What are y'alls backgrounds?

Charlie Mike

Charlie Mike

Sober since 1-7-14 (still a Paranoid Nutjob)
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Nov 1, 2000
Messages
28,365
I have always wondered if knifemakers are born or "forged" lol. How did you get into knifemaking?
 
I wasn't born or forged, I was ground out of a clump of hardened clay. Lol. I spent way to much money on knives and decided to buld me one and I was hooked. Simple story.
 
I guess you could say I was born to be a knifemaker. When I was 4 or five I would take Popsicle sticks and sharpen them on the sidewalk to make myself a "knife". I always loved them for as long as I can remember. I would have one with me all the time. Even taking it to school, I had to give it to the teacher to hold but they let us do that back in the day. I would buy knives from kids all the time too. By the time I hit highschool I had quite a cheap collection. I made my first steel knife with a dremel tool. It was a miniature but It would cut and I still have it. I then played around from time to time and made a few KSO (knife shaped objects). Then finally in 1992 I was introduced to a blacksmith and he taught me how to forge. That was all it took. I have been making ever since. I just had to find the method that best stimulated my creative side and I have not stopped yet. I do take a break now and then but I always come back to the forge and grinder.
 
I was born with a knife in one hand and a coon dog leash in the other,LOL I just always loved knives. I remember the first one I was ever given I was 5 years old and it was the first day of kindergarden, and before to long I didnt look at toys no more in walmart, just always wanted knives for christmas, birthdays, I even remember going to work with my grandfather and trying to make knives out of aluminum molding used for super market check out counters,LOL Where I came from we used our knives Hard, everyday. Cleaning fish, skinning deer, in the garden. About 2 1/2 years ago I just woke up one day and it began, I wanted to make a knife? and form that day on I have eat, slept, and well just made knives.
 
Pretty much same as Pancho for me. I collected since I was in middle school. Heck, I did the popsicle knife same as Chuck. I remember in kindergarten pretending a plastic spoon handle was a knife. Eventually, I started getting into high end production knives and collaboration knives, and even the odd handmade. My first handmade was a Dozier toothpick.

While I was in grad school, I joined Bladeforums around 2002. It was at that time I started seriously considering making my own knives. Being a poor grad student, I was forced to read the forums and any other books I could get my hands on rather than go out and do it. This helped build my knowledge and really helped me get going well once I started. I was also slowly collecting smaller tools, and I eventually bought my first grinder after graduating.

The rest is history. I've only been at this about 6 years, and my time is pretty limited, but I sure do love the feel of a completed blade from my own hands. My job is as a neuro PT and teacher.

--nathan
 
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I was a knife addict since birth. Mom "confiscated" many Fury brand Chinese knockoffs. First quality knife was a CRKT M16-04 in 97 and then a Buck/Strider 880 as a college freshman in 00. After the Army, I got into crank real bad and started waving with a BM Snody Resistor and later, a BM Skirmish. The shady types who frequented where I lived always saw me grinding and practicing FMA with my waved double edged Skirmish. After getting out of rehab, I realized I wanted to make knives from the ground up. I'm slowly making my way there with my modding business.
 
My background varies with space and time. A moment ago, after reading the opening line to this thread, I looked behind me and there was another computer and my Dog. Now, as I look the dog is gone.

More seriously, I like many here, like to repair or make things that can be used (have some function). I'm driven by curiosity and I like testing my limits of skill and knowledge.
 
I still don't think of myself as a knifemaker. I'm just a hobbyist interested in knives. In my day job I'm a manager working on projects that have no defined beginning or end. I turn to hobbies like this to advance my skills and keep me grounded, give me a sense of closure I don't usually get at work.

I don't have a long history with knives like most of you. I just find certain aspects fascinating. Damascus steel, for example. I'm entranced by the notion that there is a pattern within the steel that I can't see while working it, but still I must find a way to make the pattern blend into the design. Mystery and art combined.

Handle making is a more concrete part of the art for me. Seeing the raw materials... holding them up to each other... looking for interesting combinations, then forming complimentary shapes.

I may not be very good at it yet, and I may never be very good at it, but it is a creative outlet for me that pulls from the deep roots of my past. I've always enjoyed artistic activities, and this is just an extension of that for me.

- Greg
 
i have always liked knives but never really thought about making one until i met this guy back in 1990 who forged knives from files. i didnt want to forge knives but he gave me some tips on how to make a knife with basic tools. i took machine trades at a vocational school so i knew how to machine or grind metal but never thought of making a knife until then.

a year later i met my buddy art summers who taught me a lot more and i have been making knives ever since. i did have to take a break for a few years since i wore out my equipment and had some health problems. a friend talked me into rebuilding my equipment and helped me make my disc sander and i'm back at it again. i wish this hot ohio weather would leave so i can get back outside and make some more knives.
 
i've always been easilly obsessed, and drawn to learning to make a thing rather than buy it, both to make it more personal, and to better know what it means to the culture that invented it.

knifemaking drew me in in exactly this way.
 
I just like to make things, I got back into owning knives, and went looking online to get more information, found blade forums and the makers forums, did a fair amount of reading and decided to give it a go, not expecting to make anything worth showing.
I have been playing around with cad and 3d design software ever since I got my first computer and combined the two. First I create in the virtual world then I take it out and try to recreate in the real world. I got hooked on the first knife I made and have been trying to improve on everyone since. I can't see myself stopping anytime soon, I think I have about 40 designs on my harddrive now that need to come to life.
 
I started in this craft because I'm so cheap! I got into supplying weapons for local theaters just because I knew more than anyone else available about guns, being a country boy from Kentucky and growing up around them.
After guns the theaters wanted swords and daggers and such. Making broad swords with a side grinder was such a pain and waste of material it occurred to me that it would be better to make them with a forge and anvil. I joined a local group of blacksmiths, the Florida Artists Blacksmith Assoc. I met so many nice people like Steve Bloom and Jim Fagan that were so willing to share information that I became involved with them.
The more I learned about knife making the more I learned I didn't know. I am a constant learner (is that a word?) and the information was available to anyone willing to search it out I was hooked. I still have the desire in my 70's and hope to continue for a while.
Just what I do,
Lynn
 
I fall into that "obsessed with knives from an early age" category as well. Actually I was expelled from the sixth grade for flashing around a switchblade comb I had retrofitted a brass blade into. My dad made a few knives when I was little, out of files and such. I always loved throwing them and playing "mumbletypeg." I'll still throw a knife at a tree or board long after most guys get tired of the game. I started blacksmithing when I moved off the grid far from town and needed to make and repair things. Immediately I wanted more tools and to learn more skills. I became an anvil nut. I bought a Victor Journeyman torch and some BIG tanks. I was seriously hooked. I started making knives and struggled to teach myself- the generosity of others with their time and skill have benefitted me greatly now and then. (Thanks, Ken.) It has always been a learning process and tough and it still is. I wouldn't have it any other way. The size of my shop is governed only by the amount of money I can barely rationalize spending to improve it.
 
Like most, it came at an early age...I whittled my first "knife" from a pine stick when I was about 6 ( I still have it ). As an adult, I ran across an old (1950's) Outdoor Life Magazine article that explained how to make a knife from an old file....I tried it and got hooked. Honestly, I am fascinated with trying to make anything that a store sells that I am too cheap to buy.
 
It's amusing to me that so many of you make knives because you're too cheap to buy them... amusing because you almost certainly spend more on the equipment to make knives than you ever would have spent on the knives themselves. The assumption I make is that if you're as cheap as you say you are, you wouldn't be buying custom knives under ANY circumstances. ;)

Just seems ironic is all.
 
I did a lot of outdoorsy stuff as a kid and first got into knives then. In graduate school I started a 'serious' collection of folders and fixed blades. It sort of crept up on me - buy a tool here and a sharpener there - learn to customize and sharpen...

At this point it's a great way to procrastinate on my dissertation, and it has financed an apartment full of tools.
 
What kinda degree are you working towards?
 
Natural progression. Machinist to Toolmaker to Knifemaker. Same story I was facinated with knives at an early age. I made my first knife on a Bridgeport mill. But now all the work is done on the Bader. As a toolmaker I use the latest CNC equipment to build dies and automated machines, but it's just not like building the perfect cutting tool with a belt grinder and hand tools.
 
Old "Body Man" here. Did you know that the first body men were blacksmiths? Yup, Henry Ford made the T-Model, and when it got banged up, it went to the blacksmith shop for repair.

My grandfather, Jim Dark (1881-1965), got me hooked on knives when I was but a lad of 7 or 8. I actually started trying to forge a knife when I was around 13. I would take one of my dad's old screwdrivers and stick it into the pot-bellied stove he used to heat his shop. When it got red, I would take it out and flatten it with a hammer using a big round piece of steel as an anvil. I would cool it in water then try to grind it on a bench grinder.

I knew NOTHING about heat treating, but some of those things actually held a fair edge.

Although I "piddled" around over the years with trying to make knife shaped objects, I didn't get serious about making until early 2004. Now, almost 7 years later, I still don't know what the he** I am doing, but I sure am having fun.

Robert
 
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