SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Aaron LeVere, and welcome to my podcast. I explore the deep reaches of space and time to talk to the people influencing or influenced by knives. In an effort to unpack the rich and complex culture and history surrounding edge pools and adjacent crowds, I jump off into the abyss to talk about all things knives with special guests all the time. Join me as we reminisce of the good old days on the Good Old Blades podcast. The world of knives has taken me down a lot of rabbit holes. Which I just consider paths to a destination I'm not aware of yet. On the road to understanding the universe, I stumbled into Matt Martin, knife maker at Vehement Knives. I've had Matt on the podcast before, but in a much earlier stage. Where I think he was just doing me a favor to help give the show street cred. But it turned into a great conversation, a deeper understanding of him, and I'm eternally thankful to him. He's been a constant companion to me as I figure out how I want to heighten the experience of the podcast, and his critiques have helped make the show what it is. Like layers of an onion. On the exterior, you might see a pierced and tatted dude who's unapproachable. But if you spend a little bit of time to deconstruct him, you'll realize he's animated, full of life, and has a big heart. If you're willing to go the extra mile, you'll see the true gem he is, and the deep thinker that drives his push of the craft. I can't even say that Matt and I are peers. His skills and attention to detail is immaculate, and I admire everything he does. We're friends, which is more important to me. And I get to sit down and talk to him about a lot of the esoteric topics within knives. Staying motivated, thinking creatively, and discussing some of the many plagues that afflict the knife making industry on this episode. Matt, thanks for coming back to the Good O'Boys Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Aaron, thanks so much for inviting me back. I'm stoked to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah. Uh oh man. There's a lot that's gone on since the last time you were on. I mean, um, a lot of guests, a lot of time. I mean, you were you were in my first, what, six guests or something like that, probably.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

The numbers were were low, and I know that a lot of heavy hitters came in and uh and followed that. So I was like, wow, you know, kind of rarefied air, I guess you would call it, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Well, I I don't know. You you were you were my like a a pity guest. You were just like, yeah, man, I need to help this guy out and get him get him some some name on there.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

I mean, any part of the storm, yeah. I uh it did help. It helped out a lot. Yeah, no, I I need all the help I can get.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

No, I'm talking about the podcasts. Like your name helped helped uh the podcast boost itself in its viewership. And like nobody cares about me. Like, I mean, like it's a it's it's a it's a hundred percent one-sided on this like a professional relationship. You bolster me, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Right. Oh, what's the saying? One hand washes the other, man. And so like that's yeah, that uh and I I don't know, like I overall, and we talk on the side, obviously off-air, but I think it's important to articulate this uh on the show. Is this an important record, and not for guys like me, for the previous generation that you've interviewed on here, the Steve Johnson's and Gary Langley's. I mean, as if they're not still active, but I mean, these guys aren't getting any younger, and these are our heroes. You're interviewing a lot of our heroes. So to have this historical record uh, you know, available to the public, I mean, just think back before YouTube. Before, I mean, all we had was like knife forums, blade uh blade forums was the one that I was on. And you get to interact with some of these guys one-on-one, but it it's so challenging to get information and backstory and all that. So I don't know. Uh just on behalf of the knife community at large, uh, thanks for doing this because it's it's cool. I think it's cool and I think it's really important and really special.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Well, I appreciate that, dude. Um, kind of to that point is oh man, there's been so many knife makers that have passed in the last like five years. You know, just just in the period of time where I've been making knives, which is like eight eight or so years. A lot of knife makers and a lot of those legendary knife makers. And I've it it always just kind of like you know, somebody passes and you're like, man, I really I guess after the fact, it's the same way with like stars, you just uh like look them up in their history and stuff, and you kind of um um want to relearn about them. And a lot of knife makers, it's like, hmm, and not really anything out there. I mean, yeah, there's their body of work. Um maybe you can find a little Xer on um Arizona knife um or something like that. Uh but a lot of a lot of the earlier days in knives, you know, well, especially the s late sixties to the nineties, you know, pre-internet was all literature. And so the really the only way that you read about them is in books, unless somebody like Steve Shackelford goes through and curates a list of you know greatest living knife makers, or you are able to go through and peruse magazines and um and read just really excerpts, um, nothing nothing uh long form.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

And and all that stuff, you know, I've got a handful. It's funny, I just heard you on an episode the other day uh about picking up like the Bernie Levine's guide, you know, the knife books. I have a stack of them too, uh, from the 80s and stuff like that. And so the periodicals of that era, you know, 70s, 80s, when these guys were hitting fame, you know, beyond every everybody started in the 50s, you know, 40s and 50s, and then they kind of were charging that, you know, Bob Loveless $100 an inch, you know, in the 80s and whatnot. But those periodicals aren't uploaded into the cloud. They're not online. It's not like today when a magazine comes out and there's a digital copy available or something like that. You know what I mean? That stuff is it's hard copy and hard to find.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Mm-hmm. Um to that point, uh that's been that's been kind of difficult too, is because, you know, um uh as a knife maker, you don't know what you don't know, um which I I think is just true life in general. But if I think about it, like it was talking talking with Bruce Bump, uh, where I learned that you know, cut and shoots or you know, uh dual threat weapons have gone back a long time, way longer than I ever had any concept of. Um and he's a modern pioneer of of you know modern methods and things like that and does it his way. But um, you know, the the road was paved um uh uh or at least cobbled together in a way um by earlier makers. Um and uh to to get that book then I realized, well, uh there's a lot of really great craftsmen uh who were doing, like very few, but great craftsmen that were doing uh you know, cut and shoots. And I never had any concept of it. And I realized how ignorant I was uh to assume that if I if I can find it on the internet, then that's that's basically the window that I'm um or the box that I'm painting myself in. Uh but there's an entire universe um uh or like archival record of books that exist out there or have existed that you know far exceeds what's on the internet, and most nobody knows about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

So Adam Savage, the guy from Mythbusters, put it best, and he said that the internet is not all the world's knowledge, it's the index to all the world's knowledge. And so it just gives you a jumping off point when it comes to research because yeah, dude, like, and I've got a I wouldn't say extensive, not like Mike Janich said, you know, hundreds of knife books or whatever that he had around, which is insane. Um, but I've got dozens of older knife books, and you go through there and I'm like, I've never even heard anybody mention this maker. I've never, you know, seen any knife that looks like this, you know, whatever it is. And so that's uh I use the the hardcover books to now do backwards research through the internet to try to dig up more information, but a Google search never provided, you know, a lot of the content in those in those volumes.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Uh yeah. Um I actually I posted up recently about a um a 1984's guild book that was from Bruce Foyles. Um and there was a uh there was a knife maker in there uh named Carolyn Tinker. Um she was a knife maker from the 60s. Uh she died in 1999, I found out. But she was a a female in the guild as of 1984, and I don't I didn't see any other reference of any other women inside of the guild, um, let alone much of knife making in the 80s. You know, I th I can't remember Delena might have gotten into it maybe in the eighties, I think. Um but she know uh from like from this record from this book, I saw one knife maker that has been been making since you know the sixties and was was was in there. And you know, uh it's kind of interesting, I think, that you you can kind of draw these corollaries where you have I was just perusing through all these different works and to see kind of what the uh lay of the land was in 1984, especially in the context of the guild, and realized that I was like, I don't actually see any other female names. I mean, um uh Linda Carst Stone, Scrimshander. Um she she'd been in the guild for a long time, but I can't remember exactly when she uh when she entered it. Uh but you know, like there there's kind of like this emergence of female um in in knife making and uh knife knife adjacent uh crafts. And uh I I don't know. It's it's interesting, I think, to go through and look at different points of data and to be able to draw corollaries. That's what's really interesting to me. But uh again, like who who knows? Like there's stuff sitting out there that I'll I just have no idea on. Most people have never seen like the antique buoy knife um book. Um what's it Bill Adams, I think, wrote it.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yep. Uh uh, yeah, uh uh Mike Stewart at Bark River Knives had a copy of it that he let me borrow for a while, and that is an incredible. That's a tone. I mean, that is a wild. I there's some Tiffany style buoys in there that I was just like, like gorgeous stuff in there.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Pretty cool. And you know, uh funny enough, uh I I it's this weird um so you know, I I I bought um John Weaver's outfit, his knife shop from him. Uh knew his newest son, worked with him, kind of learned some knife stuff um from him. And when he was kind of consolidating things down, I bought the shop, but I didn't buy his library. Um and he had a ton of knife books. But at the time he was like, you know, wanting to get something out of it. And I was like, dude, I don't have the ability to pay you $300 for a book. Um like I just can't. I spent a lot on the shop um and had to have me even had to finance uh a portion of it. So um it took me a while to get through that. But um one the the thing that he did was gift me that antique buoy book. Wow. And so the book he he back in the day, um, he he made money through like an insurance. Uh so he did insurance sales uh and so he always had money through that and was able to apply it to knives. And so it didn't really matter if he sold knives or not, um, really, but he you know he would charge more than everybody else because he didn't, you know, it wasn't his full-time gig. So he ended up taking some of the uh the same stuff that uh uh Clay Gault and Martin Poland were doing, um, and sharing their their designs and everything, doing his take on it and then selling it for twice or three times as much, right? Well, one thing that he did is a lot of the guys who knew he had um money and everything would be like, hey, you know, this book is uh is out, you know, you probably should go get this thing, you know, you have the extra money for it. And even in like the you know eighties and nineties, those books were about a hundred bucks to you know, because they're self-published, right? Right. And so the antique buoy book he actually bought from Bill and had him sign it. Um and then when I when he gave it to me, he signed his name in it. Um and so I have that dude. Uh but what how I found out about the book was on um there was some like it was it had to have been from like the eighties, maybe. Um it was it was talking about uh buoy collections and they talked about the George Washington buoy. So it's this you know a long, beautiful, ornate buoy uh that has Mother of Pearl on it and a and a silhouette of uh uh George Washington carved in Mother of Pearl, and it's affixed with uh um you know sterling silver, I believe. And it's a really great example. But I learned of that book through that YouTube video, which is kind of Oh, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah, it's backwards, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um it's it's it's interesting. Like the I I can't say how I actually get um I get to information, but I just go through and just you know have no zero expectations and then uh kind of reverse engineer things and then kind of go in this rabbit hole. And so pretty much my entire life in knives is tangential.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

I hear that. Uh if you saw the state of the shop right now, we're working on blade show knives, and I I keep meticulous notes like in a lot of them. Like a lot, a lot of notes. Uh some of it's for posterity, some of it's for usage in in real time. But uh I this one knife that I want to take to blade, I want to take a couple of them. I know I have notes for it, and I I can't do this one. It's a metal handle, and I needed the machining data from it, uh its sizes and dimensions and all that blueprint for crying out loud. And so I just tore my whole shop apart on this, and I stopped all operations because I couldn't find this. So everything is torn apart, and there's just stacks and stacks and notebooks everywhere, you know what I mean? And then those, each notebook sends you on a tangent, each notebook sends you in a direction in your mind and everything like that. So yeah, it's a I mean, it's a rabbit hole in and of itself, but if you're scatterbrained at all like I am, it you know, and like you are too, it just goes.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah. So what do your notes look like when you're keeping them, though?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Uh so I I try to be as explicit as possible because I know that I'll brain dump it after the build. And so usually uh a lot of them are just gonna have like different dimensions, like how far from the guard shoulder does the fuller begin, stuff like that for layout, so that I can do it. So it's not as procedural. I'm assuming that I can make a knife if I know what feature it is. Uh, you know what I mean? Like I don't put necessarily I used to do like start with a 60 grit belt, you know, this, that, the other. I do that for timing on production runs. So I have a lot of sheets that are uh every single step overexplained and then timed for a dozen knives or whatever it is, so then I can figure out, you know, how much I should be charging for these or whatever it is. So um, but yeah, it's uh one of these days I'll have to show you. I do a lot of sketches, like a lot of detailed drawings of like certain features, like how the pommel works in conjunction with the tang and all that. So um, but yeah, I'll have to show you some pictures because I just found a whole treasure trove of them. But yeah, they're they're pretty they're pretty detailed. Pretty detailed.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yeah, I feel like a schlub, dude. Like I don't do any of that. I am like I am I'm chaotic, I think, probably when it comes to um knife making. I don't plan anything out really, everything's in my head. Um I I wish I was a better draftsman uh than I am, uh, because maybe I could get it out, but I don't I don't know. Like there's a there's a disconnect because I kind of see things in images and movie reels in my head. Like uh I don't know, it's like some people have mind palaces or whatever. I'm not kind of like that. I but I do see a lot of like uh scenarios and stuff play out in real form, I guess. Um and uh the disconnect, I think, for me is that I see things very like vividly in my imagination or whatever. And then when I I I have to look, I have to try to mimic that experience in my knives. Like it, I like it's that's kind of like what I try to do. It's like whatever I'm feeling inside of my imagination or whatever's going through my my head, that's what I want to evoke in what I'm doing physically. Um, and I've never been able to take that um intermediate step to draft things out and to plan that so that way I can um I can actually achieve that in any other form than like the Bill O'Reilly's let's let's do it live. Like that's what I do. I just like imagine and then dump it into what I'm actually working on. And there's a lot of uh a lot of error in that trial.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

But do you think it it do you think it improves the final product because you're taking more artistic license than basically articulating your thought on paper and then trying to copy the paper thought, you know what I mean? The the written down thought. Do you think that there's greater artistic license just going from your brain to steel and that in the end it comes out better when it's successful?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

That's a good question. Um I don't know the answer to that. Because, you know, it it uh we're obviously don't have a reference architecture like drawings and things to go off of, right? So I only know my side of it. What I will say is that when when I go full circle in this um this experience of imagining the way that I want something to look and then executing it, um the the general reaction when people see that stuff is very positive, right? Um those are the ones that are usually I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna I'm gonna send it off to Coop or whatever and get some photos taken of it. I kind of capture that thing that I did. Um, but you know, I I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, it's really hard to gauge success or to gauge um if whether you nailed something or not, other than the court of public opinion, which I really hate in some ways because you know the creative process is really um uh to me, it's an internal one. I don't necessarily want to create things just so that way I get a pat on the back from everybody else. It's mostly just for me to express it. So once that thing's done, uh dude, I don't care. I mean, it could be a turd or it could be a shiny one, it doesn't matter to me so much. And I I think that's probably where um my litmus test is like when I really feel like I've done everything I can with that thing, um, that's when I'm done. And then if people like it or they don't like it, um, that's kind of up to that's a I mean, I guess a secondary thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Uh but um what do they say? What other people think about you is none of your business. So you're like, you wanted to make it, you made it, it came into this world, you know what I mean? You're like, hey, I'm done with it now. Uh it'd be great if somebody paid me for it, you know what I mean? But uh at the end of it, it's the it's the creative process, I think, that trumps everything, especially when you're on like a like an artier project, you know what I mean? Something that takes that gets you into that flow state that is so elusive, you know what I mean? We try to catch it out of thin air. But when you're ate up by a project and that's all you can eat, sleep, drink, think, and breathe, uh, that you know, those are a lot of fun. And and whatever anybody else thinks, like uh what's his name said, like uh Rick Rubin said, the audience comes last. Yeah, otherwise you're doing a disservice to them.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yeah, I mixed a mixed uh uh thoughts on that at least. Um because um I'm trying to figure out a way to articulate that idea. And for everybody who's listening, there's just like this humongous gear or status symbol that's uh turning in my head. That that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Jenna doesn't like that when it flies.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah. Well, uh uh you know, well, I I I think the the point uh that I'm trying to make on that is like I I always really like the jumping into something and imagining and creating and kind of what that well how that feels, right? But it's also pretty exhausting. And then on the other side, right, you have this if uh I've kind of been in this kick where I'm like, I'm I want to make things that I like for sure, but I also want to make things that other people enjoy. And I'm kind of like, you know, you do like market analysis, blah, blah, whatever. And uh sometimes I feel like the knife industry is a little bit um like an OnlyFans, right? It's like barren of uh genuine connectedness because what you're doing is is taking something in your like that you're making and you're presenting it in a way where you know there's a higher likelihood that everybody's gonna like you for it, right? It's like you know, you're you're duck facing it or you're using a certain filter, right? Um and so if you follow things that are like popular, trendy things, yeah, it might be your take on it, but I also feel like how how personal is that, right? And I'll use an example. Like music to me is very important. I feel like music um it betrays my inner self. So if I'm listening, if I'm listening to something with music, you can tell how what I'm thinking basically, or kind of how how I'm emoting. And and it's very it's very genuine to like I don't know, uh, how I express myself, right? Um in knives, I I I I think I want to be that vulnerable. I want to be able to share something that is very just like inside of my head. Like you can't, you couldn't get in any other way. But I I kind of like adulterate myself if I'm just doing something that is popular versus something that really means something to me. And I really don't know. I mean, I d I think about this kind of stuff uh quite a lot and probably get too inside my head about it, but yeah, I don't want to cheapen my own experience in things because I'm doing something trendy, but at the same time doing artistic stuff is very it makes you very vulnerable and it makes uh you know very exhausted over sharing too much of yourself sometime.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Uh I mean like a full custom, like what we call a full custom, is not necessarily like an industry term or anything like that, but it's just it's something that that has that complete investment in, right? And so when you get done with the knife, like once the edge is on the knife and it's completed, it goes out for sheathing. Well, goes upstairs for sheathing, um you're you're drained. I don't care if it's two o'clock in the afternoon, like I have a hard time picking up another piece of steel and being like, oh, we're gonna make another knife because everything went into that one. But to your point we all want validation to some degree, right? And anybody who doesn't is neurodivergent, you know. Uh it's uh there's a uh we're communal animals as a human species. We we want to be in a community for safety, right? Like, I mean, that's our caveman, you know, early man mentality, evolutionary trait. So we have an inherited desire for validation to be accepted in the group. Um and you can do that with your acts of kindness, you can do that with the way you interact with people, you can do that um with upholding your morals and values and some degree of integrity. But you can't do that with your art. You can even do that with products, but you can't do that with art. And that is, I mean, it's a it's a uh it's a tightrope, right? I mean, honestly, it's more like a a gang plank, you know, when you're out to sea, like pirates walk the plank. You're just out there teetering over the sea, and you this metaphor is gonna fall apart before I can complete it. But um it's it's a pretty harrowing feeling, and it is that vulnerability. But in doing that, you you create this thing, this and it for the artist, it's cathartic, right? I mean, you have like this release afterwards. You're just like, oh my God, I'm glad that's out of my soul, it's out of my spirit, it's out of my head, it's out of my heart, and it's in all three D's. And so, like, that's as far as chasing trends, like I that's not obviously if you look at my body of work, that's that's not something that I specialize in. And I hate myself a little bit for it sometimes. I'm like, oh man, I wish I could be a little bit more, you know, purple time mascus mokrome type stuff, but it's just not my jam. So I'll stack leather on the handle like they've been doing for almost a hundred years, well, over a hundred years, and uh and just roll with it. And then when you get into a big project, you know, it's it's soul consuming. So yeah, I mean, don't I guess my point is don't don't hamper yourself with with too much research. You know, yeah, you'll you'll find more comfort putting the steel to the wheel and and getting that idea, getting that inspiration and turning it into something tangible, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, we talked a lot about that offline. Uh for everybody listening, uh the benefit, like uh, I think in Matt and my relationship is we're actually really great friends, um, I w I would think, um, outside of uh you know the scope of podcasting, right? And so like the podcast, if you like it, has been heavily influenced by Matt because he shares his opinion about everything I do wrong. And freely.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Yeah, freely.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, well, I mean it's it's good that you had a very successful podcast, so you can kind of like shoot me some pointers. Um but uh you know, in uh in uh your knife making um and what you're doing in your craft uh uh observationally um you do put it all on the table. Like what what like the vehement knives is your brain child, uh the way I observe it. And it's much different, you know, in this uh you know you're making a uh full-time living at it and you're eat sleeping and breathing too much in in knives in order to make all this stuff work. And I if if my experience with how difficult it is just to share a little bit of myself when I do go real like artistic, um I dude, I can't imagine. I mean it it just has to be exhausting every single day going in there and pounding at your ideas because I mean, do you do you ever feel like um do you ever feel like you've made the noose that you're hanging yourself on?

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Every not every day, most days. This is you got me on a good day because uh today is one of those. Uh today I actually I shit, you know, I went home and I changed from boots to sneakers because my boots felt like they weighed like 40 pounds. And I've never had like this is not something I've ever done. I'm not Mr. Rogers, I don't change cardigans when I walk into the shop. You know what I mean? I wear boots every single day of my life, and I was just like, you know what, today I feel like they're filled with lead and I need to lighten up somewhere because the stress that's going on, and you know, it it is all-consuming um when you're full-time. And uh it really is. And that's but it's also kind of fun. There's an element to it that is a lot like a couple of kids that, you know, me and Jenna, Jenna and I, this is this is what we talk about all night every night. You know, we go home and we don't talk about work, we talk about our business. You know, they're two kind of different things, I guess, when you think about it. Um, and so it's like, but I equate it to being like a 10-year-old with his best friend building a fort, you know what I mean? And over there we're gonna have these ramparts, and over here, you know what I mean? And so so there's that element that's just a lot of fun to kind of construct this this fort, this tree fort. I mean, that's really what the shop is, that's what the whole business is, is it's just like a it's it's a it's a summer weekend with your bestie and you're just having fun doing it. And sometimes it's hard, sometimes stuff's out of reach, sometimes there's stuff you want to do. I think that's part of the note taking, is I I write ideas down constantly. And uh Jen and I were just talking about last night. She's like, you know, a lot of stuff that's come to fruition this year is stuff that we wrote down five years ago. You know what I mean? And so it just so that part of it is pretty fun. But other days, working for Blade Show is challenging. So the stress levels are way up because you're kind of working for free for a month and then you get paid at the show. And whereas, like normally I'm delivering knives, you know, every week. So to come in and be like, okay, I need to keep the lights on on a shoestring budget using a super sharp pencil through production knives and filling custom orders. And now I have to add this element of making, you know, full handmade X amount of blades for the table, which I don't want to say the number in case it gets halved by the time we leave on the fourth. Um, but yeah, so that that part's pretty stressful. And then and then you you're looking at McDonald's is hiring manager positions, you know, you're like, dude, I can be making more money and have no responsibility in every hour to myself after nine to five or whatever the shift length is. And boy, does that sound enticing some days? But the reality is I don't have to tug on anybody's pant leg when I have to go to the bathroom or anything like that. So it's like there's there's something to be said about the freedom.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah, that's uh there's a lot to unpack about what you just said. I mean I I could understand the the stress involved. But you know, I mean when you can mind map things and I guess dream big and then uh write things down and push for things. I I don't know. There there's something to manif manifestation, I think. Where you know, like you you you act like you actualize things by uh acknowledging things. Um and uh I've noticed that in my life as well. Sometimes it doesn't always happen immediately, but there's lots I I don't know, is it's if it's just like you write things down or you imagine like plan things out, and then decisions that you make are based off of that reference, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:34

And so they're influenced, right? Because that there's a little cross breeze of that idea in your sales constantly. So it's kind of influencing your your bearing, you know what I mean? So yeah, uh and with all the notebooks, I it's a lot of I I should take you the other, it's a lot of notebooks. It's my whole table saw, stools, everything's all covered in them right now. But uh you you go, oh, there was a design I made, or there were some notes from this period. I wish they were better chronologically. I just grabbed the closest one to me, but I I you go through them so frequently looking for old data that you see those ideas, you see those models, you see those plans that you had made in 2017 when you're digging through them and you're like, oh my God, we ended up making this. I never even went back to it, but we ended up, you know, making this thing or whatever. So every time you go back and reference and skim through one of these notebooks to find all your information, um, yeah, it it's a reminder again, that thought just becomes a little bit more solid, you know what I mean? It's a little bit more opaque, and then and then you just kind of keep going until the opportunity opens itself to to strike and implement it.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah, that's cool, dude. Um I think uh I I think the the thing that I really um identify with on that is honestly, knives are not that thing for me. Like I don't write everything down. Like I'll do drafting stuff or whatever. I write build sheets down when I when I have stuff that I need to do. It's that's it's organized in that way. It's like you know, procedure like how to get this thing done that I want to in one way, shape, or form. Um but when it comes to like ideas like that, um I am very whimsy uh in knives. But um one of my uh business partners, um I have like I'll go through and like write tickets like these, you know. I mean, I work in cybersecurity, I do you know some development work and architecture and things like that. And I I'm constantly going through and just like mind-dumping ideas on features and you know, uh technology and how to organize things, right? Uh like I mean, because you know, in in in software development and things like that, you're taking these kind of very nebulous, you know, tangential type of concepts and putting it into something concrete that can be coded upon, and then it's a f feature or a you know, a software or app or something like that that gets used by somebody. And uh I'll go through and like document all this stuff, and you know, it'll be something articulated so that way a developer can actually do their job. And I'll go back through when I'll have to test it or something, you know, and I'll be like, man, like I I was proud of myself because there was a point in time where I actually sounded intelligent. Like I I'll for I'll forget that I'll forget that that I wrote it. Um, and then I did all the work on making that thing a a thing. And then I'll go back sometimes and reread it because I have to. And I'm like, man, like this guy knew what he was talking about for this one small bit of time. And then everything else, I feel like I'm just making everything up as I go along. I don't know. Like a it's it's I'm sure that that's probably similar looking through like catalogs of nodes. You're like, man, like this guy, like pro like he had dreams. Like he has a he has a vision, and then you're looking at the day-to-day, you're like, man, like I don't know, like maybe he maybe he had he had some aspirations.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

When you're in the trenches, though, it's like hey, they didn't beat us today. We we earned another day on this earth, you know what I mean? So it's it it that's it's rare. I tell you what is funny though, is a a number of years, well, probably two years ago, three years, two, three years ago, I had to start labeling my drawings because I would be up late at night and I would draw this contraption or whatever, and I wouldn't label it, and I'd have no idea what it was supposed to. I'd have to try to reverse engineer, but with no frame of reference or scale or anything. So there's a lot of times where instead of going back in my work and being like, hey, that guy was pretty smart, I'd be like, that guy was an idiot. Whoever filled this out, I have no idea what he was trying to articulate. Um, but how what what how do you write down your notes? Are they in files on a computer or do you do hard copy?

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Uh the standard form inside, well, I don't know. That's a loaded question, kind of, because the answer is there's lots of different ways that ideas um come to fruition in technology.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Um there's I guess what my point is, just so we can be on the same page, my point is is how accessible is it to go through your old notes? Like for me, I'm always like a crazy mad scientist rummaging through notebooks. I have one right here. Um, so how frequently do you get to kind of take that trip down memory lane and see what ideas ended up working out in the end that you may have forgotten about from a number of years ago?

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Uh it's trans transactional. Uh a lot of my work is transactional, right? So like I do a thing, another thing happens, right? And so I try not to get too tied down to like any anything I'm doing except how it progresses towards like the end stage of anything. And so well, but you know, there there's times, right? Like so you in writing like feature requests and things, um you might start out with an idea doc or something where you're trying to like mind map. Um I don't know if people use mind maps a lot outside of IT. Uh but the idea is Is it like brainstorming? Um kind of. So let's just say you have an application or uh uh let's a product, right? We can talk about something that's very nebulous, like a product. And you say, This product, we want it to apply to these kind of people, we want it to have these kind of feature sets, we want it to use these applications on the back end, um, and we want the output to be these things, right? And so you're always looking for what that journey looks like through a product or an experience of sorts, right? And um mind mapping is a way to put little thought bubbles around what that flow chart looks like from start to finish and and and all the interconnected pieces of it. Um so uh ideas a lot of the times will start out in this mind map where you're kind of just dumping like, well, how do how would I want this thing to look? Um, and then you kind of build you know some basic flow diagrams around it, like kind of what leaks leads to what, what data are you supposed to get from where? Um, and then when you get to the point where, like, so after I've done all that stuff, I start to uh develop out the granular problem statements for okay, so uh this is the system, these are the components, this is what what we want it to do, and you build what they're what are called tickets around user stories. So a ticket is basically a you know, a t a ticket can like exist exists in a lot of cases um or a lot of scenarios, but it's basically kind of like you know, you have a ticket for food, right? You know, you want a chicken fried steak and gravy and blah, blah, whatever. But this is you know the same like a ticketing system, like JIRA or something. And um and you create a ticket, you name it something, and then you just dump whatever is in like wall to wall you need to do on this one thing. And so a granular problem statement is saying, like, we're going to do this thing, these are all the things that I've already mapped out, like you know, you fully articulate it, and maybe sometimes you put in like code snippets or pictures to wireframe things out. And so there's a progression, you go from a nebulous idea to structured idea to tickets to execute the idea, and then at the end of it, you can test individual components, and after that, you say in your user acceptance testing, basically, is so what was the sum total of that thing? Like, let's take this idea that we created in this mind map, and then let's look at what was actually developed, um, sum total, and then did we achieve that thing? Um, and that's kind of the full cycle of it.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

I mean, that's not that dissimilar from from knife design as a whole, right? I mean, if you think about it, so you have you have inspiration, you played a video game, or there was a motorcycle you liked, or you were on a hike and got a texture, you know, inspiration, influence, or whatever. Uh, and so then you I, I should say I, um, will develop a a character, right, in your mind, like who carries this knife? And it's it's not the crowd at large, it's like, who am I in this context? You know, if you want to take like the zombie apocalypse or a World War II spy or whatever it is, you know, you kind of develop this character and then you're like, what would they carry? And and then you swing for the fences, you know, kind of like you were saying, like you you braindump all the features that are are critical to expressing this idea into uh like a concept drawing, which is rarely to scale. I mean, they're written on the back of receipts, they're written on napkins, you know what I mean? They're just sketches of the knife, just in conceptual form. And then you start boiling that down. And you can definitely see, like with concept cars, you can see where the original artistic thinking was in the drawing and how it translated to real life. But, you know, like you alluded to, some stuff got left on the cutting room floor because it was impractical or it, you know, it didn't, it was uh mechanically prohibitive with any sense of you know being able to complete the task or whatever. And so it's really not that dissimilar in all reality from any kind of designing, I would assume. You know, if you wanted to make a hang glider, you know, well, who's gonna be using it? You know, you have to design it to interface with that person, and what do we want it to look like? And, you know, on and on it goes until the very end. And you realize that, you know, in best case scenario, you get like a B from concept to reality. And worst case scenario, it looks nothing like what you dreamt up, and you throw it in the bin and you start over.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Yeah. Um so do you When you're designing things and and uh factoring like out outside of business, but we're talking about like knife design, um do you try to look at this the body of your work, like the sum total of what you're trying to accomplish, and always tie your designs back to it? Uh or are you trying not to be derivative or kind of how how do you how do you decide when you're doing something new what context that has inside of your your business?

SPEAKER_02 44:37

When as far as being derivative, I'm gonna come right out and say it in public right now. Uh I know that's a hang-up for a lot of artistically minded people. Um, but I've my work has always been derivative because I started this because I couldn't afford certain knives and I would try to make them and I didn't have the internet, so they ended up naturally being interpretations off off. I think we were talking about this through Messenger or whatever. Um, you know, take a look at the knife and then never look at it again until you're done. You know what I mean? Like you're oh, I want to do my take on this. All right, well, take a look at the knife, get an idea, get an impression, and then you'll make like your interpretation of it. You don't have to sit there with micrometers and stuff. So as far as being derivative, I I it's not something that occupies any space in my mind. It's not anything I'm afraid of. But as far as like my knives, like my original designs, you know, very separate from like the recreations of historic patterns, um, they all look like I designed them because there are certain attributes that are pleasing to my design eye. And so you'll find them incorporated in a lot of them. And then there's some stuff that's a little bit more pragmatic. We have a lot of knives with choils on them, and I know it's pretty polarizing, but to be quite honest, I hate sharpening without one. I mean, I can do it, obviously, but God, I don't like it. And the risk, you know, is not worth the reward when I can apply another step to a choil so it doesn't look like a shortcut, but that is deliberate and intentional. So when I design stuff, I I do stuff is gonna look similar, even though it might be one of them, might be a dagger, is gonna look like I designed that dagger, but so is uh uh an EDC knife is gonna look like I designed that EDC knife, and I'll share some DNA because the dude holding the pencil is the same. You know what I mean? And so like the stuff that I like that I think looks good shows up on all the knives.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Yeah, well, and I do um I do think that there's a little bit of a difference between uh how to how to encapsulate this. Uh so there's the in in my knife making, there are things that I design around what I consider limitations, right? So if I if if I've blown out a uh uh like a one-inch contact wheel, um, then I will design things or I will make things around my two-inch contact wheel that I use a little bit less often, right? Or if I have ball nose end mills and I don't have any like any you know flat five flutes or anything like that, well then I'll do something with that. It's like I don't I'm not like okay, I gotta stop because I don't have this piece of equipment right now. Um I just I work around the limitations of my tooling. And so there's there's certain things that you'll see in in my work that the flow of the of the design is is a direct reflection of the tooling that I have to be able to accomplish it, right? But what I um what I what I mean I guess and and not it's not in terms of derivative like everybody else is doing it or it's uh in homage to somebody, but um when when I look at your work, um I I see uh a hundred percent Matt Martin, like you are very uh distinctive. You could never put an uh a name on your knives, and I would be able to tell that they were your knives, right? That's that's how much I I think that you're you have um like a homogeneous uh design structure, right? But from knife to knife, they look different, right? They they do have that touch of of your aesthetic, right? But they do look different. When you're doing new stuff, do you ever go back and say, well, I've already done that before, so I'm going to do something different here? Or is it like you just invent something brand new and make it, you know, I guess make it make it uh fit, as it were.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

First off, thanks. Uh and I mean that um I don't even know if it was intended as a compliment, but I Todd Begg on an interview on my old show was like, hey, your knives have to have a face. Your knives, he's the one that's saying, yeah, you have to have a face. People should be able to look at your knives and know it's yours even without seeing the maker's mark. So hearing you say that um makes me feel pretty good on the inside. So thank you for that. Um I I think there is a to quote nothing fancy, there's a philosophy of use that goes into the knife. So it's like, okay, I we want to, we saw the economic downturn uh coming, uh especially after the COVID cash ran out. And I knew that our next production run wasn't gonna be uh like a big, huge cost prohibitive knife. We didn't want to hit everybody in the wallet super hard. So I was talking to Jason too in a DLT trading, and I was like, hey, I think our next production run needs to be EDCs. I think we need to do like a smaller knife so that when we do release them, knowing that everyone's gonna be hurt by inflation, and you know, this isn't 2024, you know, for his history's sake, but uh um I I said we're we need to make an EDC. Well, I already had, you know, our grunt model or the grunt 2.0, you know, that's been iterated two times now, and I didn't want to do like a grunt three. So, what were the issues that I had with the grunt from a manufacturing standpoint, from a user standpoint? It was a very popular model, it's still very popular. Um, it was never my favorite personally, so I kind of wanted to knock some of the edges that I had with that. So I started with the concept of like we need an EDC knife. And so, how do I design an EDC knife that isn't a grunt? And so, you know, that's kind of how that happens. So if I take a knife, whether it's a character build or whether it's a uh a functional concept, like a bushcraft knife or something like that. So though that's the fence that I'll put around it and I'll be like, well, this has to be used in this way. And how do I problem solve for ergonomics? How do I problem solve for material consumption? How do I problem solve? So all that stuff goes into it. And then it because I have a pretty deep toolbox, but it's still a finite toolbox as far as design cues go. Um I those things will get interspersed as appropriate in the design. So it really starts off with like, what's it going to be used for, or what is the message I'm trying to convey, or who is the audience that I um want to share this with, and then and then go from there, you know. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but um yeah, that's that's what I got.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Yeah, I when I ask questions, I have no intention of uh getting a particular answer out of them. I just want to hear from your mind. So I'm gotcha. I'm not hey, listen. The good thing about uh asking stupid questions is when you get brilliant answers, you can just you know take it for what it is.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

Right. Whatever keeps the show rolling.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Yeah. Um well I mean that that all makes sense. Um I don't know. There's a there's a uh I think there's a lot to unpack from even uh that, right? Because um I'm going through this this thing right now where I'm uh I've never really done drops before, right? I'm not a drop culture type of guy necessarily. Um and I I I find that uh I have a design, I know that it works pretty well, um, it's you know functionally sold pretty well for me. Um now I'm going through the um pencil pushing side of figuring out how economical it is. So like when I do it uh in a number that's greater than probably like five or whatever, um how does that how does that affect price and whatnot? Um so I've I've found that as much as I'm liking the um the idea of creating this drop thing, I also really hate it. And it's not it's not like I uh like I I like the I I I like like okay, you know, I don't even make 20 knives, like what what all am I gonna do different? It's like I'm trying to take the things that I really like about making knives for shows um and applying that to what I'm gonna do with the drop. But then when I but then I have limitations like um I can't I can't put on forty-five or fifty dollar scales because if you want to sell a knife for you know 350 bucks or so, like a little EC knife, uh you can't put $50 um scales on it. I mean it blows it blows the design and or like the the intent of how you're s introducing the market out of the water. Um is that are are those things like when you're when you're actually doing all the numbers and and everything that you think about a lot, or do you just uh um you know how do you how we're not very exotic?

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Yeah, we're not so we're not very exotic. And I as far as like drops and and production, I because I'm a gallon gun of ideas, I I change like the wind constantly. I'm like, oh, here's the next big thing, you know, we're gonna follow this vein. And then I'm in one of those transitional periods right now. So it's like answering your question directly, when it comes to production, because we run black, green, and natural micartas on 99% of everything that goes out the door for you know, production knives, um, they don't get super exotic. So I don't really have to factor that in. I know my material costs, I know everything, you know, to the T as far as that goes. And to circle back to something that you said, uh, when it comes to kind of doing a cost analysis on it, you really got to make like five of them to even get an idea of the techniques. Because if you make five, like just make five of them before you do a cost analysis, sell them when you're done. Um then all of a sudden you're gonna be like, oh, I notice if I actually use a tool rest here and a small wheel, I can get into this contour really quick. And maybe I don't need to go 60, 80, 120, 220, 400, 600. I can go, you know, 80 grit, 220, 600 and be done. So you'll you'll hack out and hash out those efficiencies as you go. And it's too um abstract to be ahead of the curve and hit it because you'll you'll end up kind of stepping on your own feet a little bit. Uh and that's from personal experience, to be sure. Your mileage may vary on that. But as far as other, like when I do small batch production, not production, but when I do small batch for like shows or something like that, and I may I want to introduce a new model. And so I'm gonna bring eight of them, right? Six of them, whatever. I am absolutely guilty of this. In fact, I just tripped across it and hard copy again today, is I will blank out six of these knives. This is the greatest thing since a pocket on a shirt, man. This knife is awesome. I can't wait to bring it to the public. I've blanked out six of them, they're perfect, everything looks good, surface ground heat tree. And I go to do bevels and I bevel two of them, I bevel three of them, like these are cool. It's starting to kind of coalesce and refine in, you know, with bevel height and all that stuff so that the design is not so visually assaulting. And then I get bored. And when I as soon as I get bored, I immediately bust out a sharpie and I start screwing with the profile, and I'll make like an A, B, and C model. They'll be like, what was a clip point now is gonna be a drop point. And then now I'm gonna do like this recon warrior sway back, is the example I saw today. So even just doing like five or six knives, I get bored and I'll start iterating the entire design profile, like completely just blow it out of the water. So uh hats off to you if if you want to kind of do the production thing. But in this current state that I'm in right now, I'm leaning more towards like, man, it feels good to just make like a full custom, like just an idea to steal, make the hell out of that knife and call it good versus trying to make more of them, which is in contrast to the drop culture that's going on around us. Although I do think that bubble is going to burst as the economy gets tighter, um, discretionary income goes down. I know that you know, some of the clients in deeper pockets aren't as affected by it as the, you know, one of two sources of income in the household that you know are reliant on just keeping the lights on. You know what I mean? So it's like, okay, let's let's make some simple knives for the our everyday collectors to not hurt them and uh for the guys with deeper pockets, air it out and know that you're just still gonna get your money out of it. You know, go get compensated for the time and effort you put into it. Because honestly, that's what this whole venture is about is how do I exercise creativity and still be able to put gas in the Jeep or you know, get stuff for my daughter, make sure that every opportunity is available to her. And I I tend to really beat myself up for not being a soulless businessman, even though I know the answers, I know the processes, I know what I can do to like get a leg up. It just it goes against certain values I think I have. And because of that, sometimes I feel like I don't my family doesn't suffer. Look, everybody's pretty comfortable. I've been broke before, I know you've been there too, we've been poor before. This isn't that. But there is a point where it's like, man, I wish I just had the mindset to be able to just do it from a business aspect. But the reality is um it's a little self-indulgent, but like, how can we survive comfortably off this creativity and this experience of making stuff, of creation, you know what I mean? Without being too arrogant and saying that way. But um yeah, so it for you. Obviously, we talk about this off air. I'm just like put the steel of the wheel, man, take your ideas and make them happen. For anybody who's listening who's like on the fence and like trying to get that. Well, I don't have this 22-inch contact wheel. I only have a 10-inch contact wheel, and that's never gonna do. You know, don't get too wrapped around the axle and the details, because trust me, uh if you want to make it, you'll make it with a drill press and a hand file. You know what I mean? Like if you want a bad enough, you'll make the entire thing with a Dremel. And so there's really no barrier to entry when it comes to that. Now, when you want to make it for a business and you want to make money out of, that's when you have to start looking at things a little bit differently. Or you have to, not want to, but you have to. Like survival relies on efficiencies in the shop, you know, mechanical efficiencies and stuff like that. But when it comes to just like creating, I'd we rather make, you know, I was just going through this uh today. I messaged you for crying out loud. I was like, I'm at the point now, I'm so far behind on my blade production schedule, is I'd rather invest myself wholly in four like full geeked out knives, like every feature I can throw at it, than have to try to muscle through 20 knives that I'm already bored with and I haven't even profiled. And so, you know what I mean? So that's each each little endeavor is fun in its own way and has problem solving. But yeah, you know, that's kind of where my head's at currently, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Yeah, the said the seven-year itch that happens in about 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

100%. Yeah, 100% of the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

Yeah, I struggle with that, dude. I struggle with getting bored. Um I I brought it up with uh Paul Uska in an episode I just dropped, uh, where it's like um, you know, I was working in corporate America. It takes me a very short period of time to realize uh how much I dislike something. Right. Um so like I you know, work for a new company. Pretty pretty well pretty well can tell within 30 days whether I really want to be there or not. And then the rest of the time is just how uh how beneficial it is to endure that thing. So you know, I I'd uh quit companies after like a year, two years, maybe. Um, but I was like, you know, like I'm not I I don't know why I should spend my life widgets in boring, dead-end jobs with people I, you know, can't really work with and whatnot. And then there's other times when you're like, meh, I could work with I could work with this. I could I could suffer because it works, right? And it's uh it's not really that much different with knives. Uh for instance, like I mean, you make a a three or four hundred dollar knife, but if everybody wants it when you're making it, right? Like if everybody will buy what it is that you make, then you have to look at that in that sustainability model, uh, because there's things that you can do with consistency, there's things that you can do with money that comes in the door that is regular, versus in this feast or famine culture of artistic expression, um, I will make something, I'll take it to Blade Show, I'll try different things out, like whatever those things might be. Um, and then it might be a total flop. And then I gotta put it up on the website, I gotta like hustle it around and everything. And then sometimes, like there's a portion of my knives where uh they sit for a little while, and rather than me sit sit and just uh keep kicking that can down the road and have them on the table, I'll just give them to somebody. Because nobody nobody will not enjoy, I know this is a double negative, but nobody will not enjoy a free knife, right? 100%. And uh for me, like um there is a there was a situation where I made I made these knives and I put this finish on it and everything. There's some of these palm knives that I've been doing. And I I don't think that the the the finish that I put on it clicked with some people. It's that Rorschach finish that I I started doing, which is basically just a poor man's tiger lips, right? Um and lots of people liked it, but I don't think the price point plus the combination was where people loved the finish beyond the price point, right? And you kind of I mean, I don't know. They're sub they're sub they're sub six hundred dollar knives when you have to fight over three hundred dollars and probably sub six sub sub seven hundred dollars, right? And um so there was this kid at this knife show and his uh daddy had gotten this little sub-hilt knife and um and that was basically what he like he he wanted it. I think he came to the show specifically for it. He ended up, you know, using his savings or whatever to get it. And this and his son, maybe maybe he was like 10 or so, was admiring my knives, really liked him. It was a perfect kid's size. And his dad was taking pictures of the knives because he was like, I really like this specific one. And well the kid was uh um kind of googling it, and his dad was like, you know, when I get work in again um weekend, I guess he was switching jobs and and when I was a crane operator. Um and he's like, you know, I'm gonna be working in the oil field and everything. And he's like, you know, when things are kind of stable, we'll we'll get back to it and I'll I want to reach out to you and, you know, take care of my kid. And I was just like, you know, I spent the entire day seeing like seeing people um walk by these knives, pick them up, ask me really great questions, but nobody loved what I did as much as I saw that kid like that thing, right? He was like infatuated with it. And so I picked it up in the certificate of authenticity and just put it in his hand. I was like, you know, I was like, here you go. And his dad was like, What? And the kid is like gobsmacked over it, right? And uh and you know, he he he he his dad was like, Are you for real? He's like, you know, I'll definitely be back, which I mean I I don't expect a recurring customer for generosity, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

But that's not why you did it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

Yeah, no, no, it was because that kid uh it was the it was what he wanted, right? Like he he saw all these knives from real great knife makers, and my that thing was what he wanted. It's just the situation didn't work out where he could he could afford it, right? And I have to look at that sometimes where it's like you know, the juxtaposition between other people who kind of like marginalize what you do, and then you have that one that one spark. That that that kid who's just like this everything that I could ever want to have. And you're like, dude, why can't you have it? I wish that people would have been like that with me as a poor kid trying to like you know collect knives and stuff. And so he was uh he was like he said thank you, and his mouth was kind of open and stuff. You could see that he was just trying to like you know take in what was happening to him. Process that right. And then I said, Well, are you gonna shake my hand at least? And he and he just put his hand out and said thank you. Oh he ran off to take to uh talk to his mom. His dad was even like, I don't even understand what's happening here. And to me, dude, that's what I want. Like I wanna I wanna when people uh like when people transact on my life energy, um, I just want it to be like that. If I could every time I give a knife away, um I think very, very little about what it is that I have in it other than the experience that I would like everybody to have. And it's just that when you have it, that it just excites something in you that is kind of intangible, right? It's not about the steel necessarily, it's about the entire scenario. It's evocative.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

And, you know, that's versus what? Versus you taking that knife home and it's sparking no joy in you as the one that didn't move, or you know what I mean, however it is. You're like, oh, because you'll remember that guy and be like, it's nice, but I I'm looking for a magna cut or something like that. Every time you see it, you're gonna get that negative, you know, feeling back. And now when you think back on that knife because you gave it away, not only did you help the knife community as a whole, but I mean, you, you know, as an ambassador of the knife community, but that now conjures up this super positive memory of you and the dad and this kid. And so, yeah, I'd uh hell, I've always said if I if I won the lottery, I would just sit at well, I mean, I'd probably go skydiving with strippers in Brazil, and then I would come back, and then I would make knives for my friends for free.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:33

Like that, that would be my ultimate. If I I hate the monetary transaction of the whole endeavor, and this is where that separation between good businessman and and knife maker or whatever you want to call it, um, it exists because like I would the money's the the lamest part of the whole thing. It's it's that experience, that handing, hey, check this out, man. Here's here's your new thing that I spent all of my life energy on to create for you, and it's gonna be around longer than both of us, and they get excited, and that makes you excited. And um with the the exchange of money, it cheapens it. You know what I mean? It just kind of becomes a thing, but I have to do it to eat. I have to do it for the family so they can eat.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:19

Yeah, I'm reminded, I'm reminded of like when I first joined the knife makers guild, um, the provenance of the organization was all I cared about. Like being in that group of people that's just like behemoths in knives, um, it that's just what I wanted, right? And you know, as you get into a a group or a guild, you start like peeling back the the onion, you you see the politics and you the history and everything, and you're like, man, I don't really know that this is worth it, right? But that's the thing, the juxtaposition is that like the uh the business side of me says, I don't I want to distance myself from drama, I want to distance myself from group like group think, you know, I want to distance myself from negativity. And um I mean the guild has no shortage of that um in in some ways. But behind uh every uh knife maker that's doing things for business is the knife maker that is handling that first knife. Like whatever it is that sparked them to to where they are today, every knife maker has that behind them. And you just slowly kill your soul in the the the day day to day, right? And for me, I always have to remember that. Like um the reasons why I want like the guild to do well is because I want to I want to stay true to the tenets of why I respect it in the first place, right? And it's the same with knife making. Over the years I've gotten kind of um jaded about the politics, about the industry, and all like the negative things. But then I see, you know, a good cause raffle come up, and it's really for a good cause, and the person or people benefit from it insanely. And I'm like, dude, this is why I want to be in this thing. And this is why I'm passionate about it. And I don't care if I make a lick of money on anything anymore. That's what I want to uh always keep in mind and anything that I'm doing is just how um magical the exchange of people's life energy and passion can be for the betterment of all people, right? And to me, like uh I I uh I get conflicted, right? Because you know, I want I want to be able to make uh a living, I say a living, I work part-time as a knife maker.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:44

Um but I want to um have it self-supporting at the very least, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

I think I think that's the point. It's like you know, you could spend eighty thousand dollars on a car and it's just your baby, it's your Sunday driver, you know, everything is like primped and everything. But you know, if the kid crashes it and they've ruined your dream, like what do you have? Like for me, I have the idea of like those memories, right? The the the things that we've done together and the the material thing is really not the point for me. Um, but I would I would like to have some insurance policy so I can keep doing those things. And um I've you know, I I recognize that when I was spending like thousands of dollars going on to knife shows and traveling and everything, and I'm like, dude, like nobody like my kids, they kind of you know, indifferent about the knife show itself. They like going to like the beach when we're, you know, if we go to Atlanta, we go to the beach for a few days or whatever, but my wife is like the road trip aspect more than the show specifically. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they like the shows, like they've learned to to like the culture too, right? But then I realized, you know, it's like five thousand bucks or so traveling and doing stuff, try to fit everything in. Or I could just take my family on a really kick-ass vacation somewhere and just have all of that, like have everything condensed down to that that time and spend that money on on building memories instead of building kind of like like the the the the fun dopamine with the bit shrewd business, right? And so I don't know. Um I felt bad and conflicted about knives and knife making and what it does to my time. And then I've also realized that there's it's building character um to some extent in me and in my family. Um so I can't really say it's it's kind of like a uh uh um a double-edged sword, funnily enough, uh to use a knife term. It's a double-edged sword sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:50

Well, um, you know, you had mentioned that there's there's something in all of us that that is some commonality, even if we can't put a fine, and I and you've done a great job in the show exploring it and asking people, but there's something more than, you know, well, my grandpa took me fishing and he always had a knife, and you know what I mean? There's something more in this vocation that draws us all to it. And you're muddying the waters with logic, you know what I mean? And so you're like, is this is this a logical pursuit? And you're you know, having to balance your time schedule and stuff like that. And so, but there's something that's drawing you to it. So, I mean, it can either be a ship in a bottle or it can be an obsession. And I'm a firm believer that every man needs to have a ship in a bottle. Everybody needs to have that one hobby that they do that that doesn't it's there's no net sum at the end of it that other than your mental health. You know what I mean? So that's hobbies. Some people golf, some people do F-class precision shooting, you know, with no expectation of making money on the back end for their investment, other than their mental health. Um I think golf is probably a bad example because I think that sends people into a weird mental spiral. But um yeah, it's I I don't know. I take a take a long introspective look and be like, am I being called to this? You know what I mean? In order for something to be a calling, it must call to you first, right? Before you follow the the siren song. Um are you being called to this or do you want to want to do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:34

Oh yeah. Well, I mean, the the the short answer is and I I I don't need knives at all. Like I need I need no part of it, right? Um it doesn't do anything, um it doesn't do anything for me in terms of um I guess filling the bank, right? It doesn't fill the coffers of the of m like monetarily. It a hundred percent makes me just feel good about it. Um, you know, it's very philosophical. I love the I love uh the people. Um I like the generosity, I like the fact that it's something that is um even though like this weird social media cultural like push to uh demonize knives as you know more than tools, like they're weapons, and you know, everybody's gonna now stab everybody.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:23

Um just fucking preposterous. Uh that has to be so chapped right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:28

Yeah. Well, I mean, uh you're talking about uh Mike uh Mike Janich um in his collection earlier. Like, you know, he's talking about these scenarios where uh by and large most people are uh if if they get into knife fights, they're just like stabbing all like all over the place and people don't die. Or if they do, it's like for after a long, long period of time. People wonder why uh you know you get stabbed 70 times or somebody how somebody could do that. And it's like, well, it's just because knives are very ineffective and unless they're in the right hand, so you get a uh uh a glancing blow.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:04

Yeah, 26, 26 half inch deep stab wounds. You know what I mean? One of them slip between a rib, and that's that's the the whole it and look, man, I mean, we make knives that are we make daggers that can't dance around the fact that a dagger is a purpose-built knife. I mean, it's a it is a weapon, it is one of the least practical weapons. I might as well make trebuchets. You know what I mean? When it comes down to it, there's a a lore that surrounds it. And in a time of lesser technology, um, they were the most viable tool. They were the uh, you know, the Mark 18 of the day, you know, a close quarters weapon, but it they've been so superseded that that we kind of make them uh to be appreciated. The same way look at the whole nation of Japan. You know what I mean? You're not allowed to own a sword unless it's a historic relic, even though this is a dyed-in-the-wolf weapon, you know, especially pre-Edo period. So that that whole, not to get too far out on a tangent, but that that whole thing is just, I can't believe that we're even garnering the attention of the powers that be. Uh, because I know it's just somebody said guns and then comma knives. And you could probably speak better to this from a technological standpoint, but that is probably some sort of tag, uh meta tag. I don't know if they still do that, but it's some sort of thing that their little bots can search out. Is it's is are they a knife company? Is knife is in the the line, hunt them down and eradicate them. But I think it was more of an afterthought than it is uh uh a scourge on humanity, you know, people who make knives. And you're talking about some of the most creative people in the world. Like, I mean, how nefarious is you know, if he were still alive, would Buster Werensky be for making you know the King Cut dagger? Come on. You know what I mean? Like, come on.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:01

Yeah, I would definitely be stabbed by that thing and I'd be okay with it. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to algorithms and things, I i it's it's mostly like uh I guess it's the different difference between being a Republican and being conservative, right? Like uh you uh some people really hate Republicans and some people really hate conservatives, but you know, you can hate Republican but not be so off put by conservatism um because there are two completely different things. One's a party, one's an ideology. And I think it's the same it's the same way with with knives. Like, yeah, there are some that like I I I could kill you with a rock. That's not the point. That's not like it's not uh more of a weapon, yeah, or a pencil. You could be like gross point blank and use ballpoint, right? Yeah, right. Um but I I think that the the reality is is that you know, um we're we're suffering in some uh cases to you are the company you keep, and there's always been uh a walk that that knife knives in general, but knife making and custom knife making has taken along with um firearms. And uh because of that um you also have the tactical or tactical culture of of things, and you have this um um uh you know black guns like the the you know ARs and things like that that are uh you know much maligned, and then you have everything that touches that, right? So I mean the we we I guess culturally like the the zeitgeist can't separate the fact that um that uh you know the bad things that happen inside of this, you know, inside of um society are not necessarily a reason to stop um embracing or allowing certain things to happen, like you know, responsible gun ownership or you know, knives or things like that. But you know, you still have to deal with it. Like and and so like I I don't know. I guess like to my point though, is like you know, a c a kid's journey, I mean it might it might be something that is short-lived um in in our lifetime, where a kid's journey through utilitarianism is to have like a knife, right? And and for that to mean something, it's a rite of passage to have a tool that you can cut things with and whatnot. And that because you know, everybody's gonna be like, well, I mean, my my seven-year-old is not old enough for a knife, and then my you know, my 12-year-old is not old enough for a knife, and then my 18-year-old is not old for old enough for a knife. And it's like, okay, well, why why are we even using knives anyhow? They should be by trained professionals, like so let's just put them in the butcher's hand and like they can do everything for us. It's like okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:51

And that separation from life to living, you know what I mean? You're just like, come on, man. Yeah, that's it, yeah. The other thing is what does the data say? Like, how many people have been assaulted? We're gonna go with the the broader part of the pyramid, not not had their life ended, but how many people have been assaulted with a $500 custom knife? And I mean that that's a pretty bare entry, you know what I mean? I bet you could count them on 10 hands or 10 fingers, you know, two hands in the last 20 years. You know what I mean? So it's like, where is where is throttling, I mean, because a lot of stabbings involve kitchen knives, screwdrivers, you know what I mean, like whatever sharp implement box cutters, you know what I mean, stuff that is not viewed through this, you know, lens of nefarious acting. So it's can we just get them to stop lumping us together with criminals because we don't make implements of crime? Uh, because I think that's what it's all about, right? I'm not gonna overthrow the government with uh one of our Raven EDC knives. Like, come on, you know what I mean? So it's like there's no crime being committed at this tier, there's no crimes being committed at the $300 tier. You're gonna see crimes committed at the $10 tier and the $5 tier. You know what I mean? That's that's where it's at. So, and those aren't the guys on Instagram showing how they make their knives. Those are the stuff that are imported on a boat from overseas and sold in a liquor store or a gas station. So it they're they're not throttling anything, they're not stopping anything. They're they're just silencing artisans and crafts people.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:37

Yeah, I didn't hear anybody complain about Ford's uh white broncos when uh when all that stuff went down. It's like, you know, like knives are not really infamous. Like nobody's saying this person killed somebody with a Ginzu. You know, it's like nonsense Westside story.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:53

You know what I mean? That was it. And if you look back historically, that was a big political platform. I think we may have even talked about this before. That was a huge political platform to stand on. Was you know, these these flick knives, these switchblades are the, you know, are killing kids on the streets. They're the toys that can kill was the name of the article, right? And so and they took a stance on just like excuse me, just like AR-15s or semi-automatic rifles or something. You know, I mean they were like, oh, we're gonna save all these lives by by and that's when the import ban started from Italy. We couldn't get stilettos anymore because of a movie, a perception, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

Yeah. I don't know, dude. I mean, well, it it does affect us. Like I I've I've talked about that um kind of I wouldn't say ad nauseum, um, but uh to an effect uh on the podcast because um everybody is really tied to social media, but social media is no longer an ally to the knife industry because now we're being maligned. Um and you know, mo most of most nobody in the custom knife world really is making any like weapons of mass stabbing, you know. Um and so it it but we don't have a broader appeal. Like, I mean, I used to be able to get like followers for whatever followers actually do towards the bottom line, right? Um I used to be more visible inside of social media um and now almost nothing. It's like crickets. You make your cricket sound again.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:19

No, I can't, my mouth's crap.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:22

Oh, fail. Um but you know, it's like uh like that that's the thing is like this whole shadow banning, it's not even shadow banning anymore. It's just there's they're outright uh enforcing an acceptable use policy and saying we don't want that stuff here. And so what is what option is there for the knife maker, right? You can do you can have a website, right? And you can use social media as a funnel, and you can do uh obviously word of mouth, or you could do shows. And those are going to be the only ways in the near future that knife makers are going to be able to share that passion and ideation and everything. You know, there's um other you know, shows, print, things like that, right? Those are it. Like we're we're going backwards in terms of like how this industry is proliferating.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:10

Yeah, you're you're totally right. And because nobody can come up with a convenient platform, like I mean, it's always going to be convenience versus liberties, right? So it's like coming up with a convenient platform is has yet to happen. I mean, Meta is so big and so powerful and so easy to for people to use that it's it's hard to get them away from it, to be sure, you know. And uh, but I mean, for me, like I've been doing this professionally since 2008. So I'm part of the youngest generation to have seen the the full arc of social media and its effect on the knife community, you know what I mean? So it's like before Instagram, um, early days of of Facebook, but I was there for the uh, this is like Uncle Corner, right? So uh I was there when they did the big change where you had a profile page, but if your profile page was a business, they just deleted it and you had to start a business page and start over again. So all our contacts, everything went by the wayside. Um, haven't seen that. And then, you know, we we built the whole brand pretty much exclusively on Facebook. I have an Instagram, I'm really bad about using it. Now I'm kind of stoked that I didn't invest too much into it, hearing what's going on with so many other makers on Instagram, which is weird because they all funnel back to the same overlord, you know, it's all meta. So I don't know why Facebook isn't quite as egregious as IG when it comes to throttling knife makers. But we kind of sit in our own corner. But I'm watching this go away and I'm very grateful that we built what we had and I could do a mailer and probably still sell knives without having to be that exposed. So it's it's tough for people who are just now getting into it or just got into it three years ago. You know, it's like, oh man, now what? Now what do you do? You know, we you know, we still take phone calls from old magazine articles. So uh seeing the whole arc, I would love to see a solution. Um, if like even forums, I I don't think there's anything wrong with forums other than uploading photos was so challenging because you had to have these URLs, right? So you'd email yourself a picture and then copy the address and put that in there. That's that's how I used to do it. And that is just you have all the liberty, but no convenience. And that's what you know, Facebook and Instagram give you is that convenience.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:34

Yeah. Well, and before uh before the the advent of social media in general, bulletin boards was kind of like the preferred social media platform. Uh but yeah, uh basically uh from a technology perspective, the um bulletin boards are very database heavy, right? Everything that you type, everything, all the emojis, everything like that are all plugged into database. And so it Has to call those things actively. Anytime you refresh that page, it pulls it all up, right? And so as a result, you have these massive amount of data as you know, more members and things like that are coming on. And there's no way to really optimize these um kind of antiquated database structures. So, you know, like they run on like a MySQL background backend, that's like all Linux stuff, right? And then, you know, you have the things like Postgres, and then you have things like um uh I don't know, uh Google Cloud, right? You can do things now with a big, big data um where it's more indexable, it's less um less in out or IO, right? Uh but the problem is is that bulletin boards, the technology has not updated for bulletin boards with uh the advent of new backend technology to make data um more accessible and larger, like are you know more scalable. And so that's the thing, like blade forms, great, but bladeform is a pain in the ass. Um like images, like uh you can't you can't easily store an image in a day, I mean you can't. You you can you can index where that URL is. That's the reason why that's the thing. So you you so the database pulls all this information up and gives you this link because you can't store an image in a database. And so it it always like if you have millions of images that you're constantly referencing, you have to have somewhere to store it, and there they're a lot of data. And so you have like terabytes and petabytes of this data that just sits out there and has to be forever accessible. And and social media found ways to slimline the technology to allow limited interaction. That's why Twitter and that whole like the character count and everything was a thing. You know, you could share ideas, but you know, you can store all that in a database and you don't have to add images or things like that. You add images as a technology gets better on hosting those things and um it becomes a feature set. Um but that's that's the thing. Like if if you want to do something like that, you have to spend a lot of money in developing um the software out and building a new platform and things, and then saying, well, what really drives us? I mean, interactivity between people who share the the same um passion, right? Um, and infographics or inf in info, right, that is associated with images and then images because everybody's really image-driven. And all that, like you put that up on Google, Google Cloud, right? That stuff's expensive. If you want instantly accessible data that is like highly indexable, fast, everything like that, it costs a lot of money. And you know, to build platforms, I mean you're talking about several million dollars in an industry where nobody's gonna pay for membership in in a way that you can make you know that money back.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:58

Um, it takes No, not when you can curse Zuckerberg's name while using his free, you know, platform. So what is the answer? More shows? Well, sure. You know, that that is an answer for sure. Um and if if the plug got pulled tomorrow on let's just say Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and everything just went belly up, it's done. It's out, went the way of the dodo. The biggest thing is the culture building. And the culture building is the brand, and the brand is where the value is. You can have, you know, uh some of the greatest knife makers in the world. If they're total a-holes, you know, they've got a very limited clientele that are willing to look past that. So you have to have like this culture building experience, this place where people can understand your values and so that they can decide whether or not they align with them and thereby decide whether or not they align with the brand. And if social media went away, we'd have to go analog, and that's more shows. You but the show circuit would have to grow to meet it because you're gonna have all these knife makers now that have all this inventory and all these products and no way to sell them. So there have there has to be venues. So I think we'd see more regional shows pop up. Um, and I and maybe even some of them grow beyond 20 tables. And you, you know, because that's that's the way you're gonna get everybody in Ohio together to slap hands and and check out knives and talk with each other and be like, this has been a great experience. Then you're gonna go to Nebraska next month and you're gonna get all your you know supporters in Nebraska together to get meet each other, but but they don't know each other. That's what social media does also. It you're you have you know uh you have Jim and you have John, right? And and Jim likes your knives and John likes your knives, and Jim and John interact with each other online and decide that they like each other too. You know there's gonna be a lot of sniffing asses if there wasn't social media in there to act as like the relationship broker, right? You're they're gonna come up to the table and they're gonna there's gonna be a competitiveness between them because they're both trying to vie for the maker's attention, the maker's product, you know, whatever it is, provided that uh you know that's something that you're selling. But uh it's the social media aspect, the social aspect, let's drop the buzzword social media, the social aspect, the community building. I want our clients to be friends with each other overall. That's where most of the conversation happens around the table at Blade Show. It doesn't even involve me. It's these guys. They became friends. You know, the usual suspects in that work used to be amazing about that with all the meetups and stuff. It was a forum, you had to pay for it, you couldn't have a Gmail account, the whole thing was pretty much a big pain in the butt. But once you got over that hurdle, that barrier to entry, you got in there and you realized there's this amazing community that we all met up frequently. So we got to know each other through the keyboard and screen, and then we got to know each other, capital K know each other, uh, at a pool party, you know, for the Colorado chapter. We all became friends. And so that's it's a critical component. It's I I it's something it would be like taking back electricity. You know what I mean? I'd I'd really, and for I'm a Lemonite, dude. I'm the least technologically capable. I'm not into it. It's nothing. I spend so little time on my phone. I have a computer at my house. I couldn't even tell you the last time I turned it on, I can tell you it's probably been months, if not a year. So it it that this isn't something that's important to me as a techie uh necessarily, but it is something from a brand standpoint that I can say is important and we need to figure out some sort of solution because it's a matter of time. We don't get screwed with on Instagram, we don't get screwed with on Facebook, we don't get screwed with through PayPal, other than one isolated incident that was actually related to another knife maker. We did a transaction with them that caused them to do like an investigation into our account, and it was a big pain in the ass. But um, it's a matter of time. And we have to figure out a solution because it's too important if people want to proliferate their brand outside of their area code.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:09

Yeah, it's uh it it's funny. You ever uh watch the uh updated Battlestar Galactica? Oh man, you have to watch that. Uh basically it's like this uh historical wheel keeps on turning, right? It's kind of like uh like the wheel of time, like everything that happened will happen again type of um mentality. And uh and I'm reminded that you know we're basically being pushed back so like socially and technologically, where um you know the the internet is still available, right? Um but social media and the socializing aspect is not. And so what do you have? Like you have shows, right? And you have like if like what was the original bulletin board? The guild is basically it, right? I mean uh and and that's something where uh uh in in the criticism of the guild politics, there's always a wonder of like, well, why be a member of the guild? Why, why, um, why I guess deal with the politics or whatever of the of that knife industry, the business side. Uh and and the reality is is that shows and a guild or a group of people that have the ability to connect and network um outside of the the confines of um technology is really the safeguard to a lot of the industry, right? Um it's it's unf like, yeah. I mean, people are like, well, I mean, that will never happen. Well, I'll tell you what, like seven years ago, I noticed that this thing was like starting, um, where technology, like social media and things like that were not going to be the ally of of the knife maker, right? And I've been talking, I've been talking to everybody about that. Get you a website, like use social media as a funnel for your own thing and uh join groups or something, right? Like do something, go to hammer ins, like be build a local culture first, right? And uh that's it's where it's going. Like I was predicting this stuff like Nostradamus, dude. Um, and nobody believed me. And the reality is that you you want to talk about uh what the next five years of knife making in America looks like. Um I'm not a like a conspiracy theorist um as you know for whatever that actually connotation that has uh today. But what what I do think is that it doesn't make any business sense to put all of your eggs in one basket. And we're not just talking about like full-time knife makers, although you know the the full-time knife makers that are out there are going to suffer I'm going to say the least if they have the network behind them and the culture behind them that they can reverse, right? The the ones the ones that are going to suffer are the ones that are hobbyists um that are thinking about transitioning to full-time knife making and the full-time knife makers that haven't really paid their dues yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:20

Um which which we're flooded with. I don't mean to cut you off, but I mean just think about the the perfect storm of uh at the confluence of Forged and Fire and COVID. So what you had was you had people at home getting paid handsomely to stay home in a lot of cases. I don't I don't think that applies to everybody, but in a lot of cases, people were bringing in COVID cash. And and then they're watching Forge and Fire and they're bored and they they start making knives and people are buying them hand over fist because they also have COVID cash. And Instagram's popping. I mean, these guys are just poof, just going full steam. And then it it kind of the bottom dropped out this year, really last year, but we're feeling it now this year because of the inflation and everything that goes along with it. But you have people that have this false sense of reality, these these full-time, you know, Johnny completely full-time makers that took the plunge and hats off to him because it takes a lot of guts to do that. But they they weren't the sky was a different color in their world. You know what I mean? Like that was that that's a false reality. There was nothing legitimate about that. And we're seeing huge attrition right now, which is it is pretty sad because you know, uh, hopefully, you know, they didn't burn too many bridges on the way out the door, you know, to go make knives. But uh yeah, it's that's pretty tough. And so I think what we're also gonna see is we're gonna see a condensation of the producer's market. We're gonna see fewer makers and we're gonna have the same volume of customers. We just need to talk to them. How do we talk to them? How do we communicate with them? How do we get them to talk to each other?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:58

Well, yeah, and uh like to that point, uh, you can you can kind of um inference that this is uh valuable because of the collector market, right? So oftentimes the behavior of a collector is to wait and watch, right? It's no different than the stock market. You wait and you watch a knife maker and you see what they're doing and you see how they're progressing, and then you get you get introduced into their world and into their product at a time that is um is collect the collectible zone, right? Um, and so you m maybe you get on in on the ground floor and you're a little speculative, and so you spend, you know, two, three, five hundred bucks on stuff. And then in five years, um if they're still around, then maybe their knives are worth more, or at least their their value is sustained. And then you have other collect collectors that are spending the time really watching, and they're like the long-term investors. They're the ones who were with Tony Bose, right? Tony Bose left enough meat on the bone on his knives that the collector market, that that resale market, always drove the fanaticism towards whatever new he was making, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:16

So it's a guaranteed investment. I mean, you get like a sweet ROI, there's always a way out of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:21

Yeah. And so they could, you know, they they get out of the military. They want to, instead of buying a bunch of stupid stuff, they go in and dump, you know, 30, 40 grand in Tony Bose knives, knowing that that's gonna hold up, right? And and and it does. Like Reese, Tony Bose, like people like that, um, their their knives have sustained um and and actually increased in price. But you know, you have other makers that they make a pretty good knife and they they charge full, full retail, right? They want six, seven, eight hundred dollars for a slip joint, they want, you know, a thousand dollars for a fixed blade or whatever, and they're they're charging as much as they can. And then in a few years, because something happens or that that market dries up, then they wash out. Well, those collectors are not going to uh collect a washout. And that's something that that like juxtapose that to the knife makers guild, you know, you you had to pay your dues as a knife maker. And then to get into the guild, you had to pay more dues. So you had to be a probationary member for what, two years. And then in addition to that, you when you were a voting member, you had to keep up with the Joneses. Like you had to, you know, have tables, you need you, you know, you needed to um be there for voting and and all that stuff, right? You you needed to proliferate the knife making industry. And so the the guild was in some ways a larger litmus test. Like collectors knew that when you were in the guild, you were serious about making it, regardless of whether you were full-time or not. Uh, if you got to that point, you had already like knuckled down and knew what the industry was like enough where a collector could say, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet on this person. And that's where the guild name and reputation and arbitration component really mattered in the industry. So, like, is it still that way? No. Like the internet has basically um has basically supplanted uh the the the kind of function of the guild. But will the guild or will organization like that uh be um the way of the future? I I really think that if these things happen the way that I've been seeing them trend, we're going to condense down, like you said, into these, you know, into into into factions basically basically. And somebody has to be able to help to mediate that and to guarantee with customer bases that there is some arbitration, there is some like litmus, there there's something to credential.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:46

All of a sudden the credential uh that holds a little bit more weight. I was it Einstein who said I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I do know that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. You know what I mean? So it's like we're careening towards a cliff when it comes to the knife industry and social media. And so there is a decent possibility that we have to go back to something uh that was, you know, outmoded uh in this frenzy. So I mean that that's entirely possible. Um, but there's also ways to look at the guild to, you know, it'd be interesting to hear your perspective on this too, is how do we shape it? Because I'll be goddamned if we drop the torch on my watch, even though I'm not like a huge participant. I I it's it's nagging at me to get more involved with it. Um right now I'm treading water, so it's hard to think of adding something else to the the burden. But uh how do how do we update that? How do we bring it into uh the 21st century, uh, given the nuances that we see out there and and and how the knife community is as a whole? Maybe this is a great opportunity for the guild, you know, as far as like to stay relevant um in its in its current state or you know be a little bit updated, but uh an analog state all the same. Um, hey, Instagram's not working out if if you want uh a source for knife makers, you know, but how do you get the culture building out of that? Okay, great. We have the pipeline to the brand. How do we get the customers to communicate with each other? That's a huge part. That's such a huge critical component. And we're lucky to have that resource so long as we actually have it.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:32

Mm-hmm. No, I I agree. Um really the the I think the industry, you know, like I was mentioning about like uh the you you can kind of use collector market to tell whether um like I kind of like what the the landscape is, like to gain situational awareness. Um in the same way, the industry is saying that the guild is outmoded, um, but they're really not looking at it like um what did the guild originally like what was the original purpose and what did it serve at the time, and and juxtaposing that to where we are kind of going. They're just looking at it kind of like, uh, you know, the the the old, like the old boys club or whatever, or good old boys club is um not necessary anymore. And a lot of people thought that, right? It's like the same way with like, you know, you you stick with your wife or you go find, you know, new new hotness, right? But you gotta realize that new hotness is gonna be old too someday.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:30

And like the clock keeps on marching on, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:33

And it's like, and and you can either dig your roots deep and you can try to make that thing work and not just be vapid, or you can just always chase that thing, and then you're like 90 years old and you've never had anything of substance substance, you know? And that's the way the the knife industry it if they want like IKEA um knives, then yeah, you can go for that. If there'll always be someone to make cheap knives cheaply for cheap people, right? Uh 100%. But you know, so somewhere like like again, if you ignore guild politics and business and like that, that kind of stuff, and you go with the the spirit of it, the history, the the reason why, like those core tenants, I think you'll find that um uh you know the guild needs to treat it like a business, right? It is a a it is still a relevant, although nobody really recognizes that it's still a relevant component of knives because the reality is sub like as of 1998-ish, when people started to migrate to the internet and have you know some email distribution lists and things like that, it was uh leaving the guild or the guild not being as necessary uh because of you know politics and rules and things, was uh it was easy to leave because there was something to supplant it. Right? I mean people are like, mate, you don't need the internet anymore. Like when I was talking to some of these old timers about joining the guild originally, they were uh saying, you know, you don't really need that. Like we, you know, you have the internet now. And I was like, hmm, yeah, no, I I know enough about the technological side of what's happening uh that I don't trust that. And that's you know, it's it's a reason why I got involved with the guild, right? Uh to to help to galvanize my reputation as somebody who was serious about what I was doing, right? And um it's going to be that way again. It it is. There's just there's no way that you that litigation, right? There's no way that law uh um that that it um backpedals that much. And you you have this uh, you know, you have things that are backing social media businesses um that and you know, and even banking and things to say, you know, you have the right to choose who you do business with and how in what context you do it in. That's uh AUP, it's acceptable use policy, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:58

That's right. And gun and knife guys are gonna be the first to go and and then uh prostitutes and drug dealers.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:06

Yeah. Well, I mean, I you you I mean you can see it with like the uh the legalization of marijuana, you know, like it a lot of people don't think about the economy of it, but uh the in any state where it's illegal, um, it's a cash business. There is no banking available to uh to them at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:24

So still federally illegal, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:26

Yeah. I mean, so it it really like what people need to look at is that it is a risk for businesses to do business with people who are risky, right? And then this like circular um type of thought process the same way is like if if you have legislation or you have public opinion or things like that that are that are um negatively associating knives with I don't know, terrorism or other things like that, then yeah, they they're going to distance themselves from it. And and I think that that's probably like people get up in arms. About Instagram's recent policy change or whatever with like de um like deplatforming is basically, you know, it's not shadow banning, it's just they're enforcing their AUP. They take personal offense, like our per like our civil liberties are being violated. But the reality is, is like you sitting on your ass at home, like looking at knives and stuff, is not a liberty, right? I mean, it's not a civil liberty. There's nothing in the Constitution that says that like thou thou shalt sit on your ass and and buy knives or look at knives. Right. And and so like for me, it's like kind of like please let's let us like disband with this false sense of entitlement. Um, the law does not work that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:40

Right. No, I you're 100% right. And we've taken a very pragmatic uh perspective from day one. It's like, dude, we're in their house. If they say take off your shoes, I don't care if it's a pain in the ass. Take your shoes off. You know what I mean? And that is uh, hey, we're gonna take advantage of the opportunity and the privilege to be able to use these platforms because we see the benefit in it. But make no mistake, dude, they can pull the plug on us at any time, and that's their right. And if they're doing it as a CYA, which undoubtedly they are, there's plenty of people out there. Look, take a look at Taylor Swift's follows on Facebook and take a look at the Misfits follows on Facebook. They could axe the Misfits, completely kick them off of all social media, and it wouldn't even affect their round-off number if they went three places from the decimal. You know what I mean? So it's like they can boot us at any time, just keep your head down and use it as you can. But yeah, I agree. There's no point getting indignant about it because quite honestly, you're using it for free. What's it cost you? And they're they're investing huge amounts of money because they're expecting a return through advertisers. Now, they're trying to insulate that from ramble rousers and uh people who spend 32 hours crafting a $5,000 custom knife because obviously they're a huge threat. So I disagree with their reasoning. Um but I I can't disagree with their decision because it's their decision to make.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:10

Yeah. Well, I mean, what did Jesus say? Like render on to Caesar what is Caesar's, right? And so if you're gonna use the currency, then you're gonna pay tax on it.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:18

That's it, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:20

Uh it'd be what were we gonna say? Oh, I was just gonna say it would be nice to have an alternative. It would be nice to have, and I don't care if it's analog in the flesh. I don't I don't know what that looks like, but it would be pretty excellent to have an alternative where we can be free. And I use that with some hesitation, that term with some hesitation, because this isn't a political standpoint. This isn't like this is just completely apolitical, but uh a place for, and I see some competitors coming up in the in the marketplace where it's the makers movement is huge, right? So there's this makers movement. People, uh I mean, from people making robots to movie prop replicas to, I mean, you name it. There's just there's a a horde of individuals. I know Obama was a big proponent of this. He did uh South by South lawn uh uh there at the White House, and he had basically um Steam come in, you know, students of Steam kids, and he wanted to get them involved in science and the arts. And and through that, you can see once you kind of take a look through that peephole, there's this enormous community. So we're seeing maker communities pop up in the form of more tailored social media. It's not quite like Etsy, it's not a sales platform, but there was like makers playground. I got on there, I threw up a couple knife pictures, and I haven't been on since because that's not where my community is, and I I cater to my supporters. Um, but I did get on there, threw up a couple knife pictures, and you wouldn't believe the reaction these people gave. Not because the knives are great, but because the community is supportive of other makers, right? And so, and I saw there's another one that just started advertising on Facebook, and it's not Makers Playground, and I can't remember the name of it, but it's another maker-centric social media, so it's not as governed as heavily because it's not really as lowest common denominator, John Q public. Uh, you know what I mean? It's more like makers and their supporters get together, and in that there's knife makers. You know what I mean? Whether it's a woodworker or whatever it is, we are also we occupy part of that demo of makers, and we have to have a space. We have these tinker mills, these you know, shared workspaces popping up. Even Escanaba, tiny town of Escanaba, has one. So there's a culture and a community out there, and we're still kind of entangled with you know politics and memes and all this other shit. And the reality is if we could step outside of that and get into the maker space, I think that might be a viable alternative because it's not as politicized and it's not as much of a danger because they know people are coming with things that they created with their hands and their minds and their hearts versus infiltration from you know, wiser by jad of, you know, whatever, just trying to steal your money with pictures of other people's knives. You know what I mean? So it's it's not quite as corrupted yet, nor is it seen as threatening.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:31

Well, uh, you know, let's look at other verticals for a second. Um crafts. Arts and crafts has never stopped having localized knife or uh arts and crafts shows because Etsy popped up, right? Like we still have arts and crafts that are local shows, like everywhere. And I don't like we decided with knives at some point in time um that we were going to we were going to embrace technology because it uh I it probably uh fits a little bit more into our antisocial nature as uh knife craftsmen, just like you know, sit in your cave and be a you know a gremlin, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:14

And talk to 15,000 people. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:17

Yeah, we gotta do we gotta do this efficiently, right? Um but um you know they they never stopped. Like gun shows have never stopped. They are they're in like Texas, like Dallas Fort Worth area, has a a large gut-a-knife show in Fort Worth. And those guys have always been there. Like, yeah, they've had tables that have come and gone and everything, but by and large, it's a staple. Like there's nothing that is gonna change that. Even if the regulations on certain guns or things like that change, there are there they've been there, they're always gonna be there. Most of those guys don't want to even mess with the internet, right? But in in knives, I I think that the the uh the larger problem is that people who sell exclusively online now are like the mail order bride um um network, right? Like what what you're doing is you're showing a picture, right? And you are and you are s you are selling something sight unseen and the market is getting whatever is sent, right? It's like I mean, you don't there is no like there's no guarantee that you're even gonna get the thing because people are sending it through, you know, postal service or whatever, and maybe maybe you get it or maybe you don't, right? There's there's always like a attrition inside of shipping. But then you don't you don't know if that picture's been doctored, you don't know if you're going to like it. Then people like how much of the um the social media group um uh world do you see where people say, Well, it just didn't really fit me very well, so I'm reselling this, right? And they take a hit on it. And so they're just trying to recoup some of their money because they bought something sight unseen, and pictures are not the same as holding something, right? So no, you know, like uh I I I guarantee that the best way to convey value is to not do things just through a picture that doesn't really mean anything. It is to actually have a show or do it face to face where you can pick up that thing. Like an like that's one of the experiences that I've enjoyed the most out of knife shows is that the like uh the people who are coming to these shows most of the time have no context into the variability of knives. And they get to, in that experience, hold and and uh interact with those things and see it in a diff completely different light. Like sometimes a scratch doesn't matter too much. A scratch that shows up on a show uh on a photo doesn't really matter too much to the to the wielder of that knife, right? Um, but then they can also look at something and maybe it doesn't photograph that well, but they look at it in person and and it has like the greatest finish that they've seen to the naked eye. And that it's a tactile experience, like it's it's a we're we are deeply like evolutionarily ingrained with tools like knives, right? And and for me, that is something that should not be ignored. Like the the the shows, the personal experience, that that culture has to be in person. It cannot be it can't be fake and it can't be offered online. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:25

Yeah, well, because I mean there are I mean Blade Show is great. That's the only show we do now. So uh I'm gonna reference it a lot. Uh, we've got kicked around the idea of doing multiple shows, but we'll see how that ever shakes out. Um Blade Show Atlanta specifically is the the one we do right now. Uh you go there and there's such a huge volume, and you know, not personally, maybe, but by pictures and social media, you know these makers and you see their knives. And there are some knives where you're like, oh man, I I love this thing. I want to see it. And you pick it up and it doesn't interface with my hand well. You know, it may photo great, but it just doesn't feel good in the hand. And that just, you know, or it doesn't match one side to the next. You can see one Hollywood side, you know, a million times and think it's amazing. And the other side looks like it was made on the street, drug behind a car. It, you know what I mean, uneven or whatever it is. So I agree. There is something about being there, uh, you know, and experiencing it firsthand versus, you know, through a you know, three by seven-inch screen.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:29

Yeah, dude, I don't know. I uh I I to me it seems so obvious. It's like the this is the this is the way, right? The Mandalorian uh uh quote, this is the way. But it's going to take a while for people to realize that that's the way and to embrace it. I think the knife makers guild uh definitely benefits from um being an early adopter of this. And it's not even an early adopter, they've the knife makers guild has been doing this since the time of like the the insurgents. They cut the path. Yeah. And they just they just need to get back to that. And and i it it's weathering the storm long enough for the culture to to pick up again on it, right? And and that's really the thing. It's like so, yeah, like are are the same tactics, this is the same provenance um uh going to always work? No. There's a there's a great book called The Innovator's Dilemma, where it's once you've developed something, it's already outdated, right? And if you it's like Xerox, right? Like I mean, Xerox kind of painted themselves into a corner with their product, and now you know you you gotta decide on whether Xerox is really the thing. It either does that one thing so incredibly well that nobody else can innovate around around it, or it's like you know, pencil manufacturers, like, well, I mean, pencil's just a pencil. There's no the other than mechanical pencil, there's no real way to improve upon that thing, right? And we like, but we we oftentimes paint ourselves into corners and then are so stuck in that thing that we will will not innovate at all. And that's the hardship that we face as business owners, too, because um, like Bruce Bump was saying, I was kind of sick of seeing everybody make hunters all the time, right? Like they were just all doing the same thing uh in the in the early aughts. And so he started doing things that were different, like you know, cutting shoots and kind of separating himself and doing kind of crazy things with Damascus and other other stuff, diversifying his portfolio. And he still was very much Bruce Bump, but he was also doing things that challenged the status quo. I mean, Buster Rowensky, like most of his work, uh you wouldn't you wouldn't say uh that those are knives, right? Like those are pieces of art but but he evolved from making functional things to works of art and didn't turn his nose up uh as like as I understand it, right? He just did his thing. I mean, I I I think that that's something that we have to look at holistically is not not pigeonholing ourselves. And that's that's the thing that I think that we all do is we get in our own way, and then we don't know how to like untangle our feet to get out of it and just allow things to like progress in a you know intuitive and intelligent manner.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:13

Which that inspiration to to go further, like you mentioned Bruce Bump, you know what I mean? Like he got tired of seeing the same stuff at the shows over and over, and and that motivated him, you know what I mean, to to step out of his box a little bit. And so again, you know, it comes comes back to the shows. You have to be there, meet the people, see something cool. Um but the uh internet sets trends, and in those trends, it's more than just like I don't know, carbon fiber and titanium. It's the context in which they're photographed, it's the backgrounds, it's the the co-props that are in the photo that all of a sudden start enticing people and start building like a little couture around a specific style of knife. And I, you know, people will jump onto that. I mean, look at the the long-forgotten zombie craze, right? Before it turned lime green, is you know, people were taking these, you're like, oh man, end of the world's coming. This is the last knife I'm ever gonna need, you know, and then it jumped the shark eventually. And so that, but we saw this trend where it was like, that is a good idea. And then people started like gathering around it, then the big corporations grabbed a hold of it, slapped a big Z on the package, and then they they they the bottom dropped out of it when that happened because it just it was uh a glut. It you know, it overwhelmed the marketplace.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:37

Yeah. Um, and and there's you know, I'm trying to think. I I brought it up recently. Um it was with uh Evan Nicolitus, right? Um I was talking about like the idea of people's uh stealing stealing my ideas is not really the right word. It's not fair to say that. Um, but when I see if I'm if I'm doing something that I know I haven't really seen around, I'm innovating around a certain idea, I'm kind of like riffin, right? And then I see somebody automatically start copying that thing. Um, I don't feel disappointed uh or I don't feel like uh like the the emotion that comes through is not um that I feel like it's a competition. I'm disappointed because the culture is like you see what's working, right? You see what is like tasty, and then you go and do that thing yourself. But I don't like that, dude. I want to see like I want to see Matt Martin do his own damn thing, right? That's the reason why I love you. That's the reason why I I I I actively thirst for your creative expression, is because you're doing something that's just so uniquely you. And even in this context of knives and everything, that you you can argue it's a dime a dozen knife makers, you're doing something that is just uh very unique to you, the same way as a lot of knife makers, but then you have you have these people who want to uh beat a dead horse and to do something that is uh derivative. It is copycatty, it's basically plagiarism at some point, right? And it's just not it's it it's it's not interesting to me. And I'm disappointed that somebody would take my stupid idea and turn it into another stupid idea. Like that's what I look at sometimes. I'm just I'm just doing something I'm riffing, and you're taking my stupid idea and you're just turning it into another stupid idea. Please do something different and make yourself seem intelligent. Because I'm not.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:29

It's what do they say? A copy of a copy is not as sharp as the original. And so I mean there's something to be said as far as that goes, too. It becomes uh karaoke, right? It's toned up. Uh, they missed some of the nuance.

unknown 2:06:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:45

I got over that pretty quick. Uh I there was a uh we'll say a junior knife maker, and I'm not gonna use any names or anything like that, but uh a junior knife maker in his group, all of a sudden I saw this kind of really shitty facsimile, especially through the salty eyes that I was looking through of one of our models. And I've known this junior maker for a while, and I I'd seen unlicensed influence, we'll call it, you know, pop up in several of his models. And uh I eventually I just had enough. So I left the group. I left the group. Well, they noticed I left the group, and the moderator or the admin of the group started calling me. Hey, is everything all right? Noticing you left the group. Yep, sure did. All right, well, well, why? I said, Well, I got tired of seeing shitty copies of my knives being paraded around. And it didn't spark joy, and you guys are free to do what you want, but I don't want to see it. So I left. And then the maker shows up at my shop with a case of beer under one arm and a white box under the other. And uh he apologized profusely, and he gave me the knife that I got so offended over, right? So he gave he gifted me that knife and a case of beer, which is the way to my heart. And when he did, I was like, congratulations, Martin. Do you feel better now? I felt so skeezy and so greasy because as this maker, this junior effing maker shows up and he was like, You're like my knife hero. You know, that's um, you know, the way you make a loveless dropped hunter. Like that's how I saw it. And I was, I felt disgusting and I felt slimy. And I was like, Wait, you know, okay, you did it. You got what you wanted, you got him to apologize and to turn over the knife. And so I kind of meditated on it is probably the wrong word, but I noodled it around, right? It became a bee in my bonnet, and I was like, so what is important? And my own vanity, my own arrogance, it's not really arrogance, but vanity. My own vanity thirsted for this thing, which is where I draw the line today, is attribution, right? So it's like if if you're gonna use a technique of mine, which are very limited that haven't been done before, or if you're gonna use a silhouette of mine for whatever reason it speaks to you, whatever, all I want is attribution. And as long as you can be like, hey, you know, I'm I'm making this, you know, Levere and Son style, you know, witch finger. This is my take on that, but give you credit, that I think this is long form for saying there comes a point when your brand is proliferated enough and you have a body of work under you, and and there's enough knives out in the world that you're gonna inspire and you're gonna influence people. And you can either be honored or you can be salty about it. And the thing that negates the saltiness is attribution. It's them saying that I am looking up to this maker, just give me effing credit, dude. Like just give me credit for the design. I hope you make a million dollars off of it, but just give me credit. And I don't know how right that is by you know Emmanuel Kant standards, but that that's what I need. And outside of that, knock yourself out. So as long as they give credit, but tread carefully because some of these guys are gonna innovate, but right now they're pantomiming just to get the muscle memory down and they and they're developing their own styles the same way you and I did. You know what I mean? So we just have to have a little bit of empathy and a little bit of compassion because their copy of our knives is never gonna have the same appeal to our customers as the original article, the genuine article, right? So just give them a little bit of grace and don't let that rent too much space in your mind because they're they're just looking up to you. Um and there are definitely some assholes out there. I'm not saying that, but uh, you know what, the marketplace really figures that out pretty quick.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:07

Yeah. I mean, I don't there there are some scenarios where I don't think that that's the case. I don't want to talk about it on a podcast or anything like that. But because I have like use cases. And and here's the deal, like I I find that it's peers. Peers are the ones that oftentimes plagiarize for the purpose of of productivity, right? Like or um monetizing, right? And and I don't have a problem with anyone taking something that I've like worked out uh that is a newcomer, right? Because you're like, first of all, there's kind of like that, you're you know, you're like Stradivarious, right? You're like, you guys are never gonna like be the me, right? And so you like, yeah, go for it, right? It's like um I've um I've really liked the form factor of a of a a Bill Rupel slip joint. It's an axe handle slip joint. And um when I saw that he that was like his first collaboration with Case I believe um in this new agreement after you know Tony Bose um uh pass, right? Um I I saw that they released it on Blade magazine and I had been waiting because I really I didn't it was his thing. I know that I think Rick uh him and uh Rick Rick Dunkerly had uh kind of made this pattern. Um but I I just really liked it because it reminded me of like the form factor that I really love about axes um and which is another kind of like childhood passion of mine is like hatchets and axes and that kind of that thing right um and so I was like you know I would really like to make this thing and just see if I can but out of respect for Bill and it being his thing I was like no but when I saw that they was going production with it you know I asked him I said hey like I it I really like this thing and it would I like I I would love to have your blessing on just being able to make it right and just to see if I can oh these are cool okay I had to look it up I'm sorry I just did an image search for a RuPax handle. Um that is a cool all right I just wanted to see the knife so I could put it yeah yeah yeah so uh Bobby House uh is mostly like so some of the guys I guess in the slip joint cartel might have made it but uh Bobby House is kind of like the uh the guy right uh other than Bill and um what what I uh specifically wanted to do was just make it to see how I feel about it and I got his blessing I got his blessing on it but you know at the same time um what I I waited and I waited a quite a while and then I asked him right and I know that Bill's like you're not a competition to me I'm Bill Ruppel and I and I that's not what Bill would say. There's no you just probably gave it to you freely like yes yeah but what I'm saying is like there I I that's just my realizations like there's there isn't there isn't I'm asking just in like to make it uh just to be able to make it and and I don't want to touch that thing if it's not um I don't want to I don't want to make that thing if it's not something that's gonna honor him in some way. Right. And it's the same way with like other people like I mean I I asked you specifically about uh like your tiger lips uh uh process and everything now I'm sorry I have not given attribution this is like like uh Matt Martin's tiger lips however I have like mentioned that actively uh in in like the the pedagogy of that um application constantly uh with uh within the podcast and everything right and for everybody I talk to like I I've I've put more time into it than just a social media post that Roarshock is tiger lips that's crappy right um but you know I mean I asked I asked about it and um it's something that yeah you freely freely shared it with me um and and whatnot but I it's I I don't know there's like this it's just there's a strata of what's socially acceptable because one like as a newcomer you have to walk into it with a little with respect right and and just a little bit of um um like a humbleness and if you're our peer you have to avoid like being derivative or stealing stuff because that's your the your that's your peer's bread and butter right they're making something for a purpose and to make money at it. And if you're looking at it if in to pay homage to somebody um in some way then I attribution is a I think a requirement and it's always like I hope you're not offended that I don't in every post that I have with Rorshock finish uh mention tiger lips but um and but and I've also I've had my time with that finish.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:02

Like it we're still doing it and everything like that and it's recognized and it's everyone's kind of done their unique take on it um which is awesome. I love some of these creations you know Alex Harrison and Nightwatch being you know number one in my mind like he he took in a totally different direction. Copus designs now I I mentored Johnny you know he showed up at our shop one day and now COPUS is doing great and he has his you know necrolips or necro wash or whatever he calls it. It's another version of it. But I've had my exclusivity time was it you and Evan that were talking about this I may have even heard it on a different podcast about like give the originator the enough time and then it's like hey now everyone can do it. Like I don't care I'll tell anybody who calls or walks in the shop how to do it. You know what I mean? Like but you got to give you got you got to give the the like you did with Bill, you know, hey, okay, these went to production now he's had his time with it. I'm gonna bring it up now because it's almost it's not public domain but it's definitely out there. So yeah you know that's it's uh it is tough with peers. Uh we have a mutual friend whose name I'm not gonna mention one of my close friends actually and he knocks me off constantly but we're close enough that I can shoot him a jab be like hey that's a nice looking raven you just put out dude and you know he'll just flip me the bird and he knows what he's doing. You know I don't get too chapped about stuff like that. But um if I I guess if it's taking from you that's that's where it's at but there comes a point where it just it doesn't matter anymore. Just make what you want to make and you know give credit where credit's due. It doesn't have to be in every post it doesn't have to be every time there doesn't have to be a TM after every time you say it um but uh I just I think there's so many ways for us to stretch our wings out a little bit and be creative and and make something that this is occupying this is taking up CPU usage that it doesn't need to.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:19

Yeah I mean again like I uh I I go back to the fact that it's just um there's lots of ideas out there and lots of things that I'd like to see. I just want to see my like I want to see people that I know are like I'm I'm I'm trying to champion uh them and you know to be supportive and everything do something that's just not what I'm doing. It's not like you know and I'm I'm uh kind of agnostic to this in some ways because like I don't derive an income from knives uh really I mean I it I always seem to be running in the red um with you know tools and other things that I'm chasing with uh with with materials yeah but so I I'm just talking about it like um if if I'm doing something or I'm thinking a little bit outside the box or coloring a little bit outside the lines um yeah that's for me to explore but don't just grip onto that like do your thing and um and don't worry so much about like what's on my plate like just try to work on your own thing and develop that out separately. And if we have convergence uh that's a different story you know you happen happen upon it but if we're like if we're only one degree from bacon away from um uh from um like graboids and uh and and everything like that then I mean as far as I'm concerned like that's kind of biting right and it's it's mostly just that like we we should not all write the same script. We should come up with our own movies. Um we should try to explore areas of knives that are um forgotten or that we don't see in juxtaposition right um but if I see a direct copy of something it's again it's just mostly disappointing because there's so many things out there.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:08

Like I uh I think I told Evan I was like you know you like in in corporate America it's like you're just biting on my last good idea that's the thing that that is the point to be made for sure is it's like when when whether you're innovative innovating or exploring or you know like you said riffing and just experimenting they're always going to be a step behind you because by the time the last good knife is done my mind is already on the next good knife you know whether it's design or whatever it is. So it's like the and those people will never catch up because they're always grabbing scraps off the excuse me I got the hiccups they're always grabbing scraps off the table. And and that's again uh and I and I know that there's we have differing viewpoints which is I love that kind of stuff. But uh um I having experienced like the full circle of it of seeing somebody take an idea and then come to me and you know capitulate like I I was just like oh that's it it felt bad.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:21

And that's why I'm sharing it not being self-aggrandizing in any respect just telling you from experience in this trade like that was one of the worst I've ever felt yeah well hmm I I I understand that I I do and it's I mean I I don't even think that there's I we're we're not misaligned on uh the value um of that either uh I mean what I there are times I think when we have conflict with other people that if they just like if your heart's in the right place and I think that's really kind of where it comes from right like if you're an asshole you are just an asshole and it's it's okay like just like I'm I'm gonna disassociate with you. But if if you if I think that you're an asshole and you're really not an asshole, the only thing that changes that is our ability to kind of clear the air right and I I've seen it some with knife makers who uh are abrasive right and like they they're really really great knife makers um but really hard to love right um and I mean hard to love as in it's just it's like that friend that's hard to love or whatever or something. I I'm I'm hard to love sometimes right like I'm I love my wife because she loves me for me but sometimes she does like make me realize I'm not perfect right and I realize oh I see what you were talking about. I just did that didn't I I know that feeling yeah yeah I mean and and and I I get that I'm hard to love sometimes and I know that other people are hard to love sometimes too but I always hope that there's somebody in a person's life that is like my wife is to me and can look look past me being an asshole right that that sometimes I might unintentionally be that way and and maybe talking through it can be the the way that we become more understanding and empathetic of that human condition, right? Some like you'll never know with knife makers, you'll never know what they're going through if they keep everything close to the cloth. They might have been abused they might have had like shitty lives like knives is just a convergence for a lot of us but we are all humans that exist outside of that right and it's a diverse you know uh pack of people with with that common thread you know it's it's not it it's really diverse.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:58

Like our clientele makers I mean everything it's a very diverse community.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:02

So it so yeah yeah so knives knives is the ocean and makers, collectors, everybody we're all icebergs. And and and I think that that's important. You know um that's that's one reason why I think I'm not really opposed to having people of uh uh differing opinions or views on the podcast either because sometimes I want to ask things like well okay I mean I you you appear to be kind of like a dick like let's talk about this thing or you uh you know like we uh it's not to be controversial but it's like you know dude knives are some of the most caddy like in in knives uh some of the culture is the most caddy like like um you know clucking old hens that I've ever seen some people they just you know they they have their opinions and they talk shit about everybody and then um wonder why um wonder why we have this perception of being like I don't know clicky yeah yeah uh uh my experience because I really I mean now I guess most of my friends are are knife related which obviously I consider you one of those too but um in the beginning I I just didn't associate with any knife makers because I was an island you know I was isolated and I just wanted to make knives so I did it and when I got into the industry proper um I had a very different experience and maybe I'm one of the catty clicky assholes I don't know because usually you know if you walk into the room and can't and you don't see that guy you are that guy um but I don't know man I I compared to like tattoos and guns oh my god yeah the those communities are unreal like unreal you know the the treachery that goes on in in in the tattoo community and the gun community um so knives was a really uh I I found some pretty amazing people and I think you're gonna run into jerk offs whether you go to the mall or whether you go to Blade Show and I just whatever man those aren't my folks.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:05

But I think to your point the discourse between people having a different perspective or a different point of view like you were talking about having them on the show or whatever I think that's critical. I mean there's studies that have been done that say you know uh people who you formerly disliked but then talked to them or you know had an experience a shared experience with them and then you grew to like each other the friendships are longer lasting and they're a little bit deeper you know what I mean because of that that recovery of respect I guess I don't know what the causation was behind it but that that's I mean you know again the data doesn't lie. So um yeah I think differing perspectives are important. But if someone's just a jerk like screw them man. Like you know what I mean they're gonna be a jerk for the rest of their life and they're probably gonna get out of knives and move into flashlights and they're gonna be a jerk in the flashlight community and they're gonna get eventually ousted from that and they're gonna move to sneakers and they're gonna be in the sneak you know what I mean to the persona non grata no matter where they go uh yeah I mean I uh I yeah I I mean I agree.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:11

Uh it's like I guess uh something like a you you kind of like uh triggered this thought in my mind like uh I I know that Joe Rogan does podcasting right I mean obviously everybody does but the the something that I've I've uh as a person have appreciated is the dissonance right to be able to take opposing views and to be able to just talk about things and ask stupid questions and whatnot and maybe unintentionally so I've tried to also do that uh I'm not trying to copy one of the you know the largest and greatest podcasters uh of all podcasting history right um but I do appreciate uh the the discourse I do appreciate talking through opposing views and to just being being willing to like remove your ego long enough to just allow a person to have that word and edgewise of of like that that mantra that you have that they're stupid or that they don't matter or whatever. It's like do you just talk talk talk to them for a minute. Like try to see it from their their point of view. Try to understand and ask good questions and then you know if it pans out that somebody doesn't care afterwards or doesn't share your values it's like I I don't want to marry myself. I want to marry somebody who is different that I respect and everything but that shares my values right and and that's something like I don't want to do business and knives with crooks. I don't want to do business and knives with uh people who um uh you know who are toxic I want to I want them to I want to be friends and I want to work with people who share the similar values but you don't have to be the same in fact I I want diversification in that um I I really do value seeing people who are you know not constantly cultivating echo chambers and and you know everything like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:10

Bingo and they can't see it because we're looking on camera but I'm like pointing and you know I'd be waving banners if I had them and that's exactly it there is no merit to an echo chamber where everyone's just saying the same thing running around like lemmings there's just no merit to that at all. And you know I wouldn't say that you're copying Joe Rogan. I would say that you're doing your part to correct the course which the other side of the coin the negative side of the coin of social media has created the you know this polarizing views this red hat green hat syndrome where you're just like they're the enemy because they support something that I don't and it's like hey man we all kind of want the same thing. We all want our kids to grow up healthy. We all want to be able to pay our bills and eat and be able to travel and you know we want to have uh have relationships with friends and family we all want the same thing we're just on different paths and I I think that that discourse is is so critical and I think Joe tapped into it I think you tapped into it I think that's why I'm such a huge fan of the show outside of our friendship is it's not this is a different perspective. This is a different take and you won't know for another 20 years provided and I hope you do that you keep doing this it's gonna take a lot of compilations of interviews to see where these common threads are and it's it's just such a valuable database. I really truthfully believe that with all my heart that what you're doing is super super valuable. And over time we're gonna start to see the Venn diagram of makers as people of values of philosophy and that's going to paint this incredible picture. What use it's going to be other than a deeper understanding of the art and the craft I don't know if it's gonna have any like pragmatic effective use like paint by numbers for success.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:01

But for people who are um in love with the history of the craft like myself and obviously like yourself um it's just it's gonna be really really valuable as if it wasn't already yeah I mean we'll we'll see I I not I guess my not my intention I guess in some ways I don't know really what my intention is I it uh I I I try not to get too in like uh in the way of what I'm doing um I I want to make it the best experience that I can for listeners um like provided like the technology and everything like that you know I know that some people send out like recording equipment and and whatnot I always felt felt that that was kind of limiting um in some ways if you want to have guests on that you send them recording equipment and then they have to send it back or send it to the next person. I did you guys do that with your podcast?

SPEAKER_02 2:31:54

No, but we didn't do very many interviews and the few that we did we were more of like a current events thing. So we had like uh um knife news was like usually our first segment and so we were teamed up with sponsors of that. And so we would get like latest releases or any you know controversy that was going on or if any of the old timers passed away you know so we did like a knife news we did a knife history so we would pick a model historical pattern and do like a deep dive into the history um usually some form of a pocket dump and and every once in a while we had interviews but typically there were people that were in studio wasn't the same sort of show. So it was more like uh industry bulletin more than it was like an interview type show. In fact I I had a terrible interview with Todd Begg just not because Todd but because of me it was abysmal it was really bad. But yeah that's uh it was a totally different format.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:50

Yeah well yeah I um the reason why I ask is because I um I know that there are some podcasts that do that but I just you know um accessibility is a thing right I want to be able to talk to people and I want it to be as easy as possible. The problem is a lot of old timers are not very technologically advanced. Um so some of some of what people see on like interviews it's a summation of a lot of work to try to get to that point right so there's a lot of effort involved in it. Sometimes we have like crappy internet connections and I have to be able to cobble together data streams and um and sound bites right um so editing is you know a concern. I I try not to get too hung up on some forms of audio quality and stuff. Like I can run stuff through filters and do some basic um audio engineering but i if you're like prosnickety over like you know using a headset of some like I I I dude every single person has a different headset. I cannot help that uh unless I just buy one and then send it out to everybody but then I have to pay for mailing and this becomes exorbited right but well plus it's foreign equipment showing up at your door

SPEAKER_02 2:34:00

Like, what do I do? You know what I mean? Yeah, I I get your point. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:34:03

Yeah, I worked too long in technical support to deal with that. It's like if you can make this thing work with this application, then we're good. If you can't, there are some rare opportunities where I I do get the chance to do in-person stuff. Um, but uh it's it is rare because I don't, I mean, I work from home and we stay pretty close to home, and so I don't um I don't always do that, right? But I I guess um the point I'm trying to make is that um I the the legacy that I have inside of knife podcasts is one that I I'm not going to make for myself. I'm just doing a thing. I don't care. Like you guys look at it uh in some point in time, uh, whether I'm here or I'm gone, whether I'm alive or whether I'm dead, you like anybody can kind of draw their own conclusions. The thing that I want to focus on is being able to talk to people about why they create, which actually is a deeper, um, is a much deeper well than why did you get into knives, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:35:06

Yes. Uh 100%. And because I mean, if you take a look at it, okay, what is our clientele, you know, knife industry in its entirety versus how many makers there are? And I mean, the clientele is the grains and the makers are the sugars and fats, right? You know, if you were to look at it as a food pyramid, the antiquated food pyramid. But so why is a subset of humanity driven to create? And I mean, does every monkey, you know, bang rocks together, or is there one monkey that bangs rocks and the rest of the tribe benefits? There's something ingrained in us, and and that's I think why so many of us see it as somewhat of a calling, even if it's a little bit of a caricature, you know what I mean? Like we're like, hey, this is really important because as a species, this has been really important that one of us, at least one of us, be around at all times. Um, you know, and so yeah, why do people create? Why, why, what why are there more people that buy than make? I don't know. Because I can't, I'm a buyer and a maker, so I see it, I guess, from both sides, but I I don't understand, you know, um the strictly what do they say? There's uh consumers and producers, you know, and the and the machine needs both in order to function at all. We have to have consumers and we have to have producers, but why are some people producers and others are consumers? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:36:39

Yeah, I mean, I I don't know that, right? I mean, I even after doing this a year, uh, which in the grand scheme of things, like for pet projects, there's very few things that I do for over a year. I usually figure out pretty quickly whether I like it or not. And I um I'm just doing this thing, right? Um But you know, it's like uh I'm reminded of uh gorillas that walk, right? So some people see like bipedal gorillas, like what is like a lot different than watching like these guys knuckle around every day. And I'm like like fascinated and terrified by a by a gorilla that will walk on two legs because it's like there's there's a little less different between me and that gorilla, except he is a lot bigger and stronger. But I I think knife makers are are gorillas that are walking on two legs. A lot of times you don't realize that subshit something is uh is exceptional until somebody else tells you it maybe. And then maybe like we all have imposter syndrome, I think most of us. And so, like I I asked Bruce that, like uh or Steve Johnson. It's like, you know, like the some of the most humble guys, right? But I think that the humbleness comes from the fact that we recognize their exceptional quality, right? And yet they didn't realize that they were even walking on two legs, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:37:59

They're just getting from A to B. I'm just making knives. You know what I mean? Like that's that Steve Johnson, like I don't know, I'm just making knives. You guys are the ones that are making a big deal out of it. You know what I mean? And so it's like, yeah, and and it as a from the maker standpoint, it it's something that you know, don't read too much of your own media, otherwise you lose focus and you start wobbling on that tightrope. You know what I mean? And we see makers fall into their own fame and they they read their own media and then they start believing it, and then it it just uh that's kind of a I think a vulgar place to be, you know, as far as I'm concerned. Um, when you you start kind of uh parroting your fanboys for lack of a better phrase.

SPEAKER_00 2:38:42

Oh yeah. Well I uh I know that we we talked about this when we were up at uh Alex Harrison's uh uh shop and doing that uh boys' weekend, I guess is as it were. Um but I I have like perpetual middle side uh child syndrome. And so it seems like when I'm doing things that there the universe always has a way of slapping me down, right? It's just it's inevitable as a middle child, I think. It's just it's in the cards that you do something and you do something exceptional, but then reality says that's not exceptional, and you're you're probably a little bit special, like you know, like a little bit retarded, right? And it's it's the ballast. Like I guess like the uh there there is very little um um manifest destiny in my life um that's not like very hard-earned. You have people that just constantly tell you you're not doing that great. Um like Spotify. Like I have this thing on Spotify, and do you know that I have a 4.1? Nine people have basically said I'm just slightly above average.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:50

Reality check cash.

SPEAKER_00 2:39:56

Yeah, so I mean, so again, like I don't I don't think about it too much. I don't I don't think I I I guess um if if I ever hear anybody who says um that they listen to it and that they spend their time on it, or that um I have guests that really just get something out of the conversation, um, that's the validation that I need. Um it's just you know, we're we all have we all have two uh points in our life that that uh are are distinctive, right? The day that we're born, the day that we die. And what we have in between, nobody actually knows. And so when you're spending time with me and we're talking about things, I take that with a lot of reverence and respect because you're sharing like we can't we can't um devalue our time and our life energy towards um like and how we interact with other people. And if you don't have a full grasp of how valuable your life is, then I think that people really need to work on self-esteem because um it is the only thing that you have. Like there is nothing in this world that is um more your own as finite a resource. Well, and more your own, right? Like the only thing that you have, like you you can have wealth, you can have poverty, you can have um sickness, you can have health. All of those things are uh are uh moving pieces inside of this thing that you have that is very very finite, and the experiences that you have, like all of it. And so uh for for me, you you just have your time. Like, I mean, look at it with knives, you want to be a full-time knife maker, you trade your time, your life energy for the widget that is money to be able to do the things that you want to do. And it's no different than any job, right? I mean, if if we operated on knives as a barter system, like let's just take the economy of it out um when it comes to the the widget that is uh tender, right? Money.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:04

Right, fiat currency, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:42:06

Yeah, if we if we take that out of the picture and we say, what are your knives to me if I have to trade for it, look at the value system then, right? And and for me, um that that's the kind of the thing. I've tried to just demonetize um to demonetize uh the the end product, I guess the knives or things like that. Like you can make money, you cannot make money, like it doesn't matter to me. What I value is the time, um, because that's something that you'll never get back, and I'll never get back.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:39

Um and so and the older you get, the the more you realize, you know what I mean? The hourglass is very full when you first stand it up. You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden you're counting grains as you get closer to the end. Um I I think that's a crisis that I'm going through personally right now, just because uh as a full-time maker, I mean, this is my wife's job, my daughter works here, this is our our sole source of income into the household. So I'm finding that I'm trading a lot of my time, or I looking back, I'm like, whoa, this ate up a huge chunk of my knife or of my life. And uh, and so how do we kind of start leveraging the follower, you know, the support network that we have now, the price point that the customs are hitting at, how do we start kind of buying our life back, our time back? Because it is critical, it is important. But on the other hand, I knew what I was doing when I started, and you know, the I've always said like the the vanity aspect of of making anything, but specifically in this case, knives. Um, that means that's my shot at immortality. So it's like every 12 hours I spend on a knife uh is uh an eternity of existence, and it only counts if you put out enough of them, right? So if you make one, no one will ever know your name in a hundred years. If you make a couple thousand, you have a better shot.

SPEAKER_00 2:44:04

Yeah. Well, and uh like to to that point, uh that's another point where that like the book I was talking about from Bruce Um Voyles um was uh profound to me. Is out of I can't remember how many knife makers were listed in that book uh from the guild, right? Um, you know, it's a facsimile of the time, and all of them were in the most prestigious guild at a time when it was really kind of like doing like very well, right? Um, I went through and there's definitely knife makers that I still know today, but uh there is a ton that I have never heard of. And I look at their work and I don't know why. I don't know why I've never heard of some of them. Like the work that they were doing was by by far something that, you know, 30 how many years ago? 40 years ago almost, right? Um, was something that we are I'm just seeing now sometimes in publication or in social media, whatever. So why like why does a knife maker who is in the most prestigious of of organizations um not exist anymore and uh and just in in in memory, right? And I think that that's something that I don't know if I'll ever get to the answer exactly. Um I do think that being prolific does help. Um, but not, you know, this like the the lie that we've been told, I guess, is that you know, uh in the participation award is that everybody who tries is uh is a hero or whatever, and it's not like you sometimes you have sh you know shitty genetics, sometimes you're just like you don't have the right thing. There is no like there's no like white white privilege in knives. Like it's just like right. Some sometimes it is just you hit it and sometimes you don't. And we even see that inside of um like legacy makers where they have kids that are in in knives. Some kids they make knives and they never they they never hit it. Like Steve Johnson has uh Nate, uh he's a great guy, um, and makes good knives too, but he he's also also been under the uh like like under the shadow of his dad for his entire life. And so I might wonder sometimes, it's not a knock on Nate, like he makes great knives, but he if if you've never heard of uh um Nate Johnson and and his knives and everything, then well, you're just like welcome to the dynamic of it doesn't necessarily follow that just because your daddy's uh a great knife maker, world-renowned for all time, that's gonna that's gonna be the same thing that's applied to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:50

It's it's X factor, and and that's I mean, that's why they have that that term. You know what I mean? There's a magic sauce in the most successful, and nobody can put their finger on it because some of the best in any craft were jerks, or the best in any craft actually weren't technically the best in that craft, whatever it is. I think it's it's timing and opportunity. It's it's it's victory in every sense, you know, a little bit of ambition, a little bit of luck, um, seizing the right opportunities, hoping you don't pass up the right opportunity. Um, you know, and that's that's the stuff that keeps you know keeps keeps me up at night. Like, was that a good good call or was that a stupid idea? Should I have gone to this thing, or did I enjoy sitting on the couch in fat pants more? Uh, you know what I mean? So it's yeah, yeah, there's it it's that that is the X factor, you know. It's uh and you I we see it unfold in this industry, and it it sometimes it's a head scratcher. You're like, what is it? What is it? And am I because I don't like that guy's knives, like uh aesthetically, functionally, or whatever, I'm just not a fan of you know, Brand X's knives, whoever that may be. Um, does that mean I have bad taste, or does that mean that there's a lot of people, you know, who are lauding the emperor's new clothes? I don't know. And so, yeah, that's a tricky one. But I guess at the end of the day, uh that is why you all it takes is all you got and you hope for the best.

SPEAKER_00 2:48:18

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um you know the like the uh like uh I I can't say that I've really like gotten into it, but like challenge coins, you know, like I mean military had challenge coins forever. And yeah, yeah, um uh and the uh memento mori coins. Yeah. Well, um I've kind of liked that idea where it's kind of like carp idea. I mean, you know, it's like you know, C is today, it's like we're all gonna die. Um, you know, what are you doing with the now? I heard somebody um I worked with him in technology when he his firm uh developed a website for me. Um and throughout my daughter's stuff, I think um, you know, he he and I have kind of stayed in touch over the years. Um and he said something on a post uh where I thought it was really cool. He said, you know, uh for milestones in my kids' lives, um we save up. Like you can do anything that you want to, like on your 10th birthday or your 21st birthday or things. And um he he basically like they save up for it. Um so and and then they plan these like vacations or whatever around um around these events. And when he does it with his kids, he's a hundred percent engaged. It's like there's no there's no thing to get in the way of that moment that they're making together, right? And uh he made this post on Facebook or whatever, and he said, you know, like his his goal is to die empty. And I thought, man, the how profound, right? To give everything that you have to this life, like with the idea that's just the one that you have, and to die empty, to give everything, you know, and I I think that that is uh one of the factors like of of knife making, that when you just give what you are and give everything that you are to something, um, that you really can you really can cause uh ripples in a in a massive ocean.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:22

Yeah, that's that is pretty incredible. That's uh it's it uh it's very uh uh it was Hunter S. Thompson, you know what I mean? Although his was a little bit more out there, but you know, it's just like yeah, dude, like give it all. And uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I dig that. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:50:42

Yeah, I thought of uh making some uh coins. If anybody's listening to this, don't steal my shit before I do it. But um I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm saying it right. I mean, I'm gonna have to preface this a little. I'm gonna say it just because you know I think it's cool, but I whatever. Um I'll I'll deal with the fact that if I see it crop up, then it's just the way it is. I want like my logo is at least they're listening to you. Yeah, right. Um and I will know. Like I will see it. If I see it crop up, I know that you were listening and I know that you're biting, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:51:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51:14

But like at this point, I didn't realize it at the time. You know, I got this this tattoo. Um, I got this uh the the you know black bear tattoo. Um it actually um I got it on my forearm and we got it when we were down in Florida after Christian, uh my stepson passed, right? And um, we were down there, we're just like um my wife got uh one of those kind of it's a heart tattoo, but you know how like uh in sailors we get something that says mom? She got one and it says son, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:51:45

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:51:46

I thought it was super cool. Um and I got this, I got this uh black bear, right? Because you know, the in native culture, um, you know, black bear has its connotations, it's a totem and it's you know spirit animal and everything, right? Um, and I really uh aligned with that with black bear, right? And um uh and so I turned this into my logo, um, and it's been pretty well received. Like there's a mix of like kids or parents that are like, oh, that's like my kid thinks it's scary or whatever, but by and large, everybody thinks it's pretty rad, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:52:22

I think it's pretty rad. I've seen it. I have the stickers.

SPEAKER_00 2:52:24

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so what I was thinking of doing is like pressing some coins, like silver coins, and getting getting it so that on one side it has my uh my bear insignia, right? And on the opposite side it says die empty. And uh basically just making those silver coins that are can be traded as bullion, right? So it's it's a it's like a troy ounce of silver or whatever, and you can actually trade it. Um, you know, if shit hits the fan and you need silver to trade, you could you know, die empty, right? I mean, it'd be funny if you like gave all of your like stolen or stabbed or to death. You and the only thing you had is this die empty coin. But kind of morbid thought, but you know, like I I thought it was cool. You know, you can do stuff, like like it mix it up, like uh do interesting things with your life, like play around with stuff. It's like money in, money out. Like I I know that's like hard to say when you're having a hard time feeding your kids or um making ends meet or whatever, but if they're if you're not doing something that's that's successful, maybe think of doing something else. Uh I I think that whether whether it's God or the ether or whatever it is, like however you believe in those things, um, there usually there's a way to tell when something is not working. And the definition of insanity is just to do the same thing expecting different results.

SPEAKER_02 2:53:46

Yeah, yeah, walking into a headwind for too long. Yeah, for for sure. Yeah, and that was, you know, like the other day when I was talking to you and I was like, make knives, not money. You know what I mean? Like it's it's it it's do what you feel, experiment, don't worry about the end result. And uh listen to the universe, man. You know what I mean? It'll it never steers you wrong. So when you start trying to shoehorn your will into things that aren't working out, that's usually where you land flat on your face.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:13

Yeah. Well, my um my wife told me, um, odd, it's this is odd. Um, yeah, sometimes the observations of uh your significant others, like she knows that knives are not like a money-making scheme for me, right? And they they have taken away from like sometimes experiences that they um that the kids and her have had or been able to have. And um, I've given enough things away that she really like she really identifies with the generosity and everything like that. Like sometimes it's her decision, sometimes it's mine. We kind of like share in that experience. And she said, you know what, you should just give away all of your knives, like like the majority of them. Like the only way that somebody can have one of your knives is if they, if you, if they are gifted it, not if they've actually paid for it.

SPEAKER_02 2:55:04

Oh, hot take, but the the license to be able to do that kind of gives you the ability to create without the burden of requiring compensation or expecting compensation.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:16

Yeah, and I was kind of like, I don't know if you really mean that. Like it sounds good. It does sound good, but like you realize that I will never make a profit at this thing. I will just be giving everything away. And you know, so far as she seems like, you know, she's like, I I like the experience of like giving things and to and to just, you know, kind of fill that. Um I don't know. Again, like I don't I don't know if it's just a a crackback to like boyhood or childhood passion or whatever. Um, you know, to to not only receive free stuff, but to do like have it with that that has an associated meaning. Um, but I've thought about that, you know, money, it really doesn't matter too much. Um, really what I think about is like the juxtaposition of the time that I get to spend. With my family, uh, the time that I get to invest in my day job and stuff where that actually does feed them. And then um, what do I take away if I'm just making knives and not making some money at it? The very least, I just kind of like, I would love to break even. Um, but it just seems like that balance of of materials and um and time and everything is I don't know. I'm still figuring it out. But you know, like when people come up to me and say, like, why why does this cost $350? Like you probably only have a $17 in a knife. Um, I'm kind of like, you know what? F you.

SPEAKER_02 2:56:38

It's not for you. Yeah, you're not my customer. Yeah, yeah, right. Get away from my tail, yeah, quick split now, my knives.

SPEAKER_00 2:56:45

Well, yeah, but it's like, well, I mean, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to have $350 in uh in material and then give give my time away for for free? Like what is it that uh that you actually want? But that is where um I think the industry is difficult because um I was talking to uh a you know a leather maker uh recently that was talking about, you know, it was like hot take um I mentioned about what you know prices on knives in the knife industry, and people are complaining about the price of knives not changing a whole lot in the last 30 years. Like people are making knives in the 80s and charging $300, and people are making knives in 2024 and still making $300. Like, why? And I'm like, um, I I really think it's because people are unwilling to increase the price of their knives because they're afraid of ostracizing customers that don't value them. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 2:57:39

Right. Yeah, yeah, that I mean that's a balance, you know, that we have to keep, especially on the production line, too, is it's like, what is the the perceived value of this item? You know what I mean? And I have to, you know, throttle back materials or whatever it is. Uh because uh anyway you cut it, this is a $300 knife at the opening price point, so we can't go over embellishing it, you know, from a production standpoint. Um, which is why I like auctions. I like knife auctions a lot because it's uh it's a way for exactly what it's a chicken chip method, but it it is a method. Uh it's because I don't have to set the price on something that I'm like, hey, I don't know how many hours I have into this, like you know, 30 hours or something like that, and let the market dictate.

SPEAKER_00 2:58:23

But yeah, what happened? What what does it say about you when you let the market dictate and they're like, uh, it's four dollars. You're like, what?

SPEAKER_02 2:58:32

Yeah, we're pretty fortunate. I haven't been hit with that yet, but uh there's always like that, oh man, I I hope it breaks 250. You know what I mean? Like it does, or really blessed in that way. But um yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a it's a it's a fickle place. But the people who come up and and question, I never sold for cheap on Sundays either at shows. I never gave like a table discount on Sundays. I was like, no, I was like, I'd rather take it home. You know what I mean? I I've never you know received a paycheck that I felt like it was too much like work at nine to five. So yeah, that's uh yeah. When again, you know, assholes are gonna be assholes, just don't let them run any space in your mind. Uh you're kind of I'd really celebrate your attitude with the podcast. You're like, this is just a thing I'm doing. You know, whatever it turns out to be, it turns out to be. And and that is the embodiment of the audience comes last. You know what I mean? You're like, I don't, I don't care. Not that you don't care. It's that's not a motivating factor. The work is the motivating factor, and how it washes in the end is how it washes.

SPEAKER_00 2:59:37

Well, yeah, and it's it's kind of stratified too, because uh there was a uh, I don't know, there it's kind of a facsimile of of kind of what motivated me originally, right? I see all these makers die and I want to record their stories, I guess. Um, you know, just I capture capture uh some of their essence, like a a soundbite, like something where you know, like there's few times where you're gonna hear Steve Johnson's voice or Bruce Bump, unless you were in a show, but they don't do shows anymore. So how do you even know, right? Who knows who who other than people who go to shows know who Steve Shackelford is or uh Bruce Boyle um or Voyle, right? Um who who knows about these people? And I want to capture that somehow, right? Um but um the other side of it was definitely um I see there there's a uh there's a few knife collectors that I know. Um I've had uh uh Dave Nemerson on, I've had Trip Miller on, and um I know of Charlie Brock, right? And by and large, when when I had a um uh Dave and uh and Trip on, we talked about like their motivation for collecting, right? And they they like um Tripp comes from a kind of like a more economical um perspective. Like he he he will try different things out. Um he wants to make sure that there's a re like a secondary market so that you know he's you know in finance and stuff, he knows business. So he looks at it as investment to a certain extent. Uh but I I know he's taken um hits on things because he wants to get out of it and move on to something else, right? Um uh Dave curates his collection and he wants to to know the maker and know his investment is uh going towards people who care about the things that he's buying. He's like he likes bespoke, right? And and Charlie Brock, um, he uh from everything I've seen like analytically, he really likes to invest in the makers because he considers when he's investing in uh a friendship, right? And and and in in actuality, what it seems to me is that his uh um his investment is in friendship and the the uh uh the money that he pays is just to see the people that he likes and that he respects and align with his value system uh succeed, right, with his hard-earned money. Right. Um and uh what I what I thought about though is like so for the Charlies of the world um who really sh need to know the maker in order to get invested in what they're doing, what better way than to sit with a maker and talk to them about what it is that they care about, you know, like to not not to try to uh um hamstring them or whatever um and and make them say something that is uh, you know, you know, the things that we say but behind closed doors, right? Um but to to talk about what they what their belief is and then allow um collectors and people of the world to um to evaluate that and to see, you know, hey, like I this guy is like it speaks to me. Like what he's doing is just something that um I I want to be invested in, right? That's that's another piece of the uh of the puzzle for the show.

SPEAKER_02 3:02:53

Like I just Yeah, you know you're broadcasting a signal and see who picks it up, you know what I mean? Who's tuned in on that frequency? Yeah, no, I think that's a noble plight, for sure. For sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:03:03

Yeah, well, and the and the other is that um I find inspiration in some of the weirdest places, right? I might be watching a documentary on uh by Ken Burns on Ansel Adams or someone someone like that, like just something, right? Something random. I might be listening to Design Matters, right? Um and like I mean, your your introduction uh with Melman. Debbie Melman. Yeah, right. And uh that's shame shameless stealing some of her format for the podcast, right? Um and uh I mean it's a good idea, but I'm trying to do my own thing with it. Um but in a respectful way, because I think that her format is uh it it's an introduction to a guest that makes the interaction more profound, right? That's what I that's what I that's what I want, right? Um but um when I listen to things or when I am just kind of, I don't know, just taking in experience and uh stimuli, I I I I sometimes just get these glimpses and inspirations, right? And I I will never know what an interaction looks like between you and I and and how it's perceived to another person, another maker, somebody who's suffering or somebody who's has an existential crisis or somebody who is just looking for the next uh the next thing to boost them, right? I don't wanna like and and some of it, like a very small portion, like 10% maybe 7%, um, is to uh uh to allow people to understand that their ego doesn't mean shit, right? And you know, it's like you bring it down to earth and to be uh reasonable and to not like get so uh involved in the prestige of things that um you forget that um if the internet was gone tomorrow, you'd be out of business.

SPEAKER_02 3:04:56

Yeah, because the the some of the great makers you have on here have none of that, not one iota of it. So I mean it's a pretty big get over yourself pill when when you talk to the Bruce Bumps of the world and they're just cooler in the other side of the pillow, and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah, I don't care about however many thousands of Instagram followers these people have, you know what I mean? It's you're you're not that big of a deal because the the work speaks for itself.

SPEAKER_00 3:05:22

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's uh it's also um it's been a weird journey too, because in it's not an imposter syndrome thing. It's like I don't want this to happen. Um where uh there's like I am not a knife celebrity. Like I will never be that guy. I don't, I'm not motivated by that thing. I want people to listen and to value things that I do, but don't look at this podcast as like a um like there's any celebrity involved with me. Like you you don't know how much I have to sacrifice in order to get people to want to sit and talk to me and to do it for a long period of time. Like you can't say like great conversation, like I vampire uh time from people because I just ask stupid questions and string things together um intelligibly enough for other people to gain inspiration from it or whatever. Like it's not it's not like that. Like I am the the I am the monkey, right? Like focus on the guests, focus on the things that they say, and uh may maybe I will articulate some things in my mind that make sense. But um I don't do that thing. Like I'll I'll never in my mind be any type of celebrity is not the focus that I have for the show. I I just really want us to be able to have some common um understanding of things and to be able to juxtapose that to a a a wide a wide uh variety of thoughts because you know, dude, you could do anything. Like, I mean, like your first episode, we're talking about you uh uh your bomb work and everything, right? I mean, you you have a lot of life experience. Um Delena, you know, she was a jeweler for a long time before she ever got into knives. You know, um Steve Johnson spent a lot of time working in knives. Um Gary Langley Bob Terzula.

SPEAKER_02 3:07:18

Bob Terzula and his jade carvings. That blew my mind. That was a great, you know, thing from the show. I was like, wait, what? All of a sudden his logo made more sense. Yeah, like everything kind of coalesced, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:07:30

Yeah. Well, I mean, look at look at uh Langley. You know, he's been a long time knife maker, uh spent a long time in like the corporate world, and then came back to doing knives more of a like a I can't you can't call it a hobby. Like that guy has some output, right? Um and his work is good, and uh, he's such a nice person. Like he's just like his episode's like everybody's everybody's dad type of you know mentality, right? And um, you know, you look at these, you know, we do have the commonality of knives, but people just live different lives and like what what brings us together. Uh that's what I want to show. We are just a tapestry. And the more diverse we are in those ways, and uh, and the more that we can look at that in comparison to what we see in the product of knives. Uh to me, I just wanted to cause like people to think, like, hmm, maybe maybe be humble and be kind um and be you know empathetic towards people. And let's let's let's share that in in this thing that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 3:08:31

Couldn't agree more, man. I think you're doing a bang up job.

SPEAKER_00 3:08:36

Yeah, well, enough about me. I know um I know we're probably gonna have to call it because you're like uh with as many hours as you work and everything, uh you're probably getting tired by now. It's like late there.

SPEAKER_02 3:08:49

Yeah, it's about 10 30 here. Um I'm getting more hungry than tired, I believe. But uh yeah, it's uh another big one tomorrow. I was here uh not quite this late last night, but yeah, we're in the blade show rush. My time is yeah, it's it's getting it's gonna get hairy here in the next couple days.

SPEAKER_00 3:09:06

Yeah, we'll see how it goes. I need to uh I need to start telling uh my guests to to not do things like don't date this episode so that way I can like put it in wherever I need to inside the lineup. Uh and uh don't talk about don't talk about time.

SPEAKER_02 3:09:23

See, and I have a differing a different point of view on that, I'm not gonna lie. And I know how important it is for the shows to be evergreen, and I'm gonna end on this note, but as an avid podcast listener, I like to know the setting of the story. What is the context? You know what I mean? Because I'm just gonna do this, just to chap you. It's 2024 right now. If we were talking about the assassination of Robert or of Robert, of uh John F. Kennedy. If we were talking about the Kennedy assassination with no context, right? You'd be like, well, what year is this? How relevant is what they're saying in each specific thing. I like to know what era I'm listening to so that I can know, well, was that idea superseded after that, or is this a novel concept, or you know, whatever it is? So I like a little bit of context. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:15

Yeah, yeah. Everybody like like somebody who's a history buff would say that, right? So it is like it is 9.27 p.m. at this time, essential time.

SPEAKER_02 3:10:25

I uh it's a Thursday.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:27

Yeah, I I have drank all the liquid that I brought uh into my closet that is uh covered with a bunch of like basically bed sheets. That's how I do the podcast. If anybody wants to know, there's no like there's there's no grandeur to this. I'm in a hot closet. Uh and like I don't want to, I don't want to share video, like because you're gonna see how like ramshackled this entire experience is.

SPEAKER_02 3:10:49

But like I and your SpongeBob shirt. Yeah. That's the biggest loss.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:53

I I I decided to shave my beard. You guys will never see it on the podcast. Uh, you know, like it's it's all these things. Like, I don't care about that.

SPEAKER_02 3:11:03

Too fun. Well, this has been a blast, Aaron. And I did I know we've waxed on for quite a while, but I mean, this is what happens when two buddies sit down and just kind of wax philosophical for uh that's something that we're both very passionate about. Oh, yeah, man. So thanks so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 3:11:18

Yeah, absolutely. I um I uh my my parting words to you is that uh your life energy means something uh very profound to me. You're a super smart, loving, caring, um, and compassionate guy. And um the light that you bring into this world is something that I I hope that everybody recognizes. I mean, I you know, you're you have some popularity. Um people look up to you, but uh I look up to you because uh you make me feel like I can do, right? And so like your your friendship is very valuable to me, and I, you know, I love you for it.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:00

Thanks, buddy. Love you too. I appreciate it. And uh yeah, I'm I'm your big supporter as far as this goes, to be sure, number one fan. So I'm gonna go too on that for a little while, but uh yeah. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_00 3:12:17

Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna kiss you, but I mean you can say you could say you love somebody at a time. I'm really comfortable with that.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:24

Normalizing of that. Uh uh, I shouldn't say I'm comfortable with it at all, but I'm glad it exists. Yeah, and and I I have a pretty pretty glad. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:12:36

Yeah. Well, dude, I mean, you're I know that you uh gotta go. I know that you're hungry. I know that you uh don't want to talk to me anymore. Uh I'll probably catch you on the flip side through chat. And uh I appreciate you being on the show.

SPEAKER_02 3:12:49

Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Talk to you later.

SPEAKER_00 3:12:53

I'll talk to you later. Bye. Thank you for spending your time with me on this episode of the Good Old Blades podcast. Remember that you are worthy, loved, and may God strengthen and bless you on your own journey in this crazy thing called life.