Packing your knives for shipment to AZCK

Packing your knives properly is essential to their arrival at AZCK in the same condition they left you. Unfortunately, poor packing has resulted in some knives arriving with chipped or cracked scales, scratches, bent tips, sliced sheaths, and other damage.  Rarely will insurance cover this damage.  To help make your consignment experience a pleasant one, we offer the tips below on packing your knives properly.

• Clean your knives before shipping! Knives arriving with caked on grime and dust are not as valuable and, although we wipe down the knives to remove fingerprints, cleaning is not one of our services.  A clean knife is a more valuable knife.  And a note about stickers: remove stickers and thoroughly clean any residue off the knife itself.  The adhesive will often discolor handle materials and even blades.  Leave stickers on boxes.
• Be sure your knives are immobile even if they are in boxes, cases, sheaths or wooden display cases. Pack them with tissue or pieces of packing paper until they cannot move around in their container. William Henry knives are especially vulnerable if in a wooden box.
• Original boxes or display cases are a key to maximizing the value of your knives.  Wrap these individually in tissue, foam or bubble wrap to protect them from scratches and bending.  Do not stack multiple boxes (unless corrugated cardboard like Chris Reeve boxes) next to one another as crushing or other damage can result.
• Select a shipping box that is the proper size for your shipment. A large box with only one knife is very susceptible to crushing during the shipping process.  Package handlers are not gentle!  Use a box that is a bit larger than all your knives and make sure you place paper, foam, or bubble wrap between ALL sides of the box and your shipment (this means bottom and top as well).
• Don’t over pack your shipment.  Two ten-to-twenty pound boxes are better than one forty pound box.  Heavier boxes are more likely to be dropped or handled roughly.
• If you are shipping a fixed blade knife without a sheath or case, make a blade protector by folding over a piece of cardboard slightly longer than the blade length, insert the blade and securely tape the top shut. Then roll the knife in foam or bubble wrap. We’ve received knives that have completely punctured the side of the box, causing a danger to package handlers and ourselves, not to mention the knives.