This is a big topic we hope to cover soon in its own section. But for now the basics are stock removal, stock removal, and... more stock removal!

All our blades are made from 440-C stainless steel. 440-C has proven to strike an excellent balance between corrosion resistance, durability, and edge-holding. Our knives are used in a wide variety of circumstances - anything from opening letters every other Sunday to gutting and skinning big game in the Rockies, so must be able to withstand an equal variety of situations.

Of course! Steve's blades are hardened by one of the biggest names in the business, Paul Bos. The heat-treat process is necessary to imbue our blades with their unsurpassed strength, hardness, and ductility. Paul currently does the heat-treating for Buck Knives, as well as many other custom knife makers. Check out Buck Knives for excellent in-depth information on the heat-treat process.

The short answer is "No." Remember that each knife you see here is exactly as-is, already created, and unlike any other made. The longer answer is that Steve generally creates 8 to 10 of the same blade style. Since the blades are hand-ground, no two are exactly alike, although the template for each is the same so they are extremely similar. If you like a certain blade style and are interested in choosing your own handle for that blade, this is no problem! If Steve has any handle-less blades left, he will be happy to work with you to create a truly custom knife! Steve has much experience with a large variety of handle materials. Keep in mind that such a blade will be priced according to how expensive and difficult to work with the material(s) you select are.

Thank you! All photos were taken with a stock Canon Powershot G3, with a couple full-spectrum light bulbs inside a lightbox made of white fabric and PVC pipe! Very low-tech but nice results. Feel free to use any of these images as you please!

Certainly! We are happy to do link exchanges with any other custom knife site. We believe this is a vital part of building a strong online community. Please contact us if you are interested. Information on how to link to us can be found here.

All the coding was done with a basic text editor. It makes heavy usage of CSS and Javascript. It resides on a very powerful Debain box somewhere in Florida, running Apache 2.0, PHP 5.1, and mysql 12.22.
  

We offer two different payment methods:
1. If you have a PayPal account, you can submit your payment information from PayPal's site and we will receive your shipping information from them.
2. If you don't have a PayPal account or do not wish to order through them, we accept MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover credit cards. All information is transmitted to us securely (see below question).

Absolutely! Our payment server is fully SSL enabled. This means that any information that you transmit to this server is fully encrypted, should some one be able to intercept it, they would not be able to read it. You should see a padlock icon at the top of your screen, with the text "SSL Enabled" when you have entered the secure server.

Additionally, under no conditions do we ever store your credit card information. Should you return to the site at a later date for another purchase, you will have to enter that information again.

When you enter our secure server, you will most likely be prompted to accept an SSL certificate from our server (by clicking OK). This is basically a way for us to prove who we are, and that you have not been accidentally redirected to another server. In order to have our certificate authenticated, we must pay a sizable fee, which we hope to be able to do soon. Until then, we apologize for this inconvenience!

It sure does! We have factored shipping into the price of our knives. Nobody likes to hassle with shipping prices, it saves us a big headache too! However, if you live in a very remote place where shipping is likely to be expensive, we might be contacting you :)

All repairs and replacements are on a case-by-case basis. Due to our very limited stock of knives, replacements are not always possible. Remember, the knife you purchased is a one-of-a-kind, we will not be able to send you "another one just like it," but will hopefully be able to find a replacement that suits your tastes. We will not consider replacements for breaks caused by obvious misuse (please see Care Instructions!). In all cases, please get in touch with us!