Hi all

I have been looking for a scabbard maker, for two scabbards and contacted Incarius about it. His products look good and prices are reasonable. Got a response with a quote, replied to it asking for some mods and was told it's fine. I asked for an approximate date when to send the swords and since then haven't heard from him. Even after sending another email a month later.

No money have been exchanged but I'm wondering. Has anyone been in contact with Rafal recently, is he doing allright? Or is it only me who is unlucky with my projects :(

Have been in contact with him within the last 14 days via Facebook. Nothing more recent than that.

I ordered (100% prepaid) a semi-custom sword from him in Feb 2020, and coincidentally it's due to arrive tomorrow.

In general I found him to be prompt and friendly, but...

Originally (according to his Etsy advertisement) it was supposed to take 3-4 months. He also told me he would send photos. So I checked back with him in July. He responded right away saying it would be done in a week! Great! 6 weeks later, I checked in again. Almost done! And so it went, until that first 'one week' stretched out to 7 months. As I recall, the sword itself was done in December (with the first set of pictures), and the scabbard was supposed to be done in -you guessed it- a week...which turned into at least a month.

Finally, in January this year, the whole order was done, the pictures look good (on his facebook page) and I thought all that 'one week' business was done. He said he would ship it that week. Great! A couple of weeks later...coming in a week! And so on. Two months after the sword and scabbard were done, I got fed up and stopped being nice. Then he finally shipped it and its almost here.

So, those are the bald facts, and you may interpret them as you wish. :)

The sad thing is that there is no reason to annoy people with 'unrealistic' time estimates (too put it mildly) - I'm used to waiting a year or two for a sword. The shipping thing though was...just weird. I had another piece shipped from Poland during that same period, no problem.

To wrap it up - I got an email from Rafal a few days after this thread was posted saying that he can't do it cause of too much work. Even though he agreed to do the project several weeks earlier. And then remained silent for a month. I was disappointed by this but also happy that I hadn't sent my swords to him earlier, like I had planned. According to other posters, he is a good craftsman but one might need to exercise extra patience waiting for an order.

I think he means well, is not able to handle the increase in demand he's seen in the last couple of years.

That is why many of us have moved over to the dark side and make our own scabbards.

You should, too.