SPEAKER_00 0:22

There probably isn't a lot that I can say about Bob Truce Wallace that hasn't been said during his 43-year career in knife making. But in my endeavor to dig deep into the soul of knives, I found that there are still some rocks left uncovered with one of the most illustrious makers of the last century. Bob is as intelligent, complex, and depthful as you might expect one to be who gets coined as the godfather of the tactical foul. But what's more, Bob is tender, thoughtful, and incredibly nurturing. His love of the craft runs deep, and his experience and stories that blossom through his journey in knives prove to be some of my favorite parts of fucking film. Bob will go down in history as a treasure to the craft of knife making. And his induction into the Collery Hall of Fame this year marks a hard-earned cornerstone to all of his efforts. I was incredibly honored Bob decided to sit down with me and talk about his life, especially in knives. Bob, it's good to have you on the Good Old Place Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Great to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

So uh interesting how uh serendipitous certain events are. I think I reached out to uh uh to you and Susie through social media about having you on the podcast a while ago, and then um I did an interview with Grace Horn, and Susie had reached back out to me um and we talked a little bit more, and then I got to talk to you, and we were here now. Uh and I kind of want to tell you like a personal hero of mine, I really love like uh the work that you've done and the way that you've expressed um uh you know uh knives and folding knives and and how to make them. Uh, I think that it bridges a lot of the gaps uh uh in um communicated knowledge in the industry. And so um, you know, I just want to uh really tell you I appreciate you uh taking the time to actually talk with me.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

That's very kind words. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah. Uh so I I think uh one gap I've noticed inside of the uh the lexicon of knife making is that a lot of people are ignorant to the fact of uh makers that come before, right? The giants that we uh uh uh sit on the shoulders of. And I've asked some knife makers, you know, or we talked about Bob Loveless and uh Steve Johnson and uh Buster Worensky and people like that, right? And uh they don't really know a lot about them. And I'm not gonna say that you sit in that same camp because I I think through um what you and Susie have done uh with social media and your publication and your constant advocacy uh uh inside of the knife industry, that you've maintained maintained visibility and relevance uh throughout your career. But I would really like uh for you to talk a little bit about what your beginnings were in in knives uh and like and maybe your early life and kind of what influenced that initially well I'd always been interested in knives.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

I'd always made knives, even when I was a kid, uh from old files. I guess uh you know, most knife makers start off doing stuff like that. Um but when I was in uh when I was in Guatemala, I've told the story many times, but a lot of people know it, so I'll try to condense it a bit. When I was in Guatemala, um I one of the several jobs that I had uh was managing a Jade jewelry factory in Antigua. And um our next door neighbor was a knife aficionado and a very interesting character. Um his name was Jim Atwood. He was a colonel in the army and he had been in the Air Force also, and he had spent a lot of time in Germany. And while in Germany, he had bought up all of the surplus pieces and parts of the German daggers from World War II. And in fact, he wrote at that time the definitive book on the edged weapons of the Third Reich. Um, there were many uh many uh different kinds of uh swords and knives that were produced. Uh basically the story goes that during the Great Depression in the 30s, um, when Hitler became chancellor, a delegation from Zollingen, Germany went to Hitler and asked if he could do something to help the people of Zollingen, which is the historic center of knife making and sword making in Germany, could help them out of the depression and do something to uh foster their work and and their skills. And Hitler decreed that every uniform would have its own special dagger as a as a as an ornament, uh, not necessarily, you know, it was they weren't always weapons of war, but they were uh Teutonic kind of historic um decorations that would adorn each individual uniform. And it was not only the uniforms of the military, but also the uniforms of like the Border Patrols, the Boy Scouts, the fire brigades, um uh the uh the Forest Service. Any any organization in Germany that had a uniform had to have its own unique dagger as part of the dress uniform. So that's how Solingen in Germany came out of the Great Depression. Well, after the war, um all of the um pieces and parts and and and blades and so forth of all of these daggers that were in progress had to be stopped. They had to be put away because Germany was forbidden to make any kind of weapon after World War II, and that included daggers and bayonets and swords. But the Germans never throw anything away, so what they did is they stored all this stuff in boxes and barrels and the attics and the cellars and outbuildings around Zollingen. And my friend Atwood found out about this, bought up most of them, bought the pieces and parts, uh, he brought them back to his hometown in uh Savannah, Georgia, and had people put them back together again. And they were genuine, authentic uh German daggers. They were just not assembled. So they were actually got assembled in Savannah, Georgia, and then he would sell these um through little advertisements at the backs of magazines, which you've seen probably certainly people my age saw uh during the 60s and 70s, and men's magazines, uh Argosy, true detective uh magazines like that, these little one-inch square ads for German daggers of different kinds, the youth dagger, uh, the Air Force dagger, and so forth. Anyway, Atwood had a subscription to what at that time was the American Blade magazine. And the American Blade was the original publication uh by Meinfeld of knife making, concentrating mainly on knife making in the United States. It became through a series of changes what is now the uh modern blade magazine. But in those days, in the uh late 70s, early 80s, it was called the American Blade. And uh he gave me a couple of these magazines and he convinced me to start making um, he said, you know, you've got machinery here which is very similar to you know the jade working machinery. He said it's very similar to uh what people are using to grind blades and you know make knives, drill presses, and so forth. He says, Why don't you try doing this? He said, You'd be pretty good at it. So I tried, I made a couple, and um became fairly successful at it, even while I was managing the J. Drew factory down there. I had um a lot of friends who were in um special operations. Um I knew all the Marine Security Guards at the embassy. Um they asked for special knives and different kinds of knives, and I came up with different models, mainly mainly combat knives. Um but I also branched out into hunting and um camp type of uh trail knives and so forth, utility knives, all fixed blades. So um I got interested in this, and by reading the magazine I learned about uh the knife makers guild. And um I applied for it while I was in Guatemala, and the president at that time, I believe, was Jimmy Lyle. Yes, it was I'm pretty sure it was Jimmy Lyle. And um you had to get four guild members to examine your work and sign off on it to be accepted into the into as a probation, as a as a probationary member. So um I wrote away to some guild members, um, and two of them, Frank Santafonti, who was in Florida, and Bob Loveless, who was in Riverside, California, wrote back to me and said they'd be happy to examine my work. So I flew up from Guatemala to Florida. There were two in Florida, I can't remember the other the others, but Frank Santafonte was the first one to sign my application, and um then I flew over to California, showed my work to Bob Loveless, and he enjoyed it, he liked it, said they're very good, signed off on it, and uh the very next guild meeting, which then was in July. Yes, they were in July. See, they the early guild members the early guild meetings, the guild shows were held in July in Kansas City. And the reason that not the very first ones, but it it the first ones were like in 1970, and they were, I think, Chattanooga, Tennessee, or something like that. Um but eventually in the in the mid to late 70s the guild decided to move them to move the shows to Kansas City because it was pretty much close to the geographical center of the United States. So everybody could more or less have uh about the same um distance to travel, even the the farthest ones uh wouldn't have to travel across the entire country, because in those days um most of the just about all of the knife makers were only part-time. They were working in their garages and their basements, um not really professionally, and uh they had other jobs, so they would take their vacations in July. June or July was the normal time for vacations in those days. So these guys would would arrange to have their vacations in, I think it was mid-July. I can't remember exactly, could have been early to mid-July. And to kind of make what equitable in terms of travel so that nobody had to travel the entire length of the country, uh, because most people drove in those days. Um, knife makers were, you know, were making very much money. They're working at different kinds of jobs. So uh not all of them were flying. And a lot of them drove. So they kind of made it uh pretty much the center of the United States at a time when most people could take their summer vacation. So that's how it wound up in Kansas City in July. Um so I flew up from Guatemala, and and my first show, I believe, was uh 1980. And I had a table right next to Mel Pardue, fell in love with his two daughters. Um, they were, oh, I don't know, nine and eleven at the time. And I had brought up some um, I didn't, I had never been to a show before, pretty much, you know, any kind. And uh came up from Guatemala and I had a uh typical um cloth covering of uh native native uh Mayan Guatemalan uh cloth. And I had uh little belts uh the uh the women would braid into their into their hair when they when they when they made braids, they would have these uh about one inch wide and maybe three foot long strips of very brightly colored uh hand woven uh decorative uh typical material. And I had several of those on the table. I gave those to uh um the daughters, and they just love them. And uh every time we went to a show, uh I'd see them and we'd sit and chat and talk, and they were just uh just lovely people. And uh Mel Pardue and his wife were very kind to me. And I remember I was selling um uh hunting relatively simple, uh drop point hunters, no bolsters, just kind of uh Coca-Bola or rosewood handles uh for $65 and $85. And I thought that was a lot of money at the time. 1980. So that was that was my first show. That was the first guild show. And uh Kansas City was wonderful. We really enjoyed Kansas City a whole lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah, that's uh that's fascinating. Um did I ramble too much on that?

SPEAKER_02 15:31

I tend to ramble a whole lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

It's it's only rambling if you don't have a direction that you're going in. And I like I fully uh follow you on kind of where you're going with everything, so it's not rambling. Okay, um okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Do start to ramble, tell me.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

No, you're fine. Um what I'm I'm interested in uh some of the uh jade carving uh that that you did in in those early years because um well it's it's interesting to me. You know, you're in in Mesoamerica, you have the influence of of the the culture and and religion and things like that down there in Guatemala. Uh what what was the jade carving scene like at that time and what were you primarily producing?

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Well, um, I'm not really sure where to begin on this. Uh my fascination with jade and carving didn't start in Guatemala. It started when I was at NYU in New York. I had some friends who got me interested in jade uh from a Chinese perspective. And when I finally went down to Guatemala, I was thrilled to find out, which I had not known before, that Guatemala has a jade carving tradition among the Maya. Now, there was none going on when I first arrived in Guatemala. There was no jade work at all when I first arrived in Guatemala, which would have been oh early 70s, uh 71, 72, thereabouts. Um the Maya had this great tradition of carving beautiful jade. Green was a very special color for them. It was the color of uh new corn, which was uh basically life for the Maya culture. And around 900, uh before 900 and after oh maybe 1200 AD, um the Maya culture flourished and had uh tremendous uh in uh I wouldn't call it an industry, but craft, a craft of of carving, very, very intractable and very difficult to cut material uh called jade. It's um it's very hard, it doesn't cut easily, it requires great skill and incredible patience, especially when you have nothing more than hand operated uh tools made of wood and bird bone. Anyway, when I got down to Guatemala, um I realized that that there was a a uh a background of jade carving going back to the early Maya, but it had died out, it was gone, it was no longer there. Um, and I started um finding in various um antique shops pieces of jade that were some of them carved and some of them not carved, but pieces of jade that I could start carving myself. So I during the mid-70s I actually started learning how to uh carve jade using uh dental equipment, uh diamonds, little diamond bits and polishing stuff and so forth. I had had a kind of a background in Lapidary work in school. I I studied industrial arts education at NYU. So I did know about abrasives and stone and different kinds of uh polishing and how to polish, how not to polish, and and so forth. So I did have some sort of a background. Um I had been working during the 70s on two other projects, one after another. One was uh an education project, uh uh building. We built uh four pilot schools and two teacher training schools to change the system of education from road memorization to problem solving. And then I worked on a basic village education project, which was which had to do with agriculture using uh mass media, uh two radio stations that we built to broadcast uh agricultural information to the to the outback, the the people both in the uh Indian areas up in the mountains and the Latino areas in the lowlands. Um as kind of an experimental program to uh um increase the production of the subsistence level farm. And we worked on that for quite a while. And I was in charge of the I was in charge of the field studies, uh recruiting uh interviewers, training the interviewers. I wrote all of the questionnaires. Uh we wound up interviewing 7,000 farmers every year for six years with a 240-question questionnaire. We we amassed an enormous amount of information about agriculture in in Guatemala and how it changed over the years. Um and I became kind of an expert in uh uh field operations, training, um making questionnaires, trying to trying to get information from surveys, doing surveys of uh different uh different uh populations of people. Um those programs came to an end, and as I and my wife at the time, Gail, and my two boys were getting ready to move back to the States in uh the late 70s, um these two people came to uh interview me and asked me if I would be willing to uh take on a job as uh General manager of a jade operation that they were trying to start. And I was very fascinated by this because nobody had talked about jade. I knew there was jade in Guatemala. I knew the Maya had worked it, but nobody was doing it. It was a lost craft, it was a lost art, it was no longer being done. And here are these two people, Jay and Mary Lou Reitinger, who started. Um they bought a whole bunch of stone from a Frenchman who was a pseudo-archaeologist. And in Antigua, they uh rented a fairly large villa in the middle of town, and they wanted to start a jade jewelry factory making cabochons and different kinds of uh bracelets and things like that, but they didn't know anything about jade or working stone, polishing, cutting, um, or even knowing the stone itself. I they asked me to go out there and I looked at this um there, it was probably about a two-acre, uh, maybe about an acre uh plot that this house and backyard were situated on. And the backyard uh was strewn with these uh boulders of green stone. It turned out that most of that stone was actually a venturine quartz as opposed to jade, but there was some jade there, and I told them, uh, yeah, I'd be interested in doing this. So they hired me and became a general manager. I started the factory, I trained uh, we had 36 people working for us. I trained them in making the jade uh jewelry and ornaments and decorations, uh crosses, bracelets. Um we had a silver and gold uh uh section with uh some jewelers, and we we had we bought silver on the market, we bought gold from uh uh couple of people in town who had were like uh porn shops, uh uh, individual people. And uh so we made our own jewelry, made rings, we made uh these guys um they're fabulous jewelers. Uh but in the in the old school, they had you know, we had very little equipment, we had very little tools, very few tools, and these guys would make uh handmade chains, beautifully made chains of gold and silver. Um they learned how to cast. We had very basic, simple casting stuff, and they did beautiful, beautiful work. And the other people working in the uh the jade section uh taught them how to how to cut and polish and uh make the various uh shapes and so forth. And I also trained the uh the showroom people. We had a big showroom, we had uh furniture made in old colonial style, very ornate, uh all of mahogany, which was very plentiful there. And uh we started getting tour buses coming in and stopping at our place, and pretty soon it was a pretty good going concern. It was quite a uh quite a factory. So there that that was that was the the beginning of the Jade factory, and why I was down there working with Jade when uh our next door neighbor, Jim Atwood, uh, would come over and visit and chat and talk. He he had some fascinating stories that I could probably talk most of the day on, not always related to knives, but some of them were. Uh, I met a lot of very interesting people through him. Um, and he was basically the one who gave me the kick in the butt to get started uh making knives. That's how I got it.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

There we go. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um what is uh what's the jade industry like in Guatemala today? I mean, is the is that culture that was built up around uh your factory and your tutelage uh still in operation today, or kind of what happened to that after you moved on uh back to the United States and whatnot?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Well, it grew. It got bigger. Some of the people who left there started their own little shops. There are now several shops in Guatemala, including this big Jade jewelry factory. And it turns out that a lot of people, a lot of uh uh artists and so forth from Nicaragua and Costa Rica and um uh El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico all got involved, all got interested, and the jade industry in I I have to say Central America. I just can't say Guatemala anymore. But that one factory that we started down there created an entire industry. There are now hundreds of people employed in carving and selling jade, mainly to tourists, but also for just works of art that are in museums. In fact, last year in October, there was a uh they they the jade factory that that I started that I was at had a an international competition for jade carving. And we had jade carving, they had jade carvers from all over the world, including uh Canada, uh almost all of Central America. They had dozens, several dozens of entries of absolutely fabulous, complex, beautifully executed pieces of jade, mainly Guatemalan jade, because that's where the jade is actually found. There's some in Costa Rica, not much. Um, but most of the jade is from Guatemala itself, the Motagua Valley. I can tell you another story about that one. But anyway, um they had an international competition. I was asked to be one of the five judges from around the world. Um, we judged them. We came up with uh very difficult, very difficult judging uh because of the high quality of the work um that that has developed uh basically since um oh I would say the mid-80s. From the mid-80s, there was only that one factory, the the factory that I that I ran in in Guatemala, in Antigua, Guatemala, and now it's uh all over the place. And we had this uh international competition, and they have they're having a repeat, the second annual, the second annual uh international competition for Guatemalan jade carving uh is uh next Friday, next week. Well, that's pretty cool. So I hope that answers your question. It has it's an industry that has absolutely flourished beautifully down there.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, well, I I think one of the reasons why I asked that is because uh I I've definitely been interested in the uh the uniqueness of the Mesoamerican uh culture and how it intrinsic uh goldsmithing, silversmithing, and um and uh jade carving, well stone carving in general, but specifically jade uh was to uh the culture and royalty and um uh you know worship and things like that. And so um I I've kind of tracked over the years, I mean, I don't know, I'm like a National Geographics kid. Uh so it's always been interesting to me uh to see uh some of these works unearthed and to uh look at the uh the way that they express their culture through the carvings, and Jade just seems to be um one of those primaries, right? And so I mean it's it's interesting to me. Like, did did the like I know that there are works that you have done that have that have incorporated jade as uh scale material and whatnot, uh, but did the did the overarching concepts of of jade carving uh when you were there influence uh your later works and the way that you uh think of lines and polish and things like that? I mean, what kind of how does that how did that knowledge translate to what you were doing in in knives early on?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Well, um that's an interesting question, um, and I'm not really sure how to answer it. Um when I was at the jade factory, still working there as a general manager, and I had started making knives, I was still making only six blades, and I made a couple of knives kind of on uh what would you call it, maybe Persian pattern, Middle Eastern type of pattern, um with jade handles, and um how shall I continue this? I made a series of different kinds and so forth, uh black, especially black jade, black jade, which is found in Guatemala and very, very few uh places other than Guatemala, of the quality that that's in Guatemala, the Guatemalan black jade, it's called chloromelanite. It's a it's a it's a true jade. It's actually, if you look at a very, very, very the edge of a very thin section with strong light behind it, you can see that it's actually a deep, deep spinach green. But if you look at a piece of it uh polished, it's jet black, and it takes a beautiful high polish. So I really fell in love with that. I made a couple of knife handles with that material, and I carved the handles or I I inlaid some gold into them, and it made kind of relatively fancy knives at the time, and um it it turned out um how shall I continue this? Um well I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you how how the whole thing, one of the things that turned out, you're asking me about Jade Handle knives. I had a guy in um in Miami who was a contract, electrical contractor. I'll just call him John. Um, and he started buying these knives, and I would I would send them up to him uh on Pan Am. I was Pan Am in those days, uh, from Guatemala to uh Miami, and he bought them. And I was selling them for a couple thousand dollars a piece, which was a lot of money in those days. This we're talking about uh 1981, 1982, something like that. He called me up one day and he said, Bob, um I've got a guy who wants you to make a set of three knives, a big one, a medium, and a small one. He wants them all to be in a fitted mahogany box. He wants the black jade on the handles to have silver rivets and to have kind of a kind of a similar shape so that looks like a theme, it looks like a set. I said, Okay, I can do that. So I started making this set, and about a week later he called me back and he said, make two of them. His brother wants one also. I said, okay. Um I said, these are gonna be kind of expensive. He said, uh, doesn't matter, just just make them. So I made the two sets. Um I called them up in Miami. I said, uh, they're all set to go. Uh do you want me to ship them up to you? He said, no, they want you, the boys want you to deliver them in Miami, and they'll send you an airplane ticket, and they want you to go to this hotel. Uh they'll have a car waiting for you at the airport, uh, and they'll take you to the hotel and they'll meet you there. I said, okay. So away I went up to Miami, carried them both. Those are the days when you could carry uh two sets of large, obviously dangerous-looking knives uh in your carry-on suitcase.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Which uh before the days of the TSA, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Before the days of the TSA, and some of the some of the young whippersnappers out there will be thinking, this guy's lying. He that can't be. Well, it was, believe me. Anyway, I arrive in Miami, sure enough, there's a car, uh, uniform uh driver with a little sign waiting for me. We get in the car, we go to this motel on the outskirts of Miami. Very nice, uh, clean, simple, painted pink, uh, flamingos on the lawn, you know, type of place. So I go into the room, uh, they said they'll the chauffeur said they'll be along shortly. So I set out the towel on a sideboard, and I put the sets up there, opened them up, and so forth. Pretty soon these two guys drive up in a limousine, they get out and they come into the room, and these were the two of the best-looking men I have ever seen in my entire life. They were gorgeous. Um, dressed in you know, Italian suits, beautiful handmade shoes, um, gold Rolexes, beautiful silk ties. They had jackets and ties, uh, yeah, they had the suits and uh beautiful silk ties and everything, and white shirts, perfectly quaffed hair and everything. And they just walked in and they shook hands and they started talking to me in Spanish. And I had been in Central America long enough. I started in the Peace Corps and everything where I could differentiate different different uh dialects of Spanish. And these guys were Colombian. I could tell instantly Colombian Spanish is pure, it's clean, it's well paced. Um, it's um it's just it's just beautiful to listen to. It's a very clear type of Spanish. So we're chatting away and they're talking everything, and uh finally the you know, the the formalities and the little chit-chat about the weather and how it was my trip and so forth are all past. And so we go over, they look at the knives, and they start giggling, and they love them, and they're picking them up and they're playing with them, and they're saying, you know, my set is better than your set. No, my set is handsomer, and it's they're exactly the same, you know, the materials and everything. But um, they're kibbutzing with each other and so forth. So they, you know, they look at me and say, Thank you very much. They pack the sets up, put them under their arms, and away they go. Walk out. And the chauffeur comes back. I had I had told John, I said, these are gonna be $3,500 a set, it could be $7,000. He said, okay. So they put the sets under their arms the way they were, they go out to the limousine, the chauffeur comes in and hands me a paper bag full of hundred dollar bills. And he said, you know, I wasn't sure if these guys were gonna bump me off and you know, walk out and not do, you know, I I had no idea what was going on. But the chauffeur came back, big smile on his face, he said, they're very, very happy with your work. I said, Okay, thank you very much. And I gave me the paper bag full of hundred dollar bills, and away they went. And who were they? Well, it turns out I found out later on that they were the Ochoa brothers. And they they um they ran the uh the uh I think it was the uh Kali cartel in Colombia. Wow. Um many years, many years later, the knives surfaced, and um I knew the guy who got them. There were a lot of stories about how they surfaced, but anyway, they surfaced. And I know that uh one set is in um Scottsdale, Arizona, with a friend of mine, and another is owned by Axel Rose from Guns N' Roses, and that's where those two sets wound up.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

That is a story for sure. Oh man. Yeah, man, like I think about stories like that, and uh, you know, it's a just for just a different time uh to be alive. Uh I mean I would say that like for me, I don't know if somebody told me uh that I would meet be meeting somebody in a like they pay for my my ticket and I'd be picked up somewhere and I'd be at an undisclosed hotel and everything. Like maybe my antennas would have gone up a little bit. But yeah, I you know it's interesting. Like I um in uh you know, doing apprenticeship in jewelry and being in the jewelry industry, there's actually a lot of things uh in American jewelry, especially in the South uh here, that kind of mimic that where the the you know the cocaine market and the um the vast amounts of money from the early you know stock market uh playing and everything just produced an exceptional amount of wealth. Uh and in you know gold jewelry and custom jewelry and stuff, it seemed to be very similar. We just have these people that pop up with a lot of money, you don't really ask a lot of questions about their line of work, and um they just you know they get all sorts of gaudy stuff, you know, Cuban, Cuban chain links, you know, diamond encrusted things, pavets, all sorts of stuff like that. And you know, some stuff that's costing you know 10, 10, 20, 30,000 in the 80s, and um, and you you find out later that maybe they were uh uh uh you know a little unscrupulous, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

Yeah, it could have been.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Yeah, well, um so eventually you moved to Santa Fe, right? And then uh started uh my understanding um is started making folding knives uh in Santa Fe, is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Yeah, it was uh a couple of years after I moved to Santa Fe. Uh we moved up there in '84. And I guess I started making folding knives uh probably about oh maybe two and a half, maybe three years later, after that. Um I got interested in full, I had always been interested in folders, but could never really get there. There were some things that bothered me about about the uh the genre of folding knives at the time. One of them was um that everything at that time, all of the knives uh being made by factories as well as uh custom knife makers, and there were some beautiful, beautiful knives being made, don't get me wrong, um were pretty much all riveted together. So that there was always pretty much always a bolster and then some handle material, and the bolster had a rivet through it that had to be uh hammered to. Just the right tension to hold the blade without rocking, but not too much tension that would prevent the blade from opening and so forth. And that goes for you know both the uh friction folders and the lockbacks and the uh you know all the different whatever, whatever, whatever locking system, if there was a locking system, um, they're all basically and then just the same type of riveted type of bolster that then had to be polished. And once you had it together, it was together, and that was pretty much it. Um and I had always wanted to figure out how to make a knife that I could take apart, maybe change the blade, change different parts, uh, adjust it, uh, because I never trusted myself to make the perfect finished knife in one shot. And you never know if it's gonna be perfectly all right with a with a hammered, riveted pivot until you actually hammer and rivet the pivot. You never know if it's really gonna be, you know, perfect. Anyway, there was that, and um most of the knives that were being made were kind of uh gentleman's pocket jewelry, usually some pretty beautiful stuff. Um, and I wasn't too keen on the type of locking mechanism for, and there were a couple of other things. I had always wanted to have a knife, a pocket knife, that I could open with one hand. And in those days, there weren't any. There weren't any at all. Um, and I even tried uh with a buck 110 that I used to carry in Guatemala, I tried um uh putting things on the on the back of the blade or checkering the the blade with a with a little diamond wheel to give grip that I could try to open the blade and so forth, but I could never get that done. Um Spiderco came out with the one-handed opening blade, which I believe was the app which I believe was pretty much close to the first. Um there were some people who were doing thumb studs on their blades, but not too many. Um and I don't think there were very many at all of the factory uh commercial types of knives being made. Almost everything had to be open with two hands, and that bothered me a lot. Because uh, you know, you whatever you're whatever you're gonna be cutting, you're usually holding in one hand. And if you got to get your knife out and put it, put that thing down, and then open your knife, and then you know, cut whatever you're cutting and then put it down again, and close the knife and put it back in your pocket. You know, it just seemed to me um too much uh too much motion and and not enough convenience. So I really wanted something that could open with one hand. And um I never really got into doing the lockback, the kind of uh lock where there's a lug on a spring at the back of the knife, and that lug snaps into a um slot at the top of the blade, so that when the blade is open, that lug snaps down and uh holds the blade in position until you press the back end of the spring and lift the lug up out of the slot. Um and it just seemed to me that there was a lot of machining and really fine file work and fitting that I really never got into very much. I never understood it, I never got excited by it. But then I saw that um there was a new type of lock that came out called the liner lock, and there was only one guy making them, and that was uh Michael Walker. And lo and behold, Michael Walker lived in Taos, which was about two hours, maybe two and a half hours, about two hours from my house. And I thought to myself, you know, I saw one of his I knew Michael, I saw one of these knives, a couple of these knives. Uh, he was doing beautiful, beautiful work. Um his early ones weren't particularly adorned. I believe they were stainless steel, but then he started using titanium. And I thought, wow, space age material, titanium. Yes, that's the way to go. Totally corrosion resistant, lightweight, extremely strong. Um, and then I saw that um Michael was making engraved titanium knives that were anodized. They had um engravings that were painted. It looked like they were painted, they looked like paintings. And I said, how the hell is he doing that? Well, it turned out he wasn't doing it. His wife, Patricia, was doing it. And um I was fascinated with the with the system, with the techniques. The knives were beautiful. So I called him up and I said, Um can I come up and see how you do these? Would you are you willing to to show me how these things uh are made? You know, what what what's the is there a secret? Is there some special way of doing it? He said, No, no secret. Come on up. He said, come on up, spend a day here. So I went. He had um a very neat shop, beautiful equipment, not a whole lot of very sophisticated equipment, but some. And at that time, this is 1980, what am I saying? Uh 87, probably, somewhere around there. Um, he had made his own plunge EVM machine, and he was doing inlays of gold and silver into steel and titanium and making Damascus blades, and he was just doing all sorts of super high-tech stuff that I'd never seen before. Nobody else was doing. And he showed me how to make the liner lock, he showed me how to use titanium, uh, warned me um that if I have an exhaust system under my grinder, make sure it's steel and not uh plastic or cardboard or anything because of the sparks and titanium flares and burns uh tremendously. Uh, told me how he almost burned his shop down once, learning how uh dangerous titanium can be. Anyway, we got along really well. Um I had I had seen his work and uh got to know him and Patricia going to a couple of uh shows in Munich, Germany, where I had been invited to show my knives there. Uh, they were all combat knives, all fixed blades combats. Um no uh folders at that time. So that's how I actually got to know Michael. We'd fly over sometime, we'd we'd meet on the airplane because we were both flying out of uh Albuquerque. And um then, you know, when he invited me up there, it was uh, you know, two old friends that we had, you know, really chatted with and gotten to know each other fairly well. So that's when I started making um folding knives, and they were just plain titanium and no adornments, uh no bolsters, uh no handle materials. So I was the second custom knife maker to be making knives out of titanium, and the second one to use the liner lock. And uh it worked out very well because with the liner lock, you don't have a backspring applying force continually on the back of the blade. The back spring of a of a uh of a lockback is constantly pressing pressing down. So it's it's sometimes difficult to open with one hand. But with a liner lock, you don't have that. The the force of the spring only comes into action once the blade is actually in the open position, then the spring snaps into place, otherwise, it's uh applying uh only a marginal force against the side of the blade rather than the top edge of the blade. So um I was able to solve that problem uh in my mind by having a uh liner lock and also a really tough, um usable, convenient, slim knife. Um and I borrowed um Sal Glesser's pocket clips. Sal Glesser also invented uh the pocket clip from Spider-Co. Spider-Co Pilot clip. In fact, the very first knives that I made, I used Spider-Co's pilot uh pocket clips with his permission. Um put them on. They had three screws at the time. So the very, very early knives that I made with clips that have three screws were among the very first of my uh folding knives. And I had the model number one, which was a kind of a utility knife, model number two, which was a mariner's knife, had a sheep's foot blade, and model number three, which was a combat knife, uh four-inch blade, bigger than the other two. And that's where I pretty much developed um the uh finger guard down at the at the bottom of the knife, and a matching thumb ramp up at the top, so that when the blade was opened, you had a little bit of a guard up at the top and a bit of a finger protection down at the bottom. And when the blade was closed, that ramp up at the top, the serrated ramp that acted as a uh as a thumb guard, uh mated with the uh with the finger guard down at the bottom. And that was the model number three, which eventually came to be known as the ATCF, the advanced technology combat soldier. And I'm still doing those today. I just can't I can't get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

Well, that's interesting. Um, you know, going back to a statement you made about uh the uh the finality of of peeding things together or riveting them together and you not being able to modify things. I think like what what a progressive jump forward in the lighter lock mechanism of being able to use uh screws and and control the the tension and some of the behavior of the knife uh simply by you know tuning the the timing on the screws versus having to uh do all of these like uh things like slacking blades and whatnot that you have to if it's all peened together. It's like you know, one of those um conundrums that a good slip joint maker has to constantly be uh aware of when they're making them, otherwise, uh you can you can botch the action on a really well-made blade pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_02 57:05

Yeah. You know, basically, um, basically, I'm a I'm a lazy, impatient person. I don't I get bored quickly, I don't have any patience. I've got to be able to um adjust things as I go along. I don't have the patience for taking something apart once I put it together and got it working, um, or even trying to figure out how to make it work better. I just don't have the patience to do that. I get bored really easily. Just talk to my dental hygienist. I'm constantly saying, are we done yet? Are we finished?

SPEAKER_00 57:48

Yeah, well, it's it's it's kind of interesting to me because I think that that that kind of a self-assessment is uh in some ways diametrically opposed to carving jade. I mean, it's a not an easy material to carve. I mean, you have to really put some thought and energy into it. Do you do you think that jade is like a self-regulating material where it's just it's intrinsically hard, so you kind of have to figure out ways to get it to respond, and that's one of the reasons why it's um engaging to you constantly?

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Yeah, you're you're there there are different kinds of jade, different grades of jade, um, and different ways of of attacking the grinding and the polishing. Um polishing is almost always done in in numerous steps. It's not it's not you don't grind and then boom polish in one step. It's it's a series of steps that go along with finer and finer abrasives. But the way you use those abrasives and the the backing for the those abrasives will vary depending on the type of jade. Like there are there are basically there are basically three types of jade, two which are very well known. There's the nephrite and jade. Both of them are true jades. They're both jades, although they're completely mineralogically speaking, they're different materials. Um, but they're both considered jade in the world of jewelry and um craftsmanship. And the third one is the one I mentioned before, black jade, chloromelanite. Um, it's it falls closely into the jadeite character category of uh mineralogically speaking. But anyway, um to your question or your statement, yes, you have to you you pretty much have to adjust what you're doing depending on how the jade is reacting to your that individual step that you're on. You may be on step three with a certain type of abrasive, um a certain grit with a certain backing with one type of jade, but it may not work on another type of jade, even at the same stage. So you really um it's a it's a constant challenge to understand what that piece of material wants from you in order to give you the kind of polish that you're looking for, kind of finish that you really want. And it um it varies. Um in knowing the in knowing the materials, for example, nephrite, you can never get a high polish off of nephrite. Nephrite will always be a waxy or a soapy type of visual image. It's not going to be a high brilliant reflective polish. Whereas jadite, um, which we had in Guatemala in abundance, uh jadite is is is the main type of jade that you find in Guatemala. Um it'll give you a brilliant high shine. In fact, I used to I used to show my uh my jade carvers, I teach them, that the jet the shine, the the the the finished polish that we're looking for is when you would hold a piece of jade up to a light bulb and you could read the wattage of the light bulb in the reflection on the jade. Look using the jade as a mirror to look at the light bulb. If you you could read the wattage, then you had the kind of polish that we were looking for, which you'd never get with nephrite.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty fascinating. Lapidary in general is something that I think uh is is fascinating in and of itself. Um I've uh I've often thought about pursuing my boyhood passion. Like I grew up on like rocks and gem magazines and and things like that as well. And so I always wanted to be an aspiring rock hound and prospector and stuff, and I've thought about you know um just biting the bullet and getting the equipment that I need to um to try to play in that lapidary space. But there are some there are some components of like my shop's never big enough to accommodate all the stuff that I want to do, and so I I really haven't, but um uh talking about it more kind of like just reinvigorates that it's it's it's it's really fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

Yeah. Well, it's it's um one of the things you need to learn is about diamonds. You gotta learn how to work with diamonds. Um my favorite diamonds are crushed powder. The uh any kind of diamond abrasive fascinates me. I have my shop is filled with not only for the lapidary, but also um, you know, for for the carving of the jade and so forth. But I found that um relating this to knife making just a little bit, um, working with Magna Cut. Magna Cut is the is the new steel. I guess it's the newest steel, it's kind of a fad, but it really is a magnificent steel in terms of the you from the user's point of view. From the knife maker's point of view, it's a pain in the butt. It um it initially grinds very nicely, but finishing is really difficult. Getting those scratches out of the grinds are very difficult. And I found that in order to do that fairly efficiently without driving myself crazy, because as I said, I'm bored very easily and I don't have very much patience. Um, I'm now using diamond belts to polish and clean up the scratches off of uh my magna-cut blades. So that's that's one thing you're gonna have to learn about is uh working with diamond. Uh you mentioned you mentioned rock hound. Rockhound, you know, I think of the rock hound with a with a pick in his hand, you know, running out to the desert, picking up geodes and picking up stones and hitting them with the hammer and finding out what's inside. Um when we were in Guatemala, uh before I moved up, I was doing the I was managing the jade factory. I took a trip with my with uh my wife uh and my father, who was visiting, out to the Motagua Valley where we knew some of the jade had come from that could come down off the mountains and fell across the highway um into the Motagua River in eastern Guatemala. And um we were tramping around there looking around, and I started to see these little pieces of jade on the surface of the ground after a rainstorm, and they had been worked. And I don't know if I can explain this very easily, but but a lot of the pieces, some of the pieces that I found. Were pieces that had mystified archaeologists for decades. And basically the question was: how did the Maya drill holes in their beads so that they could string these beads around their necks and make uh ornaments out of them? Almost all of the jade had holes drilled in them. And the holes were always conical. They were broad at the beginning or at the surface, and then as it entered the material, they got smaller and smaller and smaller. And people really couldn't figure out how this was done. And we figured it out. We worked out the technique because the pieces that I found on the ground were the central cores from those holes. Because they didn't drill the holes with a solid piece of anything. They drilled the holes with hollow tubes, much like we do today. We use what we it's called a core drill. It's basically a tube with diamond embedded around the edge, so that when you drill through, you actually come out with a hole in the piece you're working on and a core which comes out of the drill. You take that out of the out of the tube. So you actually have a core of the same material. They use core drills to drill through the ice and pull out these long cores of uh of ice so they could study the ice and the and the atmosphere over decades and centuries and hundreds of centuries by looking at the sort of the length of the of the core that they pull out. But anyway, the Maya didn't have diamond and they didn't have metal of any kind except for some gold and probably some native copper. But they used things like bird bones and bamboo reeds to drill. And the way they did that was by using a slurry of powdered abrasive, usually probably garnet, because there was garnet in Guatemala, and garnet is harder than jade. They'd crush that up and mix it with either lard or some sort of animal fat or maybe even water and make a slurry that is like a paste, and holding the bamboo or the bird bone with a holder up at the top, much like a fire starter, they would wrap a cord around it with a bow, like a bowstring. You've probably seen uh Boy Scouts or somebody using this type of uh bow to start a fire, running running bow back and forth, turns the uh the shaft, some sort of a tube or a piece of wood onto another block of wood. They have another piece that they hold it up at the top as a bearing, and they they run this twisted uh bowstring back and forth, and it turns the rod to either start a fire or turns the tube to drill the hole. Did that sound fairly clear? Was that um understandable?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I mean it's uh that's ingenious because you know, okay, I I've thought a lot about how they would uh make bead work, and you know, like uh people refer to them as gauged ears now, but the uh you know the Mayans had a a a practice of you know expanding their ears and putting in ear spools, uh, and and I've seen examples of ear spools made out of jade. And I mean you have to have an inner diameter and an outer diameter. I mean, it's all quite fascinating how they actually did that or added um added the uh circular structures to some of their masks or other things, and to think about them like sitting and using a bow drill and uh an abrasive slurry to do all that stuff is like uh very very innovative for the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:08

Yeah. Well, the the pieces that that we found that helped solve the problem, helped solve the the the question of how they actually drilled. Remember the the I said the holes were conical, they're bigger on the surface and then diminished in size as they went into the material. Okay, well, the pieces that we found were some of the cores, and they were fairly small, maybe um oh, what can I about the maybe the size of a pencil in thickness, and some of the cores that we actually found, because this was garbage, this was extraneous material, this wasn't what they were looking for. They were looking for a hole in the larger piece, and the pieces that we found were the core, and the cores were icona, they were cones, they were thinner at one end, kind of like a pencil point, although not quite sharp, like a broken off pencil tip, and then they would be bigger at the other end, so that if you they would fit perfectly into a conical hole. And the question was, how come the hole was conical? Did they use a conical drill? And I realized no, they didn't use a conical drill, the drill became a cone as they were drilling because the abrasive would stick into the bird bone or stick into the bamboo tube and act almost like sandpaper, like it was stuck there, but at the same time that it was abrading and wearing away the material, the jade, as it plunged into the piece that they were drilling, it also wore out the tube, so it actually sharpened the ends of the tube. So you had a reverse cone inside of the core and a positive cone on the structure of the piece that was being drilled. That tube no longer had parallel sides, it sharpened towards the edge.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:53

Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, and naturally it naturally chamfered it because of the abrasive action. Um and I'm sure pressure too. Um, that's that's uh incredibly fascinating to me. Um I'm uh I I guess probably uh my uh a follow-up question to that is um you know you mentioned uh I'm not I've I saw that you uh grew up in Brooklyn and uh you went to college and everything. Like, where did the fascination with with the mechanical world and problem solving originate for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Well, um I guess it was the original I guess the genesis of that was really uh my father. Um my father was a photographer, and he also loved to make things like models. We'd make models together. Um he got me interested in balsa wood models, and I would I used to buy, you know, when I was uh six, seven, eight, nine years old, I would buy uh strips of balsa wood at the hobby stores and make little World War I airplanes and stuff like that, little tanks and things, gluing them together. Um sometimes painting them, not always. So making things like that um really came from my father, and then we moved in when I was 13, we moved into a into a house that he bought, uh really, really old, decrepit uh Victorian, literally Victorian house in the middle of Brooklyn in Bensonhurst that had been built uh before the turn of the century. Uh required an enormous amount of work. Enormous. Uh, we and he taught me so much. I was 13 years old, and over the next couple of years, uh, we we learned together, and he taught me uh uh construction and cement work and bricklaying and um tearing down walls and electrical work. We did our own electrical work in there. Uh don't tell anybody that it was probably all out of code. Um and we did some plumbing. We, you know, all these uh because we didn't have any money. We were you know pretty uh threadbare at the time. And um, yeah, I learned about uh uh painting and wallpapering and uh doing wallboard. We built, we took down some walls, uh built some walls, uh, did a lot of concrete work outside on the driveway and so forth. And um I really got into working with my hands and making things, and and uh I I really, really loved it. Uh I never knew what I was gonna be when I grew up. Um I'm I'm still kind of wrestling with that question, but um in those days uh it was it was you know just it was just fun fun to work with my hands and make things, and then I went to high school, Stuyvesant High School in New York. And um in my junior year, I decided to apply for a senior year-long class of telescope making, and in that class we had a teacher who was tremendously instrumental in my life, is Howard Nader. He had been in industry and he became a teacher, and he could do anything, he knew everything about mechanical work, and in the telescope making class, we made everything ourselves. We we we actually we bought the six-inch tube, and each each student made his own telescope. We didn't make just one telescope. There were like, I don't know, 15 of us in the class. We made 15 telescopes. Um we ground the mirrors by hand. That's where I learned how to use abrasives and polish and different kinds of abrasives and different backings for abrasives. Um learned a great deal, which led to my knowledge of lapidary. Um, we made all of the frames, the uh cradle. We did uh aluminum casting to make a cradle. We went in the wood shop and made the uh legs for the tripod. We we did welding and soldering, we made our own screws, we made our own lenses out of uh window glass. We learned how to grind the lenses, shape them. We made our own eyepieces, threading them on the outside and the inside on the lathe. We learned how to use a lathe. Um we learned about optics, how to how to adjust the uh the telescope and and find the focal points and so forth. It was an amazing, amazing class that taught me so many things that I'm still using today in knife making. Um I cast gold in in rods and sheets to use on my knives, and I cast silver also. Um, any kind of soldering that I have to do, uh, drilling and tapping. We learned how to use taps and drills and dies to make threads. Um, all of those things we learned in that class. It was a year-long class, not just a semester, two semesters. And I think that was what really got me into working with my hands on a professional basis. And at the end of the year, Howard Matter told me that he had submitted my name for a full scholarship to New York University for industrial arts education, and there were four full scholarships given out every year for industrial arts education from an organization called the Hebrew Technical Institute. And Hebrew Tech was a school that was started in the 30s to train young men in the mechanical arts, and they had their own building, it was called the Barney Building. Anybody who knows New York at all, it was just off Astor Place, down in the village, uh, two blocks from McSorley's old alehouse, if anybody remembers that, um, and around the corner from Cooper Union. And the uh Hebrew tech closed down in I believe the um 70s, the late 70s. No, I don't remember exactly when they closed down, but at that time that I went to school, which would have been um 66, is when I graduated from NYU. So I got there at 62. Um, Hebrew Tech was still going as a as a as an organization, but no longer running the Barney building. They had sold the Barney building with all of its equipment, and it was full of shops. And I'll tell you about the shops. They sold all of the shops and the building to New York University for one dollar a year, and the right to have four full scholarships, including uh books and tuition to the uh to the school for industrial arts education. And I received one of those scholarships. So I went to NYU for four years, um, had the run of the place. It was just an absolutely magnificent time. But the building itself had the most advanced, at the time, machine shop. Remember, there was no CNC in those days. We didn't have uh we did have milling machine, but not automatic equipment. It was uh computers were you know still a thing in the future. Um we had an incredibly large and beautifully equipped uh wood shop, ceramics, weaving. We took uh a semester of textiles, uh electrical shop, printing. We did uh letterpress printing and wrote a reviewer. We did um we learned about inks and oh, just all sorts of um the printing techniques, but the machine shop was my favorite, and that that took up uh basically an entire floor, and I had my own key. By the time I was a senior, I had my own key to the machine shop. I could go in there and work anytime. We did all sorts of projects like toys for tots. We made toys around Christmas time, we made um little gifts for when we had an open house, we would make uh keychains stamped or um injection mold. We made our own injection molding machines for plastics. Uh, and it was uh it was a very um complete shop, and I learned tremendous, tremendous um I gained tremendous knowledge of all of the mechanical arts in that building at that time. Um and I think that answers your question probably a lot more than you were even looking to get an answer for.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:48

No, that's hey, that's the point of this thing, right? I'm I'm I'm I'm learning about you in a way that I just don't uh you know, I don't get to read about. So I mean, uh that's something that's fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:59

Um well let me let me let me give one little coda to this whole thing. That years later, I was wrestling with the time as to when the Hebrew tech closed down. I couldn't quite remember. But anyway, it was um it was sometime in the late 70s. But anyway, I was at a knife show in New York, so it would have been in probably the early to mid-80s, and a fella comes up to me and he says, I understand you went to NYU and you were in the Barney building. I said, Yes, I was. He said, Well, um, he says, I'm I do some work at the Barney building on uh computers. I'm a computer um professor. I said, I he said, uh, would you would you be interested in going take a look, see at the Barney building now and see what it's uh what we're doing there? And I said, Oh yeah, I'd love to. So we went over there after the knife show and he took me around and we went up to the third floor where the machine shop was. And I told him, I said, you know, I used to have uh a key to this door, I could get in here anytime and do whatever I wanted. I said I really enjoyed the machinery, and he had this funny look on his face. And when up there, I looked through the window of the door, and it had been turned into a ballet studio, and there was nothing there but a ballet rail and mirrors and a polished floor. And that was one of the few times I cried, and that was the future. A ballet studio from the most beautiful machine shop you'd ever want to see.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:46

That's that's rad. Um, rad and sad at the same time, too. I mean, uh, I guess it's this the the circle or cyclical nature of life is where one thing uh one thing uh is disintegrated, another thing of beauty can emerge from it, uh, the same way as like flowers coming from a dead sequoia. Um but uh um one thing uh I've thought about in the uh the lore or history of you is that uh your wife has done an incredibly good job of kind of peppering in uh points in time in in your life and history and whatnot into social media. Uh and uh um I'm yeah I know that you talked a little bit about your your father and being a photographer and whatnot, and I saw this uh um picture where you were 10 years old and had your bicycle that your uncle bought you. Um but I'm I'm also interested, like um I I saw a picture of your mother and I and uh some of your passport photos from early on, and uh I it it appears to me at least that you favored her in a lot of ways. Uh, what was your relationship? like uh with your mom versus uh the this you know um project oriented DIY uh um influence that you had from your father oh i i love my mother she was um she was both my mother and my father were were gentle kind and loving people and i never got anything but but love and hugs from both of them um i warmly remember um my mother especially on a on a saturday we would listen to uh the texaco uh opera from the uh metropolitan opera it was brought to you by texaco on saturday afternoon um presented by Milton Cross and he would give the basic outline of each act of the opera and then we'd listen to the music and my mother often would sing along and I remember her singing Kejalida Manina from uh La Bohem and uh she was always singing she was always humming she was a she was a a truly happy person um never learned how to drive but that didn't bother her we lived in Brooklyn buses and trains and stuff um I remember shopping with her um and she um she basically taught me how to read when I was uh probably three years old maybe even before that it was she would always read to me uh my father would read to me occasionally but not very often it was my mother who generally did the reading um and she would sing to me um it just uh had a wonderful related and she was a great cook and actually so was my father my father was a pretty good cook too um one little side note of my father is that he he only had one eye he lost his right eye um firecracker accident when he was 11 so um oddly enough he became a photographer and a really good one and uh not only that but when he was in the army um he he joined the Coast Artillery and he one of his jobs was uh an artillery spotter for the uh 16 inch railway guns in Seattle Washington at Puget Sound with one eye so you you go that was world war two he was in the army in 1942 I think it was yeah um so anyway um but my relationship with my mother and my father was was really wonderful i i i had a great childhood you know um we lived i was raised with seven cousins in the same house we i don't know if you're interested in this at all but it was it was uh I'm one of eight children so like uh I'm I'm interested in your take on what it's like growing up with almost siblings all together in one space we were we were in the same house I had uh one brother younger brother but there but but seven cousins we were basically four families living in the same house in Bayridge Brooklyn it was an old Dutch house and the only way any of us uh any of the the families could afford it was that everybody chipped in to pay the mortgage pay the rent in the month every month my aunt rose and uncle Tony actually owned the house and my mother and father and I and my brother we lived in the attic in one room which was half of the attic from the from the the middle of the attic to the front where we had two windows in the front and one window on the side and we lived in that one room uh till I was 13 years old and it was I guess I guess we were poor um but we never knew it or I never knew it um you know we never had very much uh we always had spaghetti and meatballs on Thursday and Sunday and Mrs.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:52

Paul's fish sticks on Friday um you know just little things like that uh and uh you know I grew up um learning a whole bunch of things we didn't have a television until I was oh probably 12 years old um used to go downstairs to my Aunt Rose's and all the cousins would gather down there with there'd be eight of us all together uh lying on the floor with our heads and our on our uh chins on our hands watching uh oh um howdy duty or flashgordon on the Saturday morning something like that and uh that was pretty much entertainment you know that was or you'd you know be outside um we never stayed in the house we were always outside I had my bicycle that you you mentioned that my Uncle Dominic gave me um and you know rode around all over Brooklyn I would take the in those days uh there were two ferries to Staten Island there's the the one that exists now which is from Manhattan to Staten Island but there was a Brooklyn ferry smaller from um the piers in in Brooklyn over to Staten Island and it basically ran where the Verizano Narrows bridge is now that was basically the route of the ferry and when the bridge went up the ferry disappeared but I used to ride my bicycles down there we weren't too far from the water and uh I'd get on the ferry it was five cents and go out to uh Staten Island ride around Staten Island and maybe have a Coke or something then in the afternoon get back on the ferry and come over to Brooklyn and go home.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:51

When the street lights came on you came home and that was it or we played stick ball in the street uh or have our you know skates that you the clip on skates that would clip onto your shoes and you had a key had to have a key to tighten the the clip over over your shoes um so we could skate and we had you know it was an asphall street so we could do that not on the sidewalk there were too many bumps on the sidewalk and um you know it was just uh growing up in the 50s it was uh a really nice time it was I had a I had a good childhood yeah that's uh it's interesting to me because um I well I grew up in in a really weird way uh because we were uh country folk from the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania uh you know many generations of living in Pennsylvania New Jersey and New York um and um there was the thing that I've I've always uh I guess acknowledged about being in an area where technology is hard to get into because of the locale is that it felt like growing up in uh the you know the 80s and 90s but really growing up sometimes in in some ways in the 50s and 60s. You know I I still remember having a black and white TV um my grandparents were both uh my grandfathers were both in World War II my grandmother didn't drive uh one of them you know there's uh there's a lot of parallels that I see and one thing that I always really appreciated was like the um I don't know like the popular mechanics like the um the Boy Scouts the erector sets the things that it was like you know what what uh what exists out there for young boys to do to keep them busy and using their minds and whatnot and in a lot of ways like you're very quintessentially of that era because this you have this mind for exploring and um you know thinking about mechanics and thinking about function and thinking about um problem solving and whatnot. And all that's just a really interesting how that bubbles up from a you know very humble beginnings um and and from your childhood because I mean that is by all accounts uh even in that time uh is a very humble and you know uh poor upbringing as it were um and it's really fascinating to me to see where you have come from in you know your time on this planet and and how uh I mean legendary uh really in the knife making world uh uh as far as anybody um uh knows right um I'm interested I guess in some ways um what what that was the driving force of other than I mean we talked about liner locks and and the you know new mechanisms and things like that and how it solves some problems um for you intrinsically right um but you know there's other things like using uh G10 uh you know being uh you know promoting these early early materials in your career um that are now just like mainstays as far as younger knife makers like myself like what what was kind of the um the thought process behind adopting uh some of these uh you know materials and using them regularly for you um well I've always I've always been interested in materials and different kinds of materials and um I grew up with kind of like the I'd this the space age and I kind of grew up together um not that I had any part in it but back in the in the in the early 50s um I you know I remember I remember I used to cut out articles from uh different magazines and things.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:13

I remember when uh I remember when Chuck Yeager broke the speeds uh the the the uh the the the the sound barrier um and you know cutting that out and putting it into a a scrapbook that I had and you know really fascinated with aliens and spaceships and drawing designing spaceships from the inside you know and with the oxidizer tank and the and the the fuel tank and the pumps and and oh you know all of these things I would look at different different books and things when I was oh you know seven eight nine years old and um I remember very very clearly that day in October 1957 when uh Sputnik was launched and I remember where I was and I remember what we were doing I was in the band class in junior high school and uh we got word that the first satellite was launched by the Russians and I guess that was kind of like the dawn of the space age and um I would have been I don't know um 14 years old 15 years old to 13 where I don't even know that you know so kind of grew up with space and fascinated with the materials you know so when I hear when I heard about titanium from Michael Walker you know I jumped on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:51

When I heard about uh carbon fiber I jumped on it you know this was you know fabulous materials and um I was at a eugene show eugene oregon and there was uh knife maker there named Kevin McClung and he was making at that show I think it was the first show that he that he brought some knives that were all G10 contact completely G10 the blade they had just one big piece of of I don't know a quarter inch G10 that he had ground and carved into uh you know with the handle and the blade and the whole thing um and he called it the frequent flyer it was supposed to be a knife that was undetectable by a magnetometer and I saw this material it was black and I said I said boy that'd be an interesting material to put on a on a folder handle or to even make a handle out of I said is it really tough that it's strong he said yes it's a really strong material it's a fiberglass basically um but really compressed and really solid I said oh good I said uh where can I get it and he said well that's uh proprietary he said we're not we're not really advertising that I said well can I buy some from you he said okay so I I paid him I don't know what and he sent me a piece that was what we call now natural it's called natural um I think Jance is selling it as uh as jade green or something but it was a it was a pretty transparent translucent light green I thought pretty ugly I didn't like it at all I didn't think it was very attractive I really wanted that black stuff that he had but uh the box that he had sent that to me in that green piece of uh G10 was apparently the same box uh that the company where he bought his black G10 from had sent that material to him so their return address was still on the box and it was a it was a uh I can't remember what it was it was we're talking you know way back 88 89 maybe it was a plastics company someplace in Washington DC or anyway anyway Washington state anyway I called them up and they said yeah we've got g10 well you know how much do you want what thickness do you want so that's how I started using G10 and I was the I was the first one to put G10 on a folder and in fact the um the C15 Spider Co knife that I designed for Spiderco started off with a anodized aluminum handle but it also featured uh later on it was the first commercially made knife of any kind that used uh G10 on its handle as a handle so there we are that's uh that's pretty funny carbon fiber I loved it I'm I'm I'm using Ultim now which is this this uh kind of a kind of a recent space age plastic kind of an amber color but it also comes black also and I've got both of them uh I I like using that um uh the magna cut of course I I I talked to Larry Thomas at length about it um he asked me he was interviewing me for for I guess the new book he's writing or something he wanted some background but he said so how do you like that uh how do you like the magna cut I said well I hate it it uh you know like I I said I think I mentioned this before to you it grinds really well uh in the initial stage but it's really hard to get those scratches out I said I just drive myself crazy he said yeah I know but it's abrasion resistant and a really good knife steel and it really is it really yeah I just don't I don't think I have to like it yeah I uh I actually I had Laren Thomas on a while back after his book was uh published because I I ordered it and I think it was still in transit at the time that um I had him on the podcast but you know we talked a little bit about um the compilation of histories and things like that um that you you know you're featured in and uh you know him and Devin um is uh real smart people and real uh kind people too um oh yeah I I love Devin I've been I've been buying um uh um uh Damascus from Devin way way way way back when when I first met him I don't even know where it was it may have been at the guild show uh one of one of the early guild shows I can't remember but um I've always loved his material really uh really an innovator yeah um yeah I when I got into knives and I'd been making knives for a little while and then I had a a a buddy that I worked with whose dad had been a knife maker for 30 almost 40 years um at that time but then he uh he was getting out of it because he had pancreatic cancer previously um and managed to survive but then had some other uh cancers crop up and um one of the things that uh I did when I had bought his shop was uh uh inherited uh some Devin Thomas and Mike Norris Damascus and I I don't know that I have the gumption yet to use them uh not not that I you know I can't technically but I just look at them and those billets are um in in the sea of Damascus that you can buy now that sometimes are not um always the the best ground or whatever they really did a very um large service to present their Damascus uh fully ground and trimmed and everything and they just like they're they're beautiful in and of themselves just sitting there and I I I go out every once in a while look at them and just like man those are really crazy patterns and then to think of all the work that went into it too.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:48

So you know maybe well it's just calling you it's calling for you come and grind me come and make me into what I was originally meant to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:58

Yeah right well kind of on that note with uh you know in regards to Devin Thomas and everything um you know 20 2023 was your year for getting inducted into the Cutlery Hall of Fame so uh you know definitely congratulations on that thank you um and in really great company too um well you have Steve Schwarzer and Devin Thomas and you all got inducted in the same year that's uh incredible yes two old friends of mine yeah um from way way back yeah I mean I you know you're you're obviously in this group of just you know absolute knife legends like guys like me and people who listen to this podcast use you guys as uh examples for uh you know the way that they deconstruct the knife world and what it is that they want to do in it. Um but I also uh you know in perusing the social media um uh stuff and everything I've noticed that you've actually had quite a footprint inside of like Hollywood too like what um is that something that's just happened uh like by happenstance or is there like uh how like uh I saw you you you had uh some stuff from uh you know sent to Dennis Hopper and and things like that like what a what is that like um how how does how does that come to be is it just through word of mouth and whatnot or is there like a specific uh thing that springboard you and being uh like rub rubbing elbows with Hollywood um well I don't have that much experience with them but um it's Susie when we were in Albuquerque Susie uh worked in the movies she worked on both television and uh movie productions um movies were were b uh beginning to to to shift from Hollywood out to uh um Albuquerque to New Mexico for all sorts of reasons but um Susie got this

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

This worked as a costumer and she was very serious and she got to know a lot of the the directors and the people and she worked with all sorts of uh actors. She worked with uh Kevin Klein and Bruce Dern. Um and Dennis Dennis Hopper. Um she got she got very close to Dennis Hopper. He he was he was a conservative and he didn't want anybody to know about it. But um Susie is is Susie has kind of a she has a an i kind of classic vent to her uh personality and she told me that that when when they first started shooting uh a TV series called Crash with Dennis Hopper, they would have these uh different people um picking him up at the airport and taking him to the hotel and then taking him, driving him to the set and so forth, and they'd be they'd come on the on the the ear, the uh what do you call it, the uh you know, the headsets that they all had to wear, uh, you know, getting ready for uh production. Uh they'd hear somebody saying, uh Hopper is uh uh 15 minutes out from the airport, uh Hopper is five minutes away from set, uh Hopper is pulling into the into the into the parking lot, you know, and so forth. So Susie started calling him the bunny because he's the hopper, and she would say, Where is the bunny now? And the director would say, Who the hell is the bunny? Hopper, hopper is the bunny, and everybody started calling him the bunny because Susie called him, she has a nickname for everybody, she has a nickname for everybody, anyway. Dennis just absolutely loved that, so we had him it turns out that he was quite an artist himself, a photographic artist. He painted, he loved art, loved um collecting art, he had quite a collection, and he had several books that he um talked about, and and uh I think he wrote a book on on paintings and art and so forth. I can't remember exactly, but anyway, he and Susie just guys she was his costumer, and she would uh take care of him and and make sure that he had you know plenty of rest, and um he got you know the bathrobe that fitted him right if he was doing a scene with a bathrobe or something like that. And um they really got to know each other well, and he he really enjoyed being with Susie. So she would have him over the house, he would come over the house in Albuquerque, and he would hang out with us. And um he told her, he said, uh he told me actually, he said, You better hang on to her because uh she's gonna be my next ex-wife. I said over my dead body. And he told her, he said, you know, you shouldn't be in this business. He said, You've got a you've got a you've got great talent, you've got a wonderful house, you got a beautiful home, you got a great husband, uh, you people are so talented and you love each other so much and you're so together. He said, This type of business will ruin anybody, you know. And uh he said, look, I've had five wives. He says, I know it, I know what I'm talking about. But he would come over the house and and uh you know, we'd chat and talk, and he's just a really sweet, personable guy. We went up to his memorial, we saw him the last time he was in public up at Taos. Um and there were some others. Um from way, way back, even before I knew Susie, way back when I was in New York shows. Um David Crosby used to buy my knives, and he would he would come to the shows and he'd buy a knife and we'd go out to dinner or and you know, talk. And he just he just had um a great personality. We'd have a wonderful time together. He was always being testered by people. Can I have your autograph? Can you do this or that? I never ever asked anybody for an autograph, never asked anybody because I know how much of a hassle that can be, you know, they they just they just try to lead private lives. Um Peter Coyote bought a knife from me and he called me up and thanked me, and he liked it and enjoyed it so much. Um and um you know, there's so many, I can't even remember them. There was there was a number of them. Uh Stephen Stills uh got to know Susie pretty well because uh he has uh uh an autistic son. And Susie's son was autistic also, and she raised him and trained him and really helped him uh you know normalize and socialize in society. You know, she was she would communicate with um Stephen about his son and how to work with him and so forth, you know. We knew um Deepak Chopra. There's all I don't know, they just uh you know, you in this business you just get to know a bunch of people. You never um you never know um who's gonna be interested in knives. Um who was I can't remember who played the saint on the radio? I can't remember that. Um anyway, I'm running out of battery here. Okay. Um so yeah, it was just, you know, I wouldn't say rubbing elbows, but just getting to know some people and find out that they're you know, they're really nice people, just generally pretty human. Um yeah, I was one of the and I can't, you know, I I I'm so I'm so bad with names nowadays. I guess it's my age or something. Um one of the fellows that was in uh Band of Brothers, uh he you know, I I sat and talked with him for quite a while. He was in Crash. And uh we chatted about you know World War II and the Battle of the Bulge and you know what it was like doing that kind of production and stuff. I was always fascinated with movies. So that's about it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:05

Speaking of Band of Brothers, um my my wife and I every once in a while go through these um uh phases of watching old World War II uh movies and lots of documentaries and stuff. And I have to say, like I I remember my grandfather saying that uh when Band of Brothers came out, it was very hard, almost impossible for him to watch because uh of how realistic it felt to him. Um and so like you know, things like that, like production value on things and like authenticity. Uh Spielberg does a you know phenomenal job at. But um, I heard that him, if I remember correctly, they're going to be releasing it early next year, but it's uh it's uh the uh Army Air Corps um version uh with I think Tom Hanks and Spielberg. And so that'll be interesting to watch too.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:59

Yeah, yeah. Um I I saw the Pacific, uh, which was supposed to be the kind of like the uh the Pacific sequel to Band of Brothers, but I didn't I didn't uh I didn't like it as much as as Band of Brothers, maybe because I had I had read the book, um I knew about Stephen Ambrose, I had seen the um the museum, the D-Day Museum in um Louisiana, who is it, uh New Orleans. Um, you know, and I'm I'm really into more of the European war of history than I am the Pacific. But um they did a beautiful job, you know, and and so many so many people today just don't know, you know, what that generation went through. You know, with you know, my father, your grandfather, uh Susie's father. Susie's father was in the battle of the bulls, he was a tank commander.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:01

Um and um, you know, just the the kinds of things that they they live through. And of course they went through the depression, you know, the depression generation, they went into World War II. I mean, they they really they really had to put up with a lot and suffered a lot. You know. Um we just gotta really, you know, and you know, I just think about I I can't I can't help but kind of relate, you know, my machine shop into a ballet studio, you know, and thinking about the generation today. Now, fortunately, I know quite a few people who are in the in the military or in the police today who are, you know, just as dedicated and skillful as the people who were back then, maybe even more so because of their training.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:53

Yeah. Um, yeah, and uh thinking thinking about like the the difference between the European and uh Pacific theaters, um uh my both my grandfathers were in Europe and my wife's uh uh one grandfather was in Europe as a paratrooper, and the other was um in Okinawa in the Pacific Theater. Uh, but he died when she was very young. Uh so there wasn't a lot of uh a knowledge transfer there. Um but um, you know, in the there's they're just different, right? I mean, uh the all the things that I had been told about, you know, European theater um was I'm I'm not gonna say more genteel. Uh I don't think you can say that about war. Uh but the tactics for fighting in the Pacific theater were just so much different because of the island structures and you know, uh the Japanese and whatnot, and uh, you know, diff different dynamics and different cultures and whatnot. And you know, it's it's fascinating to me, but I definitely have always um uh gravitated more towards European theater too, because my uh my my great uncle was also in the Battle of the Bulge and he was part of the Lost Battalion. Um so really yeah, yeah. He actually wrote a book, yeah. He wrote a book in the uh in the 90s, and I actually have uh I have I have it. I didn't get it uh he made signed copies and whatnot, um, but I this one's not signed. Uh but it's his full accounting of uh being in the lost battalion and uh what got him you know into the war and whatnot, and it's always been fascinating just to read this little excerpt. Uh it was very difficult for him to write because uh he kind of stowed all that trauma away. And then when he started writing his book, and I think it was ninety through '94, and it was published in '95, um, it he started having flashbacks and whatnot. And it's the first time since the war that he had them. So yeah. Uh, but it was interesting too because um, you know, the uh lost battalion was the with the fighting uh fight in Texans, and then kind of like this weird uh this weird serendipity to me living in Texas and whatnot uh now too. It's kind of it's it's interesting uh to study those things and figure out how how many degrees to bacon you are from um uh the experiences of your you know parents and grandparents and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:16

Yeah, yeah. I yeah, I can understand that. Um it it is interesting historically to you know to look back on those things, to think about that separation and you know where we are today compared to then. Uh but uh speaking of interesting books, um do you do you know the book? Have you ever read the book or heard of it called Endurance?

SPEAKER_00 2:02:40

I have not read it. I have heard of it. Um Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:44

That was that was written by Susie's uncle, Uncle Bud. Um he endurance was about the uh this the uh shackleson expedition to the Antarctic and their their boat, their ship got caught in the ice, and they couldn't get out, and it took them, I think, four months. And shackleson saved all of his men. They they trekked, they lived on seal blubber for four months, and they they got on land, uh, they watched the ship uh get crushed. And in fact, they actually had a photographer uh along the expedition, and he had there were pictures of the ship being trapped in the ice and being crushed, and then pictures of them as they trekked along for months. Um they finally got saved. Uh but anyway, um Susie's uncle Bud was a merchant marine in World War II, and his ship got torpedoed and he was in the water badly burned, but he uh made it to an iceberg, and he got on the iceberg, and it was the iceberg that that uh basically saved him and kept him from uh suffering too much from his burns. And he was rescued, and he was so fascinated with uh survival in the Arctic and ice and what it can do and how bad it can be or how good it can be, that he tracked down in England the survivors of the endurance, the ones who were still alive. It was it the ship sank in 1914. So there were some men who were still alive at the end of towards the end of World War II, and he tracked them down and he interviewed them and he wrote this book called The Endurance. And um, they made several movies out of it. It was absolutely fascinating. I would like to admit, Uncle Bud.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:42

Yeah, that is uh that's pretty incredible. Um, I'm trying to look and see. I'll have to find the book. I'll find it later and I'll read it. But that's that's incredible to me. Uh well uh you know, I I uh was mostly homeschooled, uh, but when I uh when I was a little bit uh like I moved out of my parents' house when I was uh 17 and a half because they were going through some stuff and I was independent at that point. Um but uh one thing I I really appreciated was that when I was in high school for a little while, uh, and by a little while I just mean like a semester because I got sick of it and left, um that the teachers would um during like uh uh Veterans Day or whatever, around around that time, would bring in some of the local uh World War II vets and have them talk to the classes and and try to have some of that um, well, the conversation about their stories, but then also allow us to ask questions and whatnot. And man, it's well, it's it there's a lot of parallels to that and what uh you know your father and my my grandparents went through and everything, and the tradition of knives, because you know, again, kind of what I've talked about earlier is that um there's lots of knife makers that don't know the origin stories of knives. They don't, I mean, yeah, they can argue that it goes back, you know, as part of history's first edge tools or knives, but in knife making in America and all of the influence since the uh the um well you know World War II on with Bo Randall and then Bob Loveless and your influence and being the the you know creator of the uh tactical folder, um, materials, things like that. I mean, people really need to know about this stuff. And I think that we we are far better as makers holistically, if we can um if we can get the opportunity to talk to people like you and to understand um a lot of the humble beginnings of knives. And you know, it's the same way as like society and learning uh from the past. Like I can't imagine the hardships and tragedies in uh World World War II that my grandfather, you could look in his eyes and see what they were without him talking about them too much. And and and the same in the same way, you've gone through a lot of hardships and a lot of uh happenstance and things to to nurture your mind in a way that you are uh uh a hero inside of knives. And to me, um that is an incredible legacy. Um it's something that I'm sure you're proud of, but um I being able to talk to you just shows uh me the absolute depth of character um of you. The the no it's no wonder that you're in the Cutlery Hall of Fame and that you have been uh uh you know impressing that knowledge and nurturing um nurturing knife making and and discovery inside of the industry. So I mean, for me, uh again, like kind of capping off the the interview to a certain extent, it's uh you know incredible honor to be able to uh talk through those things and get just a little a little piece of you and be able to share that with my audience.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:00

Well, that's very kind words. Thank you very much. I appreciate you saying that. Um if you're you know that I agree with you that you know that I'm a history nut and just any kind of history really fascinates me. But for people who are into the in the knife world, both uh you know, the collectors, dealers, uh people who just like to handle the uh even the makers I agree that it's it's something that uh that that needs to be uh studied and and recorded and put down uh for future generations, you know. And you you and people who you know do this type of podcast or this type of recordings um are are helping to maintain um a history and a knowledge of what went before and how things came to be. And I would caution that you need to do more of this and you need to do it soon because we're all not gonna be around much longer. You know, I've lost a lot of friends in the knife industry. Um Howard Veely, Mel Pardeux, Frank Sanifani, Carolyn Tinker, um Jimmy Lyle. You know, it it's it's hard to uh Bob Loveless, you know, it's hard to think about all these people who were so alive and vibrant and creative as being part of the the world of knife making and you know inventing things and now they're gone, you know. And it's it's uh it is important, I think, to to record the history and to put it down and uh do it soon.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:59

Absolutely. Well, and uh that's that is some of like well that's definitely the reason why I got into doing this. I I I I feel in a lot of ways that I'm I'm just an archivist, you know. Uh being able to ask questions and things is a a personal passion of mine. Uh but the recording and publishing and circulating these things is uh an uh uh a passion of you know you know historical documentation and archiving. But one thing I will say is that it is very difficult um at times when I'm uh uh reaching out to makers uh to uh kind of I guess break the seal on not only podcasting as a technology, uh, but then also uh being able to talk to some of the old timers, as it were, uh, about things because they feel like they're too old or too irrelevant or whatever. Like you are actually um uh one of a few people that actually do say yes, like to the 10, 12, 15 no's that I get, uh there's there are a few yeses. But it's one of the things that I wish, I wish in some ways it was easier. Um you know, sometimes I have to uh you know uh strategize around how to make it the easiest possible transition to record and to talk through things. But it as long as there are knife makers like you who are willing to talk, um, there will be people like me around to be able to record it. Um, but I will say that there are some times where I meet with a little bit of resistance for a myriad of reasons. Um, you know, poor health, um, you know, poor memory, uh, lack of you know, thinking there's relevance or self-esteem. You know, it's the the entire gambit of what the old guard goes through as you age. Um but it's a it's a humongous honor for me um and almost a duty, um, I feel uh to to be able to do this and to talk to people like you. So I mean again, it's a I it should almost go without saying, but I you know I I I can't thank you enough for being able to um you know talk to me and invest your time. I know that is valuable with everything that you have going on, too.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:06

Well, it's always my pleasure. I'm glad to do it. Um I'm glad to contribute to part of the history, and um you've been very kind. Your your your words have been um very flattering, very nice. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:19

Yes, sir. Well, thank you. And then anytime uh you want to get on and talk. Um, if I ever get to see you, um I I don't always go out to Atlanta, um, but you know, I I try to do the Texas Blade Show um and go to it because right actually right down the street from us, really. Uh, but I would like uh really like to meet you in person, be able to shake your hand and and uh talk more about those, you know, the the things that are knife and not knife related because you're uh fascinating to me. I'm sure we could probably talk for more hours and things, but um again, sure we could. I'll let you get back to it, sir. And uh I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:56

Okay, thank you, Eric. Have a good day.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:03

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Good Old Blades Podcast. Remember that you were lucky and good old blades.