SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Good Old Blades Podcast. I am your host, Aaron LeVere. And join me as we talk to other knife makers and craftsmen about anything and everything knife. Thank you for listening in again to the Good Old Blades Podcast. I am your host, Aaron LeVere, and I am joined by knife maker Craig Brossman. Craig and I met uh through the the Knifemakers Guild, and uh I've been following his work for a while now, and I thought it would be a great idea to have him on the show and talk a little bit about some of these knife shows that he's been to uh in his international experience and then talk about uh his induction as a voting member into the guild and uh just talk a little bit about him. So uh Craig, thanks very much for being on the show. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Thank you. I appreciate being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah. So uh kind of customary uh for the show is to ask you a little bit about yourself outside of knives, and then we can kind of get into what everybody else is interested in from uh you know knife and knife history and all that kind of stuff. So uh you just want to introduce yourself, talk a little bit about uh you know your size yourself outside of knives.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, so my name's Craig Grosman. I'm from uh northern Indiana, so I live about uh 45 minutes away from Notre Dame University. Um I've lived in Indiana my whole life. Um I'm a big baseball fan. Um my favorite team is the Cubs. My favorite player, though, it was a Texas Ranger, um, Nolan Ryan. Um, you know, um love basketball, football, all that stuff, but um, you know, in my free time that's not what I do. I spend time in my garage.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

So uh what I I know that you have a full-time job. What exactly is uh what do you do what do you do for a full-time job?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, so um my full-time job is I'm a data analyst for uh the orthopedic section of Johnson ⁇ Johnson. Um my job is to look over sales data and make sure that we're converting uh the actual sales that we've made into bills. So um it's it's very tedious and I spend a lot of time doing it, but I do really enjoy uh data analytics and you know working by myself um quite a bit. And it affords me the opportunity to buy machines for my garage and uh spend a lot more time with my family.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

That's cool. Uh so what uh what got you into knives and knife making? I mean, has this been a part of your life uh from early on or talk talk about that journey?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Sure. Growing up, um, you know, I spent a lot of time in sports, but um my dad was kind of always into trapping and hunting, and uh he had built his own knife at work. Um he built a couple knives, one of them was for uh skinning animals in the garage, and you know, he made a a bowie knife out of uh some tool steel. So that was kind of cool, you know, seeing it uh having him bring that kind of stuff home. And then um when I was like 15 or 16, I went and visited some friends of ours, and uh they showed me how they made knives out of files. Uh that was also really cool. Um, and then you know, I went through high school. Um my main job in high school I was on the newspaper, so that actually ended up being my my full-time job out of college was I was a newspaper reporter. Um and then I got into uh like models like um 40k. So I painted a lot, but then um that just consumed a lot of my time and uh and a lot of my money, um, which is kind of funny because my new hobby consumes way more time and money than my old one. Um but I I sold all my models and all my paints and everything, and um I told my wife that I was gonna use my bonus from work to uh buy a forge and anvil and start uh making knives because I thought it'd be cool to do something with my hands and you know uh start putting together the pictures and the ideas that I had in my mind. Um I've always had this ability to look at something and just figure out how it works and create it myself. Um and that kind of gave me an idea like knife making gave me that opportunity. Um so uh you know, after a year or so of doing that, um, I like met some friends in a nearby city. We we hung out quite a bit. And um I met I met John Shore. Um he's been making knives since the early 80s. Uh he said, he told me, he's like, hey, if you want to learn how to grind and you want to learn how to make knives, if you can get down to Florida, I will teach you everything I know. And I said, that seems like a pretty good deal. Um so when my family went down to Florida the next uh February, they went to they went for um my niece's make-a-wish, and they were all doing like Disney and uh Universal and stuff, and I rented a car and drove to John's house for five days. And he taught me how to grind, he taught me knife design, he taught me handle handle ergonomics. Um that's where I really changed my whole idea of what a knife is. Um my whole philosophy on knife making instantly changed after that. It was no longer making a knife for it to look cool, it was making a knife for it to be functional, making a knife for it to be quality, using only the best materials possible. Um that's really the turning point in my knife making journey was going to John's house.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah, and uh from a pedagogy or uh uh technique perspective, John actually has a pretty unique way of grinding and finishing out blades and things like that. And I mean you could definitely see that inside of your work. I I would say uh because I know that Eddie Ray also is uh studied under uh under John.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

It's uh it's very very obvious when you see it, if you know John.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, yeah. I mean, but it uh one thing that uh I uh uh admire about that style of finishing is the the finish itself, uh you know, when you're using the uh the soft contact wheels and everything, it looks very smooth and homogenous, right? Like it like everything is flat where it's supposed to be flat, everything is curved and you know sumptuous where it used to be sumptuous, and uh everything looks like it fits proportionally. So I mean I've always appreciated his style of uh knife making.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah, and I think what I b appreciate about John the most is that he's like he's brutally honest. He will never tell you a lie.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

So if you if you if you if you ask him what he really thinks, he might tell you it's dog crap. Like and then that you need to redo it. Um and he might also say good job. So he's really honestly gonna give you the most honest feedback, and that's how I grew the fastest was hearing yes, that's that's that's correct how I do it. Not necessarily that's correct, that's the only way to do it. It was that's yes, that's if you want to make knives like I do, then that's correct how I do it. And constantly, you know, learning one thing and then um doing it several times, getting it right, and then moving on to another little thing, and then moving on to another little step. And by the time you you know it, you've learned how to grind, you've learned how to do your flats, you've learned how to slot a guard, uh, you learned how to fit a guard, you've learned how to taper a tang, you've learned how to um fit the the handle to the taper tang. Uh you've also learned how to uh uh finish the handle, and you just kind of put it all together and it becomes something beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yeah. I mean Mitchell Hall also studied with John for a little while, too, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Um yeah, um I don't think his name's Mitch, though. Uh from there. Marshall Hall.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I was like, I was looking it up because I was like, uh no, it's not Mitch, it's Marshall Hall. Yeah. Yeah, Marshall.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah, Marshall Hall. Yeah, he lives maybe 15 minutes from John's house. So I would go to Marshall's Hall, Marshall's house in the morning. Uh Marshall would show me what he was doing, and then I would go to John's house in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yeah. And one one thing that's actually interesting about Marshall's work is that I think that he's taken a lot of the same elements of how to uh construct a knife, like you know, going through the grinding and flats and everything, but then uh made it very much his own uh his own expression of things. So it's um it's interesting how like his style has diverged from John's uh quite substantially, but it's still you can still see those facets of like that uh that technique and everything come through.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, his grinding is actually incredibly difficult. So with a typical um swoop grind or um how do I explain it, where it kind of comes up like and you get a uh a radius on the top, um you have to move quickly across the blade. So you don't spend a whole lot of time at the Ricasso where you normally would have um your blades start, right? Um so you end up having like a quarter inch or a little under a quarter inch of um like it kind of like a mountain, right? It it just kind of comes up like this, and then you have that point where you can start sharpening. Marshall's though is different. Marshalls literally comes in and it and it starts immediately. He rolls his gr his hand while he's grinding, so he puts his pressure, isn't constant. He only puts pressure where he wants to grind. So he'll grind the the sharp side of the bevel, and then he'll roll it into the swoop at the top, only grinding what he needs to grind. It's incredibly difficult. I I tried it a couple times, and I could do it with my right hand, but every time I went to do it with my left, I it would I could never get it to match.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah. Well, and um that so that style the style of grinding uh that Marshall does uh is a very versatile, if you if you can muscle memory it, um, it's very uh beneficial because there is lots of things like um if you look at the the grinding style of like uh Buster Worensky or some of these like uh I guess fantasy style knives where you have a lot of compounded bevels and things, in order to be able to do that, you have to have a lot of facility around compounding bevels, right? And in order to do that, you have to be able to finesse it and uh and swoop in where you need to go. And the only way to do that, obviously, is is uh by freehand grinding. But in addition with that, understanding that you're you're basically using a small contact wheel to scoop out material versus it being on a single plane. So it's it's actually really difficult because your mind has to figure out geometrically how everything is supposed to work and then stock remove all that stuff out.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So yeah, it was incredibly hard, and then that's when I realized why he gets twelve hundred dollars for or whatever it is for a three-finger uh EDC or whatever, because there are very few people in the world right now that can grind like he does.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah. Well, kind of on that that note, um, what's what's your favorite style? Because I see this amalgam of like you know, John Shore and you you've done Loveless uh style uh uh blade work, you know, kind of. But what in your mind's eye, what what is your favorite style and kind of how how are you pushing the envelope in your own way to achieve that?

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Sure. So the my favorite, like this last weekend when I was in Sol Engine, I I saw a maker that was making something that was so simple, but like literally one of the most beautiful knives I've ever seen. Um and I had never heard of him before, but his name is Reinhard uh Schauger, uh T-S-C-H-A-G-E-R. Um, and he was making like very clean double grinds with like um kind of like an art deco look with gold inlays and Damascus inlays on stay on like stainless. And that was kind of an eye-opening thing for me to see that kind of changed how I looked at things, right? And other things that have really changed how I looked stuff is like a Ron Lake. The the simplicity, like the beauty and simplicity is kind of where I want to go. Like keeping things very simple but yet um clean and elegant is kind of where I want to move. Um, then the next thing for me educationally um is going to Rick Genovese's house to learn how to make uh interframe lockback folders. I I think that's something that really grabs my eye is just you know the simplicity of um you know just two four sixteen slabs that you've uh milled out some sort of cavity, and then you've created a lockback around it, um, and then you use uh whatever you want for an inlay. Um but it's it's like a simple, very simple design, but as we know, simple designs are not always the easiest to execute because there's nowhere to hide. Um I think that's where I want to move to is just more simple designs that um really grab your eye, and you can uh you know just say, wow, I've never seen something like that before. Um I think that starts with my grinding because it's definitely a little different than uh a lot of makers. Um and then uh I find it a lot a lot easier to be inspired in folding knives. So I think I it's very difficult for me to look at um fixed blades and say uh and just just draw and and make something that looks like nobody's ever made that, right? I I cannot do that with fixed blades, but I can do my own style of folder. Like I can sit there for hours and draw folding blades. That's I don't know what it is about folding arms, but I just am more inspired by that. And I think that's more where I'm gonna move into is uh lockback folders and inner frame lockback folders.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, I think that's cool. Um and yeah, I I agree. Like simple, simple is not easy. Uh, because uh I'll tell you, like observationally, when you're looking at simple knives, uh the adage uh a place for everything and everything has its place, like the organizational uh kind of mindset is is true of simplistic knives, right? Because everything just looks like it is where it should be. Right? But um one thing that I've noticed about about makers that can achieve this is that they also have to be good uh machinists as well. And everything has to be square and everything has to be true, otherwise uh you don't have uh otherwise you don't have the ability to uh you know portray your work as simplistic, if that makes sense. So I mean kind of on that note, like you've actually had some pretty interesting mentors um that you've worked with, and uh I'd like you to talk a little bit about your experiences with them individually and and kind of like what your takeaways were because some of them are a little bit old school um and some of them are in like the art knife type of world and everything, and you kind of touch a bunch of different bases with like how you're accumulating knowledge through through makers and that uh that transfer of knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Yeah, I think the um if you it for for those of you that know my work, um you can definitely see where I get my influences on specific things. Because when I run into a problem, say I want to learn how to you know um solder a guard, um I'll find somebody who is really good at soldering a guard and I will message them and say, hey, I've been working on this soldering a guard, it's really difficult. Do you have any tips and tricks on how to do this? Um and it's really come that way with the specific aspects of knife making. So with um with Loveless Knives, I was lucky enough to have uh you know John as my mentor because he knew he knew Bob and he knew Wayne Clay. Wayne Clay taught him how to make knives because when when John was in Germany in the in the late 80s, um he met Dietmark Kressler at an event and Bob Loveless was there. He told Bob that he wanted to learn how to make knives, and Bob said, Hey, if you can get to Tennessee next week, I'll have Wayne Clay teach you how to make knives. And John showed up at Wayne Clay's house, and Wayne Clay taught him how to make knives because John uh because uh Bob Loveless said he would. Um so I was I'm very lucky to have that aspect, but then one day I couldn't get hold of John, and I had a question of pin placement behind the guard. You know, how far back do you go? Half inch, three-quarters of an inch, inch, whatever. Um, so I messaged uh Steve Johnson. Steve Johnson was getting ready to have a family function, and he said, give me a phone call. And I said, Okay. So I called him. He took pictures of his loveless model with all of the um pin placements, sizes, everything on it. Used a ruler, showed me absolutely everything, and since that day, uh Steve and I have been friends, and he answers uh any questions that I have about you know his work or uh certain things. Um before uh Blade Texas, I was just trying to uh solder guards, and I absolutely hate using um uh a flame, so I don't like using a torch. Um this just gets hot too fast. Um so I I messaged Steve, and Steve's like, Do you have the the right solder? And I said, Well, yeah, I've got the uh the Eutectix 157B. Uh he's like, are are you using a heat gun? And I said, No, I'm not using a heat gun. He's like, Go get a heat gun. And I went and got a heat gun, and it worked. Like, so I've had I have Steve Johnson as one of the guys that's really helped me out with understanding um a little bit more the leveless design, uh, some old school uh techniques like uh soldering, you know, pin placements, um uh and I another thing would be like guard thickness. Um a while back I tried to make a a burden trout based off of uh Steve Johnson's burden trout that he used to make. And um my first one was about a half inch thick at the at the uh um slotted guard. Well, it looks like a bolster, but it's it's slotted, one piece. And um he goes, that's way too thick. I was like, okay. So then the second time I did it, we kind of went over thicknesses a little bit more, and he was like, I kind of look at it as an eighth, an eighth, and an eighth. And I was like, okay, well that kind of makes sense. He was like, but then you also need to taper it from the back of the well the yeah, the back of the uh bolster to the front. Um so and it needs to be thin. So uh, you know, I went back and forth with him, sending pictures, and finally got that figured out. Um yeah, he he's he's been very, very helpful. Um I love Steve a lot. He's um he's a great ambassador for nice make knife making. Um, he'll literally help anybody. Um two years ago, I was in Texas for my uh inspection for probation bearing member to the the knife makers guild, and I met WDPs. And I was very, very impressed with his work, but my interaction with him was actually prior to that because I had bought the book on how to make lockback folders by Wayne Clay, Frank Centifante, and Ron Lake. And I had read the book a couple times and I got to the back of the book, and it says other people who are making quality lockback folders are blah blah blah blah blah blah WD piece. And I was like, okay, well, I know that name. So I found him on Facebook and I asked him if he offered any classes. He said, no, I don't offer any classes, but if you want to come to my shop, I'll teach you how to make lockback folders. I'll show you what I how I do things. And I was like, that seems like a you know a really good opportunity. So um I went down to his house for four days, stayed there with him and his wife, and I watched him go through the all the steps from you know pulling out the the the um pre-made spring in um blade to um you know drilling all the holes, fitting everything up, um making sure that it's not too tight. He literally went through everything, and I gotta watch all of that. Um and it was kind of eye-opening to see his shop because uh it's not as sophisticated as I thought it was gonna be. He he doesn't have I don't think he has a surface grinder. He's got uh two mills, uh four um the uh sat flank flat sanders, disc sanders. He's got four disc this this sanders, uh but they're set up uh quite interesting. Um they are on a like a really slow motor, and it's got like um the the chain on it, so there's like a a shaft in between, and then there's like a disciner on this side, a displayer on this side, and they're all set up to a different grit. So I don't remember what the grits were, but you know, arbitrarily one was 200, 400, 600, 800, whatever. He would, you know, after he did everything, he'd go over and he'd flatten them, clean off the burrs. Um and he kind of used that as his surface grinder. That's how he you know cleaned material down, that's how um he made sure things were flat. Um it was it was really cool. He had a jig for literally everything. There was something in his there was something in his process that he did that would cut time for everything. Um he doesn't he didn't do uh he he's known for doing file work on the back of his blades. And so on the back of the knife and the lock bar. Um he does not do that by hand. He uses his 2x72 and has um like a really small pin that spins, and he uses 2x72 belts or uh 1x72 belts that he splits at a slow speed, and he'll you know mark the blade down and then go over there and start it, and then I think I saw him do they look like hourglasses. He did a whole lockback uh the law the bar and the the blade in like an hour. It was impressive. Um so he also had uh one mill specifically set up just to do um milling relief on the liners. He would go over there and he'd put the the liner down, he'd put a pin in here, and it had like a spring-loaded section that would keep it in place, and then he'd turn the machine on, and then he'd take the blade and he'd spin it. And he knew that that machine was always set up to do the mill relief properly, because he had done it that way. So he just walked over there, zzz, put the other one on, zzz, done, perfect, and then he'd go back to the circuit the disc standard, clean up the edges, we'd move on. Um I saw that the maybe the most important thing that I learned from him was how to work with stag. I mean, stag is something that's like very deceptive because you never know like how thick it is, where, what it's gonna look like when you do something to it. So you always have to remove material from the back side because you want to keep the nice character on the front side. So I learned I learned how to uh you know taper and remove where to move remove material from stag um when I saw him, when I went to his shop, and I think that was one of the most important things for me because I really like using stag, it's just very difficult to get it perfectly correct. Um and then I I saw how he he likes to do decorative bolsters on his lockbacks, so he'll use mosaic uh Damascus from like Robert Egeling or somebody else, and he would heat it up until it turned colors, and then you know he'd heat it up, wait for it to change colors, heat it up again for a few seconds, wait for it to change colors, and he would do that until he got the desired color that he wanted, and then he dipped it in, he cooled it off. So that was kind of cool to see. And then I gotta see how he used a panograph to etch all of his blades with his name, and then he puts his model number on all of them, um, so he knows exactly when he made it. Um, he has a specific like naming system that he uses. Uh, so I mean that was really cool just to see him go through the whole thing. Um, and then he was just like, Alright, send in the small phone in the morning. Customers are gonna be happy. And I was like, I I would be too. It's a beautiful knife. Um so that was really cool to see that. Uh I've when I recently got into more lockback folders, uh, like trying to put my own together. Um, I had started to message uh Rick Genevieve'cause he's probably the one person who makes uh the interframe lockback folder more so like I want to. And Rick has been extremely helpful with answering every question that I've ever had. Um and I was very grateful for that as well. Um and I I was incredibly happy to be able to meet him uh a couple weekends ago in California. So that was that was really, really cool. Um I think that's the majority of the people that I've really learned from.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Yeah, well, uh so uh listeners, there's a lot to unpack there with what Craig just said, too, because I I think that when you're taught on the internet or you're doing research, it's very um well it takes a lot of time, right? And when makers tell you that you can cut off years of your learning experience through going and sitting with a maker, uh it is true because um uh like what what Craig was talking about was uh in soldering guards uh and the difference between flame versus uh heat gun. All right, the um in jewelry making, and this is something that I I'm okay with using a flame because I learned a really difficult lesson in in flame control. And in jewelry making, you know, you're working with precious metals, you're soldering things, you're melting things, and uh the the flame behaves in a way that you have to learn, right? Like be like uh like a if you're doing an oxygen uh mixture uh with uh with flames, or if you're using straight butane or something like that, they all respond a little bit different, and they also have different characteristics for how uh you use the flame, whether it's the you know the blue cone at the the front of the nozzle or the uh orange tip of the flame, but you you have to be able to know how hot certain areas get and and how quickly they uh they melt things, right? And with a heat gun, uh the difference is like you take uh you take the temperature that's a constant because of the way that the coils work in a heat gun in the air, and and that makes a very consistent, homogeneous uh heat um source that you can then control a lot more of how your solder flows because again it's consistent. You don't have to worry about that technique for heat or for uh you know flame uh flame management. And so those are like like it's it's hard to do that, it's hard to uh to work with a flame. So some knife makers will go to heat gun because it's just it's consistent and it's a little bit uh lower learning curve. Like I spent years learning uh proper flame management with jewelry, um, and you just have to mess up a bunch of gold and silver and platinum until you get it right. And uh that's just one element when Craig is talking about uh the uh uh a tool for a per a specific purpose, or jigs, or uh techniques for uh you know Damascus and Mukume and other type of uh finishing or handle materials, uh, all of those are elements that you get a crash course in that when you go to somebody who uses those materials a lot, that you just have to spend a long time uh trying to understand and and you know work through all the pitfalls. So um I highly encourage the transfer of knowledge through makers if they have the time and you have the the time and you know if you can uh compensate them somehow in uh in their time that they invest in you is the best way to learn because it's it's a different beast experiencing it and seeing it uh versus just reading about it technically in you know a blog or something, you know, though it it really does increase the amount of time uh or decreases the amount of time it takes to learn something.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Yeah, I think the most important thing about going to another maker shop is uh not only do you get to see their process, which could widely differ from yours, it could also save you a lot of time in your process, but when you're reading in a book, it's hard to understand troubleshooting if something doesn't go exactly the way it's supposed to. When you're in another maker shop, you have that ability to say, Hey, what do you do if this doesn't work the way it's supposed to? Like, how do you save this this piece? What do what can I do to fix this? And that is uh invaluable information.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah, I mean, I I totally agree. So um seguing into uh the the few shows that you mentioned and everything like that, so you uh you've you got uh voting member status in the guild uh this early this year, and then you went to Solvang and then to uh Solingen, right? Can you talk a little bit about your show experience? And uh mostly I'm interested in like the reason why you wanted to get into the guild although that seems although that seems uh uh self-explanatory based on what you talk about and knowledge transfer and everything. But then also um the difference between you know the United States knife shows and international ones. Like yeah, I think you have a uh first first hand uh knowledge on that now, especially since it's so fresh for you.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

When it comes to the the the recent shows that I've been to, um John has been the one person that's always like always been there for me. He's always answered all my phone calls, you know, 10 o'clock at night. Hey John, um like most recently, uh I was using some uh vintage uh green canvas micarta, and it was turning brown, and I was only you know grinding it at like 80 grit at 20% on my VFD. And it was turning brown, and usually when it turns brown, when something turns brown, you're burning it. And I was freaking out because this is like you know, $60, $100 set of set of handle material. So I called John and I'm like, hey, what's going on? He asked me what it was, and he's like, oh no, no, no. That's just the way vintage screen canvas micarta looks after at patinas. So just you know, kind of things like that. Um, and John has been in the in the knife makers guild for oh god um 20 plus years, and before that, he was also in the Deutsches Messermacher Guild uh when he was uh living in Augustburg, Germany, um, as a serviceman. So the difference with American um the American Guild and the German Guild is from what I've noticed it's a lot easier for you to learn from another maker in the United States than it is for you to learn from another maker in Germany. In Germany, they expect you to you know um learn yourself, you know, make those errors, correct everything, and learn your own processes. In America, um it's a little different because everybody wants you to come to their shop, everybody's willing to share information. There's nothing really off-limits, um, knowledge-wise. And I think it's also definitely a lot different now that you know in the in the age of the internet where you have YouTube and knife forums and Facebook, that knowledge is literally at your fingertips. The the best way to filter through that knowledge to understand it the best and act on it the best is to work through that with other makers. And I think that that's where you where the the knife makers guild comes into play, because there are literally some of the greatest knife makers in the world right now in the knife makers guild. And historically, the the knife makers guild's um shows for just so back in the day, um shows were rare, and the knife makers guild came around so that just members of the guild were in the show, and it was the best knife makers out there. You'd have the people like Buster Warinski, Warren Osborne, um, you know, people that uh knife makers today are still looking at their stuff and saying and and finding inspiration from Bob Loveless, uh Steve Johnson, um, all a part of the knife makers guild at some point in their life. So it's kind of moved into less about doing their their own show and more about like the fellowship of being around other makers that they've set a quality standard. Um, and that's what I really wanted to be a part of was something where um there was a there was a standard that had to be met to be a part of this organization. Um and it's it's kind of like uh what is it? The is it the good housekeeping or uh better homes and gardens or whatever where they endorse something. It's like it's it's a way for people who are buying knives to know that this maker makes quality products. This maker is making something that is worthy of being bought. It's a good product. Um and I wanted to learn. That's the number one thing I want to do, is I want to learn and I want to get better. So I I did my uh originally tried to get my signatures in um Blade Show West in LA. Um that's where I met uh Dennis Friedley for the first time. Um absolutely love his work. He's an inspiration, super nice guy. He signed my paperwork, Tim Robertson signed my paperwork, Luke Swin. Uh yeah, Luke Swinson signed my paperwork. And since they said that Dennis wasn't in the in the guild anymore, um uh Tobin Hill signed my paperwork. Um, but then when I came back for the second for uh Blade Show, Texas to get my probationary, um they got me three signatures because I must have forgot my paperwork. Um but I went through that. Um then I had to wait another year, um, really worked on specific things that I knew I wanted to work on. So it was mainly um guarded knives. Um so in that time, uh I spent a lot of time talking to uh um another knife maker from Texas, um Paul Lusk, uh learned some techniques on how to uh you know make sure that my my tapered tanks are perfectly tapered just just to the back of the guard slot. Um and there's an equation that you can use that will automatically give you a pin gauge that will make your taper perfect. So I spent a lot of time learning that um in between probationary and um the the second interaction. Um so then two months ago in March, I went down to Texas and uh went through my voting memberships uh inspection. And I you know some people would be incredibly scared going through that. I was incredibly interested to see what they had to say and how I could improve. Um luckily I had one of the most brutally honest guys inspect my stuff, and he was brutally honest and told me things um that I knew I needed to work on, but he didn't just tell me that I needed to work on them. He told me, you know, how to fix those things, how to how to see scratches that maybe your lighting in your in your space um blur out. He told me lots of different things, and I mean I still call him every once in a while. Um, Stanley Buzzick, uh he was it was an awesome interaction. I talked to him for a couple hours, um, and he signed my paperwork for my for my voting status. So that was a really cool experience. Um so going into this last year, I had two shows planned, and that was Blade Show, Texas, uh the third week of March, and the uh Knife 2023 in Solingen, Germany. Um at that point, going into like November of last year, um John and Eddie Ray were gonna go with me to Germany because it would be John's first time back in Germany in I don't know, 15-20 years or something like that. And then John kind of got sick and had to go to the hospital and had a surgery, so then Eddie Ray and John kind of backed out, and it was just me. Um so I didn't want to I didn't want to leave. Um, and then you know, a couple months later, um they were they had been ramping up the Soul Vane show for I don't know since the summer before, and it it had like one of the greatest lists of living knife makers out there right now, uh, set to go. And I was I was like, man, I'd really love to go to that as a as a person not exhibiting, but just to go see the work, talk to the makers, and have a fun time. And then I was like, but it's literally four days before I leave to go to Germany. That's probably not possible. And then uh mid January, early February, I get a phone call from Dennis Friedley, and he goes, Hey, would you be interested in coming as an exhibitor to our show in Solvang? I instantly said yes. Like yes, it was an opportunity that I could never never turn down. I mean, Rick Genevese was there. Who else was there? Dietmark Kressler was there. There were several AKI members that were there. Tony Baker was there. Jim Sornberger was there. I mean, the list is like it was a ridiculous list, right? And just to be considered as somebody that he felt was making nice enough stuff to invite to a show with uh Master Smiths and AKI members and you know people who do this as a for a professional job was uh was an amazing feeling. Um but it got a lot better. Um I mean by by better I mean like when I got out there, it was super busy, uh the show was great, but there was a lot of time that I got to spend talking to makers about stuff that they do and having them inspect my work. Um so Deep Mark Wrestler is one of the makers that I admire the most. Um, his style of loveless make loveless blades, but in an integral format, and the way he has uh special finishing that he does with multiple different times types of uh satin finishes mixed with uh near polished uh sections of the blade and the handle and the way he fits everything is flawless. And the very first day I was in Solvang, I saw Dietmar who knew John, and I let him know that you know John sends his best, and uh that was kind of my end to having a conversation with Dietmar. And we started talking about knives, and he just started you know talking about how he makes knives, what the processes are that he uses, like down to the size of the wheel he uses, what size of a belt he uses, what material like everything. Um so I spent you know, maybe a half hour talking to him inside the show. And then he went outside to smoke, and we spent another half hour or so talking outside about how to do stuff, and then he he came by my table and inspected my knives, and we had a conversation about you know how to improve things, um, what what he did and didn't like. Um, I think that was one of the coolest things that I've ever had happen to me as a knife maker was somebody that you admire so much coming by your table and giving you honest feedback about your work. Um I had John Horrigan come by my table, do the same thing. Uh Rick Genevese did the same thing, uh Tony Baker did the same thing. So I got a lot of honest feedback from uh from them on you know things that they they saw that they thought that I should improve on. Um so those are a lot I have a lot to unpack when I get back home on how I'm going to um make my my future knives because I had a lot of a lot of feedback. Um so then after after that show I went to I went to Germany and um the way I got into the Witches Necker Moffat was um I bought two books by Stefan Steigerwald. One of them was how to make it how to make uh integrals, um, which is something that I've always wanted to do, I just haven't had an opportunity to do yet. Um I mean I've talked to um Edmund Davidson about it several times. He's a pretty good friend of mine, uh, and I just haven't got around to doing it. So I bought Stefan Steigerwald's book on integrals. I also bought his book on lockback folders, and I read them, and Stefan was one of the organizers of the show for the Mesamaka Guild. Um when I first got there, after I set up everything, I looked for him, and he had already came and gone. He'd set up on the stable. So the next morning, uh the morning of the show, it opened at 8 o'clock, the show opened at 10, but the doors were open at 8 to the makers. I went down to see him, and he said, Are you are you one of the guys from from overseas that was asking me about joining the the guild? And I was like, uh, no, I don't think so. But now that you've asked, I'd be more than willing to fill out your paperwork. So I took I took an application, I filled it out, went upstairs, got my five knives, uh, came back downstairs, and they inspected my knives, and I was given uh probationary status into the Mesamaka Guild in like 10 minutes. So like it was kind of a crazy thing because I had no intention of joining the guild, but he when he asked, I was like, you know what, that's actually not a bad idea. I think I'll just try, you know. Um, because I'm always looking for people to give me feedback on my knives. And they were you know impressed. And being a young maker, which is can sometimes be difficult because there's there's not very many young makers uh doing it at a level that um some of the older guys are, it's just a very older person's game, I think. The the knife making is a lot of the just young people aren't into it as much at that level. Um so when I was at both shows, I was you know one of the youngest people in the room. So in Soul Bang, there was you know Andrew Mears, he's like 36 or 38, uh Kyle Reuter, myself, you know, Tyler Turner's not much older than us. Um I mean there was like four or five of us that are under 40 years old, and then every other table was you know 50s, 60s, 70 years. So it's it's definitely different being a younger maker. Um, but I think that's part of what makes it so special, and especially what makes it special for some of the mentors that they get to share information with people who are hungry and want to learn. Um I for people who want to learn, I the one thing I can say is just ask. Makers want to share information. Um, don't expect information, but be cordial and just ask questions, be inquisitive. Like I would not be anywhere that I am right now. I would never have been invited this whole thing or anywhere if I didn't just start asking questions and try to be the best name maker that I could possibly be.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah. Well, kind of on that note, so I mean, I I think that's really good for new makers that are just starting out to uh as as an advice point. And kind of like a um typically what I ask uh near the end of our interviews is like if there's if there's like a set of things that you could uh recommend to like new makers or intermediate makers, like those who are trying to come up, uh what would they be? That's a really good first one. Do you have any other types of advice for newer makers?

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Yeah, don't get discouraged. I mean, like the way I look at things is failure is just another way to learn how not to do something. And the more ways I learn not to make it, I have a better chance of learning how to do it. Um, I think that that's most evident. I'm very open about my knife making in my process on my on my Instagram. So I'll post you know what I've done for the day, what my processes are. If anybody has a question about certain things, I'll do a video on it. Um when I tried to learn how to do um fit guards with without uh solder, I think I went through probably 20 different uh fittings because I didn't like the way one fit, one of them didn't do this, one of them didn't do that, and yeah, it was frustrating, you know, not getting it right. But at the end of that, I had something, I don't want to say it was perfect, but I was proud of it, and I had learned something that was not necessarily the easiest to learn. Um so and through that whole process, not only what did I like fail a bunch of times, but I called you know several other makers and I was like, hey, do you do this process? And then they they would say, Yeah, and I'm like, How do you do that? And I would go through the the points at which I failed to see what I could do differently. It's just always being I guess always wanting more is just kind of who I am. I always want to do more, I want to be better, I want, I always want to be the best that I can. So not not being not accepting less than quality. So one of the things that John taught me very early on was set a standard and always follow that standard. And if if you can't make that standard, don't put it out. So there's been several times where you know I've screwed up a blade or something and I can't fix it, I I don't finish it. Um when we were when we were in uh Texas, Matt Collum came by my table, and I had had a um drop point loveless one-inch guard that I had silver soldered, but I had taken it off my table because I found an issue with the the the top of the guard was some of the silver solder just wasn't there after finishing. It was there were pits, and I took it off my table because that's not something that I wanted to sell. I didn't want to sell something that wasn't of good quality. And Matt asked me, he goes, Oh wow, cool, you sold one. I go, no, I didn't sell it. I took it off the table because it didn't meet my standard. So setting that standard is incredibly important. Um I think for a lot of new makers, uh I've seen in a lot of groups, you know, go to YouTube, YouTube always has the answer. My problem with YouTube is the makers who are putting stuff on YouTube are not necessarily the makers that I want to learn from. They're not the Steve Johnsons, they're not the Edmund Davidson's or the Dennis Friedley's. Um the people who are putting out content that I want to see that that are putting out content that is like the most helpful to makers, they're charging for it. Like Kyle Royer or um Jason Knight, and all these other people. Most of the top-tier makers are going to charge money for their content. Um, so but there are exceptions. So two weeks ago in Solvang, I was looking at John Horgan's stuff, and we got talking about stuff, and I kind of got this idea that I wanted to do you know six six-part Turkish twists, Damascus, but I've never made Turkish Turkish twists before. On my way home, I sent John a message like, hey, do you mind if I call you on the the Monday after I get back from uh being out of the country and we we talk about you know how to make Turkish twists? And he's like, Yeah, not a problem. Give me a phone call. Um, it's just finding people who have knowledge that's worthy of being shared, I think is important. I'm very I am very leery of YouTube. Um because anybody can have a YouTube channel, anybody can share any of anything they want, but I'm only interested in the like the correct information. Um so I'm I'm very leery of of YouTube. I usually just go straight to the source. If I see somebody's knife that I really like and something about it that they did really well, and I want to know how they did it, I have no problems just messaging them on Facebook or Instagram and saying, hey, um my name is such and such, I've been following your work, I noticed on your most recent work that you did such and such. Uh would you mind talking about how you did that? Because I'm really interested in doing that myself. And I've had pretty good luck with that approach. Um other things. The the one thing that John, another thing that John taught me was um having the right tools for the job is incredibly important. So understanding what such what you need to do in certain situations is incredibly important. Um I have a different a little bit of a different shop than most people. Like I have a giant surface grinder in my in my garage, and and I use it for just about everything. Um you know, I only know a few other people who have an automatic surface grinder in their their knife making shop. It's just pretty rare. Um, and I have a I have a mill, and I'm my biggest thing is you know precision and accuracy is what I really care about. So those tools are really important to me. Um so knowing where you want to go and how um knowing yeah, knowing where you want to go and what you want to make is gonna determine who you're gonna talk to and how you're gonna set your shop up. Um I think that's fairly important.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

Um yeah, so uh kind of on the point of YouTube, I mean the this this reality is that anybody can create content. Um specifically, I think like uh to frame that for new makers is that sometimes when you're on a journey of acquiring knowledge, you don't know what kind of questions to ask, right? And YouTube and blogs and other things like that um can be very useful for being able to qualify certain types of uh techniques, right? Um but like there's there's a million different ways to do it, and there are a lot of different ways to ruin it too. And so you might use you get to a picture when somebody's creating content of the just the things that might be popular um or the things that might be uh in vogue for the time. But there's a lot of there's a lot of uh techniques in knife making that you see on like the finished work from a maker, um, and you might see it in a picture or whatever, but you don't really get to see how it's done. Uh so for the vast majority of techniques in knife making, there really is no uh tutorials or things like that for it. And something that I think that uh Craig and I and I'll and a few other makers who understand that this is not very well documented, uh, try to actually post up on our our you know social media to give a peek behind that curtain. Because when I was getting into it, um even though the internet was a very viable source for qualifying questions and then being able to talk to makers, a large portion of actually how to execute it was either trial and error or talking to somebody to try to make uh to lower the the error portion and then still going through trial and error. So if you can get some if you can get qualified information but and it lowers the learning curve of you doing something, that ideally is what um you want to do as a new maker. Uh, you know, take take less uh uh less time, uh ruin less less things and work your way through the process um through you know qualified knowledge. And I think that that's an important piece. So you know, be be distrustful or be scrutinizing over the kind of information you're consuming because um it is very easy to learn bad habits um in anything, whether it's instruments or other you know, art artistic techniques and knife making especially, and it can be very hard to correct it, and you might actually find that certain uh issues that you have in your fit and finish might actually be because of the bad technique or bad behavior or um a poor posture or things like that that you're doing early on in your knife process and that just gets compounded as you go on when you're trying to get to that finished knife.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

Yeah, I think one of the one of the things that I get questions about the most is I'm one of the I don't want to say few makers, but um I taper all my tanks, and it's not necessarily one of the most popular things to do, um, because I think a lot of people don't see a return on investment for the time. Uh it takes quite a bit of time, it takes me maybe an hour and a half uh to taper a tang. Um, but you know, I I use the flat platinum and then I also use the automatic surface grinder with a um uh magnetic sign chuck and um pin gauges. But um after you do that, when you're starting to do your handles, you can't just drill holes straight through the tank because you change the way that the the handle now fits onto the tank, it's now at an angle. So one of the most important things about that that I've I've spent quite a few times on my Instagram talking about, is you have to keep the blade perfectly perpendicular to the drilling surface. That is the only way to ensure that you are gonna get the best fit on your pins or your Corby bolts, your loveless bolts, whatever. It's the only way it's going to be completely straight. And you'll have some people say, well, it's not a big deal, just drill straight through and then flip it over and just straight through. It's just not the right way to do it. And I I've had a lot of questions about that, and I have a specific jig just for that. It's basically just a giant clamp that holds my blades perpendicular to my milling machine when I drill my holes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:35

Yeah, so for everybody who didn't pay attention in trigonometry and geometry, there are some actual real-world applications in knife making. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

I'm not a math person, but I use math now more than I ever did.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

It's uh the it's the same way. Like I I'm on this uh kick of actually being a competent machinist. And you know, in this in this world of using surface grinders and uh milling machines and lathes and everything, you know, uh half ten thousandths matter. And in your fit and finish and everything, like I uh for instance, uh when you're when you're doing uh integral liners for slip joints, for instance. Right. Um the easiest way to get a really tight fit from your spring to your liners is to surface grind it correctly. Right. Right. Otherwise you have to spend a long time lapping it and you don't you don't always know whether you're going to get that that very tight fit without any gaps. Well, you can solve that problem by using your equipment correctly, but you have to be cognizant of it to like I'm cognizant of warp, you have to be cognizant of how you're taking off material uh to your uh you know, it in conjunction with how it's taking it off with your sur with your surface grinder. And all of that compounds, if you don't get it straight and you don't get it flat, or you mistake the you know just slapping it on a tool and saying, okay, this thing will make it flat, it it doesn't really work that way. There's finesse with every machine that you use, and you gotta learn not only how your machine operates, but then also how to achieve a result using that tool. And so there is learning curves for precision for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

Yeah, I mean I had that conversation with Rick Jim Hughes last week. Um, I mean, so when Rick talks about Rick also spent like six straight years posting every single day, work work in progress pictures and explaining to people how he makes his automatic folders and his uh Persian uh lockbacks and everything. So I use a lot of his pictures as reference points. But Rick, when he uses uh his pivot, he uses a you know a hardened 440C part, but it is I think he said one thousandth. wider than the thickness of the blade? So that it gives a half thousandths on each side of movement.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:07

Is he is yeah, is he using a uh like a pivot bushing?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean a half thousandths to some people is like a ridiculous tolerance. But for people who are really about details and stuff, it it's necessary and it's you can attain that. It's not that I don't think it's that hard, especially with a hardened piece. Because if he's using 440c, he could put that on his magnetic magnetic chunk on his surface grinder and literally take off tenths of a thousandth at a time. But we work him and I were talking about this last week instead of working in five and tenths of a thousandth five thousandths and ten thousandths we work in like tenths of a thousandth um which is a lot different than um most of the industry at least most of the industry when it comes to handmade knives there's a lot of uh good enough or that looks right and or it's okay it's might be a little big but you know if you really want to set yourself apart it's doing something to the best that you can good enough is not something that I have in my vocabulary in my in my garage. If it's not up to the what I think it should be it just doesn't get completed. It gets chucked.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

Yeah well and I I I think it's important too to know like it there are stages to knife making right oh definitely there you so you can you can take like a fixed blade is probably some of the most forgiving when it comes to tolerances and you can take a fixed blade that has no like uh no bolsters uh or really complex geometries and uh no embellishments that highlight those things and you you can you can do it with a fairly wide tolerance so as long as your handle material is flat as long as your blade is relatively flat you can get there uh to a tolerance that works and you your your eye does not catch it but as you start adding things like bolsters right they have to be flat to the to the ricoso and everything if you're gonna slot them all the geometry has to be right you can't have gaps or things otherwise your eyes drawn to it if you do dovetailing um it gives you a a geometrical reference point to it if you're doing tapered tanks it compounds that even further like all these things when you start getting into like the high technical details of knives um it forces you to shift that paradigm to high tolerance because otherwise everything that you do is your eye is drawn to it. So you have you have bolsters that are not lined up correctly well it's gonna you know it's gonna just look knock right um you know if your pinholes uh for your for pins or if you're using Corby fasteners if they're they're not set just right it's going to look off you know th those type of things when when you get to a certain stage of embellishment and uh and technical finesse with knives that's where uh precision becomes uh it becomes necessary but if you're just doing knife making as a um you know you're putting scales on it without any bolsters and things like that there are ways that you can get around of like really tight you know half half thousands or uh half ten thousands tolerances. So it's not it's not to say that at this stage that like Craig Craig and I operate at or you know other knife makers that like high precision is the end all be all but if you want to get like this this really tight look and everything has its place then you have to um you have to resign yourself to the fact that precision is is part of how you get there.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Yeah it's all about like the the things that I've noticed that especially in other people's works that really draw your eye and make you say wow that person knows what they're talking about precision and symmetry those are the two things and if you can if you can do well at symmetry that is a large portion of making something look good being symmetrical is very difficult especially with muscle memory right so I'm right handed and I can do basically I'm a wizard with my right hand but I can't do everything with my right hand that my left hand can do.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:39

So I have to constantly work on uh being able to match what I do with my right hand with my left hand or sometimes I'll start with my left hand because I know I can match it with my right it's little things like understanding that that I learned from another maker he's like well I know you're comfortable with your right hand you probably do all your grinding first on your right side uh well it'd be the left side but use with your right hand but maybe you should start with your left hand and do the right side first so then you can know that you can match it to the to the other side um learning those those muscle memories and constantly challenging yourself I think is also very very important yeah yeah because knife making is is whole body right I mean it is there's ways that you can get around handicaps like not being able to stand or not having all of your fingers or things like that but it is something that that's a deficit where you if if you can learn to work with your whole body you use your whole body to grind things and to um lay out work and things like that then you'll be a lot more proficient at it. And that's kind of the point on on symmetry right yeah symmetry is a very simple process of of being able to lay out your work and be able to grind to a line or a layout line right I mean there's obviously nuances to that but you go you solve a lot of symmetrical problems by being able to lay out or scribe your work using a reference point like a straight edge or a surface plate or things like that. So there are ways to to hack the system as it were or to make it easier for you to get to where you need to on your grinder when you're doing freehand but it also requires laying out things and making sure that you are measuring things correctly and then you know give yourself some reference points so that way you can grind to them.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:37

Yeah so an interesting thing about symmetry with it if you ever look at a wrong lake knife the front end is perfectly tapered and each side matches perfectly the reason why that is is because it's not done by hand. I mean it is done by hand but it's not done on a grinder. He created his own jig that was like a vertical piece that he straps the the side of the handle on for the the lockback and then it spins on a on a rotating table and the cutter will only cut what it's supposed to cut. So you put up the left side and you spin it and it'll perfectly cut you know an inch or so of that and then he puts the right side on and does the same thing. So his fronts will always match and then he uses well he doesn't make knives anymore I don't think I think he's retired but when he did he'll then use the the the slack belt to blend the middle section the middle section of the blade of the handle into the front that has been perfectly machined. So it's kind of stuff like that where you if you know you're gonna have a problem doing something do you have a better process for it?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

Yeah. And just remember like in all spectrums of knife making I've seen some incredible work that's been done with files and sandpaper and legacy I've also seen some incredible work that's done by uh milling machines and CNC and so where you're at in your journey as a knife maker and where uh you where it makes sense in your head especially with the tools that you have you got to find that middle ground and be able to use the tools to their maximum capacity. And it I mean if you're innovative and you think through the problem I guarantee you you can solve it. But it just sometimes takes a little bit of thinking outside of the box to make sure that like the problem that faces you is the one that you solve and how you solve that makes you the kind of knife maker that Craig and I specifically um try to endear ourselves to because they've figured out all these different methods for coming up with ways to make things easier and more predictable and and and you know the process more um more exact and I think that's something that I really appreciate about some of these old guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:02

Yeah I think um for me one thing that I would tell newer makers is the machine is not the end all be all like you just said right um I I I learned to try to do everything on the machine but when you try to do everything on the machine your your chance of screwing something up is incredibly high. For example uh two months ago I was at Aaron's house sharpening knives and I had a beautiful uh Loveless style lamb handled skinner that had I mean it was put together really well and it had a very very expensive amber stag with um domed pins on it and I start out the the the blade grinder on like I don't know was it 30 or something 30 or 40 speed and I said I'm like I'm gonna I'm gonna sharpen this knife and then Aaron goes are you sure that speed's okay and I said yeah I think so like two seconds later he hears me screaming obscenities in the garage and he comes out and he's like you screwed it up didn't you yeah yeah so that was one conversation I had with Stanley was how to what's the best way to sharpen a knife because there's nothing more annoying than getting down to the very end after you've done everything to the best of your ability and screwing up the sharpening and completely ruining a knife.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:44

Oh yeah yeah and uh you know it's kind of on that note in that experience so one you're you're in a a knife maker shop that you've never had experience with right uh you're using tools that are not your tools and it's down to the wire and it's right before a show and it's like the pinnacle of stress right and and yeah and there's a certain uh there's a certain amount of that where you're like hey like I'm a I'm a good knife maker like this like we're peers and I'm gonna go into this knife shop and I I'm expected to perform a certain way and I don't know if I I would have used like some hand files and just like like took took the lick and uh done it outside of the purview of anybody else before I went into some other person's shop and had to deal with that peer pressure. So I apologize if that was there. But it was fine kind of on that note it's like uh that's one thing that like sharpening blades is something that I I think my voting status blades with the guild I brought in and they I was using a Tor mock now everything the everything that you hear about Tormock sharpeners is that you know you you put it on there it's super expensive so it's nice to use and everything like that. And I had the experience where it was gouging these uh these uh tapers and everything I was putting at the end of my uh my blade so like I was I was doing swooping grinds and everything and you know at if you look down at the with your blade faced up as this nice you know long triangular taper to it and uh when I was sharpening on the Tormock it was eating through that and creating a ridge and so the the sharpening edge itself was what they called crude right they're like well it's a good working edge I think uh uh one of the Matthews said that and I was like uh that's not what I wanted to hear uh it's like it's a good working edge and um and so I was like man there's got to be a better way so because I chose to do those those swooping grinds and everything I also had to learn how to taper my bevels right and you and the best way that I found to do that is to slack belt uh the tapers on the on the grinder so using just the very uh front edge of the the the contact wheel on a on like a flat plate but where it's very rigid so that way I can control the swoop right and then get it to a place where the the like when you're initially setting the edge it just uh creates a burr but then after that I do everything uh by hand and sharpening it so whether it's a whetstone or whether you're using wicked edge or whatever then you finesse the rest of that uh hair whittling edge um after the fact so if I can go slower it allows me to control it and if I've already set that that you know swooping edge on the uh when I'm setting the bevel uh the sharpening bed bevel to me it was just easier to do the stuff that requires a lot of you know or you know decent amount of uh stock removal for the edge bevel on the grinder and then finesse that through the sharpening process where I can go slower and kind of like I I can evaluate how much material I need to take off to get it to its final dimension.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

Yeah I think with the last knives that I had to do for Solang um and then I also took the uh soling in I I had my grinder literally like moving 0.2 miles an hour or something it was it was so slow but I knew at that point that I could not I I literally could not screw up. Like looking away for a second or not paying attention was not going to be a devastating issue for me. So it took a little longer to do but uh from a quality standpoint it was a much better sharp sharpening job than I did before.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:40

Yeah no and it's you that's just yeah chalk it up to learning experience and that's like a lot of people don't think of the edge like the people want sharp knives right but they don't think of the edge bevel or how you get there as being like the uh another portion of knife making where it's like that that really is like part of the last 10% is sometimes you know getting everything finessed on your knife and the finish and fit and everything looking exactly right is part of 10%. And then you can spend another several hours sharpening it the way that you want to to make sure everything is tied together. And that's it's just another component of knife making that you have to trial and narrow through it and not everybody's process is the same because sharpening is really a component of how your bevels are set up and and how how you have to you know put that that sharpening bevel on. So I mean I fully agree it's just it's it's it's always something but that's one thing I really like about knives is it always hits these points of like I'm always learning something and I'm always learning to appreciate some aspect of it. It's very philosophical.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:47

Yeah I think that it's another thing when you finally think you understand something it it humbles you really quickly like that's the that's the point where you like you can screw up and it really humbles you and you're just like it keeps you on your toes.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:04

It really does like it knife making keeps you honest man it like just when when you're like man I understand this I'm never gonna have a problem with this ever again boom you screw it up and you're like alright I'm human I need to pay a bit more attention I need to be a little more careful I need to you know it's always teaching you something oh yeah yeah just remember always tram your mill check out yeah always tram your mill yeah I cannot tell you how many times I've made mistakes that are the result of not square holes uh and and a a tramming a tramming tool is definitely a benefit there's obviously ways to fix it like you can oversize your holes and things like that and finesse it but it requires a lot of finesse and finesse takes time you gotta re-remember how to fix screw ups that you know proper tool setup should fix.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:57

Yeah the b the bad part about not tramming your mill is you don't find out that you screwed up until you go to put a handle on. Yeah and then you spent all that time and if you did a guard you spent all that time doing the guard you you you like with with me one of them I forgot I I literally just got a mill and I was like I'm just gonna use it as a a drill press for now until I you know I learned how to do this because I'm not a machinist. So I had you know tapered my tang did a guard um did all the bevels and I start to get to put the handle together and I keep seeing like a five to ten thousandth gap between the the end of the handle material and the back of the guard and I'm like I don't know what that is it was the fact that I didn't tram my mill the the the the um it was only on one side too so one side fit properly the other side did not it was off because of the holes.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:01

Yeah um bolsters cause that problem too I mean slotting guards and fitting guards is like part of it but you know like bolsters if if you want a tight fit you need you need to make it like so that the the bolsters look like they're integrals basically if you if you really want to do a good job on bolsters. And I I had surface ground on my 416 material I had gotten it perfectly parallel on everything and I the the pins were in there they I put just a slight chamfer on the hole so that way I could hide them real easy. And then I have a pin press uh so I you know jack the pins down and everything and because the um because the holes were not square it shifted my bolster and so by the time I had all this you know I'm putting tons of pressure on it and everything and then it shifts it and when I'm starting to do dry fit up for my handle material I'm noticing that there's like a thousandths maybe even a half thousandths difference but it just like my eye is drawn to it and because I make daint like daintier small knives a lot I just like it's the first thing I see I'm like I'm gonna have to grind that entire thing off and I'm gonna have to push those pins out and then I'm gonna have to go through the process of totally finishing out bolsters again just to like correct this mistake and sure enough it was uh because it wasn't trammed properly and it was uh uh drilling you know not square holes so I don't know it's one of those things like it like if you're thinking about uh the fact that you buy a drill press or something and it's supposed to be square make sure that you check it because there's lots of ways to fix uh tramming issues but when it happens you don't notice it until it's too late and then you got to do everything all over again.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:40

I have a level in my in my shop that I use for almost every one of my machines not necessarily like the most accurate but especially when I'm on the grinder and I have my tool rest if I want my tool rest to be perfectly perfectly 90 degrees I'll use my level and I'll put it on the side and I'll set it up right you know um I use that level a lot at my grinder not necessarily at my mill but um I I use that and then I think the other couple tools that I use the most are um a surface plate and uh a nice set of calipers and then also a nice set of micrometers.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:21

So I'll I'll use the micrometers for uh gauging how thick my my uh cutting edge is because it's a little easier to to use and then you know I'll use my calipers for almost every other measurement that I need to take.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:35

Yep. Yeah the other thing too is um if you want to save good calipers I get get a height gauge. Because you know I I I do that all the time where I'm using my calipers as a scribe and it would just uh solve it solves a lot of problems when I just put it on my height gauge instead of being lazy. So yeah like a a square things that are square are a little bit easier to gauge geometry on. So I'll either use a a a a machinist square or a one two three block because they're square and uh things like that. So I mean yeah there's a there's there's inexpensive ways you don't have to have like a you know $300 uh dollar MetaToyo uh micrometer or anything but no I think I think my micrometer is like $50 off of Amazon but my calipers are like I don't know $150 I mean it's not super expensive but yeah I mean I like I like having a nice set of calipers and I prefer um dial calipers to um uh and digital calipers.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:34

Yeah I think it's a little easier to see.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

Yeah I mean yeah there yeah like uh on rise and fall for slip joints um I'll use a dial um because digital is a little bit uh more of a pain to me uh and I can see you know how much it's rising and falling and everything. Um I do have digital calipers for like I have a Midatoyo uh set of calipers and uh micrometer but those only get used for when I'm actually trying to measure precision things and otherwise I use a cheaper set uh to do other operations like scribe things and whatnot. So you know I mean you can have a nice equipment just don't abuse it because it only holds tolerance for so long.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:14

Yeah I I broke my old set of calipers and I was quite upset about it but I also abused them because I was not treated improperly. Yeah so you gotta try you gotta treat your tools right bro I know I know I now that I'm now that I'm paying for my own tools I treat them properly.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:30

Yeah it's kind of like you don't you don't punch the wall in your own house because now you're the one you're the adult that has to fix it. It's not your parents anymore right exactly exactly all right buddy well I'm gonna let you uh get back to it I know that you're trying to enjoy your vacation in Italy so um I really again I appreciate you uh spending time with us and sharing your knowledge and your experience and everything and I hope to have you gone again sometime yeah I'm super excited um because on Thursday I'm heading to Bolzano um because when I was in Solingen uh uh Reinhart Schagen had a book that was like the last 40 years of his knife making and it had color photos and everything and I really wanted that book but I don't carry cash on me and he didn't take card so it was 60 euros for the book.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:22

So then we're we're taking a trip to the Dolomites on Thursday and I come to find out he lives in the Dolomites and I was I messaged him and I was like hey do you mind if I you know if we if I come by Bolzano and um uh buy one of your books and he's like yeah here's my phone number give me a phone call I'll meet you in town so I'm really excited about seeing him and getting his book that's one of the highlights of my trip.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:49

Yeah if you uh if you're in the area and you find some uh Italian switch blades pick them up for me and I'll pay you for them normally you'll find those in um what is it Sicily they're pretty famous for down there. Yeah hey it's yeah I'll look yeah if you find something let me know and I'll uh I'll I'll get I'll get get you for it yeah yeah no problem all right bud well you have fun I really appreciate you again being on the the podcast yeah thanks for having me I really like talking times thank you for listening to another episode of the Good Old Blades podcast remember that you are loved and God bless