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get out you guys walking back to the workshop today we're going to be talking about how to order from a custom maker before we get into it I just wanted to say that this is purely my opinion and an opinion of several of the people that I know but by no means should this apply to everyone every custom maker is an individual and each of them will have a different approach to how they want you to approach them this is supposed to be more of a general guideline of the do's and do nots that come with ordering from custom makers that I have experienced both ordering from and being ordered from as a custom maker so take it with a grain of salt but let's dive into what you should then what you shouldn't do when you're ordering a custom base so first on the list should be finding out which maker you're actually going to order from some makers don't take commissions and they will advertise normally that they don't take commissions some makers simply sell from an online store or an Etsy store or website something like that and what they have in stock is what they're selling and they don't do otherwise they don't take orders if you want something from those makers then all you've got is what they've got in stock if they don't have it in stock they're not going to take your order don't contact them if they have advertisers that don't want to take commissions don't contact them from the Commission because most of the time they're just going to block you at the end of the day that is their job that is their business that's how they run if they don't advertise they during take Commission's if they do have a store but don't advertise that they don't take Commission's then you can contact them right i for instance run a store or my Etsy store but I also take commissions so therefore it's perfectly right for you to contact me and say hey do you take commissions and then there are makers I use for instance one of my greatest inspirations Carl Brewer who makes only Commission's he never makes a knife that isn't commissioned in one way or another so at the end of the day finding the maker that you want to order from is really important when it comes to whether or not they actually take commissions the second point before you even contact the Commission take up to take into account is do they make things in the style that you want so many people contact a knife maker or a cabinet maker or a furniture maker or someone who knits or somebody crochets for custom Commission without already knowing what they make right do your research on the person you're ordering from look at their profile look at their Instagram look at their Facebook they YouTube if they have one find out what this style is what they do artistically because something you've got to understand is if you were ordering from a custom maker you'll order it from an artisan you're ordering from an artist right and just as much as you don't tell a painter or to paint you don't tell a custom maker how to make their product so therefore what you want to do much like if you were searching for a tattoo artist is find the artist who makes the stuff that you want already right now they might not have made the exact piece that you're wanting but you'll know the maker has a certain style and you go I want that style but I have an idea of a knife that I wanted to make in that style one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they contact a maker without first researching whether or not they make things in the style that they are going to be accustomed to and then want them to make something completely outside of their original style most makers in that case myself included will refuse because we have our style and we develop that style over years or you know deck in some case and we're not going to move from that purely to you know up he is someone who's ordering from us at the end of the day when you come in to order a commission from us we're hoping you're ordering from us as artists not as machines not as printers not to you know spit out any idea that you give us so be very cognizant of the style of the makeup that you're ordering from so you found your makeup they take commissions and their style is exactly what you're looking for how do you contact them to make a commission all all the time they will have on their Instagram and Facebook or wherever you found the page they will have a preferred method of contact please use the preferred method of contact I for instance I prefer to be contacted through my email but others prefer to be contacted through their Instagram for their Facebook I'm I don't mind if I get contacted through my Facebook very Instagram and I do take orders through there as well but my preferred point of contact is my emails because I can keep them more you know kind of worked out in my in my list so it there is an often way to contact them that they prefer and please take that into account when it comes to actually sending them a message whether it be an email or our DMS treat them with respect they're just human beings I know who for instance myself whenever I contact a fellow knife-making like rightly admire I get really nervous I'm not sure what to say if I'm bothering them or anything like that but at the end of the day they are as people and at the end of they all they want is to be treated with respect like you want to treat it with respect the last thing we're going to do is do a commission for someone who treats us like crap so if someone contacts me and go oh boy make me this I'm very unlikely to want to make that Commission to someone unlike if someone contacts me and says hi how's it going I have an idea for a commission that I want to make with you are you interested in taking you on because at the end of the day I'm the may killer and it's up to me whether I take the commission I'm not just going to take the commission because you have money here because you have a great idea as much as I might want to take the commission respect from the person commissioning me is incredibly important so you put your email out you say hi how's it going I would like to commission a piece from you now in some cases you might get an email back and saying hey thank you very much but at the moment I'm not taking Commission's for instance right now and I'm filming this my books are closed but that will be open again in the future but for now if someone emails me and says Heather hey I have a commission I wanted to make from you I will say I'm sorry but closed right now at that point let it lie if you desperately want something from this person wait and watch their feed until their books open again if you want to you can ask them winning again books again I'd open again do you know a time at which your books are gonna open again that's totally fine what you don't want to do is immediately go ah because at the end of the day that's gonna make them less likely to answer you the next time that you contact them to the Commission so be respectful respect them if they're not going to take the Commission and if they are going to take the Commission now we move on to how to actually get your message across as to what you so you've made first contact you've had an agreement that they're going to take the Commission from you and you have a 90-year in your head of what you want or you should because at this stage if you don't have even a general idea of what you want like I don't know just want a thing then it doesn't help the maker with making it now I'm speaking in general terms because this isn't just for nice makers while my experience and what I talk about in this video will be for knife makers this accounts for all custom can whether it be you know art paintings you know crochet knitting furniture anything like that anyone who makes custom stuff is going to want you to have a general idea of what you want now that could be as simple as hi and I want a knife that I can hunt with and I'm hunting deer let's say we're hunting deer I want a deer hunting knife in your style that's perfect right absolutely perfect opener you want a deer hunter excellent my first question to most of my clients will be okay what is your budget now this isn't to insult the client and often people get insulted by the idea of bringing up money first before talking about the details the reason we're talking about budget before we talk about the design is because there is no point in us discussing the creation of a mosaic Damascus mammoth ivory frame handle take down Bowie with you know jewels in the handle to only discover that your budget is $300 it's just not helpful so therefore to understand your budget then helps us understand what we can offer you in terms of materials now as far as custom craters go materials are limitless realistically unless that creator does not work with a specific medium for instance I don't work with stainless steels so if someone ordered you know it said hey on an L max hunting knife I would say unfortunately I'm not make a few and I will point you to a maker who does make stainless steel knives but as far as handy materials go g10 carbon fiber micarta stabilize Timbers unstabilized Timbers various exotic Timbers antler horn you name it mammoth ivory whatever we can make it happen right it will affect the cost and this is why we need to know the budget so I'm gonna ask you what your budget is and a general idea of what you're willing to spend on this commission it's gonna change depending on what you mate what you're getting but have a realistic idea in mind before you contact them and you should have a realistic idea by looking through the folios of other Creators who are selling stuff that are in the similar style toy you're looking at if you're ordering a bed for instance then you know a custom bed could be anywhere up to $100,000 so going into it with a $1,000 budget is going to be very insulting so if I'm going to the to the furniture maker that's a knife maker if you were ordering you know Damascus sub held fighter or something like that have an idea in your head of what that's going to cost before you go to them because if you come to me and say I want to Damascus knife $70 like I saw this one on eBay for I'm gonna tell you to go buy that one on eBay so have an idea what your budget is and then we can get into the nitty-gritty of how to design your knife and what you want with your knife there's no issue in having a design in mind or even a design drawn on paper of what you want from the maker there's nothing wrong with having a kind of schematic that the maker can work from often a maker may make varied items like myself I make all kinds of stuff so therefore I may be willing to make something in that to style some makers will have a very specific style of knife that they make and don't tend to work outside of that theater so again this comes down to the awareness of the Maiko but once you have your maker and perhaps that are a multi-faceted make it like myself sending them a photo or a sketch it's fine sending me a DXF file with exact dimensions not so great mainly because at that point it's no longer an artistic piece for me it's simply an artistic piece from you being created by me I become a printer a machine so keep in mind that when you're ordering you're ordering an artist again this is something that keeps coming up but again we don't need to add our own artistic flair to what you want and to give a very strong stringent tight kind of idea of what you want is to completely limit the maker in their artistic freedom and most of the time where even if we take the Commission we're going to absolutely hate it every step of the way so if you have a very specific unit idea in mind be willing to make changes as the artist decides most of the time you'll come to the artist with no specific design in mind just I want a hunter to hunt deal with and having the use in mind is incredibly important because then as a maker we can then design a knife and normally I will do several sketches several handle design several blade designs and I will send those sketches to my client to ask them which one of these do you like which elements from these do you like and we can combine them and we will find you will find you in a whittle down the design to something that you really like that is both my design and your design it's something that we both can come to an agreement on at that point we can then talk about materials and then that comes with the budget making sure the materials are within the budget if your materials of us dead set one with material and it's outside of the budget as this maker is making sometimes you need to adjust your budget sometimes you need to adjust the design it's just unfortunate that's true normally makers will know what their time is worth so please don't try and undercut us the end of the day most custom makers aren't charging a day's wage for their work they're not charging what you would pay a tradesman to do as a plumber or electrician or something like that normally we're paying ourselves much less so take that into account when we give you the final number it might seem high but there may be hundreds of hours in the piece so make sure that when you finally get it don't try and undercut us at the end of the day we given you a price that we believe is reasonable for the amount of work that going to do on your piece and then we'll move into the final segment which is some of my pet peeves so the final segment my pet peeves when receiving Commission's as the Commissioner you are coming to an artist to get their rendition of something and a lot of the time when you custom order something you'll be ordering something that perhaps includes materials that the maker doesn't have so therefore we require deposit and for instance in my case I take a non-refundable deposit and the reason I taken on the front of all deposit it's non-refundable there are circumstances at which you pull out if you pull out from the agreement then that deposit has paid for the materials that I was accruing to make your Commission and I mount that money if I cancel the Commission as the person who was commissioned then it's up to me to return your money but the reason that deposits exist is to cover the artist in the case that someone makes an order and sometimes an extravagant water and then completely jumps out of the order later on down the road leaving the artist out for the materials and the consumables that they will have already gone through and making it now you might say well they can just sell it on to someone else in some cases you're talking about a very specific custom piece which may be hand engraved it may have names or lettering on it that just doesn't suit anyone else and we can't sell it in some cases the thing is just sort of stupidly expensive because you ordered this very very specific custom piece that will never be able to charge enough to get it back in the general shopping community so when you make a custom Commission make sure that you can follow through I understand there are cases in which you you have to drop out because you the money stops coming in you you know get ill or something like that that happens and it can the same can happen at the commissioner at like the person who is commissioned we can get it all and we can have issues and sometimes if it's delayed people will say all you need to give me my money back if the Commission if the person who has been commissioned to make the case the artist has to delay the Commission I understand you'd like we understand you need to drop out but just because we delayed it does not necessarily mean we're not going to finish the project that doesn't necessarily set the removal of that deposit it's the same as a bond on a house so when it comes to deposit some people get really naughty and go deposit the end of the day if you're making a custom Commission you pay that deposit otherwise you don't get the piece my second pet peeve and it's probably my biggest pet peeve of all time is if you change design portions after the design that's been a greater part so you've gone through the process you've contacted your maker you've you know agreed on design that they are happy with it you're happy with and you've locked it in you said yep that's good and then a couple weeks later when they've already started working on it you go oh wait I want to change this aspect and most of the time it's something huge normally it's like oh wait I don't want to use carbon sealant use stainless steel or all I don't want to Mascis any more on mono steel at which point the maker is out all of the extra work all of the extra effort that they've already put in to then have to start again from Ground Zero to remake the knife minor changes aren't as big a deal like oh I want to sharpen clip online instead of a drop point if that's going on halfway through the job that's not as big of an issue but big changes in tinier changes just drive me mental and worse than that is consistent changes if you contact saying hey I wanna shop and put instead of a drop the very beginning of the the job okay that's fine then you contact me a week later or say hey I actually want to you know a round of soil rather than scheduled oh I actually want this I actually want that and you constantly are changing things as the Commission progresses then that's just going to drive the oddest completely nuts we're gonna absolutely hate your guts so when you have agreed upon a design we will normally ask you more than once are you okay with this is this what you want once you've agreed to that please please try not making decisions that it will change the design of the thing I can understand that tastes may change but you're taking this person's time you're taking this person's effort than this person's experience for granted that you can just change things on a whim and just get them to drop everything and remove themselves from the situation so yeah that one is one of my greatest pet peeves another pet peeve is people who drop out once the Commission is complete people who drop out halfway through a commission it's very annoying but people who drop out right at the end and normally there are people who drop out halfway through a commission I'm not dropping out for a bad reason that is dropping out because they got ill because they want to be able afford it because they you know whatever it's normally a reasonable reason for dropping out people who drop out at the end normally just realize that they don't have the money and ghosts you leave you on red completely vanish off the face of the earth never to be seen again leaving you holding the piece that they commissioned from you and all of the time and effort that you've put in though it's been really really annoying me so those are probably my top three there are a few others but they're all kind of minor stuff it's mostly to do with interpersonal play if someone asks you a question as you're talking to the person you're commissioning work off again it comes down to that respect thing having respect for them as a person and having respect for them as an artist as a person who was is doing this for a living you don't tell Picasa or how to paint you don't tell a knife make it how to make a knife etc etc I've had plenty of people who contacted me and said I don't want you using carbon steel because it's carbon steel of and I've read on this forum that this you know CBN 3b or something like that is the best steel ever at which point I say well okay if you believe that then go somewhere where they make knives hello CPM the three faiths don't go to me so yeah just if you're coming to an art as you come into that artists for their style their opinion their experience if you want something that's made by someone else get that person to make it and the last pet peeve I will leave you on this I will show my wonderful patrons here and I will remind you to hit that like button hit that subscribe button hit the bell notification icon to be notified when I upload new videos more like this rant my last pet peeve is when people take a photo or you know a piece of art of someone else's work and contact you to make it for them I have had a few people send me photos of another life makers work and asked me to make exactly the same knife that is insulting that is criminal it's actually art theft and most of all it's just disrespectful to bow if that maker and me as a maker if we copy someone else's work normally we will take inspiration from someone else's work but we will credit them with the inspiration if you were to copy someones work line by mine you know every little detail and then sell it as your own you are an hour thief you are deliberately taking the credit for someone else's hard work whether or not you put on email the effort to rip your head it doesn't matter the original has already been made you are a thief and so to contact someone to get someone to make an exact replica of someone else's work not only are you asking them to become a criminal but you're also telling them that you value their work less because most of the time if someone contacts you for a commission from you know like a knife that's been made by someone else normally say it's Kyle Roy yet nice someone will send me a message saying hey I want this knife can you make it for me the reason they're asking me that is because of a they think I'll charge them less than Kyle will be they think that I will be willing to just you know completely demean myself and you know copy one of my greatest inspirations and see they don't want to wait the 18 months that Kyle's waiting list is so they think that I'm fast I'm cheap and I'm easy right which no one likes to be thought of that way so please don't do that during contact people with photos of other people's work if you say I want something like this this is the idea of the blade shape but I'm looking for it use a representative photo that's fine but doing it I want this I'm just showing someone else's work doesn't work at all so with that last little rant piece out of the way I would like again to say thank you to my wonderful patrons who've been sitting up here they are the angels of my shoulder they are the guys that keep me going through all of this I have been out of it with a bunch of personal stuff so these guys have really been keeping me going if you want to become a member of the patreon career I am doing a lesson in how to make a full tank hunter from start to finish in total detail for my $10 patreon link will be down the scripture below please go check that out otherwise I hope you have a fantastic week I hope you get out to your workshop and make something cool whether it's crochet whether it's furniture whether it's knife making whether it's blacksmithing whatever it is I hope you do something make something bring ideas into the world and then show it to the world