What I Have Been Up To Lately

[cookinstuff]

Looking forward to seeing you take it part time Marko, it's almost hilarious thinking about you doing this as a hobby, your knives don't look like a hobbyists work. I guess Marko being a hobbyist knifemaker is like an olympic athlete being an amateur athlete? Not exactly amateurish, looking forward to seeing more and different knives from you Marko, good luck and have fun on your time off.

[Marko Tsourkan]

The hobbyist will end on Oct 12, 2012.

Some profiles are tweaked tried-and-true profiles, some are exact copies. For instance yanagi, garasuji, and miroshi will be exact copy. Slicers, kiritsuke shaped gyuto, and honesuki/petty hybrid are tweaked.

I will do them as ready-made at first, and then I might add them to custom orders.

M

[cookinstuff]

You seem to have a knack for getting profile shapes right, atleast in my eye. I'm looking forward to some of the new style blade shapes, good luck and have fun.

[Marko Tsourkan]

Want to clarify that when I say hobbyist, I mean my approach to work (and not the quality of my work) - work at your spare time, at a comfortable pace and capacity, etc.

It can't go on like this, as it leads to missed deadlines, long backlog of orders, and stress. These are the areas where I need to improve and it will have to come from increasing efficiency - optimizing processes, adding new equipment, and put more time in. So I will allocate 25-40 hours a week to this as of mid October. If it can grow into self-sustained business, I will go into this full-time.

[cookinstuff]

I wish you luck with getting into it more, just remember when it's a fulltime job to keep having fun with it. I'm sure everyone around here would just love to keep you busy

[Marko Tsourkan]

I am in it up to my ears, just need to do things more efficiently. Thank you..

[cookinstuff]

Hehe, i was only kidding, I can imagine no difference between some of the guys on heres workload, and some fulltime custom knife makers. The standard of maker around here from hobbyist, to professional is pretty ridiculous, some real talent lying around these boards.

[Marko Tsourkan]

A quick update.

I took some time off to think about the direction I would like to take, namely what kind of knives I would like to make, what my objectives are for a next year, next three years, next five years.

The knives I make now are quite labor intensive, and some manufacturing processes are not likely to improve even as I continue to innovate. On the bright side, this is what will set my knives apart and I like how my knives perform, and the performance is the main reason I started making knives. So, I will try to find little efficiency where possible, but have to accept that my output will stay low.

I narrowed down to 3 steels, one carbon and 2 stainless, that consistently offer outstanding performance and until anything better comes around, these will be the steels of choice.

I am going to discontinue offering buffalo horn as handle ferrule material, as I find it difficult to secure a supply of quality horn. The substitute will likely be a natural material. Still working on it, so will make an update when I know more.

Western handled knives and single-beveled knives are coming soon. Prototypes will be done parallel to my custom orders, and once I reach a level of quality I am satisfied with, they will be offered as choices.

Shopping around for molted salt furnaces.

In addition to 52100 pass-around knife, I will also pass around a gyuto in PM stainless steel. I will have details soon.

This will be all for now.

Thanks,

M

[cclin]

Marko, you don't take DT damascus custom order any more??

[Marko Tsourkan]

I still do, in fact I am very excited about Devin's 52100 damascus steel (see latest chevron pattern gyuto).