paying for the economy they've convinced you to buy into. It's like that Pete's Pirate Life stuff. You're telling me that $160 fidget coin is worth it? Your $100 deck of cards? Same same, but it's just a knife....

I was kinda on the fence before, but your sour grapes review has me convinced I need a Norseman to EDC the shit out of.

I don't have a warped view about CNC being some sort of easy button to reduce manufacturing costs to the level of a high volume dedicated production line.

I find Grimsmo's story to be interesting in that it's an apparent success in a journey that started as a one man shop with an overriding theme of "this didn't seem so difficult at first glance."  He's also managed to build perception of his brand to support demand at the current price point.  That's a marketing trick that everyone wants but few achieve, no?

If you've got it all figured out, why not buy a Tormach, a belt grinder and a heat treat oven and show us how it's done?

Now that would be a $200 knife, maybe

Depends on demand, no?

We'd all be carrying mass produced Milwaukee folders if this was simply about function, utility and price.

Could you make and sell enough $200 knifes in a one man shop to keep the lights on (ie: as your sole source of income.)?

Personal opinion - the Norseman is too big for edc. I’d pick the rask.

However I’m not a fan of liner locks so I’m not carrying either one.

As far as price and scarcity- John has been pretty open about looking at ways to increase supply without sacrificing quality. They fairly recently bought a Speedio to free up time on the kern - sadly the grinding quality sucks.

I’d love to hear how the op would solve the output issues without sacrificing quality.

I looked up that Norseman.

That knife is, subjectively, ugly as fuck. The blade looks like my whiskey dick but 1/2 inch longer

Hey, you're absolutely welcome to. No sour grapes here, I just think it's interesting that people are willing to overlook what a poor comparative value they are and buy them anyway. I don't have a warped view about CNC, although all of the CNC experience I have is with far more complicated parts than a knife blade and some scales.... Honestly, the Rask is a much more useful knife, although still overpriced.

His story is absolutely interesting, and he's absolutely been successful in the false economy of that sort of forced scarcity drop culture. Like I said, I'm glad they successful, the question was, how much are you willing to pay for a knife that's priced way over actual value based on the work that goes into it, in an industry where the skill of the maker is typically a delineator of cost.

I notice you haven't commented on either of the other examples. Is it because you've bought into the Grimsmo marketing? I guess your answer to what the answer is to how much would you part for less human hands involved is "whatever Grimsmo charges." So you're willing to pay what Schwarz and Gough are asking as well? If not, why not?

Also, not that it's actually related to the question, but why would I buy a Tormach given the well-documented issues they've had? Granted I haven't looked at one in a couple years, but for repeatability of high-precision parts, there's a reason they were the cheap option and were practically giving them away to the youtube maker crowd....

I've followed Grimsmo for his CNC content.  I wasn't aware he had any sort of marketing, though I suppose you might consider his Youtube and podcast stuff marketing?  (Is it more or less marketing than Starrett or Gerstner do?)

I'm not really a knife guy, other than I EDC one or two and have been slowly re-considering my adherence to buying inexpensive stuff.

I don't know anything about the other examples you've listed.  If they've been able to cultivate a demand for their products that they have trouble meeting, I'd suggest that they're under-priced too.

I'll do the hard work for you, I'm really interested in your opinion, especially considering you're following along for the CNC content, but apparently willing to pay for a Norseman. Both of the below makers are CNC knife makers. There is a modicum of hand finishing afterwards, although not nearly as much on the blade work side as a normal knife maker. Certainly not as much as someone forging knives themselves, probably about as much as most semi-production makers. We'll ignore the sheath work since Grimsmo doesn't do any of that, although I'd posit that there's more handiwork by both of the other guys than Grimsmo does. Kydex requires work and is a hard process to automate.

TJ Schwarz Instagram
TJ Schwarz's knives
Aaron Gough Instagram
Gough Custom knives

So, given The Overland and the Resolute, two examples at $300 and $500 (conversion from CAD) respectively, do you feel like they are correctly priced for the market? Ignoring the Norseman since it's double the cost.

As for marketing, absolutely! Gerstner and Starrett, you want it, you can get it, and their production isn't based on trying to imply some sort of luxury to their product. There's absolutely demonstrable difference in value in paying the price for a Starrett when compared to the budget offerings. A Norseman, not so much. Don't get me wrong, they're nice, but "ultra premium?" Eh...

As for being under-priced and cultivating demand, I figured I already covered that considering my "number" for the Norseman comes up more regularly than they'd probably like if they were selling as well as would be implied. The random number pool obviously isn't that big. That being said, TJ Schwarz has ample batches, and two other standard knife offerings. Are you suggesting he should increase his price until demand dies off? That's an interesting train of thought! As for scarcity, 3-5 week lead on all of the Schwarz stuff since he builds in batches, but his batches are always large. Aside from some niche products now and again his stuff is generally always available. Gough is closed while moving shops, but his availability was sort of all over the place, although never too far from restocking. Both are on-man shops with output far exceeding Grimsmo with 13 employees and a dog. Granted their designs are simple fixed blades, but considering they also offer kydex with theirs, the BOM is probably similar in terms of line items. If the Grimsmo guys were taking full advantage of their 13 employees (and a dog), you would expect their productivity to be much higher.

As for reevaluating inexpensive purchases, hey, best part of it being your money is that it's yours. Only you can decide what you consider value. If that's a Norseman, drive on, I hope you get lots of enjoyment out of it. For me, a Schwarz Overland is a good mix of cost/benefit, the Resolute doesn't offer enough to merit the price, and the Grimsmo offerings aren't a decent value at all. At half the price, I'd change my tune, although the Norseman is still a hell of a lot more form than function. I think a Benchmade Bugout is overpriced considering half of the thing is nothing but plastic. And a Kershaw Skyline is underpriced considering its performance. It's the knife world, it's all over the place, and the question is where that line is for (you) the people in the thread.

Are you comparing liner lock folding knives to fixed blades?

Have you actually fabricated anything with moving parts?

Looking at KnifeCenter, 3-4" fixed CPM Magnacut knives top out at $341 (though out of stock).  Things that are in stock are $265-$295, so the Overland at $295 seems like a reasonable deal with all the custom options.

4-5" fixed A2 knives appear to be mostly L.T Wrights in the $209 or $229.  Two others are closing in on $300 and the W.A Suris  is $424.

At $490, the Resolute is expensive but also sold out, so he must be selling what he can make at that price.  I did watch his Fadal VMC build (and apparently a few of his knife videos at some point in the past).

His cycle times on the Fadal are likely slowing things down, as well as having to (potentially) setup and tear down fixtures for different parts/ops.  He's a one man shop so he's probably able to keep overhead low and adding capacity may not be worth it if he's selling everything he makes and isn't willing to make the jump to the next level.

The market might support a higher price.  I suspect they're both priced to avoid having to risk carrying inventory though.

Starrett is a premium brand but subject to substutition if there are unreasonable delays in a customer putting hands on product.  While they will sell direct, they price things to gently push you to a distributor.

Gerstner is absolutely a luxury product, however they're dealing with the softening of demand from machinists I suspect, so prices are down (a little.)

Looking at the Norseman product archive, I think your perception might be a little different if the store front and fulfillment system supported the range of variation present on the most recent page.  The added complexity and risk might not be worth it though if their current system works for them.

I kinda wonder what their placement backlog is if they've got a few things that just don't jive with potential buyers.  I guess if my number comes up I'll know how the UI works but I don't recall the Saga collection offering having a "no thanks" (though I did observe a few go out of stock while looking.)

My point is that their lottery system may work against placing a particular knife with a paying customer as rapidly as it might otherwise, and it might be presented to several candidates before that.

The supply/demand curve is a thing.

It might be an interesting experiment to see if a "buy it now" vs. "wait for next batch" price premium had any takers.

That dog clearly isn't pulling his weight.

I don't know where the bottlenecks are in the process but I suspect that they're carefully identifying them in turn and dealing with them.  If they're only able to assemble, fit and hand finish 8 knives a day, then the output rate of the machine shop isn't really relevant, except that it allows them to keep the finish shop supplied in the event of machine downtime.

I was gifted a Mini Barrage and at the time my thought was "I wouldn't want to carry this if it was my own money!"  It's been fantastic and I kinda want another as a backup.

I got a Bugout for one of my daughters and the plastic has likely been beneficial for the environment she uses it in (farm).

I like the axis lock (as well as the safety on the Barrage) and the price they're asking isn't high enough to make make me look at other options.

Paying some Kami in Nepal to hand forge a knife out of leaf springs gets me something hand crafted and unique, but not likely consistent in quality.

At the end of the day, I don't view CNC as taking anything away (or cheating).  Freeing the knife maker up to consistently and repeatedly execute their vision in a small shop raises quality, lowers price or both to some degree.  Certainly they seem to be getting product to customers faster than Randall.