Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter.
.

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: In 2022, 47.4% of Internet traffic came from bots, a 5.1% increase YoY. Human traffic, at 52.6%, decreased to its lowest level in eight years. — According to Imperva's Bad Bot Report .
2. Amazon is offering some Prime customers $10 to pick up their purchases of $25 or more at a nearby Kohl's, Whole Foods, or Amazon Fresh store, rather than have it shipped to their home. I could not find any information about whether that $10 is in the form of a cash rebate or Amazon credit, but I'd imagine the latter. Amazon said the promotion is not a cost-cutting measure and that it's specifically for customers who have never used Amazon Pickup or have not used that service in the last 12 months. .
3. Wix introduced Wix Headless, a solution that allows developers to integrate the platform's business solutions using APIs and SDK, marking the first time the company is opening its backend to work outside the Wix platform and a strategic shift by Wix to cater to professional web developers and larger businesses who need more customization and flexibility. Developers can now integrate many of Wix's products including e-commerce, bookings, CMS, and events from any tech stack. The APIs are synchronized and ready to use with Wix’s additional solutions, such as contacts and checkout. .
4. Amazon introduced a new service called Amazon Anywhere which allows consumers to buy real-world physical products in gaming, mobile, web, and AR applications without leaving the virtual experience. (Sorry NFTs!) Steve Downer, vice president of consumer electronics at Amazon said, “We’re creating a new landscape for shoppable entertainment and digital experiences while continuing to meet our customers where they are, with the products they love.” Amazon Anywhere debuted on May 9th within Peridot, an AR game feature virtual pets from Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go. .
5. ByteDance postponed the launch of its shopping platform on TikTok in the US due to concerns about the app's future, lack of interest from merchants, and lack of live-streaming e-commerce adoption in the U.S. The company was planning to release the platform for all sellers in early spring, but it has now been delayed until June at the earliest. TikTok had difficulty attracting more sellers to open storefronts on its platform after a preliminary test launch with a small group of select merchants last year. .
6. Affirm is working to shift more of its volume to loans offered at interest rates up to 36% (that's ridiculous), while simultaneously experimenting with offering merchant-subsidized lower-interest loans under 10%. As part of the shift, the company formed a partnership with FICO, which is developing an approach for reporting its consumer loan activity to credit reporting agencies. In recent months, Affirm has shifted away from its interest-free installment loans to loans with longer terms that charge interest. At the end of Q1, about 70% of Affirm's loans were interest-bearing while the remainder were pay-in-four interest-free loans. .
7. Meta announced the release of its new AI Sandbox, a testing ground for brands to apply generative AI to text and images in campaigns that appear in feeds and videos on Facebook and Instagram. The new generative AI tools can suggest colors and patterns, ad text, and promotional images that can help products standout. .
8. Amazon is planning to bring ChatGPT-style product search to its marketplace, in an attempt to rival efforts by Microsoft and Google to weave generative artificial intelligence into their search engines. A recent job posting seeking a senior software development engineer said that the company is “reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience” designed to help users find answers to questions, compare products, and receive personalized suggestions. Another posted job would be part of “a new AI-first initiative to re-architect and reinvent the way we do search through the use of extremely large scale next-generation deep learning techniques.” .
9. Google announced a similar experimental AI tool called Search Generative Experience (SGE) that attempts to make online shopping easier for complex purchases. The tool claims to do the shopping research for you, summarizing insights to give shoppers the most accurate product details, prices, and deals. .
10. WooCommerce 7.7.0 released this week with Multichannel Marketing now out of beta, which allows users to connect additional sales channels like Google, Amazon, and eBay and manage inventory across storefronts. The new version also introduced expanded styling options for Product SKU, Price, and Image, new product reviews blocks, more customization options for the Add to Cart button, expanded Mini Cart block options, and a new option to upgrade from the old classic template. .
11. Best Buy is changing its membership program, just two years after launching its TotalTech membership which originally cost $199.99/year. The new “My Best Buy Total” membership will offer cheaper service tiers to attract more customers, starting with a free membership tier. Did they hire the same consultants who blundered their last membership program for this one too? .
12. commercetools launched a new checkout solution that can be integrated with their Composable Commerce APIs. The solution is pre-integrated with payment services providers Worldpay and Adyen, with more integrations coming soon. .
13. The Indian government expanded ONDC operations into 236 cities in the country while adding more than 36,000 merchants. The platform aims to penetrate 25% of India's consumer purchases during the next two years, from around 8% now. .
14. Zendesk partnered with WhatsApp and Shopify to give businesses the ability to offer customers a buying experience without ever leaving the conversation. Zendesk's new conversational commerce allows merchants to incorporate product catalogs, checkout processes, and promotions into their customer experience journey. .
15. Five major e-commerce firms in India including Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Snapdeal, and Shopclues delisted a combined 13,118 items after receiving notice to stop the sale of car seat belt alarm stopper clips. The sale of these clips was brought to the attention of the CCPA for compromising the life and safety of consumers. .
16. Salesforce introduced Hybrid Storefronts, which offers businesses the ability to combine templated and customizable headless approaches to e-commerce site development. The solution offers a mix between their two products — one being a fully templated solution and the other a fully custom solution — so that merchants can pick and choose which pages on their site to make composable. .
17. Amazon has a new generative AI technology called Burnham that could make its Astro home robot a whole lot smarter, according to leaked documents. Burnham adds a layer intelligence and a conversational spoken interface to a smart home robot so that it can understand the context of busy households and respond appropriately. .
18. Canon and Amazon have teamed up to take down a group of counterfeiters selling fake Canon camera batteries and chargers on Amazon's marketplace. Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) used advanced machine learning techniques to confirm that the products in question were counterfeit, and then immediately shut down the 29 selling accounts. Now both companies are filing a lawsuit against the sellers. .
19. Elon Musk named Linda Yaccarino the new CEO of Twitter, who will begin in six weeks, while Musk transitions into the roles of executive chair and chief technology officer, overseeing product, software & sysops. In her first Tweet after the announcement, Yaccarino wrote, “Thank you Elon Musk! I've long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I'm excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together.” .
20. Rokt launched a payments solution called Rokt Payments Marketplace that is integrated into a merchant's payment page and presents shoppers with credit card offers that offer instant rewards like, “Get $50 off this purchase by getting this credit card.” Rokt claims that the marketplace “creates an opportunity for payment providers at a critical moment in the checkout process, when consumers are highly engaged and about to purchase.” .
21. The Facebook Messenger app will no longer be available on Apple Watches at the end of the month, ending the ability to reply to messages on the wrist. Facebook said, “Give us the ability to track conversions again, and we'll bring back Messenger for your watch!” Kidding, but not kidding. Although Meta hasn't made an official statement, it's rumored that the reason for discontinuing the integration is that when users don't open the iOS Messenger App, they are not served ads, which in turn causes Facebook to lose money, and they aren't willing to give up any more money to Apple. .
22. JD.com CEO Xu Lei stepped down after year one year in the position, after the company announced it had swung to profit in Q1. Lei will be replaced by Sandy Ran Xu, the current CFO. .
23. Etsy launched a new site-wide wedding registry, joining competitors like Amazon, Macy's, and Pottery Barn in the wedding registry arena. Gift selections on the registry can get very specific, with options to include detailed personalization requests, a feature that sets them apart from competitors. .
24. Meta struck a deal with Stripe to enable in-stream payments across WhatsApp in Singapore. Through a single chat thread, businesses will now be able to conduct direct payments without having to visit a website or open another application. .
25. Kasada, a provider of solutions against advanced bot attacks, and Signifyd, a fraud management firm, entered into a strategic partnership to protect consumers against various types of e-commerce fraud. The two companies will work together to deliver a solution that helps stop automated online fraud before it takes place while safeguarding consumers from other instances of abuse and fraud. .
26. Plus 10 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Klaviyo's filing for an IPO.

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/amazon-offers-10-to-pick-up-your-own-package/
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter.
.

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: In 2022, 47.4% of Internet traffic came from bots, a 5.1% increase YoY. Human traffic, at 52.6%, decreased to its lowest level in eight years. — According to Imperva's Bad Bot Report .
2. Amazon is offering some Prime customers $10 to pick up their purchases of $25 or more at a nearby Kohl's, Whole Foods, or Amazon Fresh store, rather than have it shipped to their home. I could not find any information about whether that $10 is in the form of a cash rebate or Amazon credit, but I'd imagine the latter. Amazon said the promotion is not a cost-cutting measure and that it's specifically for customers who have never used Amazon Pickup or have not used that service in the last 12 months. .
3. Wix introduced Wix Headless, a solution that allows developers to integrate the platform's business solutions using APIs and SDK, marking the first time the company is opening its backend to work outside the Wix platform and a strategic shift by Wix to cater to professional web developers and larger businesses who need more customization and flexibility. Developers can now integrate many of Wix's products including e-commerce, bookings, CMS, and events from any tech stack. The APIs are synchronized and ready to use with Wix’s additional solutions, such as contacts and checkout. .
4. Amazon introduced a new service called Amazon Anywhere which allows consumers to buy real-world physical products in gaming, mobile, web, and AR applications without leaving the virtual experience. (Sorry NFTs!) Steve Downer, vice president of consumer electronics at Amazon said, “We’re creating a new landscape for shoppable entertainment and digital experiences while continuing to meet our customers where they are, with the products they love.” Amazon Anywhere debuted on May 9th within Peridot, an AR game feature virtual pets from Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go. .
5. ByteDance postponed the launch of its shopping platform on TikTok in the US due to concerns about the app's future, lack of interest from merchants, and lack of live-streaming e-commerce adoption in the U.S. The company was planning to release the platform for all sellers in early spring, but it has now been delayed until June at the earliest. TikTok had difficulty attracting more sellers to open storefronts on its platform after a preliminary test launch with a small group of select merchants last year. .
6. Affirm is working to shift more of its volume to loans offered at interest rates up to 36% (that's ridiculous), while simultaneously experimenting with offering merchant-subsidized lower-interest loans under 10%. As part of the shift, the company formed a partnership with FICO, which is developing an approach for reporting its consumer loan activity to credit reporting agencies. In recent months, Affirm has shifted away from its interest-free installment loans to loans with longer terms that charge interest. At the end of Q1, about 70% of Affirm's loans were interest-bearing while the remainder were pay-in-four interest-free loans. .
7. Meta announced the release of its new AI Sandbox, a testing ground for brands to apply generative AI to text and images in campaigns that appear in feeds and videos on Facebook and Instagram. The new generative AI tools can suggest colors and patterns, ad text, and promotional images that can help products standout. .
8. Amazon is planning to bring ChatGPT-style product search to its marketplace, in an attempt to rival efforts by Microsoft and Google to weave generative artificial intelligence into their search engines. A recent job posting seeking a senior software development engineer said that the company is “reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience” designed to help users find answers to questions, compare products, and receive personalized suggestions. Another posted job would be part of “a new AI-first initiative to re-architect and reinvent the way we do search through the use of extremely large scale next-generation deep learning techniques.” .
9. Google announced a similar experimental AI tool called Search Generative Experience (SGE) that attempts to make online shopping easier for complex purchases. The tool claims to do the shopping research for you, summarizing insights to give shoppers the most accurate product details, prices, and deals. .
10. WooCommerce 7.7.0 released this week with Multichannel Marketing now out of beta, which allows users to connect additional sales channels like Google, Amazon, and eBay and manage inventory across storefronts. The new version also introduced expanded styling options for Product SKU, Price, and Image, new product reviews blocks, more customization options for the Add to Cart button, expanded Mini Cart block options, and a new option to upgrade from the old classic template. .
11. Best Buy is changing its membership program, just two years after launching its TotalTech membership which originally cost $199.99/year. The new “My Best Buy Total” membership will offer cheaper service tiers to attract more customers, starting with a free membership tier. Did they hire the same consultants who blundered their last membership program for this one too? .
12. commercetools launched a new checkout solution that can be integrated with their Composable Commerce APIs. The solution is pre-integrated with payment services providers Worldpay and Adyen, with more integrations coming soon. .
13. The Indian government expanded ONDC operations into 236 cities in the country while adding more than 36,000 merchants. The platform aims to penetrate 25% of India's consumer purchases during the next two years, from around 8% now. .
14. Zendesk partnered with WhatsApp and Shopify to give businesses the ability to offer customers a buying experience without ever leaving the conversation. Zendesk's new conversational commerce allows merchants to incorporate product catalogs, checkout processes, and promotions into their customer experience journey. .
15. Five major e-commerce firms in India including Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Snapdeal, and Shopclues delisted a combined 13,118 items after receiving notice to stop the sale of car seat belt alarm stopper clips. The sale of these clips was brought to the attention of the CCPA for compromising the life and safety of consumers. .
16. Salesforce introduced Hybrid Storefronts, which offers businesses the ability to combine templated and customizable headless approaches to e-commerce site development. The solution offers a mix between their two products — one being a fully templated solution and the other a fully custom solution — so that merchants can pick and choose which pages on their site to make composable. .
17. Amazon has a new generative AI technology called Burnham that could make its Astro home robot a whole lot smarter, according to leaked documents. Burnham adds a layer intelligence and a conversational spoken interface to a smart home robot so that it can understand the context of busy households and respond appropriately. .
18. Canon and Amazon have teamed up to take down a group of counterfeiters selling fake Canon camera batteries and chargers on Amazon's marketplace. Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) used advanced machine learning techniques to confirm that the products in question were counterfeit, and then immediately shut down the 29 selling accounts. Now both companies are filing a lawsuit against the sellers. .
19. Elon Musk named Linda Yaccarino the new CEO of Twitter, who will begin in six weeks, while Musk transitions into the roles of executive chair and chief technology officer, overseeing product, software & sysops. In her first Tweet after the announcement, Yaccarino wrote, “Thank you Elon Musk! I've long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I'm excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together.” .
20. Rokt launched a payments solution called Rokt Payments Marketplace that is integrated into a merchant's payment page and presents shoppers with credit card offers that offer instant rewards like, “Get $50 off this purchase by getting this credit card.” Rokt claims that the marketplace “creates an opportunity for payment providers at a critical moment in the checkout process, when consumers are highly engaged and about to purchase.” .
21. The Facebook Messenger app will no longer be available on Apple Watches at the end of the month, ending the ability to reply to messages on the wrist. Facebook said, “Give us the ability to track conversions again, and we'll bring back Messenger for your watch!” Kidding, but not kidding. Although Meta hasn't made an official statement, it's rumored that the reason for discontinuing the integration is that when users don't open the iOS Messenger App, they are not served ads, which in turn causes Facebook to lose money, and they aren't willing to give up any more money to Apple. .
22. JD.com CEO Xu Lei stepped down after year one year in the position, after the company announced it had swung to profit in Q1. Lei will be replaced by Sandy Ran Xu, the current CFO. .
23. Etsy launched a new site-wide wedding registry, joining competitors like Amazon, Macy's, and Pottery Barn in the wedding registry arena. Gift selections on the registry can get very specific, with options to include detailed personalization requests, a feature that sets them apart from competitors. .
24. Meta struck a deal with Stripe to enable in-stream payments across WhatsApp in Singapore. Through a single chat thread, businesses will now be able to conduct direct payments without having to visit a website or open another application. .
25. Kasada, a provider of solutions against advanced bot attacks, and Signifyd, a fraud management firm, entered into a strategic partnership to protect consumers against various types of e-commerce fraud. The two companies will work together to deliver a solution that helps stop automated online fraud before it takes place while safeguarding consumers from other instances of abuse and fraud. .
26. Plus 10 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Klaviyo's filing for an IPO.

I hope you find this news recap helpful. See you next week!
-PAUL

Hello. I just joined. This is my first post. Ok, I have an idea for making unique tiles for backsplashes and accent tiles and such. My question is, what do I look for to glaze or paint these pieces before firing them? The last time I did pottery was back in the mid 1990’s in the seventh grade. We applied/painted something on our pieces after curing them, then we fired them and they came out the colors we desired. I have tried searching Google and EBay to find such a glaze/paint that I can apply before firing them to no avail. Thank you to anyone who can steer me in the right direction ❤️

For thousands of years, arts and crafts have been essential to human life. Making something beautiful and one-of-a-kind, whether through pottery, painting, sculpting, or knitting, has always brought contentment and fulfillment. Additionally, it is now easier than ever to acquire wholesale supplies of numerous arts and crafts thanks to the rise of e-commerce.
Good packaging is sold at a discount in bulk to businesses and retailers as wholesale lots. Everything from canvas and paint to knitting needles and yarn can be found in wholesale lots of arts and crafts. Compared to purchasing individual items, these lots are a great way to acquire many supplies at a lower cost.
Cost-effective advantages of purchasing large quantities of arts and crafts: Buying in bulk is always a good way to save money. Arts and crafts found in wholesale lots are not an exception. You can save a lot of money on the cost of each item by buying it in bulk.
Variety: You can get your hands on a wide range of materials and tools at wholesale lots of arts and crafts. This permits you to explore various avenues regarding various styles and strategies and keep your creative flow new and refreshing.
Management of the inventory: If you're a retailer or an entrepreneur, purchasing discount bunches of expressions and specialties can assist you with dealing with your stock all the more proficiently. By buying in bulk, you can avoid the hassle of constantly reordering individual items and ensure you always have enough inventory to meet customer demand.
Sorts of Items in Discount Heaps of Expressions and Artworks
Painting Supplies: Canvases, easels, paints, and brushes are all examples of this. Purchasing these provisions in mass can assist you with setting aside a ton of cash while guaranteeing that you generally have sufficient stock for your work of art projects.
Knitting Materials: This could include crochet hooks, knitting machines, yarn, and needles. Knitting supplies in bulk is ideal for businesses and individuals who incorporate frequently.
Sewing Materials: Fabrics, threads, needles, and machines are all examples. Discount heaps of sewing supplies are great for organizations and people who sew consistently.
Materials for Making Jewelry: This can incorporate globules, wires, forceps, and hanging materials. Wholesale lots of supplies for making jewelry are ideal for businesses and individuals who frequently make jewelry.
Tools for the Craft: Paper, glue, scissors, stickers, and other materials can all be used. Businesses and individuals engaging in crafting activities will benefit significantly from purchasing craft supplies in bulk quantities.
Research: Tips for Finding the Best Deals When looking for the best offers on wholesale lots of arts and crafts, research is essential. Look for trustworthy suppliers who sell high-quality goods at reasonable prices.
Shopping in comparison: When looking for the best deals, comparison shopping is also necessary. Look at costs and quality from various providers before making a buy.
Distributor Directories: Finding wholesale suppliers of a wide range of arts and crafts can be made easier with the help of wholesale directories. Suppliers and their products are listed in these directories, along with prices and contact information.
Go to Career Expos: Going to exchange shows is one more extraordinary method for tracking down providers of discount bunches of expressions and artworks. You can meet suppliers in person, see their products, and ask any questions you might have at trade shows.
They offer advantages, including cost investment funds, a more extensive scope of items, and a predictable stockpile of materials. In any case, it is critical to buy from a respectable provider, consider transporting costs, and guarantee that you have sufficient extra room for the materials. In light of these contemplations, discount loads of expressions and specialties can be an essential resource for organizations in the artistic expression and specialties industry. You should check out Shopify and eBay if you're like these creative people and want to learn more about arts & crafts. Additionally, you want to save time and access everything with a single click. If that's the case, you should go to TrueGether, an alternative to eBay and a website that only tries to defraud people with big, attractive pictures, catchy slogans, or false promises.

My friend’s dad has been an art & antiques collectodealer for years and is unfortunately facing some health issues so my friend asked me to help them downsize their store. He asked me to help list several items on eBay, including this vase. I’m very experienced with eBay but know next to nothing about glassware and pottery!
This vase stands about 5.5” tall and has an iridescent shine when light hits it. It’s a very fun & funky piece. I’m having trouble making out the signature. It looks like “Krinky” to me but when I search that name nothing is coming up. Even a reverse google image search is yielding no results. I don’t believe it’s a high value piece but I’d still love to find out a little info on the maker so I can be descriptive with my eBay listing. Thanks for any help!
https://imgur.com/a/pqR2cT0

I am NOT an official representative of Goodwill.

Previous AMA
Figure I'll just throw this on the sub, but I won't bother to put a start or end time, I'll just check in now and then and answer what I can. Usually check my Reddit at least daily, so you won't be waiting long.
For almost two years I had taken and refused your donations, processed some hardline items, drove a forklift, and compacted the garbage. It's amazing what some people donate thinking someone will get "some use" out of it.

PROOF

As well as proof of my being in the backroom with a gaylord collapse (A common event with the condition of the gaylords we are provided)
Along with the picture, I will spew a whole bunch of information so that you can know without a doubt that I have the knowledge I claim to have. If none of this answers your question, then let's hear it.

Weirdest Donations:

• Dildos, including double-ended
  
• Hitachi Magic Wand (Stained yellow)
  
• Porn, sex self-help books, and sex equipment catalogues
  
• Toilet plungers and brushes
  
• Pooper Scoopers (For dog poop)
  
• Steak Knives wrapped in a Sweater (To "protect" us)
  
• Snowglobes wrapped in a Sweater (To "protect" the snowglobes)
  
• A scanner with a check still inside written for $3000
  
• A set of gold teeth found in a purse
  
• Blood samples with medical information on them (A different store than mine, but I just had to include it)
  

How can I, a customer, help?

• Don't try to donate items we can't sell.

If you wouldn't pay money for it, then odds are nobody else will either. Bring us items that are in good condition, and hold some sort of monetary value. Items we don't want/can't sell include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Anything to do with toilets. (Gross)
• Any item designed for baby safety. (Recalled)
• Beds, Frames, Mattresses, Boxsprings, Headboards, Hide-a-bed Couches, etc.
• Homemade items like your kid's first pottery complete with paint job. (Garbage)
• Anything dirty, damaged, or otherwise unsaleable. (We are NOT a dump)

Bringing in the above items should result in you being sent away, but not all attendants are quite as resolute as I was. I've had to compact many things that should have been no-brainers. Eventually I made it my personal mission to deny one thing from every donation, just to train myself up to saying No more often.

• Please bring your items in bags/boxes/totes that you are okay donating.

Nothing makes my day worse than somebody trying to donate unpacked china, in a tote, and they want the tote back. Lady, I get an industrial laundry bin to put this stuff in, your china will not survive, so now I have to take time, holding up other customers, to put your items in a box I hopefully have lying around. More often than not, I took the tote inside, turned it upside down over the dumpster, and brought them their empty tote back. Don't waste my time.

• We'll even take your moving boxes if they are in good shape.

So many people that donate are in the process of moving, and when they see a pile of free moving boxes, it just makes their day. This was just a thing we did at my store though, and not standard, so please see if your Goodwill would like to do this. (Tell them we got really good donation surveys from those people, and they might just decide to try it.)

• Take the surveys.

Many stores have trouble with getting the number of surveys they need, even though they only need maybe one a week as long as it scores them well. But the real trouble happens when they have to fight against a bad score, then they need more surveys with a good score to raise their average. Help out your store by giving them a good review, and at ours, it even enters you for a chance at a $100 gift card. These scores affect whether or not a store can give it's employees raises come next year, so you're not just hurting that one employee that wronged you, you're hurting everyone.
It was so hard to get any surveys at my store that I just started taking them myself, but I wasn't stupid and wasn't giving myself perfect reviews, I made sure they were average-good reviews, with a great review peppered in there. If the managers knew about it, they sure didn't tell me.

• Dishware is the best donation for Processors.

Some sets can be valuable, but even if it's a cheap set, it's still easy for the Hardline processor to price them and get a quick cart of items for the sales floor. Plus they don't retain too much smell or staining, so unless it's chipped or scratched, it's pretty much good to go. However, if we get too many dishes, we can't fit them all on the shelves, so then we are forced to toss them.

Common Misconceptions:

• Don't donate things we can't sell for money.

The lowest sticker value is $0.49, so if you didn't pay at least a dollar for it, don't bring it to us. We are paid a certain amount per hour, and if we are pricing cheap garbage, we are hurting our sales.
Our store even went so far as to retire the $0.49 sticker, so now the minimum is $0.99, and they're encouraged to slap an extra dollar on there if they think they can get it.

• These items do not go to the needy.

We sell the items you give us to the general public to raise money for our causes. Giving us your ratty shoes is not going onto somebody's feet. If you wouldn't buy it, then we probably won't sell it.

• We don't pull the color tag when that color is on sale.

The whole point of the sale is to get those items out of the store, while still getting money for them. The tags we price with change color each week, that way an item is out there for roughly a month before it is put on sale to give it a final push. Any unsold items with that color tag AFTER sale day are taken and put into Outlet or the Trash, it would not benefit us to hide the items that are on sale. The other customers simply bought those items that morning, or even before sale day if the price was right. Also, tearing off a tag and having it price-checked, hoping it will be the color that is on sale will NEVER happen.
The color tag sale has changed a lot over the years. Before I started working there, it would be that the color tag was reduced by 75% of the posted price. Then it was just anything that color was $1.49. But now I think it's just 50% off, and they eliminated Kids Day which was 50% off Toys and Clothing for kids. Since I like to buy board games and Nerf guns, this was a major bummer for me.

• We do NOT wash clothes before selling them.

That would require WAY more money, what with hours for the people running the washers/dryers, the cost of buying the washers/dryers, the time involved waiting for new product, and the cost of running that many washers and dryers as often as would be needed. Please donate clean clothes.

• Something about the CEO taking the money for themself.

The way this was explained to me was that not every Goodwill is officially on the same page, or even associated with every other Goodwill. So it was the CEO of some other, seedier Goodwill that was doing the shady stuff, not ours. Not sure I buy it, but I don't care. Look to the websites of your local Goodwill for info on that stuff.

Interesting Info

• Our Employee discount was taken away from April to December of 2017. (Never Forget)

This update was stupidly rolled out on April 1st. Worst joke ever, except it wasn't a joke. Previously, employees got a 25% discount on all merchandise. But the higher-ups discovered they could save $400,000 a year if they made us pay full price. But, come December (After I left) the discount has been returned, although slightly different. 15% off new goods, 35% off donated product. I think this is better than the previous situation. An employee now gets more off than a donating customer in both departments, since donation coupons (from 2017) only got you 25% off donated items. Donation coupons don't even get you a discount now, just a sign-up for our Goodwill VIP texts. Ugh. More worth it for me to donate to Savers instead.

• We are treated as if we ARE stealing, all the time.

Our locker doors are clear plastic, so that they can always be looked into, and our bags are searched when we leave, every time, even managers.

• Purchases made during your shift have to be locked in the Manager's Office.

You could only purchase items off the clock, or during your unpaid lunch. (I still bought plenty on my paid 15s, just gotta be sneaky or "forgetful.") But, purchases need to be stored in the Manager's Office until the end of your shift. One day this came to REALLY bite me in the ass, as my purchases were in a plastic shopping bag, tied shut. We had a new janitor that day, and he mistook this tied plastic bag for extra garbage, so he compacted the DS Lite I had just purchased, as well as a silicone cereal bowl that looked like a splash of milk, and a medal from some Monster 5k that looked cool. Probably other stuff too, but those three were the most memorable items. The Manager gave me a refund as he reviewed the cameras, and he confirmed that they were compacted, but that he couldn't tell me who did it. (As I said, there was ONE janitor that day, I know who did it.) But the refund isn't satisfying at a thrift store, as it's not like I can turn around and buy another of those super unique items that just got CRUSHED. So the next time a DS came through, I marked it down for my trouble and bought it CHEAP.

• We don't get dibs on items.

You might think with so few benefits, we would at least be able to buy items we want if it was priced by someone else, after all, the money is still money. But no, we are not allowed to "stash" items to buy ourselves. It has to be on the sales floor for a number of hours (Varies) before you can have the chance to buy it. A number of amazing items can slip through your fingers this way, and you might start resenting the rules.
That resentment can lead to... Unintended team building. If you were in good with the Sales Floor employees, you could have them hide your desired item somewhere so you had a better chance of buying it on your next break. We had one employee that was pricing stuff and just sticking it under his work station for later. I saw the prices and thought he was just not an experienced pricer, so I threw on an additional $2 to each. I was called to the office and asked about the items, and I explained that I had priced them up from his number. "They were priced lower than this? Thank you very much." and then they put those items in a black tote labeled EVIDENCE. That guy and his sales floor sister weren't working there for much longer.
To avoid meeting the same fate as him, whenever I wanted to buy something, I took it to be priced by a manager, and if I knew the manager well, I would tell them a "customer" wanted to buy this item, so even they would be willing to hide stuff for you as long as you were willing to pay their price.

• The REALLY nice items get sent to e-Commerce.

If we think it might be worth more than $50, or we look it up and find it to be super rare, it is sent to our e-commerce site, shopGoodwill.com. (We have to send stuff, we are not personally deciding to not let you have these great items. We want them just as much as you do.) shopGoodwill.com is a 24/7 bidding site, with items from a number of stores. No discounts are allowed, so everyone is equal there. We've sent up items that we would have priced at $100 minimum, and it sold on there for $22. It is REALLY hit or miss.

• Purple and Red tags are products from Target.

At our store, and others in our area, we have the option to buy product from Target. Stuff that didn't sell, or didn't sell within it's season. So we buy it by the pallet and price it ourselves, usually aiming for half the price it was, but with bigger pieces this varies. Because this is new, non-donated product, our coupons do no apply to them.
My store has since stopped partnering with Target, as they were not screening the items on these bulk pallets, to the point that they were sending leaking/rotting food. Disgusting.

Terminology:

• Gaylord - A large, cardboard box in which we store both soft and hard donations. Sometimes these boxes have flaps on the bottom, which means they sit on a wooden pallet, and sometimes they are flapless sleeves, which means they sit on a black, plastic pallet. The wooden ones are more readily available, however the plastic ones are FAR safer, and less prone to collapse.
  
• Hardlines - Items like dishes, decor, toys, etc. Pricing varies as multiple people Process at this station daily, so don't expect any standard to be found.
  
• Softlines - Wearable clothing or other materials made of fabric, such as bedspreads, tablecloths, etc.
  
• Processor(s) - The people that price your donations for sale. They have certain goals they must meet every week, so poor quality donations or employees being out sick can cripple their ability to accomplish these goals.
  
• e-Commerce - Or e-comm for short, is Goodwill's online presence. For my store, it was ShopGoodwill.com, but others have ebay accounts, or something like that. e-comm is where the really nice stuff goes, stuff that is old, collectible, or just plain rare. It is all packed as carefully as possible in a giant gaylord, and shipped away to be sold online.
  
• Outlet - Items that did not sell at our store, so have been boxed up to be sold at our Outlet stores with bulk pricing. (Clothing/electronics by the pound, books by the inch) Items under this label can be clothing, boots and shoes, purses, books, electronics, toys, or other non-breakable, non-recyclable items.
  
• Bale - Damaged clothing beyond any hope of selling. Turned into ragstock at a different location.
  
• Recycling - Metal and Cardboard will fall under this label. Recycling these materials won't earn as much, but will still get us some money to put toward our mission.
  
• Trash - Items that do not fall under the categories above. Breakable, or heavily stained/damaged items that would not even sell when in bulk. Pretty much anything to do with the vicinity of the toilet, even if you say you cleaned it.
  

Hello from Canada. I am a seller seeking input and advice. Well over a month ago I started listing on Marketplace. The success rate is thus far abysmal. Out of 13 items, only one sold. I took high-quality photos, wrote detailed descriptions, and listed the items in all conceivable Buy/Sell groups on FB. People click / share in silence. I also crosslisted on Kijiji. Same situation, which is odd given that I sold pets and furniture before.
My wife suggested that my prices are too high for the platform. Really!? Does everyone on Facebook expect find art sculptures, vintage glassware and pricey pottery to go for $20!?
Let’s take the elephant sculpture as a prime example. After going broke to get it, my gift recipient rejected the elephant. Not their style. Subtracting the outrageous shipping puts the actual price at $1500. Price too high, eh? Consider the details: 12 x 12 inches, carved with unprecedented detail on Red Jasper stone, by an award-winning artist. Why would I sell RARE GENUINE ART below its value after pouring that much money into it!?
Another example: the large Precious Moments sculpture that also wound up a costly gift reject. I paid $260 for that thing (excluding shipping), hence the price. The box was never opened. It’s as new as the day it arrived on my doorstep plus a collector’s item. Why sell lower than its actual price, given its pristine condition!?
Even the used items are expensive. Those vintage flute glasses cost Mom a LOT back in the day. Perfect condition, large, impossible to find anymore and there are 12 OF THEM. Why not sell the set for at least $250?
Must I become an eBayer to get rid of these items for an appropriate price? I loathe eBay’s fees.
FYI my only sale was a small taxidermy alligator head for $45. Over 30 eager customers inundated my inbox before FB banned my listing for breaking a ‘no animal products’ rule that I didn’t know exists. Riiiight. You can (try) to sell a half-eaten cookie Covid hazard, but not a professional souvenir from New Orleans. Makes perfect sense. face palm The alligator’s ‘forbidden’ nature is likely the only reason that it sold.
Suggestions, please? Is there a Marketplace secret that I am unaware of? If the platform is only good for cheap sales, where can I properly sell valuables? Many thanks to all who answer.

Timestamps Local to Rocklin / Roseville area (95747) Will cover shipping unless it's going all the way to the east coast, in which case we can split 50/50
The hard drive is brand new, still sealed in it's bag, I can unseal it and test it if you request. Still under warranty. You can check here with the serial number "2TG03K9E".Looking for $350 shipped, this is $50 less than Mercari and eBay price

I've been working towards this for awhile. getting all my items prepared on a spreadsheet to figure out my costs. my niche key vintage item that I knew would get a lot of views has already gotten 53 views and 8 watchers in 24 hours. It is posted at $1,200 though. I already sent out a 10% discount offer to the 8 watchers but none of them have replied with a counter offer yet. I can sit on this item for a few months waiting for a buyer but when should I consider dropping the price? At the moment my item is the only one on ebay in working condition without any damage and with the original packaging. I have other cheaper items, all vintage video games, clothes, books, animal bones, artist signed pottery, and a microscope but they definitely aren't getting the same attention that my collector item is getting.

TimestampsLocal to Rocklin / Roseville area (95747)Will cover shipping unless it's going all the way to the east coast, in which case we can split 50/50
All Prices OBO, Comment before PM
The hard drive is brand new, still sealed in it's bag, I can unseal it and test it if you request. Still under warranty. You can check here with the serial number "2TG03K9E".Looking for $400 shipped, this seems like what they are going for on mercari / ebay, but if it's out of line let me know.
G.Skill 2x8GB DDR4 3200 CL16, this is the original ram that I had when I first built my pc with a ryzen 5 1600, it's been used no issue since I upgraded to a 3600X and then a 5800X. Never had any issues with it at it's rated speed and never tried to OC above 3200 or tighten timings.Looking for $40 shipped
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, 3200 2x8gb CL16, Still new, took it out of box to look at it, never mounted.Looking for 55 shipped Sold for $50 Shipped

My family has a large number of boxes of collectible American art pottery (like Roseville, Buffalo, etc). My parents were collectors and sometime dealers. I see a few auction houses listed in Cleveland but would like recommendations from those who have used them or know others who have. These are mid to high value items ~$40-a few hundred $.
(Before someone tells me to sell them on eBay…I do smalltime eBay, for other items. But it would take hundreds of hours to photograph, list, and pack all the breakables. I would need to scrounge and match boxes sized for all, deal with insuring the packages, store the items, and pack them so well that they do not break. My family and I just want to liquidate them for a fair price.)
Thanks everyone for the ideas!

Had a buyer purchase something from me last week.
When they paid and I received the shipping information the name sounded completely fake, to the degree that I googled the shipping address to make sure a house actually existed at that address. One did, but the name on the account had no connection with the address that I could find.
Anyway it was like a 20 dollar sale, I said the heck with it and mailed the item. I thought maybe they were a renter, a guest - who knows, didn't feel like spending more time on the small sale. I was hoping for the best which turned out to be a mistake.
Now today I get a message from that buyer going on and on about how filthy the Pottery item was and how they had to wash it, felt physically ill due to it being crusted in old food bla bla bla. They went on to say they would have to leave bad feedback because they couldn't in good conscience do anything else. A refund desired was not stated, because of course then I could turn them in for extortion... But it was certainly implied.
It's all lies, the item was not dirty. I washed it myself and they are flat out full of BS but I know a person/scammer who knows how to work the eBay system when I see it and I really didn't want to deal with a negative hit over a 20 item.
I refunded them, said sorry and told them to keep it, they may still leave neg feedback who knows...
Getting to the point, I did searches tonight because this pisses me off and the name on their account isn't even their real name. Does ebay not even bother to verify user's identities now?
Getting a little sick of constantly eating expenses and giving out free products due to scammers. This is like the third one in three months.
Would calling and complaining about this scammer buyer do any good? They're actually also selling items which is where I found their real name. They're selling something supposedly owned by a famous actor and they claim to be the famous actor. The name of the so called famous actor, has zero relation to the name on the account and furthermore it's not a famous actor just some clown who made a free imdb profile 🙄
Could I have done an hour and a half of deep searches regarding this person before I sent the item? Yes, but I shouldn't have to and that still would not have avoided negative feedback and a defect on my account if I cancelled the sale.
I guess it's just the wild west for sellers on ebay now.
Any pointers on how to get out of a sale in the future - without a defect and bad feedback, when the buyer looks sketchy? I'm tired of this.

I wrote up a few lengthy comments on how to make knives and someone pointed out that it'd make a good post, so here we go!
Knifemaking at the artisan scale (vs. mass produced) has been going through a really great revival lately. The options and materials that are available for a knifemaker now are better than they've ever been at any point in history to date. And the internet has really helped spread critical knowledge about how to make a good knife.
There's two main ways of making a knife - forging and stock removal.

• Forging is what most people think of when they hear about someone making a knife - a person banging hot metal with a hammer on an anvil with a coal forge. You buy some steel stock that is ideally as close as possible to the final dimensions of your knife, heat it up and shape it with a hammer and anvil, and then quench it, normally in oil, and temper it, usually with a torch or an oven.
  
• Stock removal replaces the anvil and hammer with a belt grinder (basically a belt sander on an impressive amount of steroids). Instead of shifting metal around with a hammer, you remove metal via abrasion. The metal shouldn't ever get hot enough to glow if you're doing things correctly. You heat treat the knife blade by sending it out to a heat treating facility or doing it yourself with a digitally controlled kiln.
  

Ok, ok, got it. Now how do I make a knife inexpensively?
Luckily, making your first knife is quite easy and can be done for under $150, not counting the cost of tools. Possibly less if you can scrounge stuff!
Here's what you'll need:
Tools:

• Eye protection. An absolute must. You only get one set of eyes and many things in knifemaking can throw material (sometimes at very high speed) into your eyes. Impact rated eye protection can be found for a little under $10 at places like Home Depot or Lowes. Can you imagine what would have happened to this guy without eye protection?
  
• Ear protection. Also a must when operating an angle grinder, hammering on an anvil, or using a belt grinder. Take it from me, hearing loss sucks. And tinnitus is even worse. You'll want something that offers 30 decibels of hearing protection or very close to that. $30 at Lowes or Home Depot.
  
• An angle grinder. These can be quite cheap, and found at Home Depot or Lowes for about $30 for a basic model. This is also one of the most dangerous tools in the shop. Never operate it without a guard and eye and ear protection. Grinder disks can explode outward at high speeds if they bind up in a cut (easy to do) or just because they feel like it. I've had it happen a few times to me and it's far faster than you can imagine. A guard will help keep the pieces away from your soft flesh.
  
  • If an angle grinder isn't in the budget, or electricity isn't accessible near where you'll be working, a hacksaw with a metal cutting blade is a safer, more affordable but slower option.
• Something to contain the heat and allow the steel to heat up in a uniform manner. Actual coal is hard to come by these days, and isn't cheap. But a simple MAPP gas torch and two cheap soft fire bricks will make the most affordable forge you've ever seen.
  
  • A torch, ideally using MAPP gas, as it can give you a hotter flame than propane. A cylinder of MAPP gas is around $15 and a very basic torch head can be had for around $25. Also readily available at Home Depot or Lowes as a combo kit with a nicer torch head for around $55 (self igniting, can be locked in the on position).
  • Soft fire bricks (don't get the hard ones, they're much more difficult to shape) can be had for around $10 a brick online, but even cheaper if you have a pottery supply store near you.
• A hammer. An inexpensive cross pein 3 lb mini sledge is a great starter option, especially if you use a grinder with a flap disk to make the face smooth (results in less hammer marks on your knife).
  
• A drill. A corded one can be as little at $30 to around $60. The battery powered ones are more convenient, but they start around $100 for a decent one.
  
• Some clamps to hold the handle slabs in place once you pin and epoxy them. Bar clamps are inexpensive and better than C clamps, but trigger clamps are really nice and only a little bit more.
  
• A cheap jig with a large file in it to create the bevels that can be easily built at home. Making the knife blade bevels can be done without a jig, but I don't recommend it, due to how time consuming and uneven it would be otherwise.
  
• A hard surface to shape the knife against. An inexpensive $50 chunk of railway track will more than do the job. Proper anvils are really, really expensive. Like this Nimba anvil for $2,500.
  
• An inexpensive sharpening stone - a simple diamond one won't break the bank and will rapidly remove material. $20 or less usually.
  

Materials:

• Some inexpensive high carbon steel like 1084 (A 1/4" x 2" x 12" bar is just $14.88 here)
  
• Some slow cure epoxy. You can use the faster curing 5 minute epoxies found at Home Depot and Lowes, but getting everything positioned and clamped up will often take more than five minutes and then it can be very difficult or possibly even destructive to fix.
  
• Inexpensive stainless steel rod stock to make the pins that will be used to anchor the knife handle with.
  
• Some material for the knife handle. The options are vast.
  
  • Definitely avoid softwoods like pine, as they'll break far too easily. Hardwoods like oak are what you want.
  • Stabilized wood is also pretty neat. There's even a hybrid wood / resin version which looks really amazing!
  • G10 is an inexpensive, colorful and extremely durable option. Make sure not to inhale the dust from it! (it uses glass fibers)
• Some oil to quench the red hot knife in. Three gallons of Canola oil works great.
  
  • Don't use motor oil! If it's dirty, all sorts of nasty stuff can end up in your lungs with the smoke that comes off when quenching. Even when clean, motor oil takes too long to quench a knife blade, resulting in a low hardness.
  • You can go with Parks 50 if you want one of the best (but more expensive) options out there.

Now for the steps to make your first knife!

• Once you have your steel, draw an outline of your knife on a piece of paper. Mark where you want the handle pins to go. Cut it out and glue it to your bar of steel.
  
• When the glue is dry, use your hand drill to drill out holes for your two or more handle pins.
  
• Next, use an angle grinder with a cutting disk or a hacksaw to cut the outlined shape from the bar of steel.
  
• Place your knife blank in the filing jig and proceed to file in your bevels. This can be time consuming and cramp inducing, but it's far better than doing it without any jig. At this point, the knife should be close to complete in terms of what the metal part of the knife needs to look like. The edge shouldn't be sharp, but about the thickness of a single dime. Any finer of an edge and it will get messed up during the quench.
  
• Test fit your stainless steel pins. Finding out that they don't quite fit after you've hardened the knife really sucks, because then the steel becomes nearly impossible to drill.
  
• Heat up your knife in your two brick forge until the steel won't stick to a magnet.
  
• As soon as the steel no longer sticks to a magnet, quench it in the canola oil.
  
• Let the blade cool to room temperature.
  
• Once it's at room temp, it's extremely hard and dropping it on a cement floor might cause the blade to crack in half.
  
• To fix that issue and have a knife blade that's still very hard but not fragile, we'll temper the knife by putting it in an oven and heating it up to 400 F and then letting it cool back down to room temperature. This should give us a hardness around 58-60 Rockwell.
  
  • Note: Using your household oven for this might draw the ire of your significant other, as the burned oil smell from the knife can be surprisingly strong once it's heated back up.
• Now that the knife has been heat treated, it's time to clean up the metal with some hand sanding.
  
• Next, cut your handle material to rough shape and attach it to the knife with the pins you cut down from the stainless rod stock and a good amount of slow cure epoxy between the handle slabs and the knife tang, as well as a small amount on the pins. Slow cure is ideal, because too many epoxies have a working time of 5 to 15 minutes, which can be waaaaay too short if you need to move things around a little.
  
• Clamp the heck out of that sucker! For a durable and high quality join, you want even clamping pressure across the whole surface of the slabs.
  
  • Wrapping the handle of the knife in a layer or two of saran wrap before clamping will greatly reduce the amount of cleanup you'll need to do afterward.
  • Make sure to remove any excess epoxy at the spot where the handle meets the blade / the front bolster before it sets up, this will make your life so much easier after it cures.
• Wait 24 hours for the epoxy to cure. Once it has, you can begin sanding down the handle into a something that looks like a knife handle.
  
• Once the handle has been shaped, you can sharpen the edge of the knife till it'll cut a sheet of paper cleanly.
  
  • If you haven't spent much time sharpening things before, I highly, highly recommend the book "The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening", which can be found online for free at the Internet Archive here. That's one of, if not the bible of sharpening.
  • If you want a quicker to digest option, this Bladeforums post is pretty good.

This will get you a quick and rudimentary knife that will work well! If it doesn't look great, don't despair. Making a good looking knife is an art, and can take years of practice.
Now to cover forging in more depth!
Forging is great and fun, but once you start going down that path, you realize the costs add up quickly.

• To really heat up your knife blank properly to the point where you can easily move the metal around with a hammer takes a great deal of heat. A two brick forge won't be able to supply that much heat.
  
  • Coal isn't readily available, portable coal forges are a bit of a pain to work with and a proper coal forge takes up a good deal of room and needs really good ventilation. Plus coal is dirty as all get out. You will get coal dust everywhere and it will get all over you. It does not come out of clothes very easily at all.
  • So you want a gas forge. Much cleaner, more compact, propane cylinders are plentiful and cheap to refill. Oh. Wait. Gas forges are really expensive! A decent one is $1,000. You can build your own for less, but how efficient it will be and how evenly it will heat the blade is a toss up. The money saved might not make the loss of time spent in building and testing worth it.
• A chunk of railroad track can work in a pinch, but you will rapidly discover its shortcomings and find yourself wanting a real anvil. Finding a used one that isn't beat to hell and back is difficult, mostly because collecting anvils has become trendy 🙄, driving up the price and greatly reducing availability. Expect to pay around $5 a pound currently if you can find a decent one, and 130 pounds and up is what you'll want. $650 for an anvil?! It still beats buying one new for $2,500. Don't be mislead by cheap anvil shaped objects, lest you waste your time and money.
  
• Hammer skills. Once you acquire a decent gas forge and anvil, you'll start hammering away at hot metal and finding out that getting good looking results is extremely difficult. The amount of manual dexterity and skill required to make something look good is extremely large and can take multiple years to build.
  
• Limited subset of metals that can be forged. There's a lot of really fantastic knife steels out there. CPM S35VN is really awesome looking! Oh, wait, it's not a steel that can be forged. You'll find out that the majority of high performance steels aren't suitable for forging. It's like being the kid that only gets red and orange paint while everyone else has every color of paint out there.
  
• Grinding, filing and sanding. So. Much. Sanding. Once you get something halfway decent, you'll find that you need to clean it up with a bunch of filing. Your hands will cramp up and it will take what feels like an eternity. And then comes the sanding to get a good surface finish. You will curse sandpaper after the first three or four hours straight of sanding. Why not use a power tool of some sort for all this grinding and sanding?
  

And that takes us to stock removal, the other way of making knives. Stock removal is using a belt sander instead of a hammer and anvil to shape the metal into a knife. It has a lot of pros vs forging and a few cons.
Pros:

• Types of knife steel that can be used with stock removal. The sky is the limit! CPM S35VN! CPM-154! AEB-L! M4! Magnacut!
  
• Ease of shaping. Using a belt grinder definitely takes a fair amount of manual dexterity to get good looking results, but I'd say it takes less time to learn vs hammer skills to get something that will impress other people.
  
• No ventilation or expensive gas needed! You'll want to wear a respirator, as it generates a bunch of metal dust that is no bueno for your soft, pink lung tissue, but you won't have to go outside or build a hood and extractor setup or spend decent amounts of money on propane.
  
• Precision. Forging is messy in terms of getting the metal to go where you want it to. It will bulge, curve and squish as you hammer it, making shaping difficult and time consuming. With a belt grinder, once you remove that metal, it's not going to affect anything around it. You can grind out exactly the shape you want. This is surprisingly critical.
  
• Speed. Once you get past basic looking knives and want to do something fancy, forging becomes fairly time consuming, like trying to get somewhere quickly on a bicycle. Using a belt grinder is like going somewhere in a top speed dragster by comparison.
  

Cons:

• Grinder cost. You'll want to use 2"x72" size sanding belts, which are the standard for knife making. You can use smaller 1"x30" belt grinders, but they're more difficult to work with due to the size of your potential work area. 2x72 grinders aren't cheap. An inexpensive single speed grinder with motor runs around $800. It runs at one speed, and that speed is "too fast". You'll rapidly find out you need a variable speed grinder. And one that allows for various attachments and grinding positions. And one with a bigger motor, as you'll bog down a 1 HP motor far too easily. Oh, wait, now you're spending around $4,000 for a good one!
  
• Cost of sanding belts. You'll rapidly find out that inexpensive aluminum oxide sanding belts wear out very quickly when grinding steel. They're decent for shaping handles, but you'll really want ceramic belts. Expect to pay around $10 per ceramic belt. When you're first starting out, you will go through a lot of belts in the process of making a knife. Four or more, easily. Before you know it, you've spent $40 to $80 in sanding belts alone for a single knife!
  
• Metal dust. So much metal dust. It gets everywhere. You can't use dust extractors that are suitable for woodworking shops, due to hot sparks and the potential for fires. A five gallon bucket of water on the floor directly under your grinder helps take care of the hot spark issue, but the dust still gets in the air and coats everything. Metal dust sucks. Hope you didn't have anything in your garage that you wanted to keep clean!
  
  • A respirator is an absolute must. Your lungs are soft and pink, and react very badly to metal dust. Unless you want lifelong health problems, you'll be wearing a somewhat uncomfortable respirator the entire time you're using the grinder.
• Noise. A hammer hitting something on an anvil is quite loud, you should be wearing hearing protection. With a grinder though, between the motor and the belt noise, you will have to wear hearing protection if you don't want to go deaf very rapidly.
  
• Heat treating. With forging, you have a gas forge you can use for simple heat treating. But those fancy knife steels you can now use since you're going the stock removal route? They all have complex heat treating requirements where you need to keep it within a few degrees of a certain temperature for a very specific amount of time. This is far beyond what you could do by hand with a gas forge. You can send your blades out for heat treating, and it's not horrible at $36 a knife blade, but it's not great either. And you lose so much time in the process of shipping it out and waiting for it to come back that correcting any mistakes can rapidly become very, very time consuming. Want to make a knife for someone on a short timeline? Good luck!
  
  • So you'll really, really want your own digitally controlled knife kiln. Be prepared to spend $1,500 to $2,000 for a good one. You can build your own more cheaply, but that has its own share of drawbacks.

Stock removal is considerably more expensive than forging. You'll be able to work faster, more precisely and use any knifemaking steel under the sun, but if you have an average income, you will find the cost a bit on the painful side.
What steps do you take to actually make the knife though?
Roughly speaking, the steps to make a knife via stock removal are extremely similar to the inexpensive knife making steps outlined earlier:

• Sketch out your blade design, put it on paper, glue it to some properly sized metal stock.
  
• Drill holes for the handle pins.
  
• Cut out the outer profile of the knife with an angle grinder or portaband metal saw.
  
  • A portaband saw and stand will make this job a lot easier and not overheat your steel , but you're looking at nearly $500 for that.
  • Angle grinders generate a great amount of heat, causing your steel to harden around the edges, and require an extra annealing heat treating step you might otherwise not need. And creating precise cuts is difficult. Forget about making cuts that are anything other than a straight line.
• Use your belt grinder to shape the bevels and other areas as needed.
  
• Turn on your knifemaking kiln and heat treat the blade, or send it out for heat treating.
  
• Grind your edge close to its final dimensions.
  
• Sand, sand, sand to get a good surface finish. A belt grinder can make this quicker, but you will need to hand sand towards the end, and you'll spend an unpleasant amount of time doing so.
  
• Drill holes in your knife handle slabs.
  
• Shape your knife handle slabs to the rough outline they need to be.
  
• Use epoxy to glue up the slabs and put your pins in.
  
• Once the epoxy has cured for about a day (if you're using the nice slow cure stuff), come back and use your belt grinder to shape the handle. Be ecstatic that you have a belt grinder, because you can do this so much faster and more precisely than you could before with hand tools!
  
• Sharpen the edge of your knife. You can do this by hand with some diamond stones or nice water stones, but a sharpening jig will give you a far sharper and more precise edge, with far better performance. You can achieve close to the same results sharpening by hand, but it requires a lot of manual dexterity and has a steep learning curve.
  

If you've gotten to the end of this post, congrats! I'm happy to answer any questions about knifemaking that you are curious about!

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APC Cork, Inc. 2014 West Atlantic Boulevard Pompano Beach FL 33069 954-931-8951
Artemis USA 8400 NW 25th St. # 128 Miami FL 33122 305-599-8856
Ceramica Etc. 6767 Collins Ave #2008 Miami Beach FL 33141 305-867-4494
Colombian Government Trade Bureau 601 Brickell Key Drive, Suite 608 Miami FL 33131 305-374-3144
COMPAC The Surfaces Company 1666 N.W. 82 Ave. Doral FL 33126 305-406-3600
Coral-Light Stone Products Inc 522 NE 43 STREET OAKLAND PARK FL 33334 954-530-4142
Diamant Venturi 664 S. Military Trail Deerfield Beach FL 33442 954-427-4745
Diamond Tech 5600 Airport Blvd, Suite C Tampa FL 33634 813-806-2923
Dioro Mosaic 2647 NE 186th Terrace Aventura FL 33180 877-443-4676
Emac Complementos, S.L. 1970 NW 129 AVE. UNIT#103 MIAMI FL 33182 305-406-1593
EO Stone 2190 NW 87th Avenue Doral FL 33172 786-888-3333
European Onyx 3785 NW 78 Street Miami FL 33147 305-804-8845
Florida Tile, Inc. 2210 Commerce Point Dr Lakeland FL 33801 863-284-4155
Genesis APS America Inc. 11940 NW 87th Ct Miami FL 33018 305-471-1029
Germans Boada, S.A./ Rubi Tools 9900 Nw 21st Street MIami FL 33172 305-975-2532
Heka Product 1275 Bent Pine Cove Port St. Lucie FL 34986 772-475-6550
HMK Stone Care 3162 Pembroke Rd Hallandale FL 33009 954-964-1658
Hurok Marble Group 1736 Parl Central Boulevard North Pompano Beach FL 33064 954-977-4876
Ilva S.A. Ceramica 4040 La Playa Blvd. Miami FL 33133 305-667-7090
International Tile & Stone 285 W. Central Pkwy# 1712 Altamonte Springs FL 32714 407-774-8600
International Wholesale Tile, LLC 3500 S.W. 42nd Avenue Palm City FL 34990 772-223-5151
LTS Ceramics, Inc. 502 Palm St. # 17 West Palm Beach FL 33401 561-655-0766
Magma Diamond Tools 1325 S. International Parkway # 1231 Lake Mary FL 32746 407-833-0552
Mapei Corporation 1144 East Newport Center Dr. Deerfield Beach FL 33442 954-246-8792
Mark E. Industries, Inc. 28921 US 19 N Clearwater FL 33761 727-771-9470
Marmoles de Honduras, S.A. 2227 NW 79th Ave. T-1050 Doral FL 33122 305-213-4361
Masters Lumber & Hardware 10454 W McNab RD Tamarac FL 33321 954-726-4515
McColl Display Solutions 805 College Ave West Ruskin FL 33570 877-408-8349
Mediterranea L.L.C. 3501 NW 115th Ave. Doral FL 33178 305-718-5091
Mosquito Mud Pottery & Art Tile 808 Magnolia St. New Smyrna Beach FL 32168 386-409-7240
Neelnox Metal Mosaics 10752 Deerwood Park Blvd S. Waterview II, Ste# 100 Jacksonville FL 32256 904-880-5557
Phoenician Arts 185 SW 7th St. Suite #1905 Miami FL 33130 305-305-0121
Prodim USA 424- 4th Lane SW Vero Beach FL 32962 772-293-9422
Proflex Products, inc. 3406 Dean St. Naples FL 34104 239-403-1790
RMTC Group Company 1025 SW Martin Davis BlvdSuite 205 Palm City FL 34990 772-288-6712
Rooms Alive 720 West Morse Blvd. Winter Park FL 32789 423-949-6615
Safeharbor Software, Inc. 12400 Capri Cir N Treasure Island FL 33706 727-360-0004
SGM, Inc. 1502 SW 2nd Place Pompano Beach FL 33069 954-943-2288
Spain Pavilion 2655 Le Jeune RoadSuite 1114 Coral Gables FL 33134 305-446-4387
Stone Fabricators Alliance 4181 SW Winslow Street Port St Lucie FL 34953 772-370-9489
Stone Mosaics 131 Tomahawk Drive, Unit 14-A Indian Harbor Beach FL 32937 321-773-3635
Stoneline Group, LLC 2141 NW 72nd Ave. Miami FL 33122 305-594-9294
Stonexchange 9635 NW 13th St. Miami FL 33172 305-513-9795
TarMak USA Inc. 4440 Adamo Dr #404 Tampa FL 33605 813-247-1700
Terra Verre Inc. 455 East 10th Ave Hialeah FL 33010 305-884-7704
The Flooring Empire 290 N.E. 183rd St. Miami FL 33179 305-652-3353
The Minimalist Group, Inc. 3214 Ne 2nd Ave Miami FL 33137 305-438-1775
Timeshare Hot List 7680 Universal Blvd Suite 565 Orlando FL 32819 407-218-7264
Universal Polishing Systems (Xiaoyu Abrasive) 4352 S Kirkman Rd. Orlando FL 32811 407-690-4660
Venture Traders Inc. 7967 NW 21st Street Doral FL 33122 305-468-3549
VIA DELL'ARTE, Inc. 1713 NE 19th Street Fort Lauderdale FL 33305 954-449-3937
Vidrepur, S.A. 2301 NW 84 AVENUE MIAMI FL 33122 305-639-2926
Wholesale Tile by Aguayo 10302 NW South River Drive Miami FL 33178 813-248-0455
Akemi Group PO Box 920384 Norcross GA 30016 770-409-8789
Artstone PO Box 52831 Atlanta GA 30355 404-664-7441
Blanke Corporation 3631 Clearview Parkway Atlanta GA 30340 770-936-9211
DSA-Deutsche Steinzeug America, Inc. 367 Curie Drive Alpharetta GA 30005 770-442-5500
Dural USA, LLC 175 Commerce Drive Chatsworth GA 30705 706-695-9888
Dura-tiles America, Inc. 925B Peachtree Street NE #321 Atlanta GA 30309 678-472-1933
EGE SERAMIK Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. 1721 Oakbrook Drive Suite C Norcross GA 30093 678-291-0888
Elite Building Products, Inc. 4235 Buford Hwy Duluth GA 30096 678-206-0242
Gem Granites 2420 Black Rock Drive Duluth GA 30097 678-360-5337
GranQuartz L.P. 4963 S. Royal Atlanta Drive Tucker GA 30084 770-723-8280
InnoChem LLC PO Box 920384 Norcross GA 30010 770-409-8789
Italdiamant USA Inc. 1035 Old Middleton Road PO Box 1049 Elberton GA 30635 706-283-4104
Klein and Company, Inc. 167 Hickory Springs Ind. Drive Canton GA 30115 770-345-6334
Langston Associates / International Product Supply 3405 Martin Farm Road Suite 150 Suwanee GA 30024 678-546-9828
MagBacker 2100 Line Street Brunswick GA 31520 912-261-4810
Tile Partners for Humanity 3845 Holcomb Bridge Road Suite 400 Norcross GA 30092 770-416-0200
Villeroy & Boch Fliesen GmbH 305 Shawnee North Drive, Suite 600 Suawanee GA 30024 770-904-6830
VitrA Karo Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S 305 Shawnee North Drive Suwanee GA 30024 770-904-6173
Wilson Industrial Electric, Inc. PO Box 1058 Elberton GA 30635 706-213-6725
B.A. Schmidt Arts & Enterprises 128 Lincolnwood Highland Park IL 60035 847-432-5679
Beno J. Gundlach Company 211 North 21st Street Belleville IL 62226 618-233-3636
Bestview International Company 226 Gerry Drive Wood Dale IL 60191 630-594-1816
GranitiFiandre 314 W Superior Chicago IL 60654 312-506-2858
Grout Boost 1105 S. Frontenac Street Aurora IL 60504 630-952-1383
Groves Incorporated 818 TRAKK LANE WOODSTOCK IL 60098 815-337-9780
John H. Best & Sons Inc. 1 Burlington Rd. Galva IL 61434 309-932-2124
Laser Products Industries 1335 Lakeside Drive Romeoville IL 60446 630-679-1300
Lowitz & Company 4401 N. Ravenswood Avenue Suite 206 Chicago IL 60640 773-784-2628
Red Rock Tileworks 1550 N. 5th Street Charleston IL 61920 217-345-2300
Roto Zip 1800 West Central Road Mt. Prospect IL 60056 224-232-3347
Shine Artifical Stone 2101 W. Irving Park Chicago IL 60618 630-306-7210
Stone Pro Equipment Co. 3020 South Banker Street Effingham IL 62401 217-536-6187
Stone Profit Systems 445 E. Ohio Suite 350 Chicago IL 60640 312-828-0600
StonePeak Ceramics, Inc. 314 West Superior Chicago IL 60654 312-506-2800
TEC 1105 South Frontenac Street Aurora IL 60504 630-952-1383
Design Decor Mirror Tile 941 Oak Street Elkhart IN 46514 574-264-9674
Husqvarna Construction Products 17400 W. 119th Street Olathe KS 66061 913-928-1270
One Granite Place/SODI Decorating Material 6394 College Blvd. Overland Park KS 66211 913-338-0591
Northwood Machine 11610 Commonwealth Dr. Louisville KY 40299 502-412-0109
Bostik, Inc. 211 Boston Street Middleton MA 01949 978-750-7287
Cover Guard 255 Revere Street Canton MA 02021 781-821-2600
Rodia 167 Ferry Rd. Haverhill MA 01835 978-420-0029
Sound Seal 50 HP Almgren Dr PO Box 545 Agawam MA 01001 413-726-0135
Vytek 195 Industrial Road Fitchburg MA 01420 978-342-9800
Architectural Collections 800 E. Gude Drive, Ste. F Rockville MD 20850 301-762-1002
Logix Stone 890 Airport Park Road, Suite 102 Glen Burnie MD 21061 443-524-6900
Starquartz Ind. Inc. 1300 Russell Street Baltimore MD 21230 513-218-4778
Antiquity Tile (Wiseman Spaulding Design) 12 Shaw Hill Road Hampden ME 04444 207-862-3513
CMS/ Brembana 4095 Karona Court Caledonia MI 49316 616-698-9970
Motawi Tileworks Inc. 170 Enterprise Drive Ann Arbor MI 48103 734-213-0017
Noble Company PO Box 350 Grand Haven MI 49417 231-799-8000
Vaporlux, Inc. 15701 Martin Road Roseville MI 48066 586-775-2429
Alabama Stone Company 23894 Third Ave Mankato MN 56001 507-345-4568
BonTon Designs LLC 6960 Madison Ave W Golden Valley MN 55427 612-201-0563
Fabricator's Choice LLC 1375 Trout Brook Circle St. Paul MN 55117 651-259-1300
Granite City Tool 247 28th Ave. South Waite Park MN 56387 320-251-8600
Park Industries Inc. 6600 Saukview Drive St. Cloud MN 56303 320-251-5077
Stone Care International, Inc. 3701 Shoreline Drive #202C Wayzata MN 55391 952-471-9009
Casa Italia - Vitrex 54 Eagle Cove Lane St. Charles MO 63303 636-949-7878
Sassomeccanica / SassoAmerica 1551 S. Kingshighway St. Louis MO 63110 314-533-6500
SunTouch Floor Warming Systems 4500 E. Progress Place Springfield MO 65803 417-447-8055
National Tile Contractors Association 626 Lakeland East Drive Flowood MS 39232 601-939-2071
Woods Powr-Grip Co., Inc. 908 West Main St. Laurel MT 59044 406-628-8231
Bella Vista Tile PO Box 207 Brasstown NC 28902 828-837-8256
Bonsal American / Prospec 8201 Arrowridge Blvd. Charlotte NC 28273 704-529-4204
Dancik International, Ltd. 2000 Centre Green Way #250 Cary NC 27513 919-379-3723