Ed Fowler's Willow Bow Ranch Seminar

Karl B. Andersen

Karl B. Andersen

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Jul 27, 2003
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I really couldn't find any other place to put this thread, so I figured this was as good a place as any!
My name is Karl B. Andersen of Andersen Forge in Illinois.
This past week I had the extreme pleasure of working closely with Ed Fowler, Bill Burke, Eldon Perkins and Butch Deveraux. I was one of two students who spent the week at the Willow Bow Ranch in Riverton Wyoming. I chose to go mostly because of everything I had read of Ed's over the last few years. I am an avid outdoorsman, traditional bowhunter, and 7 year knife maker. But, to be quite honest, I was making some darn good lookin' knives, but really had no idea how they would perform, from knife to knife. I wanted to KNOW! what my customer was getting before it left my shop, so I signed up for Ed's class.
One of the incredibly few really smart things I have ever done!
I was tired of the cookie cutter run-of-the-mill garden variety type flat grind lifeless blades that I see everywhere. I wanted to learn to make a knife that had character, a soul, and would cut 'till the sun went down! And that is exactly what I learned to make at Willow Bow.
That's not all. I met a group of guys who leave NO stones unturned, take NO short cuts in their knife making, and who make beautiful knives that can save your life - or somebody else's!
I'll tell you this - if I was driving down the highway after having just been to a knife show where I bought an Ed Fowler knife, a Bill Burke knife, an Eldon Perkins knife, and a Butch Deveraux knife and came upon an accident where I had to act FAST! to save somebody's life, and only had ONE! chance, I know which knife I'd grab!
It wouldn't matter!!!
Each one would do the job necessary.
Each and every knife these guys make is made with the same integrity. The same attention to detail and most of all, with the same degree of asurity that it will perform!
Not to mention of course that these guys were just one heck of a lot of fun!
Ed couldn't participate as much as he would have liked to because of some upcoming surgery, but to be quite honest, those other guys know their stuff so well, I felt like I was being taught by Ed himself. Ed did, however, manage to keep us cheerful with stories from over the years. There was never an awkward or dull moment!
We worked from 9:00 in the morning 'til 1:00 the next morning! One night we quit "early" at 11:00!
I'm sorry I had to leave.
I hope I made life-long friends, and my next visit will be to Bill's for some Damascus training.
Thanks to all at Willow Bow.
Thanks to Tina.
Thanks to Ed for sharing his hard-earned knowlege.
Thanks to Bill and Eldon for coming from miles away to spend time at the forge.
Thanks to Butch for the .300 Win. Mag practice.
I'm honored to have been there.
Karl B. Andersen
 
Thanks Karl for the post about your experience at the Willow Bow Ranch. I too would enjoy the eye opening visit there. I know Ed and Bill and always enjoy the time at shows with them. They have done their homework and most all of us cold benefit from that wisdom and still retain our "Own Stlye" of knife. I use such a wide variety of steels and heat treat each one with proven formulas but truth be known there insnt enough time to test each one and combination of steels such as in most damascus blades. Ed has tested and tested and tweaked one steel for most of his life and has always shared with anyone willing to spend time to listen. I would like to add to my "total knife experience" by spending at least a week with him. Ive always looked up to him and have been inspired since my start in 1989.
 
kbaknife said:
I was tired of the cookie cutter run-of-the-mill garden variety type flat grind lifeless blades that I see everywhere. I wanted to learn to make a knife that had character, a soul, and would cut 'till the sun went down!
Click to expand...

Is it just me guys, or did we just get dissed? :confused:

-Allin
 
fitzo said:
It's part of the package trip, Allin. ;)
Click to expand...

That is what I figured when I saw the post the other day. Kinda like how I have to fill out surveys on the training I go through for work, attendies from Ed's classes must be asked to post something here.

Glad to know kbaknife liked it, but just seems like more advertising to me. :rolleyes:
 
Come on guys. Nobody asked or suggested I do or say ANYTHING!
I wrote this entirely on my own with no influence from anyone.
I just got tired of making the same ol' stuff and wanted to learn to make something better that really worked.
What would you say if you went and learned something new from someone? Nothing? No thanks? No gratitude?
That would be a disservice to your teacher.
You have something against a person improving their ability to deliver a better product, and then announcing that fact?
As far as I know, those guys don't even know I wrote this - haven't talked to them since I left Willow Bow.
I say to improve your ability to produce and deliver a better knife whenever you have the opportunity, and to support and congratulate those that do.
What will you say when I go back to Washington Arkansas and take the Handles and guards class?
I'm not supposed to say anything? Will you feel "dissed" if I say I learned something really neat from a great instructor?
Ya'll need to lighten up and make the Knife World a cool place to be.
Karl B. Anderson
 
Congratulations! I am sure you'll enjoy getting back to your own workshop, where you can put it all into practice.
 
Karl, I don't think anyone is denigrating your enthusiasm whatsoever.

It is a common phenomenon to come away from a class like that amped. It can be ABS school, a good hammer in, even a knife show. That is a good thing, where we get our continuing inspiration to learn and improve. To have left Wil.low Bow without that buzz would have been a true sadness, neh? Thus my comment that the post-coital glow is "part of the package trip."

It is not your taking the class that generated the comments. It is a (possibly unintended) insinuation that you've "left behind" the run of the mill knives that the rest of us mortal knifemakers make by now having found the "One True Way". It comes off as a "this is the way to make a good knife, and the rest of the ways are lesser." After 24 years at this, I tend to wrankle when I hear that stuff. There is a lot of truly superb work out there that doesn't follow Ed's methods, and while he is the source of a great way, it is not the only way to achieve comparable results.

Having used some of the same flowery language that often accompanies Ed's teachings, I hate to say it but it is easy to misconstrue your writing as an advertisement, considering the frequency of those threads of late. Given your low post count and the appearance of your post close on others of this kind, I hope you can give a moment to consider how others may become a little suspicious.

I apologize if I have inadvertantly misunderstood your intentions..... and I am truly happy for you that you have had a personal epiphany. I mean that.
 
All of these posts lately about Ed's class are getting to be too much. If he taught you well, thank him. That's all that's needed, I don't need to know!

Sounds like all you have to do is spend a week at the Willow Bow Ranch and pretty soon you'll be on the cover of blade with your own ESPN or NESN knife making show~!
 
This is a great group of knifemakers that are more than willing to give any help they can to answer any questions and discuss any aspect of knifemaking. One thing they will not do is pad your ego -- they will shoot you straight and if that is not what you're after then I seriously couldn't tell you where you would find that kind of forum.
 
kbaknife said:
You've just proven people are no different here than any place else.
I had hopes.
Karl B. Anderson
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Oh, please don't go away mad..... ;)
 
If you had wanted to post about the wonders of the Willow Bow School experience, why did you not start with a posting about your thoughts and feelings before leaving? That would have been a start, and the posting above would have been an end.

There are so many knifemakers on the Forums. Some are well known and respected, like Ed Fowler, Kit Carson, Art Washburn, Ed Schempp, Tom Mayo....

There are also knifemakers in THIS forum that might not be so well known, but are highly respected, and care for each other's plight, successes and failures. I repeat myself repeatedly, but the only way to get respect and regard in a community, is to become part of a community. You become part of a community, which the Knife Maker's Forums in BladeForums is, by communiCATING.

It is presumptuous to come in here posting about a great experience that you had, using words or phrases that can certainly be construed as insulting, and have anyone respond overwhelmingly positively without them KNOWING you. This is not a Forum of anonymity, or blogging, this is an outpost of community.

No one is banishing you, or holding you in scorn. If you want to be part of this community, than you may do so by sticking around for a while, and chiming in on conversations when appropriate. Let people get to know you, your work, and your feelings. As an example(not picking on anyone here), if Mr. Goode, Mr. Buxton or Mr. Koster attended the Willow Branch School, and posted their experiences on the Forums, they would (generally speaking) be greeted with enthusiasm and an awful lot of questions.

Hope you stay.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
I wasn't aware this was Emily Post's Book of Etiquette... I'm not a knifemaker but a "registered user". I used to be a gold member, but now I'm just normal. I feel some of the folks out there who are happy about their successes, and others who are having real positive experiences are being told by some of the rest "how to feel" or "the way they should say what they feel"... or even lately "who are you?"

This is a public forum, my access to it and ability to post on it is a matter of the forum rules. Apparently, the guys who put the site together don't care whether I know what I'm talking about and don't see it as their job to criticise, or prohibit those who aren't established members. So, what I'd like to say is "LET FREEDOM RING". Thanks for posting Karl. I, appreciate hearing your story and visit.. Hope there's more to come. Don't let the naysayers and aggravated, frustrated, or aspiring-to-no-end, confused people bother you .02
David
 
Alright,


This is going to become one of those "popcorn" threads .........isn't it. :)


I swear I hear that danged Elephant Song in the background again.
 
Posted by Karl,

I was tired of the cookie cutter run-of-the-mill garden variety type flat grind lifeless blades that I see everywhere. I wanted to learn to make a knife that had character, a soul, and would cut 'till the sun went down!
Click to expand...

So from now on are you only going to make knives that look like Ed's? I mean they have so much character, asthetics, graceful lines, and are so pleasing to look at! ;) :p
 
2knife said:
I wasn't aware this was Emily Post's Book of Etiquette... I'm not a knifemaker but a "registered user". I used to be a gold member, but now I'm just normal. I feel some of the folks out there who are happy about their successes, and others who are having real positive experiences are being told by some of the rest "how to feel" or "the way they should say what they feel"... or even lately "who are you?"

This is a public forum, my access to it and ability to post on it is a matter of the forum rules. Apparently, the guys who put the site together don't care whether I know what I'm talking about and don't see it as their job to criticise, or prohibit those who aren't established members. So, what I'd like to say is "LET FREEDOM RING". Thanks for posting Karl. I, appreciate hearing your story and visit.. Hope there's more to come. Don't let the naysayers and aggravated, frustrated, or aspiring-to-no-end, confused people bother you .02
David
Click to expand...

So, by your own reasoning, David, wouldn't you have to afford the dissenters just as much right to voice their opinion?

I tried to be relatively nice, understanding enthusiasm may have generated language that could be construed as an insult (which it is; whether it was intended or not is the important qualifier). I apologized if I had misunderstood. Mr. Anderson came back with disdain. If you have a problem with what I considered a fairly reasonable attempt at dialogue, then I can put it much simpler:

Bite me. Now, that's neither Emily Post nor confused. :)
 
I'm going to add my $.02 where it doesn't really belong.

I don't know kbaknife at all and can't speak on whether or not he meant to insult. My personally feeling is that he did not. On the other hand, I also see how it is an insult, meant or not. As he stated that he was a knifemaker before attending Mr. Fowler's course, I think kbaknife would have been much better recieved here if he had referenced the quality of his own knives (prior to taking the course) rather than that of those he "saw everywhere." The internet is too vague a place for statements like that, IMO.

What I took from his comments in that regard was that he felt that his own knives were run of the mill cookie cutters and lacking soul and that he took Fowler's course to remedy this. And that, for him, the course was wildly successful at accomplishing this. Good on him for finding the soul of his knives, eh?


Given the enthusiasm of the post and the fact that he is not a maker known to the regulars in the knife maker's forums I think it would have been best if kbaknife had posted this in community or the general knife discussion forum as it is not relevant to "bladesmith q & a" but is instead a somewhat flowery review.

Ok. I'm done now. ;)
 
OK - it's half time!
At ease!
This is a public forum,(thanks David), and I have every bit as much right to post whatever I like here as anyone else, with-in the Forum guidelines, regardless of how many posts I've made! (I don't even understand that one.)
I made NO direct attacks on ANYONE!, but I see it happening now.
Directly from one person to the next.
I was talking about MY knives - not yours.
All I said was that I had learned something cool and met some awfully nice people.
Who's knives do yours look like? Does that put you in some sort of category? If you learn a blade shape or guard technique or heat treating recipe from someone and use it, does that make you some type of clone? No.
Gee whiz, guys! Sorry I touched a nerve! Don't go off on the deep end.
Knife making is fun!
Shout it from the roof when you learn something!
Promote yourselves and each other.
I have gone to the web sites of a few of the guys who just couldn't resist "jabbing" me, and ya'll make some bodaciously awesome knives! Breathtaking stuff. You need to be congratulated in your efforts and successes.
I might be an "apprentice" knife maker, but I've been around for more than a 1/2 century, and was born at night - but not LAST night!
I can see what's going on here, and it's going nowhere.
Go back to the shop and do what we enjoy most - making knives!
Together we stand - divided we fall.
 
Karl, you gotta re-read your first post. It VERY MUCH can be read that you say "flat ground knives aren't as good." Obviously, a number of people didn't read it as "my flat ground knives". Consider the fact that different wording may have had an altogether different response. Your last post has a different feel from the first.

I'll explain the comment about post count: you have been a member for a couple years but don't post much. Like was said, people don't know you, and regardless of it being public, forums tend to develop a community. You suddenly show up and carry on and people wonder whether they're being insulted. Having had several threads like that very recently, can't you at least see where someone could take it wrong, and perhaps think it's advertising. If you don't understand the history here, especially near term, then I can perhaps understand why your reception may seem very strange to you.

NO ONE should begrudge a man an epiphany-like experience in knifemaking, and I'd be sad if anyone did. That's why I offered an apology if I had misunderstood you.

Now, I will repeat, I have no interest whatsoever in denigrating you or your work or your experience. I am happy for you.

Lemme just pose a closing question, hypothetical: if you did come in here specifically with the motivation of testifying for the benefit of promoting the school as the only way to make the "best" knife, would you consider it understandable if people got pissed?
 
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