What Is Your 'Gateway' Custom?

Not really into customs -BUT
First custom is a sterile David Mosier Infiltrator - D-2 blade. Seller honestly described it as a user - excellent knife and is the custom I've used the most ( had STR put a lowrider on it).Great tool -excellent lock up (liner lock) and about as big as anything I will carry/use as a daily user.
Have since acquired a Instigator and Serron made by him - and I've got the problem everyone has with customs - they're too pretty to use!
BTW - my experience with Dave has been very positive - he does what you want and ships the results to you when he says he will.You may have to wait - but he does deliver when he says he will.
 
jason aube tanto, £45 when i was 16, am now 18 and have had upwards of a hundred knives pass through my hands, hopefully a few more hundred to come:)
 
for me it was seeing all of Ichiro's pictures in American Handgunner , of custom 1911's with some of Allen Elishewitz's knives in the pictures. I then began to search , found BF , bought a couple Seb's , Shinosky folder and W & H T10 ( all from Gary Graley ).

It has been a journey like no other since. Been thru many forums , met many makers , bought some customs , sold some customs , but am currently happy with the knives I have now.
 
I read an article on Phil Boguszewski in Blade mag. back in the late 80's. Thumb studs were pretty new then and I loved the one handed opening. I mailed Phil for a catalog and wound up ordering 2 folders. The folding boot knife and the Spike, both with black micarata handles.
 
I was an obsessed hunter-gear nut before the doctor severed my umbilical cord. I detailed a list of all guns, calibers, and attendant gear needed for my hunting adventures before puberty (mid-1950s). Everything except knives, that is. I was eager to buy best quality custom knives, but I had no idea what they might be. I was a prodigious reader, but all I found about hunting knives were indirect and tepid references that Randalls were best, which was my eventual choice many years later when gainfully employed.

In 1980 chatting fireside with a couple of duck hunting buddies, my host handed me a Loveless stag hunter. My response was a gasp that sucked all the oxygen from the room. I could not/would not put the knife down for at least 30 min. At first it was the external beauty of the thing, but after regaining my senses I recognized how wonderfully it handled. I was smitten, and before this little vignette played out I bluntly demanded how much he'd take for it. His laughing reply of $1,200 had me sputtering and even angry--my Randalls had cost $30 apiece. I simmered down when he explained the Loveless phenomenon. Ten years late, and hundreds of $ short.

Somehow I'd missed that Guns and Ammo article that detonated Loveless into stardom. I'd been to many gun shows and noticed custom knife makers/knives, but I had never seen one that wasn't homely. Knife shows were unknown to me, and in my rural area knife magazines were not available. I was a lost soul looking for an introduction to the custom knife world that would not come for 26 more years, coinciding with my bulging prostate and silver crown.

Ordering the Loveless was not to be, but my eyes were opened. My first custom was a lockback folder with a 3" ss blade and micarta scales by John Hoskins that I found in a gun show in 1984. This sexy little gem did heroic, magical feats without ever needing sharpening, something unclaimed by the Randalls. To understand why and to investigate the buzz over forged knives, I turned to the net in 2006 and bumped into BF.

To call me a collector is to torture semantics. My knife total will not exceed 10 or 12 and all will be enjoyed (used) pursuant to my primary and unfading passion--hunting.

ken
 
I saw an article in one of the gun mags in the mid 90's about Les's LDC knives - every one of them blew me away...especially the autos. I was used to PX prices on knives, so my curiosity was piqued and I started looking for a higher end knife than what was on base. Came across Bob Bell at a gun show and bought a Microtech SOCOM for $350, which was about $325 more than I had ever spent on a knife. Started reading the knife mags and visiting Bob at every show and after 2 years, traded the SOCOM back to him for a Crawford French folder with stag scales. It went downhill from there.
 
My very first custom was a Dawson Defender, 9 years ago. This model caught my eyes in a french magazine in... 1992 ! Still have it.

dawson_defender.jpg
 
My first real custom was a ladder pattern damascus and California Buckeye burl "Personal" from Burt Foster. Got it with a horizontal and a vertical sheath. Burt liked the way the set came out enough to use it on his website- I liked it enough that I've been on his waiting list ever since!

I got even luckier because when my knife was ready someone had backed out of a woodgrain damascus and Ironwood Blue Collar hunter, so I started out with two examples of Burt's work.

I can't tell you how patient Burt was with a very curious and PITA newbie trying learn it all at once and get the "perfect" knife.
 
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