Tulip Knife Co

ashwinearl said:
I am a fellow custom pocket knife maker in Utica. I visited Jason's shop last month and he came over a few weeks ago with these three. I handled them up close...Very impressive. He's great guy, very humble, and working very hard.

I traded him one of my customs for some handle material, including some vintage jigged and some that blue rope jigged bone. He owes me a lesson on how to jig and dye bone and bolster shaping. Can't wait to collect on that.

As a maker, I see several super powers he has that set him apart. He was/is a die hard collector before a maker. We were looking through binder after binder of ephemera like catalogs, old ads in his 'knife room'. Yes, he has a dedicated room that will set up with display cases for the collection. His making is founded in deep understanding and research into traditional methods combined with design cues from history. One of his recent Barlows had a flattened section on the bolster where he put a Tulip etch. He showed me an old catalog picture where the idea came from.

The thought he puts into his designs is painstaking. Comparing a V1 drawing to V2, they look similar, but he explained the differences and specific motivations behind each minute change. The target pull strength, the final clocking of back spring, every line,angle, and curve is obsessed over.

He grew up in a fabrication shop so has a mindset for batch production. I'm learning a lot on just how to think about the step-by-step process flow of slip joint making and where to look for places to optimize efficiencies. So things like drawing in CAD, laser cutting, and making jigs for a specific steps are second nature. We were talking about single angle cutters for nail nicks, and he modeled in CAD the shape of two different sized nail nicks using and angled cutters with different sizes and angles.

It's great to have another maker local to encourage each other and bounce ideas back and forth.
Click to expand...
This sounds really promising!
 
Today’s arrival from Jason. Very pleased with his craftsmanship!
M48kug5.jpeg
 
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