What got you interested in becoming a knifemaker!

Rene E. Roy

Rene E. Roy

Joined
Oct 4, 1999
Messages
709
Ok, it's so cold here today....I need to here some stories...:) What got you interested in becoming a knifemaker?...:D
 
Knives are something I've always really been interested in. Starting with when I was young, and all the guys I looked up to carrying pocket knives. Then I got my first pocket knife when I was around 8 years old and took to whitling. Everything I did was really crude, but I was proud of it and always showed my dad and grandpa. They told me I would do better if I sharpened my knife. That got me into obsessive sharpening as if it would make up for my lack of skill. I pretty much wore out the soapstone that came with my knife (a craftsmen 3 1/4" stockman) and started getting actual carving tools and sharpening equipment for birthdays/christmas and stuff.
From there it just kind of drifted into knifemaking. I've almost completely quit carving and woodworking and spend pretty much all my time in the shop working on knives now. I mix the other stuff in from time to time but the main thing is knives, can't get enough of it :D

Why didn't you tell how you got into it Roy :confused:
 
Originally posted by Matt Shade
Why didn't you tell how you got into it Roy :confused:
Click to expand...

Because my hands were trembling cause of the cold...:D :D :D

Ok here goes....as a kid I was to fascinated with knives....I think about age 8 or 9 I got my very first knife that I could keep but couldn't bring to school...:D From there I started collecting factory knives...about 1979 I found a gun digest book on knifemakers and order my very first custom knife from Robert Ogg...it took a year to get it and it was a whopping $60.00 I still have it....bought another and another one and had a pretty good collection going...read some books on knifemaking in 1986 and said I think I could do this and sold off a good chunk of my collection and started buying machinery...by 1987 I had made my first knife and the rest is history...I owe a lot to Jim Siska my mentor...and to Tim Zowada for showing me how to forge my first knife....Thanks guys!:D :D :D
 
Dan (pendentive) told me that my sharpening questions were no longer sharpening questions they were making questions and told me to post them here. How can you read this forum every day and not get excited about knife making.

I have never really had a big enterest in knives but use them every day. I hunt a bunch so naturally the performance of a knife does get questioned I just never thought about the rewards of having a nice knife until I got hooked on this forum.
 
I have loved all kinds of cutlery since I was a kid. When I had money and any freedom to spend it, I usually spent it on a knife. Unfortunately they were mostly all imports of poor quality. My time in the military also helped refine both my knowledge of what I wanted a knife to do and desire for a really nice knife that I could afford on my meager enlisted pay. I got out of the Army in 1998 and just made my first knife last year. I am hoping to get some in the hands of the guys at Ft.Campbell (after more testing) when they get home.

Tom
 
When I was in high school back in the early 70s, the auto-shop teacher was teaching his students how to make hunting knives. They were all using some colored plexiglass and brass for the guards and handles, and after fine sanding they were going to polish with - toothpaste! Clever! (As a side note, I still use toothpaste for certain things, like cleaning white micarta, etc...)

Well I tried to get into that class, but never could. That was over 30 years ago, but I'll never forget my fascination over how cool it was to hear that someone actually MADE their own knife! Since then I've been making knives, but only seriously in the past 4-5 years.
 
For me I guess it was something of a natural progression. Growing up (ok I am only 20 so I guess I am still growing up;) ), I always liked guns, knives, military stuff (tanks mostly) and tools. Well my mom hated guns, so I could never really get into shooting(but I did, and still do ocassionally), and live in NYC so not much hunting going on. That left me with knives, tools and tanks. Well collecting tanks is extremely expensive, and takes up a bit of space. For a while I was making model tanks, but got tired of it. After a while each model would cost me more and more money, and take more and more time to build. Also started running out of places to put them. So then I started to really get into knives, mostly buying better quality knives to use. One day I just decided that this was also very expenxive, so I could maybe make my own knives. That would save me money, and I could play with tools and use my hands, things I also liked. I am still just starting out, but I am not saving any money at all, if anything I am spending more on materials and new tools. But that is what got me started anyway.
 
Well, like the rest of you I have always had a fascination with knives. I never really thought much about making one till about 1992.

My stepfather is a very aavid gun nut, and owns the business some of you have seen in the big gun papers....Abercrombie and Hitch (my mom is the Abercrombie in that mix). When the gun license and sellers license crap started he was thinking of getting into something else he had a facination with....custom hand made knives.

He asked me to keep my eyes open for anything interesting in the area as far as knives were concerned, and I came into information about the Batson Hammerin. At the time his hammerins were small enough that most of the attendants could park a camper on his property behind his home (too big for that now). This is not what I thought it would be, but well worth the drive over for a few days to watch.

Batsons place is nto but about 30 minutes from my house, and I drove over for the next few days to watch the happenings around the. I met Jim Batson, and his lovely wife, Hugh Bartrug (I believe retired now, but a very nice gentleman, and knifemaker), and many more. I watched with amazement as the guys heated and hammered blank after blank in demos and found the whole thing very interesting. I watched scrimshaw artists (very much an art...not for me), and wire inlay work being done. I found folder makers, and stock removal demos. Batsons big power hammer shaking the ground, and the "Junk Man" trying to get his toilet bowl forge lit with no success. He was a funny old guy.

I was dead broke and interested. School loans and school, two jobs and at the time two very young kids kept me from being able to do much with it. Now, my kids are older (teens and a 7 year old), and I can pursue more of this than ever.

Now you know how I got interested, but it takes looking at the work of all of you fine craftsman to make me want to keep it going. Nothing I have made is special to anyone but me, but they get better with every piece. My forge work over the last few years has kept my nerves steady, but not alot of knife work.....

You guys make me want to keep doing the work, but it took many like you to get me interested.....

Doc
 
I couldn't afford to pay what custom makers were charging at the time, that was in the early 1980's. I decided to try my hand at it and I'm still having fun and making a little money.
 
I first saw handmade knives in the very early 70s and was completely mesmerized by the work of Lloyd Hale and Buster Warenski. I don't think either one of those guys has ever made a knife that didn't just stop my heart...then send it beating like mad with joy and imagination! And I was a punk kid with no income. In desperation I took one of the files at work and ground off everything that didn't look like a knife, very careful not to overheat it and lose its hardness (even ignorant I understood that much). That was very unsatisfactory and finally I gave up.

Some years later my brother told me he'd buy me a small belt grinder if I made him a big butterfly knife. I agreed. Made 13 knives with that grinder (which I still use for some stuff), until I met my wife. End of knife making career.

Until a knife dealer at a gun show saw one of the old knives I'd made and told me he'd buy them if I'd make them. By then my wife had enough of me and allowed me back into the shop. After about 12 years of failure I finally finished my brother's butterfly knife (it sucks) and started making again. That was in 2000; haven't stopped and have no plans to. :D

But you know what? I still marvel at the work of all these fantastic knife makers! So many great artists! Cripes, I'll never make stuff like you folks do. And I've found that keeping your own knives is kinda like eating your own cooking. I'm going to end up buying knives after all!

:D

Dave
 
What got me interested? Simple. "The Highlander" ;)

That, plus my parents didn't want me playing with knives - no better catalyst for an interest in knives.

Tim

Here we are, born to be kings....
 
I've always been interested in sharp and/or pointy objects. My late grandmother "collected" many things including a few interesting knives, when I was young she gave me a small, almost miniature puukko with the horse head pommel. As for making I guess I kind of got into it backwards, I worked for a small leather goods manufacturer for 10 years and met a few makers along the way then in the mid-90's the company started doing the leather sheathes for Chris Reeve. I was in Chris' shop quite often dropping off orders and that started me asking questions and watching. Then I found rec.knives which led me to the knife-list, the online forums when they started up, hit the Guild show the first year it was in Los Vegas, the Oregon show. Bought a couple of kit knives, then some blades by the late great Bob Engnath, who I had the pleasure of meeting at a couple of shows. I'm waiting for the glue to dry so I can finish the base for a new Grizzly grinder, I am gathering parts for a hybrid 2x72 from the old meta machine plans and Wayne Goddard's ideas in his book scattered on one workbench and am taking an art metals (more jewelry related, but interesting) class at the University this semester.

Todd Brandel
Wolverine Forge
 
I know a very modest fellow by the name of Dave Larsen. He has work published, and he thinks he is not up to par knifemaking because he is pretty new.Hey,we have seen you work, Dave! And your knife dealer/customer is a fine fellow, and appreciates your fine knife work, too! So do I! Anyhow, I puttered around for about 50 years just making odds and ends knives, spears,big fish gigs. I decided back in '91 to make a serious knife for one of my sons. A fellow stopped by to visit and saw the knife and liked it. He offered me too much money to refuse, and then ordered another one! Things just snowballed from there, and haven't slowed down. From power hacksaw steel, scrap silver and brass,and some antler and home cut osage orange, I became a knife maker! Well, anyhow, I am trying, and folks are paying me for my work. What helped greatly were the few books our local library had. I had a pretty good idea how to make a knife, and the books filled in a lot of gaps. With a small shop and the equipment paid for by some of the knife profits, I am happy to have some folks call me a knife maker!
 
well when I started I was to cheap to bye them oooh
wait I was 7 or 8 ?:confused:
no I was to young to have money( there was no money then)
so I made wooden knives, bows and arrows, swords
you name it if it was pointed I wanted
to have one if I couldn't buy it I made it.
I just graduated to steel.
I liked blowing stuff up too.:eek:

I didn't make a lot, because
here in Maine back in the 60's and 70's
Maine folk just didn't buy
knives that were much over a few bucks ,,
I sold my first one ( in the Navy) I said cooool
but I came back to Maine and
working 60+ hours a week razing a family it
didn't leave much time
and it just wasn't there for it..
once the internet started getting popular I got the idea
hey no money here but there is money out there
so I hit that market
and now I'm as must as full time as I will ever be.
I got the cart before the horse kind of but it worked.
now I hit what shows that I do to have a good time
if I sell a knife OK if not that's ok too,
money is good but it's not what it's about for me.
of course you need it to make more knives...

It's that boy in me that still likes it..
 
I've always loved knives ever since getting my first one, a Victorinox pen knife that I inherited from my granddad when I was 6 or 7.

I used to hang out watching my great uncle work in his shop and he would give me wood and tools and tell me to just make stuff.I can honestly say that I made my first "knife" in about 1974 when I was 8 years old. There was a small piece of scrap steel in the garage and some tools lying around so I grabbed a file and stuck the steel in the vise and went to town. I don't remember now what I ended up with but I don't think it had any handle on it at all, just a shiv sort of thing but I had fun. Of course it was not heat treated and was more than likely just mild steel. I used it to cut string up in the treehouse. (I had a killer treehouse that was on the property when we moved there.) I think it finally ended up getting made into a spear and got chucked out into the woods.

About 18 years ago I apprenticed with a smith doing ornamental ironwork. It was at that time that I first became aware that there was such a thing as a fine handmade knife. But I never tried to forge any blades then although I did make some punches and chisels out of spring steel.

I got hooked when I went to have a custom folding tool made a few years ago. That's when I really discovered nice knives. I bought a Sebenza and some Benchmades and then decided to try it myself. Who could have imagined that I could spend that much money......?;)

Thanks to all of you who so tirelessly and patiently answered my millions of questions...... Without the forums I wouldn't be making knives today, that's for darned sure!! :)
 
A guy I worked with brought in a pocket knife made by a machinest friend of his. I admired the work,andlater that day went to the library and checked out How to make knives by Barney and Loveless, my brother and I have been hooked ever since.
 
I grew up in a poor household in the Highlands of Scotland. My father was a sheepherder, too poor to even be called a shepherd since we didn't have any sheep. We didn't have anything in the house to eat except for some old haggis and whey. My father apprenticed me off to a mean old man and it was my job to muck the stables, shovel the snow and empty the honey pots.

One day an even poorer man than my father came by, he was a cutler. The mean old man sold me out as an endentured servant to this cutler for a trade on a Frost Cutlery knife the old cutler used to clean his toenails. The mean old man said he got the better end of the deal!

The cutler found passage on a steamer to the Americas. I was tasked with lugging his most prized posession, his anvil, onto that ship. I was only 4 years old at the time.

We set sail for the New World and three days out came into one of the most fearous storms ever! We were shipwrecked with the captain, the first mate, a very wealthy couple, a movie star, a professor and Mary Anne.

It was tough getting to shore with my master's anvil. I tried swimming at first but found it to be easier to just walk. I made it after only having to come up for air 6, maybe 7 times.

We were rescued after the 4th or 5th season and I ended up in the West Indies. After selling fake Cuban cigars to tourists, we were able to make enough to take a tramp trawler to New Orleans. We found an old shop there, it used to be used for Cutlery. "Somebody" Searles ran it last century.

We made enough knives that we were able to buy a pig. This pig of all things, had hemmoroids. It was my job to cut them off every day. It wasn't the best job in the world but at least we had bacon every night!

(Somebody else can take it from here, my memory is getting kinda foggy...)
:D
 
When I was seven My mom was our Cub Scout den mother. She was so cool we got to play with knives. I still remember the feeling of maturity from just holding my scout folder. It even had a brass lock much like the liner lock of today. I whittled and made sharp sticks to my hearts content. The slips and cuts hurt but the scars were always sure to get some attention from everybody. I bought and used and broke and lost a hundred knives but never though about making one until Dad took us boys to our first gun show. I was about 13 by then. There was a table full of the most beautiful hand made knives Ive ever seen! People can make a knife? I got interested in motorcycles and spent the next 27 years in the bike shop. Made my first knife in 1987 and sold it for $25.
 
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