@Pàdruig not an entry for me, Dylan, as I’m already fortunate enough to have a very nice example of the 2019 Ironwood Guardians Lambsfoot.
I will, however, participate in sharing my favorite story about Jack.
From 2016 to 2019, my brother and his family lived in Bath, in the southwest of England. We were fortunate enough to visit them twice during the time they lived there, first in the summer of 2017, and again for Christmas in 2018.
Before our 2018 visit, I reached out to Jack and asked if he might be able to meet up if I were to make my way up to Sheffield, to which he kindly agreed. We flew into London overnight (left Minneapolis in the evening and arrived in London the next morning), I put my wife and daughter on a coach to Bath, then took the Tube into London to catch a train to Sheffield.
Jack had sent me some directions (with pictures!) from the train station to my hotel, which proved to be very helpful, as I was unable to charge my phone on the train and it was nearly dead by the time I arrived in Sheffield. After checking in at the hotel, I sought out an adapter (so I could charge my phone) and some food (Nando’s), then crashed pretty early.
Jack and I met up the next morning in the hotel lobby, where we chatted for a bit and exchanged a couple gifts. Jack, of course, gave me two different Lambsfoot knives — a horn Big ‘Un and a rosewood model which has proven to be one of my favorites — among several other wonderful gifts. I left my bags with the hotel desk, and we headed out to see Sheffield.
After a nice café breakfast, we stopped in at Wright’s, where Jack had some important business: picking up a prototype for the 2019 Ironwood Guardians knife!
As we walked around Sheffield, Jack provided an endless amount of interesting information and humorous anecdotes about Sheffield’s various neighborhoods, buildings and, of course, old cutlery and steel works. I had such a wonderful time walking around and chatting with Jack that I often forgot to take photos of the things we were seeing.
Throughout the day we stopped in at some local shops, a couple museums, several pubs, and one coffee shop (while I had crashed early the night before, jet lag also had me up again around 2 am, so a midday coffee was much appreciated).
We spent a good bit of time at the Kelham Island Museum, which was full of interesting exhibits (if a bit short on Sheffield cutlery content), and even got to peek through the widow of Stan Shaw’s workshop, although Stan was out for the holidays, as this was less than a week before Christmas.
One of my favorite parts of our day was the various pubs we visited, which included The Fat Cat, Kelham Island Tavern, The Bath Hotel and the Sheffield Tap. I could've sworn there were one or two others, but those are the pubs I remember specifically.
Now I don’t say that the pubs were one of my favorite parts just because I absolutely love sitting down to a pint in a real English pub (which, of course, I do). It’s actually because these were the moments when got Jack and I got to sit down and just talk as friends. We talked about our lives, we talked about movies, we talked about knives, of course. Several of y’all came up in conversation (mostly good things, I promise).

Jack is 100% the genuine, wonderful person you get here on the forum, and I’m still so thankful that we got to spend the day together. Thanks again, Jack!


Somehow, of all the pubs we visited, the only one I took any pictures in was The Fat Cat, which is a shame, too, because all of the pubs we stopped in were absolutely fantastic.