SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Good Old Blades Podcast. I have Aaron LeVere. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Good Old Blades Podcast. My name is Aaron Levere, and I have with me Steve Schwarzer. Now, if you've never heard of Steve and his contributions towards the knife industry, um, I don't know what rock you've lived under. Um, but uh Steve has for a long time been a contributor in uh to the uh ABS. He's a mastersmith. Uh he's done profound work in the world of mosaic Damascus, especially. And now he's turned his attention to teaching the world his craft and uh passing on his legacy. And I thought it'd be a really great idea to have him on the podcast and talk a little bit about him and record it for posterity's sake. So uh Steve, incredible honor to have you on here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, thank you very much. Uh I enjoy helping out, and this is the one of the ways I contribute and it's fun stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, I it's crazy uh doing the podcast to be able to get to talk to people like yourself and and really just kind of pick your brain and understand from the horse's mouth, as it were, um, some of the the legacy of knives, because you know, only being in it um, you know, seven years, there's a lot of things that I've only read in um you know through research and through anecdotal uh conversations with other other knife makers. And um that's this is my opportunity to be able to uh talk to uh people I could get on the podcast and at least record that because there's so many great conversations that happen between knife makers, especially uh when we're you know retelling things or um you know conveying tribal knowledge, and I think it gets lost from um maker to maker, um what it you know, that the context and everything around uh the history around knives. So uh it helps, I hope, uh for other listeners to be able to paint a larger uh picture by having people such as yourself on and and talk through those things.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

So it makes it fun. The his the history, the anecdotal history is is like you said, tribal. It's it's it's mouth to ear, and it can get lost in one generation. If one person dies and the other person doesn't remember it or remembers pieces of it, they don't tell the whole story and then it all goes away. That's what happened with uh some of the steel technologies over hundreds of years and some of it, you know, many hundreds of years ago was lost because the techniques went away and because nobody, you know, nobody was talking. Nobody passed it on. It's uh it's a blacksmith kid had to work too hard for his daddy, and you know how daddy's situations work. Well then he decided he'd rather go herd camels or or uh go cut wood than work in the blacksmith shop. And so that all that knowledge his dad passed on to him is gone in one generation if they didn't write it down.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, absolutely. And it's uh, you know, I I had Bruce Bump on uh uh quite a few episodes ago, but um at the time uh my exposure to the cut and shoot, or what he calls dual threat knives, uh, was fairly limited. But I actually, after uh talking with him, it opened up my world to uh researching a lot more about um combination weapons and realized that there was actually a fairly long lineage of that, and he was uh uh one of the one of the makers in the modern era to bring uh bring that back into public visibility. And so um, you know, a little bit of naivete on my side, um, but uh I I think it's that's what's beneficial is like what are these lost histories and how do we revive them and talk about them? Uh and if it wasn't for people like yourself talking about those things actively and trying to research it as diligently as you do, um, I think that we'd be far less uh forward on our thinking on on how to master these things.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So oh, absolutely. I take my hat off to him and Vince Evans and a few more that uh Vince does mostly historical cutting edges, but there's some guys out there that are doing those cut-and-shoot pieces and uh historically correct stuff, and and then some modern interpretations of them. But that was in a time where you got one shot, and if that didn't hit, you better have backup and whipping somebody that's still loaded up with a pistol. It's not a good plan. If it's got an axe on the end of it, it helps.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah. Yeah, it's uh it's interesting to me about uh well thinking about uh combination weapons and those weapons that are purely utilitarian because I know that uh Will is a uh protege of yours for a lot of this uh mosaic Damascus and things like that that you guys have done uh together. And I remember an episode on him and uh Alex's YouTube channel where they were doing a a sword breaker and how like talking about how uh sp very specific that design is and how uh how like brittle the build is and being able to actually break swords and and how how often it was used and how nobody really sees it anymore because it wasn't used readily, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, it wasn't practical. It uh yeah, it it was uh it was almost used like a shield. They would trap a blade with it, they like they call it a sword breaker, but unless the sword was too hard and not flexible enough, generally a sword would take a bend or if you look at the Toledo blades, especially where they were used against those things. You can I've literally had one in my hands that you could bend the tip around and touch the end of the tang with it and it'd go back straight. They were like giant springs. So the sword breaker wasn't effective on that to break the sword, but you could catch the sword with it, and then you had a secondary dagger or a short sword that you dispatched the guy with once you got his weapon entangled. And that's that tradition runs all over the planet. I mean, the Japanese had entanglement tools, so I mean there's a bunch of different iterations of that sort of thing, but uh warfare is the greatest driver of technology of anything in the world. Everything any all the great medical stuff and the uh military stuff, and uh like my shop is completely full of space technology and uh because I'm using ceramic wool and uh high temperature ceramics and stuff in my forges that were designed for the space program. You can literally take an inch of that kale wool and put 2700 degrees on the other side of it and lay your hand on it. And uh so all that technology transfers into what we're doing is bladesmiths if you look for it.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah, I mean if if we think about uh the uh cross-discipline of knife making today, there's really not a lot that knife makers don't use that don't touch a lot of other technological industries. Like for instance, uh like heat treating, like uh uh you know, in high carbon steels, I I recognize that heat treating uh it's f fairly rudimentary. Like it's you know, this this is the process that you follow, but then if you're going through um high stainless or have uh differential heat treating or things like that, like those are all techniques that are used in a lot of different industries to get a certain uh type of ductility or hardness uh for a very purpose-driven um tool or or something of that nature, and it's used everywhere. So heat treating is just a thing that a lot of other industries use that that cross-discipline uh also helps in uh perfecting blades as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

So that's uh heat treating is the heart and soul of any blade, any cutting tool. Um it's more important than almost the material. If you've got enough carbon in any steel to harden properly, then the heat treatment is is paramount. That's what makes it shine or or or not shine. It's the is the heat treatment. That's uh that's the whole thing. That's the most important part of it. And the second thing that comes along, and some people think it's first, is edge configuration for the design use. And that's something people don't really study, they just assume things.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, that's something that I actually was very interested in the ABS for, and specifically the uh uh Journeyman Smith and Mastersmith program, is that I uh I think that for the the technical inspection of knives, so your test knife and everything, you're really uh you're really testing the functionality of heat tree and and edge geometry and things uh for a a good utility knife, and and you expect that as part of the fundamentals of knife making to be performed and to be tested. Uh and I've noticed especially with those in the ABS that there's a lot of functional testing that is done uh to make sure that that knives conform to that. So um, like for me, uh doing stock removal and everything, I I don't necessarily uh take my knives and before I send them out, I I you know beat them or or stress test them to make sure that they're adequate. But I've noticed that there's a lot of guys in the ABS especially that will do a bunch of testing on that knife before they ever send it out to make sure it conforms to those parameters. And I've always really admired that because if if a knife can withstand damage or utilization uh to that degree before it goes into the customer's hand, then uh you know that that that like every single blade is tested to a high degree.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Right. You don't, and the thing is there's yeah, and if you do enough of it, then you have a benchmark and you have to know your material and the ranges that it heat treats in for certain uses. It's like I've I've got like probably high twenties or maybe over 30 knives on one high fence ranch out in Texas, and uh and that's over a 25 or 30 year period of uh dealing with people that own the ranch. And I've been making these little skinners for over 30 years, and the design hadn't changed much, so I've got it down to a bare minimum, so I can make them in batches like some where somebody can afford one. And I I set those knives up with a certain edge configuration, they're 60 Rockwell and they're 52 100, and I I only had two complaints from them in all those years. It's because I ground some that were like paper thin for skinning, and they gave them to ranch hands, and those guys went out and they called me and they said, We got a problem with these two knives or something. I said, Well, what is it? And he said, Well, the edges are chipping, and I went, Okay, let me see what you did. Anyways, well, they'd given to these ranch hands and they used them like they used the other ones, and these were set up for just for skinning, that's all they were designed to do, their scalpels, and uh they'd been breaking joints and driving them in the bones and batoning the things and all kinds of things anyway. They set them back, and the only thing I did was take the chips out of the edge and reset the angle on the edge, and they went back out there and never had another problem with them. And uh, but that's where you know yourself. Uh, you know, if you're a beginner, then you begin to second guess your heat treating, and maybe I left it too hard. It's and no, and that was all edge geometry, is what that was. But it's the thing is you've got to know your materials. That's uh there's a there's a couple anecdote stories. One of them I've got the the guy's name was a little guy used to hang out up at uh uh especially on the east coast. He'd come to hammer ends like Ashokin and uh and uh up on the East Coast, and he'd come down south a little bit once in a while. The guy's name was Charlie Hoyle. And uh he he he caught me and I'd been drinking a little bit of one of those hammer ends back in the old days. I don't drink now, but I did then a little bit. And he he said, What can I get for a hundred and fifty dollars? And I said, A rivet. So he's he stayed after me. He said, When you when are you gonna make me a knife? And I said, Well, Charlie, I don't want to make you a knife for $150. Anyway, he stayed after me and he caught me. I'd had a had a couple of drinks and it and uh I said, Okay, I'll make you a knife for 150 bucks. Anyway, it got to where I was dodging the guy for like two years. I'd see him come and I'd disappear in the crowd because I didn't want to answer him. Anyway, he called me up one time and said, This is Charlie Hoyle. Uh you gotta make my knife or not, and I said, Okay, so I got pissed off and I said, I'm gonna make it today. And I went out into my scrapyard and I grabbed up a piece of uh steel, and it was a a spring out of a car, and I went in there, I beat out a scram of sacks under my power hammer, and I waved the torch over it and got it red hot and slapped it in some oil, and then I drew it with a torch. Just half-ass did the thing and slapped some hard maple on there for a handle, and I threw it in a box and sent it to him. I had this sick feeling when I did it, because I was just I I knew that I hadn't done the right thing in my mind, and it was just to get rid of him. And I just I sent the knife up to him. Two weeks later, I get this phone call, and I literally got sick at my song. This is Charlie Hoyle. I want to talk to you about my knife. And the first thing came to my head was something's wrong with a knife. I gotta make him this $150 knife for free now, another one. And he said, I don't know what you made that out of, but I cut up a cord of rock maple with it, and it'll still shave. And I went into a panic. I said, Well, what is it? So I ran back out there and in the scrap pile and I got the other piece of that, and I sent it to a lab, a friend of mine worked up at Teledyne. I sent him a piece of that spring up there, and uh, he looked at it, and that's what it was. It was 5160, probably out of 72 uh dog dusker or something. But what had happened is I had forged that thing and just by absolute blind luck got the heat treat and the edge spot on, and that stuff will cut like crazy. Uh this ADCRV2 is nothing but 5160 with some more alloy, a little bit more carbon, and it it cuts like crazy. And uh, and so I talked to a friend of mine who's a lot smarter than me, and uh he he said uh I told him what I'd done, he said, Well, anytime you use unknown material, you introduce a term into your work called total imponderability. That means even if you get a good result, you can't repeat it because you don't know what you're dealing with. That's why I never ever use scrap steel anymore. I never use it. I don't care if it's free. Uh the thing is, steel can vary a little bit from batch to batch. And uh so that's the reason that uh the Japanese swordsmiths were so picky about what they did with the Tamahagani, because every piece of steel they made to make a sword out of was different. So, how do you learn to heat treat that? And so what me and a few of my really smart friends did, we got together and we were brainstorming figuring out how they could heat treat those blades without losing them, because you can't heat treat one of the swords two or three times, or it's done. I mean, you you're you're out of business. And so what we found out is uh, and and I've never found anyone that disagreed with it, is the little Kozica blades that go in the side of the Saya. A lot of those you'll find will have hormones in them. And what they were doing was taking a little piece of that material and they were testing the heat treat on those little knives until they got it right, and then they heat treated a big knife. It just makes sense. There's I've never found anybody that could find a better way that it could have been done, or I hadn't heard of it yet. There may be somebody listened to this and they'll go, oh no, that's that's not right. They did it this way, but we think that's the way it is. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Well, I guess uh it in that case too, it's like uh history is written by the Victors, right? Um and yeah, and so if if you spend the time and energy to research things and draw a hypothesis, that tends to be the prevailing theory until somebody disproves it. So if anybody's listening and yeah and can disprove it, go for it. But that's that's well, that's that's interesting though, because that's scientific method, right? Uh you know, at the end of the day, um a a knife maker who spends any amount of time in the trial and error process is actually um is actually committing to the act of science. Um and that's something that's really interested me because uh previous to uh you know being in making knives and everything, I was actually studying pre-pre-veterinary and pre-med uh to try to become a veterinarian. And I've always been really interested in science. So there was a lot of things that from a a mindset perspective on the um research and hypothesis and testing that and trying to prove out um whether something is going to functionally work or not, that's always really um endeared itself to kind of my the way that I think.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

So yeah, it's it's good stuff. I've I'm a science freak. Uh when I went through school, uh public education thing, uh I was an abject failure. I'd find the grades I liked and I'd just stay in 'em. I'd uh that was my plan. If if if they had the information back then that they have today, I would have the alphabet after my name. And I'm not a doctor. It's uh it's uh they didn't know what to do with me. Uh but what saved me was my ability to read. And then when the first word processors came out, this is like pre-internet uh facts was a brand new invention when I started writing because it freed me up because my handwriting and my spelling was atrocious. And uh so that freed me up, and then I began to do enormous amount of research on anything I was interested in. If I was disinterested in it, you couldn't stick it to me with with uh contacts email. I couldn't remember anything, but if it was vaguely in my realm of interest, if I collected it and it was in my database, I kept it like that. And so that's what's driven me all these years is discovery, and and then I'm always looking for new methods, and I'm excited about new methods, and I'm always being inventive in that arena because I'm trying to find better ways to do it. 90% of what I discovered in the the powder metal technology and the canister technology end of it was a way to get around high-tech machining. Uh, which I did some real early, early EDM work back in the day. That was the only way you could get a a prescribed image without a bunch of forging and filing and all that kind of stuff, was to get it wire cut. But you know, a small image with a wire machine, it costs you you know several hundred dollars, if not a thousand dollars or more, to have it cut because it's the machines are expensive. It costs and so we developed all these techniques to get around that. It's uh so we invented what we call a poor man's hip, which is a hot isothermal press. Most people don't know what they are, but they are an industry thing that was used to consolidate powder into a solid. And uh so what it is is a containment, and you put 40 to 80,000 psi of liquid argon in there, and you heat the thing up to about 26, 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, and it'll consolidate whatever you put in there into a solid because of the heat and pressure. And so those machines, you know, like I said, it costs you hundreds of dollars just to get one little piece made, and if you made a mistake, it was done. So we were looking for ways to get around that, and that's how the all the powder metal and the canisters came to be. And uh and on my end of it. So that was kind of a way I went at it.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah, I it's fascinating to me because um I I I think like so when I when I've done research on you and when I've done research on early pioneers of uh Mosaic Damascus or modern mosaic Damascus and everything, um, there's one thing that is uh a common thread, and it's that You guys have spent an egregious amount of time and money trying to figure out how to save time and money. And uh it's it's it's you know, I was uh reading uh Laren's uh recent book, and uh all of the uh all of the motivators for being able to have easy access to materials and to uh um results that would otherwise cost a lot of money in and in itself cost a ton of energy and money to figure out and I I think that's one area where passion leads to innovation because uh like uh people like me can actually access that technology and that technique uh a whole lot easier simply by the work that you guys have put in and the extraordinary amount of money and time. And and without that, it would be impossible to have the kind of uh renaissance that we see today in in bladesmithing and and and knife making in general. I I just you know there's there's really no no way to look at it as a modern knife maker, uh, other than we were really sitting on the shoulders of giants, and you know, I feel like you're one of them.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Well, I I appreciate that. That uh one of the things that I've always done is uh is I honor my teachers and the people that helped me. And uh almost almost without exception, that uh because uh I had a guy named Bobby Tyson that helped me when I first started making knives back in the 70s. I made a few what I call knife-shaped objects in the 60s. I worked at uh at an aircraft manufacturing company and I got to work on some really cool stuff there. Uh I was on the team that built the first 747 vertical stabilizer, and I worked on Saturn rocket parts and a bunch of stuff. Uh built stuff uh just some amazing things that I got to do there. And that was my first introduction to big uh double arch uh forging hammers because we forged a lot of aluminum there. Anyway, so I got to do some of that, but that technology that was my first dose of it, and then everybody, every southern males are frustrated at knife makers, some more frustrated than others. We just find a piece of stainless or a piece of steel and we grind out something that looked like a knife, and there's just a lot of guys doing that today and selling it, and they they they don't know anything about e-treating, they're just guessing. And so we I call that that period of my life the knife-shaped objects era, and I say and I mean they were ugly. And then in 1972, I started working out of the I uh migrated to Florida and uh started working out of a boilmaker's local up in Jacksonville as uh as a temporary guy, and I worked for a rigging company anyway. The boilmakers, they were ballmakers, iron chip fitters, and blacksmiths, and there weren't any blacksmiths left in the local, and I was really interested in it, and I got a book by Alex Beeler, and it's the art of blacksmithing, and there's about a page and a quarter in there on forging knives. I read that and it flipped a switch in me that didn't stop. It's like the next day I was I went out and bought an anvil and a little rivet forge and got me some cross-cut saw blades, which were L6 at that time, a lot of them were, and I began to cut those things out hot and make fillet knives for the local guys there, and they would outcut anything you could buy in a quote store. And uh so they told me I was wonderful, and I thought I was. I have a couple of those knives in my shop to keep me humble, but uh I'd heard about a guy up on a job in White Springs named Bobby Tyson that was a knife maker. And so I've uh he was a pipe fitter, and I've I made it my mission to go find him. And uh anyway, I found him, he was leaning up against a big old acid tank at lunch, and I walked up to him. I had three of these old filet knives uh rolled up in a snotty rag in my hip pocket, and what was in my head was I'm gonna show this guy something about making knives because my friends told me I was wonderful, and I assumed I was. And I walked up to him, I said, Are you Bobby Tyson? He says, Yeah, I am, and he pulled out the most beautiful pocket knife. I said, I heard you make knives. He pulled this knife out, and it walked and talked, and I mean it would fit in any collection today, and he can make two of those a day, and it walked and talked, and it had stag on it. It was made out of some mystery seal I'd never heard of called D2. Anyway, we talked a little bit, and he says, You know, I got books on making knives. I said, You have what? And he said, Yeah, I have books on making knives. I said, Where do you live? He said, Jacksonville. And I said, No, no, what's his street address? And he made the mistake of giving it to me. I said, Can I come see you? And I did. I went up there for a weekend. At the end of that weekend, I was five years down the road from where I would have been on my own. And I never have forgotten him, and I and he's still making knives, but he's forging now, and all he makes is big old choppers. He calls itself Red Moon Forge, he's up in Georgia, and he retired for a little bit. I think he's back now. But that guy changed my life, and I've never forgotten it. And I never forget to mention him because he took time for me. And I would go up there almost every weekend, and they had a thing called the Bowl City Knife Club. That's where I met Paul Sheffield, who owned Sheffield Knife Supply at the time. And this is back in the early, early 70s, and uh we all hung out and we talked about knives, or I got to making pocket knives. I bet I made 20 before I could sell them without a pair of pliers, because the springs were so heavy. I didn't know how to tune a spring. Anyway, so I just I thought everybody asked me, so why the springs are strong? I said, That's a manly knife. If you can't open it, you ain't bad enough to own it. That was my excuse. But anyway, uh that that changed my life. And what I see now today is because the information is free, basically. You you don't have to put the time in. You can just sit down in front of your television, and there's a lot, a lot of uh people that have YouTube channels and stuff like that that do not give any credit for anywhere the information comes. You see them, they video after video, a technique they learned from someone else. They didn't invent any of it. And they and I'm not whining about it, but it's just a fact that they never discuss where the information comes. But occasionally you get one that does. And and I tell you what, those guys that recognize where their information comes from, they'll go far. They will absolutely go far. And uh, and uh it's because that information, like I said, it wasn't free. We spent hours. Nothing's impossible once you know how. I can show you something in a few minutes. It took me years to figure it out. And uh, like I said, I'm not I'm not I don't allow myself to dwell in that, but it's just a fact in business. And uh I learned lessons over the years, you know, you you'll see these young guys and they'll come and they're they they start off, they're all excited and they'll listen to anybody, and then after they they begin to get some success or start selling a few knives, then they kind of clam up and then they think they've arrived. I've seen thousands of these new makers arrive, and then once they get some knowledge on the belt, they realize they don't know near as much as they did or think they do. And then when you get to my stage of the game, you realize you don't know much of anything. There is so much to explore out there, you physically do not have time to go do it. I'm running around with a I'll be 76, the 23rd of this month, and I got an 18-year-old kid trapped in here, and so I gotta hurry. I'm four years away from I don't I don't let any dust settle on me. I've got stuff to do. And so that's what these young people don't understand. I said you've got to hold your your people up. It's like Schmidt taught me how to do file work, and uh I wanted to do file work. I met him in 79 or 80 up at Ashokan, one of the first ones. And uh I walked up to him and I was showing him at work, and I was doing multi-bar blades then, twisted stuff, so I can show you pictures of it. And uh most of it was Merovinian stuff, and it was influenced by Daryl Meyer, who was doing a bunch of it, him and that bunch of it, Carbondale, Illinois. They were already exploring all those orbs, and then it got me all excited. I wanted to try it, so I did some of it. And I went up there and I showed Schmidt my knives, and he had a big old deep booming voice. It was funny. He goes, Well, who are you? And I said, Well, I'm Steve Schwarzen. Where are you from? I said, Florida. Boy, you come up with Pendray. I said, Yeah, me and Pendray were up there. He looked at my knives, he said, Well, he said, if your knives ever catch up to your steel, you'll be a force to be reckoned with. And I went, Yeah, that's the nicest I've ever been told. My knives sucked. And but I took it to heart. You know, he was he was good for me. And he taught me file work. And uh, man, I got all excited about the firework. I was doing firework, I was wearing out chainfall files by the handful kind of thing. And so I made this knife and I put file work all over, and I couldn't wait to show him. The next year I went up there and I couldn't wait. And I ran up to him with that pocket knife and I put it in his hand, what do you think? And he turned it over and over like he was turning a little pointy pine cone. And he said, uh, would you buy a new car and put different hubcaps on it? I said, What do you mean? He said, This stuff's supposed to tell a story. You got a new car with four different hubcaps on it. I just put the firework on there because it looked cool, and I did a bunch of so I learned something. It it has to flow, it has to tell a story. And so I I took that home and I put that to work. I changed the way I did, and it really those kind of statements from those old legends are the those were the things that set my work ahead every time. Him and Don Fogg and Jimmy Fikes were probably the greatest drivers, other than Alfred Pendray, were the greatest drivers in my early career because they were right on the cutting edge of everything. And they and they would share with you. Darrell Meyer, you know, I always looked at him as a teacher. But uh you gotta give credit where credit's due. It doesn't make you any smaller. I had uh, I'll give you one more instance that's yeah, I don't care who it is. I had a uh a guy come in my shop, a young guy, and uh he hadn't done much with knives. And uh we were setting up to do a W pattern, and I normally start those in a set of squaring dies, and I would I'd I'd lay them vertical and start bending those C's over on the end of the block. He said, Well, why don't you lay it horizontal? I said, I don't know. So I tried it and it worked, and now that's I do that, and his name is Caleb Budd, he's a young knife maker, and uh and call it the Caleb Bud method. And did it make me any smaller to use his name? No, absolutely not. But I learned something from him because I listen. And anytime I can learn something from you, I don't care whether you just started or you're been at it a thousand years, if I can learn something from you, I'm all over it. So anyway, I'll stop a minute and let your ears cool off.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yeah, no, I'm I'm uh I'm digging what you're throwing down. I mean, I uh uh I I I I I think so too. And you know, it's something that I've noticed about like the modern knife industry, it's that emotions are very brittle, um, in the sense that there's some guys that they don't really want you to talk too much about their methods because if they convey it to you, it's kind of like a a secret. It's like you know, amongst friends. Uh and there's others that you know they don't want to hear criticism because uh they're not asked like you might ask somebody, hey, like what do you think of this, but you're not really prepared for the bad things about it, um, or the the the the uh the critical assessment of things. But for me, I've I've always thrived in that world. You know, I I had grandparents that were in World War II. Um, I mean, they were cutting their teeth on shoe leather, and uh and I don't feel like they really held back a whole lot from me. And I it was the same way in this in this uh Appalachian culture that I grew up in where um it was all about uh bringing boys to manhood and uh and trying to teach them the things that would give them grip. And so for me, it's always made sense. Like I I want that honesty because I I might I'm I might be slightly offended by it, but it'll give me room to grow. Um and and I'm the one that has to decide on whether you're blowing smoke or whether you're um you're just being uh uh uh you know unintentionally or intentionally critical of me. But at the end of the day, um I I would prefer honesty and transparency over a false sense of um accomplishment for something I didn't earn.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Oh, absolutely. And that the thing is, is your friends don't want to hurt your feelings. I've there are two distinct types of people that come to me for critique, and they're they're pretty obvious. Those are there are those that actually want to learn and get better, and then there's the ones that want to be patted on the head and told they're wonderful, and uh and that's it, and I then they want to go on their way, and so it's pretty easy to weed them out, and and I'm pretty blunt with it, and uh I've had people that you know I've I've interacted with and you tell them that and then they get mad at you for three weeks, they don't want to talk. Only time they ever you ever see them is at a knife show, then they want to talk to you and hang out and meet all your friends, but they're not really wanting to learn. And uh, you know, we've had these knife critique boards at the Blade Show for a few years. I've been on a couple of them, and then there's people that actually want their stuff better, and then there'll be some guy show up and he goes, Oh, uh, this is my knife, and uh you look at it and go, What's the seal? I don't know, it was either this or that. I wasn't sure. I said, You don't know what seal it is? He says, No. Uh he said, but they both heat treat about the same, well about the same, yeah. So if you don't know what it is, then what you have is a knife-shaped object that you can't repeat because you don't know what it was made out of. And they don't like to hear that. Then you got another kid that comes up and says, I've been using this skill and I'm I'm having a little problem with this, and then you give 'em a different eat treating schedule and they go off and set the world on fire. And I've had students in my shop that literally within a year of being there would go around me like I was parked. And I'm I'm going, Yay, I'm happy. I want to see them excel. Because you you don't have time to explore everything, and they'll go off down paths you can't get to. And if you're kind to them and share and you boost them up, nine times out of ten, they'll come back to you with information you can use. I'm like a sponge of that. Uh uh prime uh example is is uh Seth Lopez. He came to me and said, Well, I want to make this, I want to make that. I showed him about some fortune. Hell, he ran off and left me with pattern welding and and uh in his particular venue and his carving, his handle designs are just crazy. And same way with Will Shelton and them, that uh you know, I've added to their their color box, I put some colors in the craft, but these guys are gonna excel no matter what. They really are gonna excel no matter what. And then you got people that just struggle, and then you got people that you try to help them, and they they're very resistant to any type of help. You show them if you it'll change that, or you if you'll start doing tangent lines on your on your pieces, it'll change the complexity, and they don't want to listen. And so what I've done as an older teacher, and it and it's taken me a while to figure it out, is when they quit listening, I stopped talking. And uh, so I got a captive audience now, they have to listen. If they want to, or they can turn the thing off. But uh it's the people that are truly on the quest to learn, they'll listen to you. Now, the knife stuff, the craft stuff, is uh everyone is everybody's an individual. What they don't get is the only competition they have is themselves. Nobody else can make your knives. You're the only person on the planet that can make your knife. It's like you would go back in the old days, they'd be Bob Loveless at a knife show. A hundred guys in there making Bob Loveless drop point hunters. Okay, and so the guys that were pretty good were getting two or three hundred dollars a piece for them, and the guys like Steve Johnson and those guys that excelled and worked in Bob Shop, they get $800,000 for one of them. And there's old Bob back there pulling on a cigarette, and he's getting $2,300 to $2,700 a piece for them, and it's the same knife, and some of the knives in that room were better than his. And so it's the story. The guy has a story, and the story is the critical part of it, and that's what a lot of people don't get. You you build your legacy by doing good work, but you also have to have a story to go with it. You have to be interesting. You'll you if you walk in any life show in the world, you see people sitting down reading a book or they got their head buried in their phone or whatever, and they're not addressing any of their customers come by, there's no story there. Even if the work is exceptional, there's no story there. So there's not as much interest as there would have been. And so, you know, it's I've seen it come and go and and the and this thing is there's like thousands of knife makers now. And when I started, there was like six people on the planet doing what I wanted to do, and only one of them would talk to me, and that was Daryl Meyer. And say, you know, the world has changed. I mean, you've got you you can literally learn anything you want to learn by opening up the internet. You can learn it. And there's a lot of what I call experts out there, and some of them actually are, and that's where you have to learn to winnow it out. In the old martial arts school, and I've done a lot of things that I liked, and if I liked it, I did them pretty well. I wasn't ever oral class, but I was good at it, and uh, I did martial arts since 1962, that's when I took my first lesson. Teachers used to say, Well, he's not very good, but he's enthusiastic. But you go in and all that stuff is around body type and your physical abilities. And so if you got a certain body type and certain physical abilities, you're gonna excel. And so, what you do is you go in, if you're learning from a teacher like that, then you take the you listen very respectfully, you take every bit of the knowledge that he has, and you take the pieces that fit you and you apply them to yourself. That's the same way when you go to learn about a knife technique. I just went to Texas with uh and uh spent a day with uh uh Spencer Alpin down there, and that guy is a friggin' carving genius. Did I want to copy his designs? No, that's his stuff. What I wanted to see was his carving technique and what tools he was using, and he was very kind to me and very generous and showed me that stuff, and it made a huge difference. It took hours off my finish work because I took that time to go down there, and it was last year, and it made that much difference in my work. It literally took hours off my carving and finishing work because he's an absolute expert. Do I want to copy his designs? No, that's him. I want to do me, but I want to adapt those techniques to what I do. So that's kind of where I am.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, yeah. Spencer is like an uh unsung hero in Texas. Like I know that you if you know Spencer, um, I haven't found anybody who doesn't love him, but there's not also not an exceptional amount of the world that that knows about his uh carving techniques and how he uh he molds steel. And uh I've always found that his uh his fitness in it is uh immaculate and the way that he thinks about um uh um the way that he thinks about sculpting steel, uh to me it's kind of like the same way that uh the master uh thought about uh sculpting uh marble. Like you see some of these just exquisite work. And he's been able to connect the dots in a way that I just don't think anybody else really has.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

No, there's not many like him. There's not many like him.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Yeah, and and so kind. Um my my daughter uh really loves him. Like we uh I'll take her to shows when we're at in Blade Show, Texas, and the last two years I've I've come along, and he'll uh um you know this past year um we went up and he got she got to talk to him and everything, and he was explaining things uh to her about different handle materials and what was you know, stag and things like that, and she was just soaking that up and and he was just so uh he was so attentive and generous to somebody who has really just kind of uh vicariously uh learning about knives through through my um experience in it. And I I've always felt like uh he has done the same thing for me in being willing to talk, uh being very candid about the cost of materials and things, you know, because uh he's spent a lot of time uh trying to bring in materials like you know, sandbar stag and whatnot that have just previously been very difficult to find in the modern era. And I I I admire him a ton. Not just not just because of his uh his prowess with his knife making technique, but just how kind and and genuine he is.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Oh, he's he's a genuine good person. Yeah, I I really enjoyed it and I really appreciate him spending time with me. And uh, you know, I I I like to apply all that stuff. There's a bunch of those good guys out there, not not people know about that uh another one that is just a genius at uh doing film work and stuff like that is Tony Severo down there out of uh Almighty, Louisiana. He does some beautiful work, he's uh been making knives forever, but what people don't know about him, he was in the movie business for years. He knows more about cutting and editing. I've stopped off and gotten a couple lessons from him on the way, you know, to Texas and from Texas. And uh and uh it's just you know, he's the exceptional knife maker and stuff, but uh you know, they just people just don't know about him, and uh and they're good, genuinely good people. They're super.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Yeah. Well, uh, so I want to take a step back um because uh generally I try to ask a little bit about um my guests' history and and history of knives, and I think it's probably worth um hearing it directly from you versus uh you know trying to read it on your website or uh from other uh tidbits. But um can you can you give me a a brief introduction of you like outside of knives? Um you know your your you your life um and family or you know and your career and things like that outside of what what you've been doing in knives?

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Yeah, I did uh I grew up in a a little small Texas town, and uh my dad worked in the aerospace industry. And like I said, I wasn't good at school. I hated school. Like I said, I'd find grades I like and I'd just stay in them. And then uh he moved us around a little bit. We moved to California in the oh mid-60s, and I went to high school out there and made some lifelong friends. I just went out and uh taught a class out on uh Chumach Indian Reservation. A friend of mine, Vince Armenta, and his brother Bo. He's a Bo's the tribal historian. Vincent was the uh chief of the tribe there for about 12 years, but he's still a very powerful guy, and they they uh they're the probably the most powerful tribe on the West Coast. They've done more for any of the other tribes than almost anybody. But they uh they're hard-working people that came up hard and worked hard all their lives. So they they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they all worked construction, that kind of stuff. One of the things that Vincent does is he's he collects little giant power hammer. He's got one of every little giant made from 500 down to a little health hammer. Anyway, I'll see it's a class out there, and this wanders back to me going to high school. One of my lifelong friends over 50 years is a young guy named Ben Tai Tai. He ain't so young anymore, but he's a Samoan kid. And uh he's he him and his friends, uh Kilipoatuitama and them, they took us in because we didn't know anybody out there and they protected us, and uh the street was a little bit rough back in the day. And we surfed and hung out and made lifelong friends. I don't know. I was he'd never seen me work, and so I brought him up there for three days up there. And of course they I uh we stayed in a really nice place and and I was able to visit with him, but that that that travel out there, it we were like in culture shock. We'd never been to any place like that in our lives. And we came back and of course I finished up high school and I went to work at uh at the aircraft company where my dad worked for a little while and got to work and got into forging and stuff, and then of course I moved to Florida in 70, and then uh I got hooked up with a ballermakers union in uh in about 71, and then I I got into blacksmithing in 72. I'm a founding uh member of FABA here in Florida, Florida Artists and Blacksmith Association. I'm a member of f of a Bana for many, many years and made a lot of lifelong friends in that arena. Uh like I said, I've stayed in the martial arts world for all that time. Like I said, I wasn't ever good at it, but I was enthusiastic, and uh I've got Dan grades in three different systems. I do Kenpo and uh mostly Yoshikai karate. I did Kittori Shinto Rukendo for a while, and uh like I said, I enjoyed it. Uh I've got lifelong friends that are in there uh forever in that, and then I've just done a lot of different things, but nearly my whole self is designed around knives. I did rigging, uh did water uh tank work a little bit, I did radio tower work for a little bit. Uh did a lot of different things, and then uh in 1982 I uh got my lungs burned with sulfuric acid gas on a construction job. And I really couldn't work. I could work about an hour, and then I'd have to lay down and sleep. And uh so I was already, you know, been making knives for a while. So that was the reason I went full-time making knives, is because I physically couldn't go to a job. And uh I had a wife and two kids at that point, uh married uh my wife and adopted both of her kids, and uh I had to work, I had to be fed, so I'd go out in the backyard and in my little 10 by 10 shop, and I I would uh make a few knives and sell them. And uh a year went by, two years, and then I've never worked another job since 1982, except for a year. And uh a friend of mine uh I lost an eye. I woke up blind in my left eye and uh don't know why. I had a total retina collapse. And um my daughter-in-law, or my stepson, is uh is a night doctor, and uh I went up there and she looked at it and she said, This is bad. I said, This is not gonna be eye drops, is it? And I said, No. Anyway, she hooked me up with an eye surgeon, and they literally opened my eye up and and uh rolled the wallpaper back up, tacked it with a laser, and they fill it up and put a gas bubble in it to hold it in place, and I had to sit in a chair for nine days with my head down. You're talking about Mr. Happy, Mr. Congeniality, at the end of that nine days, it took a year for that eye to heal. And that year I did a consulting job for a friend of mine on designing knives and tools for them, and then at the end of that year, he quit paying me. I quit going and we parted friends. But other than that, I've been full-time knife maker. I've traveled the whole world doing it. Um, and then uh one of the other things I did is I got into racing airboats and drag racing and uh did that and was successful and spent a ton of money. That's uh that's uh you know, what boat stands for break out another thousand. Well, it was several thousand. Anyway, so I did that and then uh Scott to give me trouble, and uh I was before uh uh uh that was actually before I was racing, I was 62, and uh a friend of mine ran a teaching hospital up east, Sandy Klein. A lot of knife people know him, he was a knife collector, but he he liked to make knives as well. Sandy was a really a special individual, and he was like the knife maker's doctor guru. Anyway, my shoulders gave me a fit and he said, Well, let me put my guys on it. So he sent me a little packet with a bunch of exercises to do, and I said, Well, okay, so there was a little uh uh gym down here, a little little like family gym with a bunch of machines in it. I thought, well, I'll go down there. I went down there and there was this guy in there, and he was built like a refrigerator, he was square, it wasn't real tall, but he was like huge. Uh and uh and he was a good bit older than me. And uh I looked at him and he was doing an exercise called Good Mornings where you bend over at the waist and you got a bar on your neck. He was doing that with 500 pounds. I went, oh man, I said, if somebody tried to bulldog you, they'd be in a lot of trouble, wouldn't he? Anyway, he said, I need a training partner. I said, Okay. Well it turned out he was the local police chief here in Crescent City. And uh I said, okay. Seven months after I started training him with him, I broke the Florida State bench press record in my age and weight class. And I went on over the next few years to break eight world records bench pressing. The AAU records still stand. I bent four hundred and eight pounds and I was almost sixty-four. And uh so I did that for almost seven years and then I I just got tired of being sore and and say I did that. Uh there's my whole passion though is around knives. That's that's all I do. But that uh I don't do anything a little bit. If I find something interesting, I'm all over it. I want to know everything there is to know about it. It's kind of how the powder metal took off. And that's a story in itself. It's um I've been doing canisters for a while, and there's a story I tell about Daryl Meyer and I, and I don't know who started the canister business, but it was all started about the same time. I think Daryl and them those guys were messing with it because what we were trying to do is get around this hot isothermal press because it costs so much. So we were trying to find a way that if you forge weld, if you can keep the oxygen off of it and put enough pressure on it, you can damn near weld it at room temperature. Some things will weld. If they're clean enough, you can you can cause them to to fuse at with enough pressure. And uh so we were working on that, and so I figured out a way that I would take a little piece of tubing, uh stainless tubing, about half-inch tubing with a and uh I would use a uh refrigerating gauge uh where you put argon, or not argon, but uh on in a car, and I had a set of those gauges, and uh, friend of mine worked for a phone company, he'd throw me off a bottle of nitrogen once in a while. I thought, well, I can purge all that nitrogen out of that can. I'd we'd weld up a uh a canister, and this was all solids back in that time, and we put solids in there and weld them, and it worked great. But uh the first time I did it, I pulled a vacuum on it and just used a vacuum pump, and it worked great until you got a crack in the can, and then you're sucking fresh air over your part, which defeated the purpose of the can. So then I decided I would purge it with nitrogen, and then so I purge it with nitrogen. I'm keeping a little bit of pressure on it, and uh you can weld at temperatures. I mean, if you told people at where you're welding, it'd call you a liar. But if you can move it, and if you can get fresh material together in the absence of oxygen, it'll it'll hold hands, it'll it'll get a molecular bond. Anyway, so that was working. I couldn't wait to tell Daryl Meyer about that. So I went running up to Daryl. Daryl wanted hammer ends and I said, Daryl, Daryl, let me tell you all about my octopus rig and this T-head and all that stuff. And he listened very patiently. And he says, Well, I just put a couple of drops of diesel fuel in mine. I don't have to mess with all that octopus rig. I said, My bubble. He let the air out of my story real quick. And I went, Oh, okay. Anyway, that was Daryl. And uh, so anyway, to get on the powder, uh, it was 82, or maybe just a little bit later. It was anyway, it was the first hammer in Jim Batson had at his house, which now became the big thing at Tannehill. But he had it at his house up in Huntsville, and there was a guy there named Gary Runyon. And Gary Runyon was a metallurgist and uh he's a geologist trained, but he he did metallurgical stuff for Teledyne Corporation and their powder metal division up there outside of Huntsville. And he was over there, and I'd already been doing canisters for a while, and he was over there trying to wick some borax and nickel powder into a piece of cable and weld it. Walked by him, and he said, Uh, you see Swords? I said, Yeah. He said, Can you help me with this? And I said, Yeah, I think so. And he says, uh, I tried to get this to weld. I said, Well, why don't you put that in a steel tube and seal it up and it'll weld? And as far as I know, and I always preface this stuff, there may be somebody off on the other side of the planet that did it before, but this at first I that's the first powder metal canister that I know of was right there. And then, of course, I then I got all interested in the powder, and I went up to teach a class for Gary up at Teledyne and got to see all the powder to work, and uh so I decided that uh that was something I needed to explore, and uh so the first piece of it I did was my actual signature in a block of steel. I still have some of it, and uh I had Joe Heidovic take a wire EDM damned expensive project, and he cut he mapped and cut out my actual signature, and my signature's got a bunch of loops and stuff in it that have inserts in it, and so he made that for me, and it took a long time to do it, and it was damned expensive, and he donated most of the time to it. And I took it home, and I was trying to put little sheets of ten thousandths nickel down in there to make my signature, it wouldn't go. So I took it back to him. I said, Could you cut that in half? I want to try to use it as a die to force that sheet metal in there. And he cut it in half, and then I destroyed the thing. And then I took it back to Joe, and I'll paraphrase Joe, golly gee, I wish that hadn't happened, uh, kind of thing, but my ears like up fell off. Anyway, so he made me another one, and uh and I was sitting there pushing those little uh pieces back in it that he cut out. Too bad we can't pour that in there, and I said, Oh my gosh, we can't I had an epiphany. So I basically mortgaged my house and bought a drum of nickel powder, and we poured that nickel powder in there and I welded that signature, and then that metastasized into all the powder mill that we're doing today that I knew about. Now, Larry talked to Ed Chemp and those guys, and they were using some sandblast and grip, but I was totally unaware of it at the time, and so I don't know. I mean, you know, who did what, when, where, I don't know, don't care, but this is where I started, and it was the first of it that I knew of. And uh so we started doing some really wild stuff with that, and then of course it's grown into what we're doing now, and every bit of it is building on that on those previous steps. Nothing's impossible once you know how. And so we shared the we shared the knowledge with a lot of people, and it uh now you see what's being done with it. Now we're doing 3D stuff, so it uh you can do about anything you want with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about um about the uh 3D printing component of what you guys are doing, but I also want to talk a little bit more about like just how complex it is to actually be able to forge weld materials together and get a a proper image out in this mosaic concept without uh deforming it. Because to me, it it seems like uh I can't geometrically wrap my head around all the different steps and ways that you have to manipulate metal in order to get this final result, which is a a homogenous uh proportioned uh image out of it. And uh I would uh I would like if you could, can you just explain to me uh what when you're pattern welding and when you're doing these mosaic uh uh patterns, uh some of the uh the pi pitfalls and things that you know uh go into actually making a homogenous image?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

Right. That uh yeah, it's easy to explain and it's extremely difficult to do controlled forging. That uh that shooting scene that I did was a pivotal thing worldwide. It changed the entire forging industry worldwide. Uh almost as much as the powder did. And uh that was a a challenge that was thrown at me. I was doing some pretty neat stuff. You can make curved lines, and if you bend them a little bit, they're still curved lines, but you bend a straight line and it's a curved line, and you're not gonna get it back. I I won't say it's in impossible, but it it adds a layer of complexity that you can't even imagine. It requires a bunch of precise high-tech machining and all kinds of stuff to get to where you can cause that material to move, and it's not just not worth it. So that control forging was uh I'd watched Daryl do some stuff with some straight line work. He did the first radial patterns that were done, and then uh Shane Taylor out there in Montana capitalized on that. He's probably done more radial stuff than probably anybody else, and has invented a lot of techniques to go with it, and that's a that's a whole different complex thing. But the control forging, I I use a lot of squaring dies, and that shooting scene was one of the most complex things that's ever been done. I've uh there's been some stuff close to it. Uh actually doing another one of those shooting scenes with uh as a collab with Henning Wilkerson in South Africa. But that I've still got the original block that guy came out of, and he was you know almost two inches tall. And in that blade, he's less than a half inch tall, and his gun barrel's dead straight. He's got heels on his boots and a bill on his hat, and there's some penetrations in that guy where his elbow is and uh different places, and the dog is pointing and with the leg and that had pieces in it. So the dog had to be scaled to the guy and joined to the guy, and that reduced, and then that was pulled down, and then uh the quail were three-quarters of inch from a wingtip to wingtip, and they're down, they're about a sixteenth of an inch across now, and you still see the flight feathers on them. And that was the control I developed for that project, but it took me months to make that thing. Anyway, it uh you have to be very, very slow. Anyone can make the puzzle. The puzzle or the picture is the easy part, the forging is the difficult part, and it's a feel for it. Uh, it's like trying to describe color. How do how do I know what you perceive as blue or red is that color? What you're seeing. I don't know. I can show you the technique, but I can't tell you how it feels to me. And so you're actually feeling what's going on in a machine that weighs 8,000 pounds, and uh and you're pushing it, and you have to know how the metal flows, how it feels, and then every once in a while you have to just stop, cut the thing open to look to make sure it's going where you think it is. So you have to be able to think in 3D, and you have to have You know, it's like a gymnast, only you're doing it with steel. You it's positional. You have to know where that image is, and then you over time you build up these skill sets where you know that the further in the bar it is, the less distortion you're gonna get. And you also have to know the tools. Because a hammer moves material much different than a press does. A press captures the outside and scorks the inside of like a two-by-tooth face. And a hammer, if you hit it hard enough, it will extrude, but it builds heat. Or a press is is trapping heat. It's it's a heat sink, it's pulling heat out, and it causes that material to move at a different rate. And that that knowledge is really it's hard to teach. You can teach it. Uh I've got some of my students are very, very good at it. And uh they they've got that spatial awareness, but you the ninety-nine percent of the people that have trouble with these canisters and stuff like that, it's because they're getting in a big hurry. And uh thing is if they got powder in them, and of course that that shooting scene was all solids. There was no powder in that at all. None. It was all solids. And uh so you have to be aware of how that material's coming down and uh it's it's you know, like it's it's really difficult to explain, but it can it can be done because obviously I did it. And uh there's been a a couple of people do some really con neat stuff. You can get by with uh mosaic stuff uh because I mean it's interesting in the control over it. Salem Straub is probably one of the top young bladesmiths on the planet right now as far as pattern development, but he's not he's he's doing specific designs and they're very, very controlled, but it's not in the minute stuff. Uh there's a guy in Florida that makes folders, his name's Cliff Parker, and he does a lot of powder and he's very, very controlled. He's he's got a really good grip on reducing those images. Now, if you've got a mixture of solids and powder, then you gotta remember the powder, no matter how you can put it under that 118-ton press I've got, and it'll still have to be reduced by 30% before it's a solid. So you have to design all that movement into the the part. You don't just you know, you don't just print out something and fill it up. If it's all powder, then it'll come down pretty even. But if you got a mixture of solids and powder in there, then the solids are gonna stay putting and then the powder is gonna compact. And so you you that knowledge you just it's time on the tools. I can show you and we can make canisters, but you've got to spend the time and learn not to get in a hurry with the forging. You have to the temperature's gotta be right. Um with powder, your soak times are about twice as long, especially in the beginning because the particulate won't transfer the heat energy. You think it's hot, but it's not. And uh so all that stuff is just it takes years of of working with it to really develop the skill set, unless you're one of these young geniuses, and I'm surrounded by those guys now that they grab it and go. I mean, they don't have any trouble with it at all. They understand how the material works. So that's kind of that's kind of how it works. The puzzle is easy, the forging is not.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and um it's kind of analogous to, you know, it's really hard to stick the landing when you have to deal with all these um physical properties. And I'm I'm reminded, you know, like everybody sees uh NASA when they're doing uh like docking exercises or things like that for the International Space Station or whatever, right? Um and like you have all these people that are surrounded and figuring out the equations and and the mathematics and physics around how to dock two moving objects that are going at dissimilar speeds and have different thrusts and are dealing with different um locales around um the earth and everything. And uh and you know, and they get it right, but it takes i in order to get it right, you have to have an exceptional amount of fail saves in order to be able to guarantee in a high, high stake, high-risk uh in environment, you have to you have to have people around to guarantee that. And it seems like um, you know, all these people that are doing um this work in Mosaic Damascus and um in uh pattern welding uh are are they they're kind of like islands, you know, like everybody is able to do things by themselves, but it requires so much knowledge to get to the point where they can execute something and have it look the way that it should look. And that to me, it's always blown my mind. Like I'm I'm sure I could spend an entire career uh working in in this form of Damascus and still feel like I I know almost nothing about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

Yeah, welcome to my world. Because that's about where I am. You'll find out the more you know, the less you know if if you're if you're really on the journey. Uh a lot of guys they'll get one little thing and they stop. They absolutely stop. But me, I want to play every instrument in the band and I want to own them. My shop is a testament to that. I got one of everything known to man to make a knife with, and sometimes two or three of them that I can't find because I'm not very well organized. But it's uh yeah, it's it's a journey and it's never ending. And what you find out is you get into a time crunch, and the older you get, uh the faster things go, and uh it's it's it's disproportionate for some reason, but I'm I'm stuck in there. Uh but it's uh it's like being in a damn time warp, only it's warping the wrong way, and it's you're running out of time quick, and you haven't discovered everything you want to see. And uh it's just it's it's an amazing journey with a bunch of really amazing people.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:34

Yeah. It it's kind of funny. Uh, you know, when they talk about uh uh about age and everything, they say like when you're young, you have uh all the time and no money, and when you're mid-aged, you have no time and no money, and then when you're old, you have uh all the money and no time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

Or you're a knife maker and then uh honey, I need this one more tool and I'll be successful.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

Yeah, right. Um I'm interested. Uh when you're talking about this uh your your 3D printed technology and everything, first can you kind of uh describe to me a little bit more about what it is that you're doing in 3D printing that is so significant? And then the second part of that, uh, can you talk a little bit more about how that changes the dynamic of how you're doing Mosaic Damascus?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:27

Right. Okay, uh I gotta back up and punt. Uh back in the in the early 80s, I started doing a lot of tiling and uh where you cut them off and turn them over and and and then put them over a center core. And all my early work, I did cinecores and I would do because I used it was using a lot of this nickel and uh nickel sheet and stuff, you can't have that on a cutting edge, so you had to put a centacore in it. And so I I I tiled a bunch of stuff, and then I found out over time that if I put sacrificial material on the outside of that, I had greater success because I had a a larger uh thermal mass and it kept the air off of it, and the the material on the outside of those little plaquettes when I was doing those jump welds in there, it would trap that and make them more efficient. But the downside of it was you had to machine all that off of there. So I found out, and I don't remember where I got it from. Somebody told me about it, I tried it and it worked, is I used uh burned uh stainless steel foil, heat treating foil, and I would lay two little pieces of that on the outside of my little plaquettes that I'd I'd tacked all up, and I'd put sacrificial material over it and I'd weld the edge out and I'd forge well it, and then I'd grind the edges, and those pieces would fall off. And that worked great. It was just super, and this is mid-80s, and uh anyway, I thought I ran out of that foil, and I thought, well, what do they use in Mokomegani? Well, they used paper to do the same thing, and so I took two pieces of copy paper and I laid on there, I put my sacrificial material on, welded it out, and I heated up well and heat went pop, pump, pop under my hammer, pulled it out. I started grinding the edges, nothing happened. It was like grinding a solid bar of steel. There was no weld line, nothing. And I kept doing it, I thought there's something wrong, and I put that in acid, I could see mosaic all the way around the edge, end of my center core. And what had happened is that paper had turned to carbon, lowered the eutectic level of both surfaces, because the more carbon you have, the lower the melt temperature of the material is. And so that that paper went to carbon and was absorbed like a kid eating cotton candy into the steel and made a perfect weld. It act like a solder. Well, what came out of that was all the paper forms and tape forms and stuff I did to make flowers and animals and all kinds of stuff out of paper. Use that as powder, and with the powder technology, well, down the road, you know, a couple of years ago, I'm out at Kilroy's and I'm teaching a powder metal class out there, and uh Ron is a genius, he's really a smart guy, and that's a one of the greatest groups of people you'll ever work with out there. Anyways, he had his uh his computer guy there, and uh and we were bending uh little thin sheets of pure nickel, which gave you a bright line and making images with it and using powder. And he thought, well, what happens if you print a holoform and just fill it up with powder? And I said, Well, what is the the plastic made from? It's PLA. Well, it's a plant-based polymer, it's basically paper, it's plastic paper. I said, Oh my god, it worked. And it was like one of those epiphanies, it's like the nickel powder was in the signature. And we went out there and and uh uh he has a young lady that uh works for the Curier. Uh she went out there with uh uh Kilroy's works and and uh printed one and went out there and welded with nickel powder and it came out perfect. And as far as I know, that was the first piece of 3D stuff that was welded. And then say the problem well wasn't a problem, the deal was there was too many people involved, and there was no way to protect it with a patent. So we open sourced that entire process, and uh, and a lot of people take no Baker Tool and Forge uses it a lot, and they give us credit for the discovery process, and uh, but a lot of people have used it and they don't they don't say anything about where it came from or anything, and uh shame on them, but that's that's life. But uh the there's a bunch of people that have given us credit for it because we shared it. We wanted everybody to be able to use it because it opens the world for anybody who wants to do a mosaic piece with a specific pattern in it. It takes those thousands of dollars worth of machining out of it, or you forge stuff to shape and uh and make stuff, and that's another way to get shaped is a forge of shape, but that's how that happened, and we've open sourced it and he's got all that stuff on his website, and if you don't have a 3D printer, he'll print you one. Now they've had uh 3D printers in industry for years that print metal, and that would be the best way to do it. But the problem is that technology costs thousands of thousands of dollars, and so what this does is you can use a PLA, and that puts that in the hands of anybody can buy a a a hundred dollar printer, and then you're off to see the wizard with your powder metal work, you can make anything you want. So that's how that happened. But it was it came off of me doing that first piece of paper in that bar back in the eighties. And uh it's it's pretty neat, and then you get into the forging techniques of it, and then that's where if you get in a hurry, you get a Roshak test, and if you don't, then you have an image. So that's kind of how that works.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

Yeah, that's that's pretty incredible. I mean, because um I I imagine that when I get into uh forging patterns, because I I want at some point in time in my uh journey through knives, I'd like to be able to actually focus uh quite a bit of time on forging and and going down this road of uh um mosaic Damascus and pattern welding and everything. Um I will I'll probably adopt that uh technique as well. Because like for me, um there's a wire EDM and doing uh nickel shimming and everything uh to me just seems like a lot of extra work that I probably don't want to do. And uh the incredible nature I see uh to using 3D printing is I can get I can I can at least start somewhere that lowers the lar yeah, it like lowers the learning curve. And so I I don't have to spend years figuring out how to just get the layout correct. I can start with the 3D printing and then, you know, I mean the sky's the limit. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:30

See, yeah, it puts it in anybody's hands. You know, I I don't draw on cat or anything. I've got a young guy at uh Bird Forge up the road here, uh Travis. He's uh IT guru and he's got uh some printers and stuff, and he prints for he'll he'll print stuff that I need, and uh and I let him use my heat treat ovens and stuff to run some of his stuff. So we're friends. And uh Travis Haynes is bird forging. He also makes pelican paste wax. I'll throw that in for him. He really is a fine human being. Uh I'm he's a treasure. We like having him in the neighborhood, and he's a good friend. Anyway, it uh yeah, I rely on these young gurus to help me with all kinds of stuff. And you know, I've got ideas. Uh Logan Gillihan out there at uh at Cole Art, he he designed and built the computer that runs my 50-ton press. And uh and I get right on the cutting edge of those guys. Those guys are the best people to work with. I've worked with in a long time, and they they build a super unit. And uh they only built two of the 50 tons because they're costs prohibitive at uh material costs, and I mean uh damn cylinders are thousands of bucks, and uh it costs a lot of money, but that thing is just I'm lucky to have it. It it'll be in the yard sale when I choke over.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:03

Yeah, um I'm interested. There's uh there's a guy I know uh that's part of the Texas Knife Makers Guild, and his name's uh Daniel O'Connor. Uh he started uh nuclear um systems is basically uh uh it they use it a lot for heat treating and uh establishing hormones and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:21

Hey, smart guy, I've got some of his stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:25

Yeah. Well, uh when we're talking about 3D printing and kind of the um lowering the barrier of entry uh for people, um earlier this earlier this year he kind of wrote a little article and um he he off of this this um clay that he's been making, he started doing a lot of research into sticky flux, which I guess is uh something that uh Japanese bladesmiths had used. And he started making this uh this composition of uh of uh nuclear fusion. So basically it's just um um it's a paste that you can uh put pieces of not to interrupt you, but I have a jar of it in my shop. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, the the uh have you worked with it? Because uh when he posted not yet. Yeah, when he posted it in January, I was like, dude, I was like, this is a game changer potentially. I said, have you tested it in these in these ways or whatever? And uh he he it was basically like that's what that's the start of this thing. But basically, for everybody who's not aware, is that you know, in in standard standard pattern weld welding Damascus, you have to have access to some form of a welder to be able to uh bind those pieces together and then heat them to fuse them. Um and he's using this uh this fusion clay to be able to uh you know dry these pieces together and to establish the the weld so that way you don't have to necessarily have um a TIG or MIG or arc weld in order to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:00

Exactly. I'll tell you what I'm using it for, and and and I'll probably it'll be this week that I'll do some stuff I've been setting up to do it, is jumping bolsters on, where you make a blade and you leave a little extra width there by the blade, and then you you take your bolsters and you grind them and use that stuff to fuse the bolster so you don't have to do any back welding. You stick your bolsters on, bring it up to a welding heat and hit them, and they fuse it, and it turns that knife into an integral.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:31

I had never thought about that, but that's ingenious. Um, because uh something uh uh something um that I've thought a lot about in uh going down stock removal versus bladesmithing is that there are very clear differences in what you can do with stock removal versus um smithing because of your lack of ability to manipulate steel through heat. And um and one of those things is integrals. Like I I really love the look of some integral bolsters and and uh and how that uh that entire process works. But you know, in order to do that in stock removal, you have to take a very big chunk of very expensive, um, you know, nice making steel, and then you have to mill out a bunch of stuff. So basically uh half of your work turns into a discard because you're chipping it away, and then you're left with you know something that if if you brick it and you and you don't uh you don't you know you don't get to your final product, you have a ton of wasted material. And something that I've always appreciated is uh in bladesmithing is the ability to take something that is you know it's it's it's already there, right? And to manipulate it and form it into shapes uh and configurations that you don't have to have as much waste. And uh so when I get to a place where I can use fusion and uh some of these techniques that you've helped to develop and everything, man, I don't know. It's uh I'm my mind's racing, but I don't have the property uh to have all of my forging equipment and stuff around because I'm in a residential area, and I'm I'm really I'm really just waiting. Like I'm collecting knowledge and trying just to kind of figure this game out uh on the research side so that way I can play with it. And I I just can't imagine how fun it's gonna be to uh mess with all that stuff. And it's uh thanks to people that are not me. Like I'm I'm sure that my learning curve is gonna be cut down by many, many years by all the stuff that's out there. And it's just uh I don't know, it's a it's a mind warp to think about all the effort and human energy that goes into creating these things. And I mean, I I can appreciate it, but I hope listeners here in the podcast just really appreciate the contributions that you and and other like-minded um scientists and enthusiasts have put towards it because without that I don't think that we would have what we have today.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:51

No, it's uh and it's fun. It's like this uh guy that built this fusion stuff. I'm gonna try that, but I think I'm gonna I'm also gonna try I've got uh an induction heater as well in my shop, and I do a lot of forging with that thing now, and I I didn't think I'd use it as much, but I'm gonna try to forge weld some bolsters on using that technique, using those things.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:16

And uh I just step on a pedal and I can get to I can get to forge welding heat with it easily because you designed the coils to fit it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:26

And uh and then you just go there and whack and it's done.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:30

Yeah, yeah. Derek Melton um is a bladesmith and blacksmith, and he's actually done a lot of popularization of the induction forge as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:40

Yes, he's he's the one that tipped me over the edge.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:44

Yeah, it's yeah, it's crazy. Um I actually uh when we started the podcast, it was uh Chris Crawford who's done a lot of uh uh videos uh for knife making, as well as being a phenomenal knife maker himself, but he he did videos and brought a lot of people together, and when we were talking Early on, I was like, hey dude, I want to do that, but I also want to um do it in like a podcast format so that way we can be a little bit more agile. Because the the editing process on videos and timing that for schedules and stuff is just like ridiculous. I mean the fact that he has yeah, the the body of work that he has is is great because it has changed the dynamic of a lot of people's knife making. Um but he actually I believe is best well, he was best friends, but I belie I believe he's known Derek since high school or college, something like that. And so we had him on early on. He was, I think, our first guest actually. And uh and I've learned an insane amount just by being introduced to Derek and talking through that.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:41

So you know, uh his Oh, he's a he's a shark cookie.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:44

Yeah, I mean he two things that he is uh really big on is these tire uh tire hammers and induction forging. And I I I can't imagine uh based on people getting into the craft and everything, being able to have those two tools could replace for an entry-level um um you know bladesmith uh a ton of things that just are not like easy to find. Like finding little giant hammers around my area is impossible.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:14

Um well if you do a tire hammer, then you know how to repair the thing because you built it, unless you buy one that's already built from somebody. But go to one of the if you know I recommend that. Uh go to the workshop and build a thing, and then you know how to fix it. And uh, yeah, Derek is sharp, and Chris Crawford, he's got uh I've done a I did a canister uh film for him on canisters, and he has that, and it's available from him.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:42

Yes, sir. Yeah, I I don't know. I I I think like you and I are birds of a feather. Um, I really appreciate being able to talk to you because I realize, you know, you where I live right now, you grew up not too far uh away in Pentigo um area, Dalworthington Gardens, and that's like right down the road. And um I had an early career, uh not career, I had an early experience in martial arts, and uh my my teacher told me basically the same thing. He's like, you know, Aaron, you you lack you lack the uh the natural ability to uh to perform martial arts, but you have the tenacity to work through that the lack of natural ability. You know, my my grandfather told me, you know, he was a World War II, he came from a very impoverished area, and his dad died when he was real young. Uh and he worked from the time that I don't know, he was like seven in steel and everything like that. Uh and he was like, Aaron, if there's one thing that I can tell you, if you if you teach yourself how to read, then you can you can do anything. And you know, if I think about like the the parallels to my experiences in my you know late 30s and the things that you've experienced in your life, I just uh I can really resound with that. So um you are a personal inspiration to me because um you can like there's sometimes I think that you you meet people that give you a blueprint of things that you can do and things that uh excite you and your imagination on what's possible, and you are just one of those people to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:15

Well, I thank you. I appreciate it. Uh I've never allowed myself to dwell in any kind of success. I I I I like it when I succeed, I get excited by it and I'm gratified by it. But my teacher Schmidt told me something when I first started. He said, You're gonna walk in a room and people you'll hear them whispering. He said, Never believe your own bullshit. And he was right, and I never would allow myself to look at any of that stuff, and so recently I decided that I would start going through my archives. I've kept a lot of stuff over the years where I was published and that sort of thing, and I had Laura go through it because I physically I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to read it, and she went through it everything we had page by page, and I was in I've been in over a hundred and fifty different publications, not a hundred and fifty blade magazines, but a hundred and fifty different publications and over fifty hardbound books in my career. I had no idea that that much stuff existed out there. I've been published on almost every continent. And it was pretty amazing to look back at it. I I kind of laughed. There was even a grit newspaper. I don't know, you're too young to remember grit. But back in the 50s and 60s, that was a nationwide like uh it was almost like the farmer's almanac if you got the grit. And I made the front page of grit way back in the 80s. You know, because I've been so busy discovering new stuff. I don't dwell in the past, I dwell now. I had a guy one time, and and and this goes back to ego. And uh when you're young and you're trying to make your own market, you'll see it a lot in life as a everybody wants to be their own man and they don't want to be beholden to nobody. But like you said, we're all standing on the backs of giants that came before us. I mean, some of these guys guys that were before me were just I mean, just incredible talents. And uh a guy had copied one of my designs and uh and uh won a a big an award with it overseas, and uh and so I got a little incensed by it, and this is pre-internet, it's all facts anyway. I won't go through the whole thing, but uh I was kind of upset by it. And if I had just sat still and kept my mouth shut, everything would have been fine. But no, I had to rise the bait like a carp after a dough, and uh so I went for it, and then anyway, the conversation got a little tense, and anyway, it uh we're still friends, but it it got a little stress. Anyway, if I had waited until I seen the knife, I would have never been upset. And so I I was telling a friend, I was relating this to a friend of mine, he was a pellet attorney for 40 years, and he's a brilliant mind, he's been one of my closest friends since 1982. And uh he said, there's a poem by Roger Kipling that fits this. I said, Well, give it to me. It's the only poem I ever remembered from the first reading. He said, They asked me how I did it. I gave them the scripture text. You keep your light of burning a little ahead of the next. They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. And what that comes down to, there are people that create and there are people that copy. And if you only copy, you can only copy what's there. But if you create, you always have new ideas. So never worry about the old ideas. You you always worry about creating the new ideas, and that's where I choose to live is creating new stuff and developing techniques. If somebody shows me something new and I think I can add to it, I'll jump right on it. I do it all the time. I'm still doing it, you know. If somebody's doing something cool, I want to see it. I just spent 10 days in Hawaii with Neil Kamamura. He's probably one of the brightest young blazesmiths on the planet. And I watched some of the stuff he was doing, and I'm looking at it, man, that's cool. But he honored his teachers, and one of them, Rico Malmassi, and and the other one is Peter Burt, who lives there on the island. Peter is one of those Holland Wall guys. You don't think, but he's doing woots, he's doing clay Damascus. He's making precious, you know how they make the precious metal clay? Well, he's doing clay with steel, and he's doing some in stainless. But he's figured that out, and you can get that intel on his what he does off of his website if you want to uh pay into his Patreon just to pay him a little bit for his research time, but he's developed some stuff in pattern weld and in that clay that that nobody else has done. I fooled with the clay back in the in the late 80s a little bit, but I never did uh follow it up. I didn't follow along. He is the first guy I know that did a whole blade out of clay and fired that thing, and he's got a finished knife. That's where he is. And that's that's one of these guys that nobody knows about. That's probably he's he does a lot of Woots research, he does a lot of cast steel research, and he's on a farm over there in Hawaii off the side of the hill, and he's just amazing talent, amazing talented guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:11

Oh yeah, yeah. I've uh I've followed his work on social media because the the way that I came uh to know uh his work and everything, it was actually I watched a video um on YouTube that was about Woots and Um and Al was in it, and uh then I started down this rabbit hole of uh trying to understand Woots and what those I guess those uh d dendritic um uh formations and everything looked like and kind of getting into the science of things, and then I saw uh Peter's work and I've been following him on social media to see everything that he's done. And so it's it's kind of weird that you know when you the without understanding the context behind knowledge, sometimes it's really hard to understand how profound that is. And um that's one thing I've really uh benefited from with social media is like we're we're in a time where you can be a fly on the wall of history being made every single day. And it's it's almost like dr drinking from a fire hose. Um, but that's it's it's kind of interesting to me because m my understanding from you and your career is that um not to uh try to um misword this, but you kind of fell like after this illustrious career in in working in knives, you kind of fell into this uh um uh obscurity of sorts uh until uh quite a few years ago when you got into social media and re-uh reignited that. Can you talk a little bit about that for me?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:41

Yeah, well, I'll I'll throw one thing at you before my mind skips a beat. Is me and Pendray and a guy named Bob Job started the Wootz stuff, and it was mostly Alfred. But this other guy, he was into uh Buckmeister Fuller and uh Bucky Balls and all that stuff, and he was a pretty neat guy, and he he was always bringing us Mr. Shield, but he was really into Wootz research and did all the early Woos research, and then Al and I worked on those projects together for a long, long time, and then Alfred finally solved the mystery of forging it, and then and then we worked together, but all the first blades that were made are marked P for Pendray, J for Bob Joe, and S for Schwarzer. And I've got pictures of those blades and the stamps and everything here, and then uh he got involved with uh Dr. Verhoven early on, and uh Bill Dows from uh Nucor Steel, and they moved on with that project, and I was busy trying to feed a bunch of kids, so I went and did something that would pay me. Research paying. But all right, now where were you directing me before I got shuttlecocked over to the other side of the net?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:01

No, I appreciate that context for sure. I mean, people need to understand that you know you when it comes to what we understand as woots today, you were you had your your hands and feet and body in that that research. So I appreciate you making that distinction. But specifically what I was talking about is like um, you know, you spend all this time in the analog world. Um you were um, you know, it's like uh I'm going to talk through knife shows and hammerings and things like that, and then you know, a year later you come back or whatever and talk to these people and show what you have, right? Like all this research you've done. But then and you did that for forever, and then um, you know, social media comes around and everybody thinks that you know, if you're not online, you don't exist. And I'm interested in though because over the last what four or five years, um, you went from still being an analog to coming into uh social media and everything, and your career kind of like resurged in a way that uh I want to to be able to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:57

Oh, absolutely. It uh yeah, it was the young guys that came in my shop and said, Well, I didn't know. I mean, I'm before internet. Fax machine was a new thing when I was a young man. Facts. There wasn't such a thing. Internet didn't exist. None of it did. That uh Bob Jones was still in his damn basement working, you know. That's how far back that I was working. And that most people don't get it. They they they they don't think well 70s, you know, the sixties Vietnam War was going. Anyway, uh yeah, I I I was up here and I was uh what happened to me is I I seventeen years ago I was happily married to this wonderful lady and she passed. Like she got sick in the morning and that afternoon she was gone. And it took the wind out of my sails. I still write fairly often. But uh I just think uh my life kind of light went out of it for a while. And uh so I uh I didn't know anything about social media. I thought, hell you know, Don was had his site, but hell I didn't even go on that. Like once in a while, I didn't understand how any of it worked. And so I was having a few people come to shop and they said, Well, you need to do Instagram. I said, What is that? You know, or you need to do Facebook. I said, What's the Facebook, you know? And uh so they started telling me about it. I said, Man, I don't want to do any of that. That's nonsense. And then uh I had a couple people come, the students, and they they went, you should be on social media. I said, Man, nobody knows who I am. They can care less. They kind of given up almost, you know, on that part of it. And uh I was still you know teaching at a high level, but I wasn't doing it as a much teaching. And these guys kept on me about this. Well, okay, I'll do it. And then I've started figuring it out, and I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't worry about the algorithms or any of that stuff, I just post stuff. You know, if it's interesting to me, uh most people don't like pictures of my dog, they want to see me on fire in the shop, kind of thing. But I've I've had some really good people here that understand that world, and they explained it to me, and I thought, well, okay, I'll do that. And I did that, and it changed my life. It changed everything I do. And it's not that I'm bound to it, but it it has put me in connection with people that I would have never met. And one of them is Henning Wilkinson. I met him on there and I watched him work, and I couldn't believe the level of skill that guy has. And uh he's this amazing guy. So we cooked up this deal for me to come to South Africa and teach some classes, teach him, and and we'd do some collab stuff together. But the whole plan was for me to go there and watch him work because he's probably one of the best guys on the planet of Mary's. He comes out of a gunsmithing tradition, but he thinks not only he's got it all, he thinks with both sides of his brain, and he thinks in 3D, and he can do the machine work, the calculations, and the finish work and the design work. He can do it all. You know how rare that is? That's extremely rare. The guys that are absolutely on the cutting edge of the entire business, they all have that in common. They think in 3D and they're able to execute. Jason Knight's one of them. He can design stuff in a minute, and he thinks in 3D. Only his 3D is a kaleidoscope. It's got a jail and different papers in it. I've known Jason Knight since he was 13 years old. He used to write papers in school about me. And we've had lifelong friends since he was like 13 years old. But that social media is what drove all that, and then he invited me up. I did his Ford series with him and all that stuff. I've had a bunch of film crews here uh over the years doing different stuff, and uh some more of that stuff coming down the road in the future. But it all that stuff is well and good, but I just I enjoy the people and uh interacting and teaching people. I do a good bit of teaching on uh social media, and that's it's it's pretty gratifying actually, but getting a grip on it, it's like uh Neil Kevin Mora told me he said he'd never seen anybody in my age group do what I did with it. And uh I went, okay. And uh I don't know, it's uh it's kind of fun. I finally got recognized, uh uh got inducted into the Hall of Fame this year of the Blade Show. That was uh a benchmark. I won every major uh thing for the ABS and uh knifemakers guild. I was vice president of the knife makers guild in the 90s. Most people are not aware of that. But um I'm I'm I hadn't been a member in some years, but I I still uh I've been the longest serving ABS Master Smith, continuously serving. Don Fogg has been a Master Smith longer, but he quit for a while. And uh there may be another one out there somewhere I don't know of. But anyway, I've been at it a long time, and to share this life experience on social media is is kind of a big deal because you get a big bigger audience there than you would ever get in a bookstore. I think. So that's kind of why I do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:04

Yeah, well, yeah, I uh I that's uh it's a lot to unpack. Um because uh I don't know, like there's there's a lot of uh philosophy in knives, and there's a lot of like overthinking and and uh neuroticism in knives, and I'm sure in in many in many crafts, right? And I I I personally feel like I've reinvented myself a million times already um in a short experience in just one craft, and to see the the rise and fall and rise and fall of your career um makes me think that it's not it's not just me, it's normal that you know you you're always reinventing yourself. And so like that's that's something I think that if if anybody takes away um one piece of philosophical knowledge from this interview, I'd like it to just be known that you're you're uh from from cradle to grave, you have ever like the opportunity every single day uh to to reinvent yourself and to reconfigure your life uh to uh fulfill whatever your life purpose is. And if there's anyone that can uh exemplify that, it's you. And I really appreciate you taking that time to be able to share yourself with us and to um to be uh vulnerable in that way because it's not it's not so often that some people are just so open that they're willing to uh allow themselves to be captured uh candidly the way that you do, and I you know I really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:41

Oh, you're very welcome. I'll I'll give you a parting shot. And this is something I've learned after years of self-reflection and uh and listening to some very, very bright people, people that go around me like I'm part mentally. In life, you have an agenda. Everybody does. You do, I do, my wife does. Everybody you know has an agenda. And what you're looking for is a stream in life where people are going in your direction, that same goal or or in the general direction that goal is, and you you do not let negative stuff drag you off or drag you back. You get rid of it immediately, you don't belabor it, you don't dwell on it, you don't think back on it, you just turn it loose and move forward. You can you can grieve over the death of a loved one, but it'll never bring them back. And you can't change one syllable that came out of your mouth a second ago. All you can do is regret it. So if you're gonna move your life forward, then you need to move in positive and don't let the negative get you. The only person that can create your work and your art space is you, you're the only one that can do it. It's not somebody else's responsibility to make you happy, that's your job. That's the reason my wife and I have got the best partner on the planet for me. She might not be perfect for anybody else, but she's the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. And uh she's just amazing because I'm not responsible for her happiness, she's responsible for it. I'm responsible for me. And generally, if I'm happy, everybody around me is happy and my people that really know me. If I'm unhappy, you will be very uncomfortable. That's the way I am. Anyway, I appreciate the opportunity and it's been fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:47

Yeah, Steve, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for the time, and uh um I will post up all your social media stuff just to can kind of continue on that tradition of uh giving you more exposure. I hope in in some small way that the podcast does that. But really, you do a greater honor and service to me and the listeners because um I there there's just too much. There's too much to uh unpack in this, and I hope that it serves as a an example of you in a small way and that people can listen to it multiple times and pull knowledge uh from your words uh to further themselves. So uh I really appreciate it. It's a total honor and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:23

Oh, you're very welcome, sir. Appreciate you taking time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:27

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Good Old Blades Podcast. Remember that you are loved and God bless.