Buster Warenski

Triton

Triton

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Aug 8, 2000
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So the Jody Samson thread got me thinking. In that thread what I considered an iconic knife / sword maker was posted about. The op was asked what people remembered about that maker. A few people posted a little about what they knew, remembered or had heard. It was kind of neat and possible because Samson was still in living memory. I wonder how long that will be possible for other iconic makers, collectors or other knife celebrity types. For example Samson is within living memory, Scagel is just barely so (or maybe not) and James Black is not.

With that in mind I thought it might be fun to capture some of that living memory here. So, what do you remember about Warenski? I never heard of him until well after he had passed on. All I know comes from Blade magazine. How about you?
 
He is synonymous with daggers for me and not just the legacy series. I have studied them in Coop's gallery and now have a bunch of the David Darom books. It is interesting to see some of his early work before he moved into art pieces.
Julie's engraving is another aspect. I like the one where she installed about 100 tiny gold balls into a spiral of carved flowers around the handle.
 
He's synonymous with art daggers to me. Just crazily decorated works of extremely expensive art. Loved his wife's engraving.
 
Richard338 said:
He is synonymous with daggers for me and not just the legacy series. I have studied them in Coop's gallery and now have a bunch of the David Darom books. It is interesting to see some of his early work before he moved into art pieces.
Julie's engraving is another aspect. I like the one where she installed about 100 tiny gold balls into a spiral of carved flowers around the handle.
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I'm going to have to look that one up. Do you know what t was called? I will also have to look up Dave Darom. The legacy series are the pinnacle of art knives to me. Loerchner has some others that are up there but the sheer talent displayed...
 
I honestly don't know much about him, but I would like to know what happened to his solid gold knife he made, is it in a private collection now? That is one of the things that inspired me to make knives out of precious metals, I managed to make quite a few functional work hardened razor blades out of solid fine silver.
 
Triton said:
I'm going to have to look that one up. Do you know what t was called? I will also have to look up Dave Darom. The legacy series are the pinnacle of art knives to me. Loerchner has some others that are up there but the sheer talent displayed...
Click to expand...

Here it is.
You might also enjoy this thread of daggers: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/celebration-of-daggers.1762400/

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Does anybody else think Kyle Royer and his style of knife was heavily influenced by these knives. Look at that dagger above, then look at a lot of Kyles latest knives.
 
Londinium Armoury said:
Does anybody else think Kyle Royer and his style of knife was heavily influenced by these knives. Look at that dagger above, then look at a lot of Kyles latest knives.
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I have been watching Kyle's Youtube videos. I would say that he has many influences, but more generally the art knife world inspires and builds upon itself.
There are a few very unique makers but most have obvious inspiration.
The annoying part of the Royer videos is seeing that he has the same disc grinder I do, and still uses an old 3-step-pulley KMG grinder, so what's my excuse?
(for now I'll go with the mill, lathe and surface grinder that I don't have)
 
Richard338 said:
I have been watching Kyle's Youtube videos. I would say that he has many influences, but more generally the art knife world inspires and builds upon itself.
There are a few very unique makers but most have obvious inspiration.
The annoying part of the Royer videos is seeing that he has the same disc grinder I do, and still uses an old 3-step-pulley KMG grinder, so what's my excuse?
(for now I'll go with the mill, lathe and surface grinder that I don't have)
Click to expand...

Haha, I think Kyle is a very patient perfectionist, I think you can do what he does but maybe need to be prepared to spend 2 weeks making nothing but a single pommel or guard. Restarting 5 times over if you get something even slightly wrong. He's the complete opposite type of maker that I am. I ram, slam and pound big rough unfinished parts together, until I feel it's as strong and robust as it needs to be and feels good in hand. I don't even start considering how something looks until i'm saniding and finishing. Then I think hey that kind of looks stupid, but it feels good. I have the Sal Glesser effect. Kyle is the kind of guy who will scultp art with his mind and tools first and then make it fit like a glove.
He's more of an artist.
 
Londinium Armoury said:
Haha, I think Kyle is a very patient perfectionist, I think you can do what he does but maybe need to be prepared to spend 2 weeks making nothing but a single pommel or guard. Restarting 5 times over if you get something even slightly wrong. He's the complete opposite type of maker that I am. I ram, slam and pound big rough unfinished parts together, until I feel it's as strong and robust as it needs to be and feels good in hand. I don't even start considering how something looks until i'm saniding and finishing. Then I think hey that kind of looks stupid, but it feels good. I have the Sal Glesser effect. Kyle is the kind of guy who will scultp art with his mind and tools first and then make it fit like a glove.
He's more of an artist.
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Sal Glesser doesn't "ram,slam and pound big rough unfinished parts together". He plans his designs just like any decent cutler.
 
Londinium Armoury said:
I honestly don't know much about him, but I would like to know what happened to his solid gold knife he made, is it in a private collection now? That is one of the things that inspired me to make knives out of precious metals, I managed to make quite a few functional work hardened razor blades out of solid fine silver.
Click to expand...
Are you referring to the Tut dagger or something else? Not that I know where any of them actually are....
 
TRfromMT said:
I'll let L Londinium Armoury speak for himself, but Sal, in his own words, makes knives for the hands and not for the eyes. I think that's what Londinium meant by that.
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I'm glad you got my reference and didn't take it the wrong way, yes this is exactly what I mean't, Sal makes knives as functional cutting tools without regard to how something looks. He doesn't try to create art, he tries to make the best functional tool possible.
For the record Spyderco are one of my fav knife companies, and out of my whole collection I probably own more Spydercos than any other brand.
I like Sal, we have spoken quite a few times, he's a very nice man.
 
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