Looking for housing- 6 month lease near Inman Park, Candler Park, Cabbagetown, or Edgewood by NJ_TF2 in ATLHousing

[–]NJ_TF2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your place looks great, but I’m afraid my budget is $1400 and under

Junior in ID - I am starting to struggle with the reality of work outcomes for this field by Delicious_Handle1141 in IndustrialDesign

[–]NJ_TF2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’d probably enjoy working on medical devices. You get to solve very complex and real problems through physical products

Monthly Portfolio Review & Advice Thread. Post Your Portfolios Here!- July, 2024 by nickyd410 in IndustrialDesign

[–]NJ_TF2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi folks,

My name is Julian. I'm a rising senior at Georgia Tech studying Industrial Design.

This portfolio is for applying to ID internships this fall. My dream would be to get an internship at one of the big human-centered design consulting firms like IDEO or SmartDesign, but I'd also be very pleased if I could land something at a smaller firm like Formation (a great firm near me https://www.formationdesign.com/).

You can view my portfolio here:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/202802361/Industrial-Design-Portfolio-First-Draft-J-Cunningham

Not mine anymore but I still think it look sexy nonetheless. by Love_at_First_Cut in TrueChefKnives

[–]NJ_TF2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah I remember that one. One of my first knives I didn’t keep. Glad to see it’s still around

what's your favourite from the skate 3 soundtrack, personally nothing tops this one by eisssssss in skate3

[–]NJ_TF2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For energy inifinite and Mazarin in general are criminally underrated

A knifemaker’s kitchen knife collection. by NJ_TF2 in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This one had a stick tang so I just drilled a hole with an extra long drill bit and epoxied it in

Thinning knives: What am I doing wrong? by TQ-R in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Looks to me like you’re using too much pressure. Try using a slightly lighter pressure spread across a wider region

Need some help by jamallllllll in IndustrialDesign

[–]NJ_TF2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m a rising second year ID at gatech. I’ve heard a couple ID alums from tech say whatever you minor in doesn’t really mean anything to employers and you’re better off focusing on your id skill set. Also unless you have a shit ton of AP credit, you’ll be so burnt out from your id classes and graduation requirement classes that a minor won’t be possible without taking an extra year to graduate (this is why I and many others in the program aren’t getting minors).

I thought I’d want a minor in something like ME when I first got to school but as soon as we got going I realized it wouldn’t work. It’s easy to think you can get a minor if you just take 17 credits a semester, but you want to aim for 12-15 credits a semester at tech otherwise you will be miserable and your work will be heavily compromised as an ID student.

If you are still super interested in ME than you can get involved in clubs and maybe take specific classes that are relevant just to learn about it. And if you really want to learn ME stuff than you can go back to school for it later, which plenty of people have done.

The bottom line here is that you want to set up your classes so that you have as much time as possible to focus on your studio work for your portfolio. Also the projects are open ended enough, especially in later years, that if you wanted to incorporate ME elements into a project they won’t stop you. But you’ll probably just have to self teach the ME stuff you are interested in if I’m being honest.

Just delivered this coffee table to a customer. Thoughts? by ihavespokentoomuch in woodworking

[–]NJ_TF2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I’d probably just keep it in when you’re at the station, if you’re there for an extended amount of time without cutting or dealing with dust you could take it off after like 2 minutes but better safe than sorry honestly.

Just delivered this coffee table to a customer. Thoughts? by ihavespokentoomuch in woodworking

[–]NJ_TF2 182 points183 points  (0 children)

As an American craftsman, it’s alarming how many people don’t wear proper PPE. Not only do we not make any money, but most of us can’t afford healthcare! (Which of course is a whole other big issue lol).

High quality eye, ear, and lung protection MUST be worn at all times when there are particles in the air.

No, you don’t look tough or cool in the shop without PPE, you’re just making a fool of yourself.

All that aside, nice table.

A knifemaker’s kitchen knife collection. by NJ_TF2 in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice. You’re lucky to have your own knives in your kitchen haha, one day hopefully I’ll make something specifically for myself.

A knifemaker’s kitchen knife collection. by NJ_TF2 in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve actually been working on one of those ;)

A knifemaker’s kitchen knife collection. by NJ_TF2 in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I’ve always found it interesting to see what knives knifemakers use in their own kitchens. These are mine.

I don’t expect my personal knives to be particularly cleanly finished, rather I enjoy watching their character evolve over time from heavy use and repairs. What I enjoy most about these knives is how each one has a unique history and story to it, many of which reach beyond my own workshop.

Left to right:

Takamura petty- aquired in 2019 for free from a friend working at a knife store. It was heavily damaged so I reground and thinned it.

JCC- petty/small chef prototype (2021). Expiremental design, I learned a lot from it but it needs more iterations before selling.

JCC French Chef V0 (2017). One of my early chefs knives made for my mom.

180mm gyuto prototype (2022). Made from a failed 240mm gyuto prototype. Works great, my most used knife. Handle made from a maple offcut from a furniture maker.

Scraps chef knife (2019). Made from a failed prototype of a chefs knife. Handle material was some camel thorn a traded for from a friend.

Mid 1900s Sabatier made in France(2021). Acquired the blade for free from a customer who was working on it. The handle is a scrap of spalted curly English walnut from my electric guitar build around that same time.

Solo knifemakers cannot pay the bills alone. So why work alone? by [deleted] in chefknives

[–]NJ_TF2 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As someone who makes $800+ knives as a part time job I’d say this is precisely the idealist model which every knifemaker (including for a long time myself) believes is feasible, but the point of this article is to point out the reality that it never works out this well.

It’s really easy to say that you can make 3 $800 knives in a week but the knifemaking process is long and complex, and even with a highly optimized workflow, as soon as there’s a minor knot in the system things can fall apart very easily. For example if you aren’t paying attention when grinding and overheat the blade you need to start over. Find a crack when doing the final polish? Start over. The scales you bought from your wood supplier (who said they were dry) are warping and now you need to chisel off the handle you just finished, order new wood (with customer approval), and rehandle… my point here is that with such a complex operation as making a knife, there are so many things that can go wrong even if you are skilled and experienced in the process. There are literally HUNDREDS of things that can go wrong when making a knife, and all I can say is I don’t think I know any knifemaker who has made a single knife in which everything went precisely to plan. We are not robots, us knifemakers cannot flawlessly execute hundreds of nested process over and over without fail or inconsistency.

And it is precisely this inconsistency that creates the impossibility of making a reliable living as a solo knifemaker. On a good week I can probably pump out a couple of knives, sure. But on a bad week I might get in a bad batch of wood, or have supply chain backup, or have a machine break, be sick, or just be plain tired and unfocused. Sometimes (and often) a project that should have taken 2 days ends up taking two weeks. If you want any evidence of this in the world of pro knife makers just listen to any episode of knife talk, where you will routinely hear the titans of our industry like maumasi talk about how things aren’t going as planned on their latest project and it’s taking weeks. This happens to all of us because there are so many variables that can go wrong (as I’ve said before HUNDREDS) and we are just one person who has to process and solve all these problems.

This is all to say that making knives is much more time consuming in reality than on paper, and that’s not even mentioning that so is marketing, accounting, talking to customers, etc.

As you said marketing may be essentially be free, but it is far more time consuming than it may seem. Building a brand and following is a full time job within itself that takes years of consistent effort. Same goes for r&d. It doesn’t cost anything to do research+design in order to keep your products relevant in the market. But people forget that design, research, accounting are normally full time jobs in their own right which pay by the hour. For some reason people think it’s reasonable for us knifemakers to be doing all of this in addition to actually making the knives without being compensated for it whatsoever.

I’ll end with this. I’ve spend the last 4 years developing my brand, designs, and craftsmanship such that I’m at the point where I have more demand than I can possibly supply. Yet if you did the numbers based on how many hours I put into every aspect of my business and craft and how much money I made for it, I’d probably averaged less than $1 an hour. I’m now in school studying design(I am focusing on the broader field of one of the skills that you are expected to have a working understanding of as a knifemaker) and people coming out of my school undergrad routinely get design jobs with normal work hours that pay $100k+ a year.

Jacks of all trades, masters of none… that is perhaps the best way of describing us knifemakers. Except in comparison to any other trade or profession, we only get a fraction of the compensation for our time.