Call me Romantizing too much, but sometimes I still like a realistic painting over a photograph, even if it painted with the aid of later. Tho each to his own.
Warning, whisky fueled statements incoming:
I mean, I don't think either of these are the wrong answer. I appreciate that there's a place for both. As the son and grandson of artists, I love the craft and artistic aspects of handmade knives. As someone who works in non-profit to address accessibility barriers and systems of care, I like the idea of someone being able to access good tools for cheap and not needing to have an elitist knife to enjoy preparing a good meal.
With knives, I try anything I can get my hands on, ali baba purchased knives and blade blanks, refurbished antique fair/swap meet finds that started as rust buckets, home made knives, to a handful of pieces that would be considered fairly high end.
Occasionally, I've been invited to do some pop up sales in the area after doing some pieces or re-handles for folks locally. I bring such a random mess of the cheap stuff I try out and enjoy to refurbished/re-handled pieces and some occasional self-made knives in either aeb-l or from old two-man crosscut saw blades or lumber mill saw blades. I try not to hemorrhage money and for every knife I sell, I probably end up giving away a whetstone, or a knife to some broke grad student who wants to ask about knives or sharpening. The first time I did it, I sold about $300.00 in goods and made about $30.00 (don't tell my significant other, she only heard the sold $300.00 part). Talking to my friend who invited me out, I was stoked, I spent 5 hours on a Saturday talking about knives and a couple people actually gave me some money in the process! The best part was talking to a young couple who moved from the Midwest for grad school and asked about where they could get their grocery store bought knives sharpened. They walked away with a small aus10 gyuto for $10.00 because they wouldn't let me give it to them for free and I told them to go to the local knife shop for sharpening unless they wanted to try whetstones.
Whatever gets you stoked is awesome. Even better is getting to share the stoke. Cheers to all of you that share the stoke about knives, working on knives, refurbishing knives, making knives and making good food.
P.S. Sorry, this had nothing to do with knife findings.
