- Joined
- May 5, 2010
- Messages
- 622
For some years now, I had been threatening to visit Rodrigo Sfreddo in Brazil. I first became interested in his knives from an article on gaucho style knives in an old Knives Illustrated magazine featuring blades by Rodrigo Sfreddo, Luciano Dornelles, and Ricardo Vilar. I was enamoured with the style of knives, and impressed with the quality of what they were making with very simple tools. I have always loved integral knives, and in my opinion, the Brazilian Bladesmiths are the kings of that style.
I met Rodrigo, Luciano, and Ricardo at the Blade show in Atlanta in 2005, I was impressed by the excellent work and their friendly personalities sparked instant friendships. When Rodrigo, Luciano and I all tested together for our journeymansmith ratings at the 2006 Blade show I realized that these were extremely talented knifemakers who were thinking "outside the box" on design and construction. It was about then that I started daydreaming about a trip to Brazil to visit and spend time in the knife shop with them. I talked to Rodrigo about it every year at Blade, and he finally told me to stop talking and just get a ticket. So we did. We made plans to go in February this year. At first we had just planned on visiting and seeing a little of the country, and hopefully we would get in the shop and knock around a little bit. Then Jimmy Chin decided to go as well, and we turned it into an actual "advanced damascus integral" class in Rodrigo's new school of bladesmithing.
We left Alaska at the end of January. It was snowy, windy and very much winter... There had been some glitch in our visa aplcation, so we had to route our trip through SanFrancisco to pick up our paperwork in person. This added an extra day to an already long trip... After 23 hours of flying, we arrived in Porto Alegre, a metropolitan city about 40 miniutes drive from the quaint and charming town of Novo Petropolis where Rodrigo lives. We were met at the airport by Rodrigo, his fiancee Glenda, and Jimmy who had arrived a week before us.
Glenda drove us on the "scenic" road back from the airport and it finally began to sink in that we were actually here! Since the seasons are opposite this far south, it was summer, and the beautiful scenery and blooming flowers along the road home were a welcome and exotic break from the frozen north we had come from. The wildlife was amazing! This giant lizard kept an eye on our progress in the shop...
This butterfly was getting a close look at Haley's excellent finish...
Since we had arrived on Saturday we had the weekend to settle in before the class started on Monday, and we got the royal introduction to the very warm hospitality of Brazil. We were all invited over to friend and fellow bladesmith Daniel Jobim's house for a delicious dinner of roasted wild boar. The boar had been hunted by our host just that week!
Naturally, dinner conversation was mostly knife talk...
Monday morning came and we jumped head first into integral knife forging as Haley and Rodrigo fashioned a pair of carbon steel hunters.
Next up was turkish twist damascus and composite integral construction for me and Jimmy...
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For the next two weeks the sparks flew and the flux splattered and the steel was twisted, smashed, folded, tortured and finessed into shapes that I would not have believed possible two weeks before...
More than anything, I began to think of this class as an exercise in freeing my mind from conventional knife construction. Rodrigo has had the unique experience of making knives his whole life without outside instruction. He has developed an amazing ability to overcome obstacles in a fresh and creative way. It was exciting to watch him work and try and guess how he was going to accomplish the next step.
Of course it wasn't all work and no play...
Throughout the class we were able to watch the different projects all of us had going on. Haley was trying out some high relief carving on her full tang integral hunter while Rodrigo was growing damascus flowers in the handle of his bowie...
At last we got a few knives finished and learned some of Rodrigo's finishing techniques. This bowie is etching in the ferric chloride...
Here the Glenda's kitten 'Bikini' inspects the facilities.
These are three finished hunters. Top to bottom:
Rodrigo, Haley, Adam.
This is a hunter that I started in Brazil and finished in Alaska. The sheath is my first shark skin inlay...
Thanks for checking out our great adventure!
Hope you enjoyed it. We did!
Adam-
I met Rodrigo, Luciano, and Ricardo at the Blade show in Atlanta in 2005, I was impressed by the excellent work and their friendly personalities sparked instant friendships. When Rodrigo, Luciano and I all tested together for our journeymansmith ratings at the 2006 Blade show I realized that these were extremely talented knifemakers who were thinking "outside the box" on design and construction. It was about then that I started daydreaming about a trip to Brazil to visit and spend time in the knife shop with them. I talked to Rodrigo about it every year at Blade, and he finally told me to stop talking and just get a ticket. So we did. We made plans to go in February this year. At first we had just planned on visiting and seeing a little of the country, and hopefully we would get in the shop and knock around a little bit. Then Jimmy Chin decided to go as well, and we turned it into an actual "advanced damascus integral" class in Rodrigo's new school of bladesmithing.
We left Alaska at the end of January. It was snowy, windy and very much winter... There had been some glitch in our visa aplcation, so we had to route our trip through SanFrancisco to pick up our paperwork in person. This added an extra day to an already long trip... After 23 hours of flying, we arrived in Porto Alegre, a metropolitan city about 40 miniutes drive from the quaint and charming town of Novo Petropolis where Rodrigo lives. We were met at the airport by Rodrigo, his fiancee Glenda, and Jimmy who had arrived a week before us.
Glenda drove us on the "scenic" road back from the airport and it finally began to sink in that we were actually here! Since the seasons are opposite this far south, it was summer, and the beautiful scenery and blooming flowers along the road home were a welcome and exotic break from the frozen north we had come from. The wildlife was amazing! This giant lizard kept an eye on our progress in the shop...
This butterfly was getting a close look at Haley's excellent finish...
Since we had arrived on Saturday we had the weekend to settle in before the class started on Monday, and we got the royal introduction to the very warm hospitality of Brazil. We were all invited over to friend and fellow bladesmith Daniel Jobim's house for a delicious dinner of roasted wild boar. The boar had been hunted by our host just that week!
Naturally, dinner conversation was mostly knife talk...
Monday morning came and we jumped head first into integral knife forging as Haley and Rodrigo fashioned a pair of carbon steel hunters.
Next up was turkish twist damascus and composite integral construction for me and Jimmy...
For the next two weeks the sparks flew and the flux splattered and the steel was twisted, smashed, folded, tortured and finessed into shapes that I would not have believed possible two weeks before...
More than anything, I began to think of this class as an exercise in freeing my mind from conventional knife construction. Rodrigo has had the unique experience of making knives his whole life without outside instruction. He has developed an amazing ability to overcome obstacles in a fresh and creative way. It was exciting to watch him work and try and guess how he was going to accomplish the next step.
Of course it wasn't all work and no play...
Throughout the class we were able to watch the different projects all of us had going on. Haley was trying out some high relief carving on her full tang integral hunter while Rodrigo was growing damascus flowers in the handle of his bowie...
At last we got a few knives finished and learned some of Rodrigo's finishing techniques. This bowie is etching in the ferric chloride...
Here the Glenda's kitten 'Bikini' inspects the facilities.
These are three finished hunters. Top to bottom:
Rodrigo, Haley, Adam.
This is a hunter that I started in Brazil and finished in Alaska. The sheath is my first shark skin inlay...
Thanks for checking out our great adventure!
Hope you enjoyed it. We did!
Adam-
:thumbup:
