The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Thank you kindly, that was a post I originally made a few years agoWonderful Story, Jack! Thanks for your masterful writing and editing!!!
www.bladeforums.com
Nice work Rick, a Lambsfoot is such a great user
Sorry to hear about your cars! 
That rotten luck my friend 
Insurance isn't mandatory?! Nice pics 
It's hard to beat nickel silver and ebony! Looks awesome.Thanks Jack for the virtual tour of Whitby, and the tale of the Helga Maria, quite the adventure! Really great pictures!
I've got this newly arrived lamb in my pocket today.
Thanks buddy, looks like you got a good one thereThanks Jack for the virtual tour of Whitby, and the tale of the Helga Maria, quite the adventure! Really great pictures!
I've got this newly arrived lamb in my pocket today.
Definitely a looker Thanks Steve
Thank you kindly, that was a post I originally made a few years ago
Round Yorkshire With A Knife: Heading For The Coast (more at post 41)
Whitby is a Yorkshire fishing port and seaside town, once the haunt of whalers and smugglers, now thronged with holiday-makers and day-trippers. On one side of the town lay the beautiful Yorkshire moors, on the other the cruel North Sea. In between, red-roofed cottages cling to crumbling cliffs...
Nice work Rick, a Lambsfoot is such a great user
Nice example of a working lamb.Thanks Jack for the virtual tour of Whitby, and the tale of the Helga Maria, quite the adventure! Really great pictures!
I've got this newly arrived lamb in my pocket today.
Very nice Dan.
Thanks buddy
Way to go Postie Mike!
Nice to see it here, I debated on that one myself but ended up going for the ebony. Love the snakewood.
I'd enjoy it too as long as the Droogs, Goths, Hipsters, and Morlocks were not there!
Bogey was the original leader. Ol' Blue Eyes upon his demise.Only one person missing from this Rat Pack pic , Shirley MacLaine.
I wasn't very clear Jack. I don't understand the meaning of the "costumes" the two were wearing. I assume they are making some kind of a statement?The Tunisian guy just has 3 tables next to his stall, and usually people share tables, and/or don't take up more room than they need to. Then, when they've finished eating, they go on their way, so others can sit down, and the feller making the food can make a living. Not this people, of course, who think the market is some sort of 'experience' provided for them. There were six of them, sprawled across all 3 tables, loudly talking the sort of pretentious haw-haw-haw rubbish you'd expect, even after they'd long finished eating. I went back 3 times, but they're probably still there now
Very nice image Curtis.Thanks Jack for the virtual tour of Whitby, and the tale of the Helga Maria, quite the adventure! Really great pictures!
I've got this newly arrived lamb in my pocket today.
Jack Black
That photo is just so rich with detail Dwight. Very nice burl.I wasn't very clear Jack. I don't understand the meaning of the "costumes" the two were wearing. I assume they are making some kind of a statement?
Very nice image Curtis.
Great maritime story Jack!
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I guess toolman would make it interesting.
What a great story. You have a gift, Jack!Thank you Bob, let me know when you can make it my friend, and we'll find better digs
In the meantime, if you've not already done so, please read the story of the Helga Maria, and if you can do so, without your heart swelling with pride, and a tear in your eye, you're a tougher man than I am Gunga Din
The Story of the Helga Maria
Now that I've introduced Whitby, I feel that this would be a good time to share my favourite Whitby tale. The events I'm about to describe took place more than twenty years ago, and I was not involved in them whatsoever, but I occasionally recount the story, and it always warms my heart to do so.
I don't think it is the case so much today, but in the past, when winter came round, the tourists and holiday-makers abandoned Whitby to the fishermen and the locals, who gathered in pubs like The Black Horse to warm their bones and drink their ale. One bleak night a group of middle-aged locals sat nursing their pints, telling tales and lamenting the fact that, as most of us do, they had unexpectedly arrived in their golden years, perhaps not having achieved everything they might have achieved, or run every race they could have. But on this particular evening, the familiar story took on a new form, and the germ of an idea formed with it. What they needed was an adventure, and one man, Captain Jack, would lead them on it.
Among Whitby's many proud sons was one who had invented the crow's nest, an important innovation in its day. Yet he was buried in the arctic without a proper marker. The motley crew assembled in the pub could identify with their ancestor, and a plan began to come together for them to honour this former son of Whitby, and have a real adventure themselves along the way.
Captain Jack had a boat, a humble old craft, the Helga Maria, and over the next few weeks, with the help of his new (totally inexperienced) crew, which included the local vicar, they worked to make it shipshape and Bristol fashion, enthused with a new energy they had not possessed for many years. The Helga Maria had a new coat of paint, and like her crew looked to be in better shape than she had been in for a long time. The man from the British Admiralty disagreed however, proclaiming the craft to be dangerous and unseaworthy, it would not be allowed to leave Whitby harbour.
Jack's crew were despondent after all their hard work. Over the past weeks, they'd been carried away by their dreams of adventure. Their lives looked all the more depressing at the thought that those dreams were now to be crushed, and that they were destined to sit around the pub table, fading into old age, only dreaming of what might have been.
No! They would not give up! This adventure was important to them. They set back to work on the boat, determined to win the approval of the man from the British Admiralty.
The Helga Maria was inspected once again, and Captain Jack and his ship-mates waited with baited breath. But the man from the Admiralty shook his head, the boat had no radio, and without one it could not be certified as seaworthy.
Once more, the crew of the Helga Maria were left in dismay. They couldn't afford a new ship's radio, or any of the other things that were needed. Once more they repaired to the pub with the heavy weight of disappointment sitting on their collective shoulders.
But they were determined that no naval bureaucrat was going to thwart their plans, and so they resolved to defy the Admiralty and the Royal Navy, and laying plans to communicate with the vicar's secretary by telephone as and when possible, they slipped out of Whitby harbour under cover of darkness.
The next day, when the Helga Maria's absence was noticed, the man from the Admiralty was not amused, and naval warships were ordered to hunt her down and arrest her crew. The little boat and her inexperienced crew were facing the full might of the Royal Navy, and nobody expected that the hunt would last long.
The Admiralty however, had not counted on the sheer determination of the first-time sailors and the dogged guile of their captain. The Helga Maria hugged the coastlines of small Scottish Islands, mooring in tiny bays, so that the vicar could get telephone reports of the hunt from his secretary and pass back news of their situation.
The Navy stalked the craft, but it's small size, and lack of a radio, undoubtedly worked to the advantage of the Whitby adventurers, as they slipped in and out of the network of islands between the North Yorkshire coast and the Outer Hebrides, playing cat and mouse all the way to the Arctic, and the site of the long-deceased son of Whitby they sought to honour.
Against all the odds, they had made it, and out on the ice, a ceremony was held, and a small monument erected to mark the last resting place of that Yorkshire lad. Then the crew readied themselves to return home, their mission accomplished, something neither the Admiralty nor the Royal Navy could now take away from them. But the tiny craft was stuck fast in the ice, and it looked as if the adventure would end badly for all involved. The vicar prayed for divine intervention, and by miracle or good luck, the ice shifted and the Helga Maria was free once more.
Captain Jack led his brave sailors homewards now, still dodging the Royal Navy as they went. They were bold and hardened by their trip, but knew that they would have to face the wrath of the Admiralty upon their return. On the night before their return, the vicar rang his secretary and told her they planned to slip into Whitby harbour at midnight.
Sure enough, the little boat that had successfully evaded the might of the Royal Navy, approached the twin wings of Whitby's ancient harbour as the clock on the cliff-top church chimed midnight. The crew stood on the deck to see the home that it had at one time looked like they might never see again. They had expected that their return would be secret, but as they entered the welcoming arms of the harbour walls, they could see that the entire town of Whitby had turned out in the darkness to greet them, and were loudly cheering the return of the local heroes.
I'm writing this in the pub with a lump in my throat, and I can't tell you what exactly happened after the Helga Maria came back. I do know however that everyone who crewed the boat had the adventure of a lifetime, that the Admiralty were left embarrassed and shame-faced and chose not to make martyrs of a small group of middle-aged people, and that some years after the events described, when I was in Whitby and wanted to interview Captain Jack, I was told that he was off on another adventure, and the Helga Maria was out at sea.
Hopefully, we've all got at least one more adventure left
Jack
Gimme Tool Man! I feel an affinity for him....despite his rudeness.I guess toolman would make it interesting.
Yeah: "Look at me, I'm an idiot!"
Thanks Dwight, that ironwood? sure is a pretty knife, great picture of it.I wasn't very clear Jack. I don't understand the meaning of the "costumes" the two were wearing. I assume they are making some kind of a statement?
Very nice image Curtis.
Great maritime story Jack!
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