- Joined
- Feb 10, 2006
- Messages
- 1,176
Last weekend I attended Murray Carter’s Forging and Completion of a Camp Knife course. It was an amazing experience. Mrs. Tradja and I have several Carter neck knives, outdoor knives, and kitchen knives, and Murray and I have gone backpacking and shooting a few times. He is great to hang out with, so this seemed like a great opportunity.
When I arrived, I had anticipated that the other student Chris and I were ostensibly there to take some steel and make a knife – after all, we’re both knife knuts and wanted to make a knife! Over the course of three days, this simplistic vision was quickly replaced – the knife was just the curriculum, but we got a lot more out of it.
In addition to the rote knife mechanics, I really gained a lot out in the areas of functional design, meticulous attention to detail, training the eye to simultaneously see minute detail and big-picture project scope, all in the context of a thousand years of Japanese artisan tradition. Instead of just the knife-knut fantasy vacation I expected, I actually took a lot out of it that unexpectedly applies to my very different profession (enterprise-level database design).
Murray guided Chris and I through a series of hands-on lessons that took our knives from bars of untreated steel to graceful high-performance cutting tools.
Murray’s teaching style is focused, disciplined, and enthusiastic, engrossing the student in a challenging learning environment. For example, after explaining and demonstrating the safe and effective use of his imposing power hammer, Murray had Chris and I start with a few exercises on a piece of mild steel tube and progress to forging our blades to final thickness with a 50% taper in the tangs and 20% taper in the blades.
The lectures and shop time melded seamlessly together, providing a great context to absorb what initially seemed like an extremely ambitious and overwhelming curriculum. The small class size allowed plenty of personal attention from the instructor but empowered us to work independently when appropriate, with Murray’s guidance and assistance when needed. Indeed, absorbing Murray’s instruction was what I was there for, but some of the biggest rewards came when it was our turn to step up to the plate: quenching, forging, or confidently laying our precious work onto a grinder or cut-off wheel.
The outcome of this long weekend was not just that I have an intermediate understanding of forging and Japanese cutlery philosophy - the knife was just the result; the skills were the prize. I don’t know the next time I’ll be forging, annealing, quenching, and tempering hot steel, but I definitely have the confidence to tackle my long wish-list of rehandling, regrinding, refurbishing, kydex, and reprofiling projects now.
OK, our knives turned out pretty cool as well:
When I arrived, I had anticipated that the other student Chris and I were ostensibly there to take some steel and make a knife – after all, we’re both knife knuts and wanted to make a knife! Over the course of three days, this simplistic vision was quickly replaced – the knife was just the curriculum, but we got a lot more out of it.
In addition to the rote knife mechanics, I really gained a lot out in the areas of functional design, meticulous attention to detail, training the eye to simultaneously see minute detail and big-picture project scope, all in the context of a thousand years of Japanese artisan tradition. Instead of just the knife-knut fantasy vacation I expected, I actually took a lot out of it that unexpectedly applies to my very different profession (enterprise-level database design).
Murray guided Chris and I through a series of hands-on lessons that took our knives from bars of untreated steel to graceful high-performance cutting tools.
Murray’s teaching style is focused, disciplined, and enthusiastic, engrossing the student in a challenging learning environment. For example, after explaining and demonstrating the safe and effective use of his imposing power hammer, Murray had Chris and I start with a few exercises on a piece of mild steel tube and progress to forging our blades to final thickness with a 50% taper in the tangs and 20% taper in the blades.
The lectures and shop time melded seamlessly together, providing a great context to absorb what initially seemed like an extremely ambitious and overwhelming curriculum. The small class size allowed plenty of personal attention from the instructor but empowered us to work independently when appropriate, with Murray’s guidance and assistance when needed. Indeed, absorbing Murray’s instruction was what I was there for, but some of the biggest rewards came when it was our turn to step up to the plate: quenching, forging, or confidently laying our precious work onto a grinder or cut-off wheel.
The outcome of this long weekend was not just that I have an intermediate understanding of forging and Japanese cutlery philosophy - the knife was just the result; the skills were the prize. I don’t know the next time I’ll be forging, annealing, quenching, and tempering hot steel, but I definitely have the confidence to tackle my long wish-list of rehandling, regrinding, refurbishing, kydex, and reprofiling projects now.
OK, our knives turned out pretty cool as well:
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