Thanks Lew.
And that is only part of the capital investment required to produce a finely crafted custom knife to the standards demanded by today's extremely discerning buyers.
The makers I have known over the years have never achieved anything like the $35 PH that you consider to be reasonable remuneration for this type of work, and they have mostly regarded their investment in the equipment required to produce fine knives to be in the nature of "hobby costs".
However, if somebody wants to make a living from his work, he must factor in his capital costs, depreciation on his plant and equipment, his insurance costs, he must make provision for superannuation, and if he wants a holiday every year, or to cover days when he cannot work because of illness, he must factor allowances for that in too.Then there is the cost of material, and any other unmentioned overheads.
Ultimately the marketplace decides the price of a product. Makers like the fellow who you consider charged you too much for his product may not be able to compete. However, if that maker was doing something for which there was a demand, and which was unique, then possibly he could continue to charge prices which to you appeared to be unreasonable.
My personal position is that modern custom knife work, for the most part leaves me cold. Don't like it at all. I much prefer older pieces, or pieces with an ethnic flavour. For instance, I have a very soft spot for puukos.
But the only way we can truly determine in an objective way if any item is over priced is by analysis of the production of the item concerned.
Of course, the marketplace is not much into objective production analysis, but it is very sensitive to price, so what we usually finish up with is the bare minimum standard that satisfies the requirement.
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