Spreadsheets for collecting

[Campbell]

I know a lot of us use spreadsheets to keep track of the knives we buy, where we bought them, and what we paid, and details like steel, cladding, grind, weight, dimensions etc. etc.. A few years ago I threw together a rudimentary spreadsheet in excel, but I don't love it. Before I spend more time trying to fine tune it, I thought I would reach out to see if anyone has already developed a great base template that could be shared with everyone. Some of you have some really big collections, so I am sure there are some well thought out spreadsheets floating around. No sense reinventing the wheel!

 

[mengwong]

Some kind of open/federated database to track holdings by maker would make sense too – by analogy, goodreads saves us the trouble of re-entering author and title, while allowing us to log personal details.

 

[captaincaed]

If you promise not to tell anyone then I’ll admit to using one. Helps when selling, just to remember what I paid, fair pricing etc. Also makes posting dimensions and whatnot easier.

 

[Heckel7302]

I have a spreadsheet. Haven't found a better way. My columns are: Maker, Model, Shape, Steel, Finish, Length, Height, Weight, Handle, Ferrule, Cost, Date Acquired, Retailer, Country, and Sold price. I've thought about adding more measurements, BTE, Spine, etc, but never got around to it. I mostly use it to remember how much I paid when selling, but interesting to have the other stuff too. I have tab for stones also, and total costs are linked so I can see how much I've spent on stuff, which can be humbling at times.

 

[Campbell]

Have you gone to the trouble of creating a table with drop down menus? I think your columns are comprehensive. One additional column I've been thinking about because it has become more and more important to me, is grind - convex, WH, workpony, laser, flat, hollow, s-grind etc.

 

[Bico Doce]

One column that I have that has proved convenient is a selling description that brings in all of the data formatted where I can copy and paste it directly to my BST thread.

I pretty much use all of the fields already mentioned in addition to a pics column which has the link to my Imgur post for the knife.

 

[Campbell]

Such a pro move. Do you have the headings horizontally in rows like you do in your listings or vertically at the top of the columns?

 

[Heckel7302]

Have you gone to the trouble of creating a table with drop down menus? I think your columns are comprehensive. One additional column I've been thinking about because it has become more and more important to me, is grind - convex, WH, workpony, laser, flat, hollow, s-grind etc.

Grind would be a good one.

No tables. I’m not that fancy. Just select all and sort by headers.

 

[Bico Doce]

Such a pro move. Do you have the headings horizontally in rows like you do in your listings or vertically at the top of the columns?

Here’s an example of my spreadsheet with a row populated for reference

 

[tostadas]

Length, height, weight, choil height, tip rise, spine thickness (handle/heel/mid/tip), edge thickness behind the edge midblade (1/5/10/20mm), balance from heel, handle dimensions (HxW at ferrule, HxW at butt, length, depth of facets), shinogi height, concavity/convexity on left and right sides, thickness taper

 

[deltaplex]

I'd suggest using a kanban style board for this kind of documentation. Unless you're really planning on leveraging the mathematics/data tools inherent to excel, setting up a card for each and then sub-organizing those cards seems more well suited to the task.

 

[Moooza]

Not a spreadsheet, but I recommend saving the webpage of the knife, from where you bought it. They often aren't kept up, or are hard to find later. You can download it and save it for future reference.

 

[Heckel7302]

Not a spreadsheet, but I recommend saving the webpage of the knife, from where you bought it. They often aren't kept up, or are hard to find later. You can download it and save it for future reference.

I always take screen shots of the original listing photos.

 

[M1k3]

This sounds like right up @ian's alley. Unless he's only into diagrams

 

[ian]

This is all way too organized for me. Props to those of you that do it, though! I can imagine it would be very satisfying to have all that info recorded.