Beautiful Pendray knife as well as the price!!
 

Mr. Pendray did excellent work on this blade.
Closed item on eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...0253&rd=1&rd=1

A magnificent blade, and I like the lines of the whole thing. The guard flows well with the blade and I like the combination of rib and T-spine. I dislike the fittings though...I think the piece would have been more attractive with a nice wood or ivory scales.

Regards,
Emanuel

would you post some pictures, the link is good butr the pictures are gone.

OK pictures
 

Pendray knife pictures

More pictures
 

Please do not drool on your computer! ;)

Personally, I think is is garish.

The blade is nice but the furniture is complete fantasy as my mother use to say it's Ongepatcheket (Overdecorated, overdone) :)


Lew

Also do not like these fittings. I've seen the similar, but old, filigree fittings on some old Middle Eastern, Albanian/Balkan daggers, but they never impressed me. Agree with Manolo - Woots looks much better in the "natural" fittings, i.e. bone and leather. Also, for THAT price one can get a fine antique wootz sword (or actually several nice and old swords and daggers). Excuse the comment about the price though, it is just my opinion !!!

Glad I am not alone!
The silverwok on this piece is the simplest and the cheapest Caucasian decoration technique. You can see similar examples on e-bay for $19.99 ( stamped blade included :p ) and the only difference is that the present one is silver. I was told that Georgian mass-producers of these souvenirs employ part-time youngsters ( kind of " flipping hamburgers"-type job) and those start producing commercial wares after 2-3 days of practice. This is fine for a $19.99 trinket, but I would never pay $8,500 for this " Fantasy Sword of Klingon General" !

You are not alone. I thought this was bad enough with pearls and enamel. I have to sing my own praises :D :D :D . Rather expensive garnets :p .
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...happy/D001.jpg

That's my big gripe with the custom knife business today they make some nice stuff but they charge prices that are astronomical. I once showed a famous knife smith one of my wootz katars that I paid only $150-200 he said it was nice and if I wanted one made by him it would cost $2,000 :eek: So why buy a copy when you can have the real deal for much less :confused: :shrug: People just get caught up in the hype that's my opinion.

Lew

Agree with Lew 100%.
Modern swordmaking is an industry that manufactures toys and home decorations. Modern-made blades will never be used anyway ( are you going to slice sausages with a $8,500 blade?). For all I know, these high-priced Damascus blades may be no better than Taiwanese dinner knives from K-Mart: nobody will ever put them to practical test. And even if they are 10 times better than Ginsu knives, so what? Whose life had depended on the quality of his sword over the past 150 years?
Why would I want to have a blade with no history behind it? Without some romantic story, be it about the owner, the era, the war, the tradition?
Some want to revive lost technological process? More power to them. Some want to master old decorating techniques? Great! But to pretend that the final result has anything in common with the old weapons is like selling a "hand-painted" copy of Van Gogh's oil as a real thing and having a gall to ask twice the price of the original (" I had to work very hard to fake Van Gogh's style!")

Ariel

Pendray makes a great knife that's tuff nails and he doesn't charge that much for his work I actually paid very little for an all wootz knife with a 5" blade a few years back. The price sky rockets once the knife falls into one of these purveyor's hands. I have actually over heard them at shows telling other sellers that their prices are to low and to charge more so the big guys don't get under cut so buyer beware :eek: I once traded a damascus camp knife a few months later it showed up on one of these websites where it went for fives times what I paid :mad: go figure :confused:

Lew

I also agree on the "garish" as stated by Ariel as well as what Louieblades said. As the blade did not sell also indicates the "Price is not Right".
My comments are on the BLADE not the furniture. I think that Pendray's modern wootz is some of the best around. I am of the opinion that Pendray made just the blade and someone else made the rest.
I did learn something (any day is a good day when I learn anything, and most of my days are very good) ;) when Ariel stated that it is the cheapest style work. I am always amazed of the collective knowledge of folks on this forum.

I am sure that Mr. Pendray's blades are technically superb and can cut regular steel like butter. But... who is going to try it for the price? I fully understand that there are 2 kinds of collectors ( many more in reality!): those who admire technical aspects of the blades and those who seek history and romance behind the sword. I am firmly in the latter camp and that's why I am not thrilled by modern blades no matter how beautiful and technically superb they might be. Give me an oldie, coming from a violent place with a fascinating history any time, something that likely saw a battle and bears scars to prove it and I am happy.
But, to each his preferences...
More from Zaza Revishvili:
http://www.balisongcollector.com/galleryZ.html
http://www.knifeshows.com/revishvili/revishvili.html
The best part, of course, he was a professional football player and is on the list of Best Ever Georgian Football Players
http://www.gff.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG&sec_id=112
This is for our European Forumites: no real American will be impressed by this info anyway. And, just for them: football means soccer :rolleyes: .

Looks like he's really into garnets and excessive silver filigree :shrug: too bad for the blades.

It appears that the majority are in agreement....and I have to say IMHO they are right. Fantastic blade...beautiful curves :cool: but the furniture :shrug: OTT and too 'fancy'.......not my cup of tea ...at all....especially at that price :eek:
You cannot beat the historical .....and dare I say... the romancism of old arms :cool: Newly made edged weapons, are to my mind 'soul less'.........

honestly

when you think about it..... how much did those old blades cost to produce back in ancient times ?.. some the price of a kingdom...

and now you can get them for a song and a dance :rolleyes:


not that i'm defending pendray... but he was the pres of the american blade smith assoc. at one time....

G

I wonder what Antonio thinks about this matter...

Personally, I love the fact modern smiths are continuing the art and traditions of the past. The Pendray blade that started this thread is an excellent example, and one I'd be proud to own.

I, myself, have several modern interpretations of my favorite weapons, and every single one is a work of art. None were inexpensive, and all cost more than I've paid for nearly any antique. I was happy to pay the price for the quality of workmanship in every instance.

Any attempt to compare the "worth" or "value" of antiques to their modern counterparts will fail. You may as well attempt to compare modern hand-crafted furniture to antique furniture. :shrug:

Not to talk about modern-made swords/furnitures that are made in the same traditional way as the ancient ones making no break in the tradition.
A large part of japanese antiques are cheap junk in front of works by very
talented japanese modern makers.
Sometimes even western makers surpass lower lever antique ones.
I wonder how much this apply to other cultures as well...

I agree completely: some of my antiques are junk.

My first blade wasn't worthy even of the costs of the restoration...

[QUOTE=Gt Obach]honestly

when you think about it..... how much did those old blades cost to produce back in ancient times ?.. some the price of a kingdom...

and now you can get them for a song and a dance :rolleyes:



Gt

I really don't think they would have cost a kingdom for a dagger maybe a horse or something like that. At the last Timonium seminar there was discussion about how much it would cost to supply a warrior in the Polish army during the 16th or 17th century the cost of a good sword was not that expensive. I have heard that during viking times a good sword was worth the equivalent of $25,000 but that was before good steel was available in larger quantities. It is amazing that when you see some modern makers asking $1200 for a small hunting knife and these guys claim they have some super heat treatment which they claim can make 5,000 cuts in a piece of rope before becoming dull. It's all hype and there are a lot of gullible people out there willing to empty their pockets to buy one. I have been there and done that and that is why I now only collect Antique weapons. Pendray is a great guy and he does not think that one needs to charge an arm and a leg for a knife you can buy a wootz dagger from him for about what you would pay for an antique one. Btw the funniest thing I ever saw was was when at an ABS cutting competition I saw big burly men trying to cut through the wooden dowl of a toilet plunger to prove how good there expensive bowie knives were :eek: :D you never know when a plunger will jump out from behind a tree and attack you in the woods so you better have one of these knives at your side :eek: :eek: :p


Lew

i agree but a horse was still very valuable.. and the daggers must have been aswell

there will alway be hype with blades... just seems to go with the territory..
but the abs does have standards and you should get a decent knife from one of their js or ms smiths....

decent knife for normal situations... excluding fierce plunger attacks, ofcourse

G

Agree with Lew.
The first expensive modern knife I bought based on "Virtually Undestructible" claims and DVD commercial was a Cold Steel tanto knife. I took it to the jungle and tried to open a coconut. The blade tip snapped without even applying a pressure. Yet you see guys piercing a car hood with it in the commercial. So now I have a $40 good old knife, and it never fails. However, the point is only in QUALITY. It is not fair to compare a bad antique with good modern (and vice versa). Similarly, it is not fair to disrespect the antique artist by comparing the product made with and without ANY modern technology.

Alex

Years ago a famous bladesmith referred to the stuff we collect as tribal junk which I thought was quite snobbish.

Lew

Snobbish :eek: :D :D :D more like blind ignorance, I wish there were more like him these days :o :shrug:

It can even be understood as a racist quote... "tribal junk"... :(

Anyway, on other fora I'm renown to be "traditionally minded" :D but
honestly age is *not* a warranty of quality. Of course you can't expect
from a modern made sword the same feeling an antique (even a junk one)
has, but it's not fair, IMHO to completely put down modern made works.
The one that started this thread seems to me an excellent work, but to
make judgment about the price or the historical/cultural accuracy is
beyond my knowledge.

cold steel sells production knives... .. same idea as the walmart type knives... which some people seem to prefer... ( maybe for the economy, or stainless nature... and that all the good i could possibly say about that )
- they are completely different from a custom knife..

i still maintain that the ancient blades that are bought now ...are usually at unbeatable prices...not at all compared to the old days.. if you were to pay the equivalent now a days... ha ha ;)

... so with that in mind, you are usually getting an acceptable price for some of the decent custom knives being made today...

G

ps... as you can see with the dha that Jesus made.... !

Got pics? :D

oh dear... I meant Jesus Hernandez


http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php?showtopic=7567



Greg :o

Ah, I thought the other one :)
He was into carpentry: scabbards, shira saya etc

I know. ;)

Commencing in about 1978 I was involved in the making of custom knives.

I made a few complete knives, but was not fast enough, nor good enough to make more than about $2.50 per hour for my work.

I was pretty competent at making blades though, and I made a lot of damascus and nickel damascus blades for other makers.
I made billets, blanks, and completed blades.

These blades were all forged by hand with a hand held hammer, and the blades that I took to finished stage were made using hand tools, not machine grinders, linishers, and the like.Effectively I was working the way traditional smiths worked prior to the industrial revolution.

I did this work as a hobby, and I enjoyed it. I also became pretty fast at turning out blades. So fast that I was able to base my prices on $10 per hour.

The custom makers that I sold my blades to mostly worked to extremely high standards and tolerances.They invested very large sums of money in equipment that enabled them to turn out knives that were technological works of art. Fit and finish taken to the highest degree and the closest tolerances.

Many of these makers were machinists, tool makers, die makers, or other metal workers.One or two were jewellers who concentrated on lavish adornment. They were for the most part, skilled tradesmen working with their trade skills at a hobby.

Whenever the subject of remuneration for the work we did in making knives came up, it invariably came around to how little we could make on an hourly basis, compared with what we could make at our regular jobs. When the cost of equipment was factored in, it was obvious that many, if not most of these custom knife makers were not making any money at all from their work, but were in fact paying for the pleasure of pursuing a hobby.

My situation was a bit different:- I was working with low tech equipment, mostly stuff I'd made myself. The most expensive thing I had was the anvil, and that had cost me $120. My forge was built in an old truck wheel, and my blower was an old vacuum cleaner. What I made from making blades was pretty much all clear money.

I was able to turn out a useable knife from motor vehicle coil spring in about 40 minutes---straighten the coil, forge to shape, hoop handle, clean up, heat treat.

However, I also made a number of keris blades.
The shortest time a keris blade ever took me to make was 16 full working days.
The longest time a keris blade ever took me to make was 47 mandays, including 6 mandays working with two strikers in the forging.

Making a knife, or a dagger, or a sword is no different to any other work. It is simply work, that dependent upon the technology used, and the standard of the work, takes part of a person's life to complete.

When you buy a custom, or hand-made, knife you are paying for that part of a human life used in the production of the knife you have bought.

At what price do you sell your life to your clients, customers or employers?

Here is an example of a contemporary, mass-produced Georgian "kindjal" with a filigree job similar to the $8,500 one :rolleyes:
http://cgi.ebay.com/GEORGIAN-CAUCASI...QQcmdZViewItem

A.G.

I understand that some knives are more work intensive but the smith who wanted to charge me $1200 for a using knife told me it took him a week to make a simple hunter and he broke it down by the hour in which he charged me for the time it took for the blade to cool after each forging 3 days where the blade just sat in his shop cooling slowly. A good knife smith should be able to make a standard knife in 3-4 days tops. Fancy art knives could take months of work and I can undestand having to pay a high price for one. Al Pendray would charge about $650-$800 for the blade so $8,000 just for the hilt and a scabbard is quite a bit much in IMO. There are good smiths here in the states that make good knives at affordable prices those are the only ones I deal with now when I want a good using blade. We have had this discussion at some seminars on custom knife making and feel that $35 an hour is fair for making knives most of these guys use trip hammers so it is quicker for them to bang out a blade. I think we just about exhausted this subject and there are always pro and cons when dealing with modern custom knives I think this thread should be put to rest at this point before it gets out of hand.

Regards

Lew

Yes Lew, I tend to agree with you.

After all, this is a forum for discussion of ethnographic weaponry, not custom knives.

But just as a matter of interest, what do you think the capital investment might be in a trip hammer?

My comments are not meant to insult or belittle modern bladesmiths or other artisans involved in making replicas, modern renditions, old style etc, etc knives and swords.
I am just trying to clarify my purely personal reasons for not collecting them.
For me, history behind the object is of paramount importance. Any modern creation, no matter how technically advanced or artistic, lacks the ingredient of authenticity. These are not for me.
Others admire technical superiority of modern blades and the variety of exotic materials unavailable to old masters. They are the market that decides how much to pay for a contemporary sword.
The pricing for both ends of the spectrum is purely artificial and equally arbitrary. Any knifemaker, like any artisan, can charge whatever price he wishes. The market will decide. After all, what is the rational explanation for $3,000 - $15,000 price tags on Fiegel's Tulwars? $ 100,000 for a Katana? they have no practical contemporary value. Why is Kilij costing on the average twice as much as Shamshir? Who said that a good Khanjarli should command 5 times as much as Bichwa? The price is dictated not by the number of hours or cost of equipment, but by the collectors' "fashion of the day". Moro today, Chechnya tomorrow, Zaza Revishvili in 100 years.

A.G.

A new 100lb trip hammer will cost about $5000 but if you do some looking you can buy an older used one for about half.

Lew