2011 mini knife KITH

Well I guess some closing thoughts on this little KITH are in order. What started as a bit of fascination and intrigue with little knives had turned into an organized event. Lots of steps were in between the start and now the end. Seeing Stacy's (aka Bladsmth) creations led me to do massive amounts of searching this site and internet for more images and write ups on miniature knives. Not much was to be found. A few pictures, a couple collections, and the only WIP's or tutorials I found were written by Stacy. Greg (Trypper) had started one which he chronicled nicely. I was thinking of a way to get more information and knives in one place, with a KITH being my best bet. Why else would everyone go through the trouble of making a "toy" knife unless they got one in return. So I tested the water and found enough interest. I conversed with Stacy via email to figure out the details which he was gracious enough to take the time in helping out.

March 31 I posted the official start of the KITH and a few makers who were eager jumped on board immediately which helped get the ball rolling, so to speak. Soon after the list of makers began to grow, makers new and old were getting excited and started collecting materials. Interesting enough, some makers went through multiple knives during the course of this event. Either from failures, completing one and starting another, or just working in batches, while some of us were struggling to find time to work on the one we were committed to. I originally started with a 2 month window which I felt was enough, but proved too short because even I got behind and would not have finished on time. Nice thing about being the host, you have some latitude to change the rules! Well it ended up being a good choice to extend the deadline for everyone, not many knives were close to being done. In the extra month the deadline was pushed to, I think more work was done on mini's than in the previous two months! We even picked up another maker who did an excellent job.

There were quite a few firsts involved with this as well. For me it was my very first knife from scratch, mini or otherwise! Others have never had to think about the tiny j-hook scratches on a normal knife being almost 1/4 the length of the blade on a mini, or how to make a square hole so small. Learning that margin for error is scaled proportionately to the size of the mini is difficult, at best. I think everyone did a wonderful job, though!

So I would like to extend one last THANK YOU to all the makers who finished a knife. I would also like to offer thanks to the others who showed interest early on but were unable to complete a knife, even you were instrumental in getting others interested. I do want to make sure that everyone knows to thank Stacy as well for overseeing this little get together and offering his expertise when needed for either making a knife or how to run one of these events. Thank You Stacy, very much. I look forward to hosting this again next year, with hopefully much more interest. Lets all do our part to make miniature knives a serious segment of edged culture. Even if just for fun.


-Xander Holman, KITH Director

The following is the list of makers who completed a knife in the 2011 MINI KNIFE KITH. Be sure to scroll through and enjoy the images of each knife.

Stacy Apelt - Bladsmth
Xander Holman - Fast14riot
Charles Steffes-Clayton - Zaph1
RyanW - Ryan Weeks
Mike Davis - Mike Davis
Daniel Fairly Knives - Daniel Fairly
 
I would like to see it again too.

I think the timing works well in the summer too, no conflict with the xmas one.
 
Oh don't worry, I do plan on hosting another one! If I change the schedule it may only be to move it one month later, but I don't know if a finish date of August would interfere with the X-mas KITH. Keeping some time between the two I suspect would let makers get caught up on orders.

Count, can we expect to see you making a mini next year?


-Xander
 
fast14riot said:
Oh don't worry, I do plan on hosting another one! If I change the schedule it may only be to move it one month later, but I don't know if a finish date of August would interfere with the X-mas KITH. Keeping some time between the two I suspect would let makers get caught up on orders.

Count, can we expect to see you making a mini next year?
-Xander
Click to expand...

Maybe announcing the start earlier, but keeping the same end date would get more entires - being careful to not interfere with Blade

You never know what could happen.
 
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