Knifemaking: finding a way and the Desert Fox

April 16, 2017April 21, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.”

John Krakauer– Into the Wild

The Desert Fox, also known as the Fennec Fox is the smallest member of the species Canid. They can be found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa. Living in such averse conditions has allowed for some particular adaptations in order for them to find their way in their environment, most notably their prominent ears (I mean, look at those things):

The ears help them to dissipate heat, as desert temperatures can get up to 117 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. They also have a specially evolved set of kidneys allowing them to go without water nearly indefinitely and their required moisture can be obtained from their food. Unlike other foxes or canines, they have fur on the bottoms of their feet. This keeps them from burning their feet when traveling over hot sand. Their cream-colored coat helps to reflect the heat of the sun.

They are omnivorous, eating insects, lizards, and birds, but are also known to eat roots, leaves and other vegetation. The Desert Foxes are social creatures, live in groups, and mate for life.

I find this to be an incredibly encouraging little animal, finding home and company in a place where a large portion of its environment is actively trying to kill it. On days where I’m not sure how to find my own way, I often think of the Desert Fox. I find that I don’t have to worry about blistering heat, numerous birds of prey, even more numerous venomous snakes, or scarce food sources, and then I proceed to count my blessings and pray that I don’t become complacent in my station from lack of natural predators.

Because finding your way when there isn’t anything pushing you can be just as hard as navigating a desert full of bad things.

I was in Pittsburgh recently, taking an Uber to dinner. I’ve never particularly cared for riding Uber; it always feels like there’s an expectation for conversation and an uncomfortable and resentful silence if that expectation is not met. On one Uber ride in Manhattan there was a driver from the Caribbean who wouldn’t stop talking about his kid and showed my friend and I a video of him playing baseball. All this while driving in rush hour traffic. This most recent Uber ride was not that.

The man picked us up and the conversation was easy. After a little while of talking about what we were doing in the ‘Burgh, I asked him what he did for a living. He said that he had been a private investigator in Los Angeles for twenty years, from the early ’80’s to the late ’90’s. He said he had seen it all: cheating spouses, runaway kids, you name it. He thought it was all hilarious. He wanted to write a book.

His friends all thought his stories were great and they had been encouraging. The only problem, he said, was when he sat down to write he couldn’t get anything on the page. He just froze.

I know what this is. This is the crippling self-doubt that almost every writer and creative person I know deals with. Myself included. I told him so. Hell, I know a filmmaker who has a Crippling Self-Doubt Room in his house where he goes before he works on his projects. If you don’t find a way forward, you get stuck, and your ideas aren’t heard. Nothing happens and life goes on. You have to live with the sting of unrealized potential. That sting becomes more painful as the years go on and there is no more time to realize what could be.

The only thing to do, I told him, was to find a way to be with that debilitating feeling of self-doubt. Find a way to get something, anything, on the page. Once there is something on the page finding your way becomes much easier, and it can take you to surprising places. There is meaning in those places, satisfaction, and everything becomes a bit deeper and beautiful.

This is the lesson of the Desert Fox, a creature that has an unforgiving place to call home yet finds a way to thrive in it, and makes an existence in the uncomfortable. If there is something eating at you and calling to you, then you can always find a way to make it happen.

We start with flat stock O1 tool steel:

Roughing in the blade choil:

Profiled:

Rivet Holes:

Hand sanding the bevels before heat treat:

Hardened:

Tempered:

Hand-finished satin:

Texas Mesquite. One of my most favorite materials to work with:

Shaped:

Sanded to 220 before giving the grain a burst:

The Desert Fox:

If you can find a way to exist in the uncomfortable, than you can almost always find a way forward.

Knifemaking: Rock and roll, privilege, and the Sir

February 10, 2017May 14, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.”

-Confucious

Warrior, Merchant, Artisan, Farmer. These are the four classical occupational archetypes of Feudal China. These archetypes still ring true today. There are variances and nuances but in the way we go through life, many of us find ourselves in all four of these occupations, even if only briefly:

-The Farmer understands the value of labor. He is master of working within the seasons to sow his crop.

-The Artisan understands how different mediums and materials go together, and how to craft his goods within that understanding. He is master of his tools.

-The Merchant understands business- buying low, selling high, and having a good product. Business at it’s core level is the art of profit and the Merchant is master of this.

-The Warrior understands the above three archetypes. He is master of himself and carries the weaponry of his choosing. He serves society.

I have found myself, at various points in life, in all four occupations. The Warrior intrigues me most. Speaking as a man, I feel that most of us want to master ourselves, and the things that try to enslave us- our fears, our desires, and our insecurities. In our occupations and work, obsessions and compulsions can develop, our fears can play out, and we can become consumed. We can become obsessed with trying to squeeze the seasons dry, or maximizing profits, or with crafting a better and more beautiful mousetrap. When these things become all that we see, we have failed to master ourselves and aren’t really serving anything except for what we are trying to achieve. At this point, all the things that really matter get left in the dust. We lose sight of the world we live in and are not present in our lives.

In order to master yourself you must know yourself. Sometimes the best way to know yourself is to know others. And sometimes the best way to do that is in service to others.

I was working a large arena rock and roll show, one of the largest I’ve ever worked. The headliners had been around for decades, on the top of the charts, and darlings of video-era MTV. They have recently been selling out arenas around the world.

I strolled into the production office to get my assignments for the day. There was laundry, grocery shopping for the tour busses, FedEx and post office runs, prescriptions to be filled, and other bits of housekeeping errands that keep a massive touring operation on the road. Not everything gets done. Touring is a practice, not a science. The most successful touring operations are predicated upon this notion. My job is to take care of as many of these things as possible based on what the tour needs and the priorities of the show. This doesn’t leave time for anything that may be superfluous or unnecessary.

After the day was laid out and I had my assignments, the tour manager asked if I could add another thing to my list. There was a very large basket of toiletries- soaps, shampoos, and lotions- that had been collected from God knows how many swanky hotels. The tour manager asked me if, time permitting, I could find a Women’s Shelter or a shelter for families in transition and drop them off there. The band and the crew collect them from every place they stay for that explicit purpose.

I didn’t give it too much thought. I had a lot of things to do and honestly this little task wasn’t real high on my list. But the tour manager kept asking me about it and so I decided to make it a priority. After all, I was in a position to take care of this. I got on the internet and found a facility nearby. It was a shelter for women leaving bad domestic situations- in many instances they showed up with nothing but the clothes on their back.

I called them and told them who I was and who I was with and asked if they accepted donations. Yes we do, they said, please come by.

So I went by, even though I really didn’t have the time. The people at this organization were really happy to get these things. They wanted to take a picture for their social media page. All smiles. They thanked me for thinking of them and to remember them in the future because funding is always tight and every bit helps.

This was all really special to be a part of, even though it was a pretty small thing. I wasn’t really expecting that and it was nice. I don’t normally find myself in these sort of situations. I’m usually wrapped up in my own affairs, serving the things I am trying to achieve rather than broadening my gaze. I noticed a lightness in me and the rest of the day felt easier.

There’s a lot of talk about privilege- white privilege, gender privilege, and a myriad of others. When all of the social justice orthodoxy is stripped away, I find privilege to be a form of power. There’s nothing wrong with being privileged but it’s important to be aware of it. Many of us aren’t aware that we have that power within ourselves. It’s a noble thing to use that privilege, that power (which, honestly, many of us take for granted) to help those who may need it. It’s a really special thing to give or share of your time and talents when it’s within you power to do so. This type of service can help you to become more familiar and intimate with yourself, and also help to make the world around you a better place. That is the mark of a Warrior, and the lesson of the Sir.

O1 tool steel, thin stock

Profiled:

Rough grinding:

This is how to heat up your quench oil on a cold day:

Hardened and tempered:

Handfinishing, at around 220 grit:

Hand finishing at around 320 grit:

Ebony wood:

Clamped:

Shaped:

The Sir:

Don’t be afraid to look out for others every so often. This is part of the path toward mastering oneself.

Just a Bunch of Roadies– This is an organization of Music Industry Professionals that use their time and talents to make a difference. They facilitate larger operations, but also smaller projects, like the one written about in this story. Be sure to check out their website if you would like to help.

Knifemaking: yes and no; and Urim and Thummim

January 18, 2017February 13, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Take these,” said the old man, holding out a white stone and a black stone that had been embedded at the center of the breastplate. “They are called Urim and Thummim. The black signifies ‘yes,’ and the white ‘no.’ When you are unable to read the omens, they will help you to do so. Always ask an objective question.”

Paulo Coelho- The Alchemist

I took a philosophy class in college. The professor was an older gentleman, and a bit mysterious. He had us buy a very expensive textbook which we never used. He was the one asking the questions and it was mostly us, the class, that did the talking. We never learned much about him other that that he had had a bit of celebrity on the academic circuit several decades prior. In his younger days he practiced judo. Later in life he discovered Tai Chi, and taught that as well. He never elaborated on any of this.

I don’t remember much of what we talked about. I was twenty-two and liked to go to class stoned. I do remember there was some Kant in there, and some St. Augustine, and probably some ideas on relative morality versus universal morality. I also remember one lesson we had, one about truth, and how all matters can be broken down into a yes or a no.

He gave an example: all cellular communication can be broken down into ‘yes’ or ‘no’. ‘Yes I will fuse with this protein,’ or ‘No I will not fuse with this protein.’ ‘Yes I will bind to this synapse,’ or ‘No, I will not bind to this synapse.’ Matters that are gray in appearance only remain so until one goes deep enough to find a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’- and in many instances in our personal lives we never get to that point. Sometimes the truth contains many yes’s and no’s. Sometimes the truth is much larger than our own individual internal agreement or disagreements. This is part of what gives life it’s mystery and beauty.

There was one particular assignment, a large one, that came up. We had to write a 10 page paper on a topic we chose. The professor had a list of topics to choose from. We were to choose a topic with which we most disagreed. I had found mine:

‘True virtue requires true religion’

He then flipped it around and told us that our paper had to argue in agreement with our chosen topic. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t agree with this statement at all and was a bit stumped. After many starts and stops I found a legal dictionary and first looked up the definition of truth, then of virtue. I found a way to manipulate those very clean and sterile definitions to find agreement with a statement I didn’t agree with. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote and I’m not sure how I got ten pages out of that but I was pleased with myself.

I got my paper back. There were no corrections or suggestions. Written at the top of the page in red ink was a little note saying that I had made my argument using a clever lawyer’s trick. I got a C.

Over the past dozen or so years I’ve thought a lot about this. Truth is something that just is. It is the yes or the no. The point is that the truth of things can’t be manipulated. There is discordance in the world because all of us are trying to manipulate the truth to serve our needs, to pacify our fears and insecurities, to indulge our convictions, and to fit into the way we believe things should be. In spite of these dances we do, at some point everything will break down into yes or no. When things appear to be both yes and no at the same time it only means that the truth isn’t fully visible at that point.

This doesn’t mean things are clear or easy. Black for one person may be white for another, and vice versa. It won’t always fit into nice agreeable little boxes. I was working with teenagers and there was a young girl who was acting out horribly. After speaking with her mother, I found out that her father had left the family to go live his life as a woman. The young girl had a very strong ‘no’ to her father’s insurmountable ‘yes’.

At some point decisions have to be made and assistance may be needed when one can’t always read the signs of which path to take. Sometimes we can bring an external influence in to help us to get to our truth, our own personal “yes’s” and “no’s”. This is the where Urim and Thummim come in.

This two-knife kitchen set was a commission for a good friend and former teacher. He is a man who taught me how to look at matters deeply and to think about things critically. We were on a farm for this past Thanksgiving and I noticed that he had been reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This is a book that is special to me, and was given to me during a time when I was having trouble reading the omens. It was the inspiration for this set, and an exercise of gratitude for this man, a sort of alchemist himself, who has helped me to find my own truths over the years:

We start with Urim, a six-inch boning/filet knife

Because the stock is so thin, I hardened the blade before grinding the bevels:

Rough grinding at 40 grit:

Full flat grind:

Laying down a hand finished satin:

Detail work on the plunge lines:

Ebony Gaboon: the black symbolizes the ‘yes’:

The bit near the ricasso; sanded to 2000 grit:

Profiling on the handle:

Rough-shaped:

Sanded to 220 grit and then oiled. I let this sit for a day or so and then sand the entire handle up to 2000 grit. This process helps to burst the grain:

Urim:

To start on Thummim we need things that cut:

Once again the whole bit is hardened:

Rough grinding:

Full flat grind and finished on the grinder to 120 grit:

A lot of material was removed:

Laying down a hand finish. A smoother finish makes for less resistance when doing knifework in the kitchen:

She goes into hot acid for an etch. The etch helps to prevent corrosion and also makes for a more pronounced patina as the knife is used. It will also darken the blade:

Spalted Tamarind: the light color represents the ‘no’

With black spacers for contrast:

Once again, sanded to 2000 grit:

Clamped:

Profiled:

Shaped:

Thummim; the no to the yes:

Urim and Thummim:

The name of the professor mentioned in this story is Jonathan Shear, Ph.D., and you can find links to his publications here.

Knifemaking: doing the work and the Operator, Mark II

December 3, 2016February 4, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“The sword has to be more than a simple weapon; it has to be an answer to life’s questions.”

Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

(you can read about the crafting of the original Operator here)

I’ve always been drawn to people who do things. The people who speak through their work and translate knowledge and mastery through their particular skill set without having to say much. This is a day and age where anyone can broadcast claims of mastery and experience to a large audience and it can be difficult to discern who has done the work to back up these claims and who is just trying to get to the bank.

In today’s vernacular, ‘operator’ commonly refers to military personnel who are at the pointy-end of things. They are the ones who are taking the orders and quietly (or not so) doing the work out of a sense of duty and service. ‘Operator’ is a title that gets tossed around and claimed where it doesn’t always belong, very similar to ‘genius’. The ones who actually fit the bill generally eschew such titles. This is usually a symptom that you are doing the work.

This blade was a commission for a military serviceman doing Ops work. I wanted to build him a tool that would serve him in the work he was doing.

There was a summer about ten years ago where I was between semesters of study. I had decided that I wanted to learn how to fix things. Many of my friends were working at Blockbusters or car washes but I liked the idea of being able to take care of things myself. I took a really awful job doing apartment maintenance for three and a half months and did just that.

It was not very satisfying. The job I took was for a rental company who owned properties in my neighborhood so I could walk to work. It was a pretty slummish company that rented to a lot of college kids. I ended up having keys to half the apartments of what was called ‘Hell Block’ of a street close by to me. The summer was when a lot of leases ended so there were many people moving in and out. As a result the streets and alleys were full of discarded furniture for most of the summer, a lot of which was set ablaze by some of the rowdier tenants. Sometimes my days started with cleaning up the ashes of incinerated love seats.

Other days started with hauling four-burner stoves up three flights of a fire escape. Most of the time was spent flipping apartments from where someone had moved out so that someone else could move in. There was a lot of painting. Flat antique white for the walls and ceilings and semi-gloss eggshell white for the trim and kitchens. The apartments weren’t very nice to begin with and after three days of work they still didn’t look very nice. I tried to remind myself to just make it about the work.

I would spend hours gutting bathrooms- ripping out drywall, removing tiling, and replacing subflooring before redoing everything. The best days were when I could work by myself and keep my own company. Bathrooms were a bit more satisfying to do because they would actually look nice when you finished them.

There was one time when a new tenant couldn’t move into her apartment because a homeless person had moved in after we had flipped it. We went in the apartment after the police took him away and found no less than eight bicycles, some smelly furniture, and a plethora of bizarre pornography. There were also footprints all over the wall. We had to repaint that one.

My boss was a middle-aged anomaly with claims of ties to the trash hauling unions of New York City. I didn’t really believe anything he said. There were four of us handling most of the work orders:

-Mark was in art school, a bit cranky, and liked to smoke a lot of pot. Oftentimes it was hard to tell whether he was stoned or not. I liked him.

-Scott had gotten back from several tours of Iraq, most recently Abu Ghraib. He was a good guy but wouldn’t get anything done unless he was told exactly what to do.

-Mario was in his late thirties and from Guatemala. He worked 7 days a week and sent most of his money home to his family. He didn’t say much but I think he missed home. The man could eat faster than anyone I’d ever met. He said that in the Guatemalan Army they only gave you three minutes for lunch.

There was also a rotating cast of derelicts who would come in and work for a week and then disappear. I never learned their names.

One of the happiest days I had was telling my jackass boss that I quit. I gave myself a two week vacation before I went back to school.

What I learned at this job was that in order to get through many uncomfortable situations with a modicum of success you have to make it about the work. It helps to find something bigger than yourself in what you are doing. The skills I was learning would serve me well much later down the line, and the money would help me buy books and live through the school year and work on my education. Everything else was just bullshit that came with the job.

To let yourself speak through the work you do, whether you are toppling Marxist empires or replacing toilets in shitty tenements- this is the lesson of the Operator. In these situations our work speaks through us but also teaches us our lessons.

The recipient of this blade may find himself in harms way and needed a blade that would serve in such situations:

Rough cutting:

Bevels profiled:

Hardened:

Hand sanding:

This is G10, a commercially manufactured synthetic material. Normally I prefer to make my own handle material but in this instance I opted for something consistently fabricated that would be failsafe in a potentially tactical situation:

The Operator, MkII: O1 tool steel, G10 scales, fabric spacers, and steel hardware.

Let your work be your lessons.

Knifemaking: how to behave in the world, and the Dummy

October 1, 2016October 7, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“You big dummy!”

-Fred Sanford

It was New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago and it had been a pretty crappy year. I was with very good friends, half drunk, and a bit reflective. There are times in life when challenges present themselves, as they always will. You can deal with them with grace, dignity, and elegance and use them as an opportunity to move forward….or you can let each one smack you in the head until you find yourself sitting in a pile on the ground feeling sorry for yourself. My year could be summarized by the latter. So in my half drunken state I came up with the last New Year’s resolution I would ever make. I wrote it down:

Don’t be a dumbass. The next day in a brand new year I thought about this. I proposed that whatever future situation I found myself in and there was a decision to make I would ask myself, “What would a dumbass do?”. When I had determined what course of action a dumbass would follow, I would simply not follow that course.

The beauty of the whole thing is the simplicity of it. Much like kindness, it functions on a continuum. It will meet you where you are and, if you are diligent in your practice of not being a dumbass, it will expand into your entire universe. Before long, what started as a way to make your immediate life better turns into a lifestyle. You set an intention to be present in your life and your relationships. You are navigating opportunities. You are not perfect but anyone who is not a dumbass knows that no one is. It is quite challenging but the payoff is that you, my dear friend, are not being a dumbass.

But alas, no system is perfect. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you find yourself ambling down an avenue of unbridled, unbuttoned, and completely unadulterated dumbassery.

I found myself on that avenue the other week. It was one of the most embarrassing and humbling days of my professional life.

I had a contracted production runner job working for a big televised arena show. My job was to run around town and procure necessary items for the show. I’m generally very good this job. They give you a list of things they need done to make the show happen, you figure out the best way to accomplish those things, and everyone works together to make a production happen. Many times you are part of a well-oiled machine that makes incredible things happen and it is very satisfying.

This particular show, being a massive televised touring production with many things that can potentially go wrong, required a copy of our drivers’s license for insurance purposes. Most production runner gigs don’t do this. No worries though and I handed over my license.

It had expired. Then I remembered the notice I had gotten from the DMV a couple of months ago and how I said I’d get around to it and how I actually hadn’t. This wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to be reminded. It was hugely embarrassing and I wanted to run away and hide.

I did not run away and hide, because that’s what a dumbass does. The people on the production team for this organization are incredibly kind and though I couldn’t do my normal job and was working my way out of a shame funk, they let me work in catering. I hadn’t done anything in food service since I was 19.

They sent me to the kitchen and I met with the head catering lady who just laughed at me, handed me an apron, and sent me to help unload a cargo van slam full of food to be prepared that day. The cargo van was in the loading dock and the loading dock was a zoo. In addition to the van there were four tractor trailers being unloaded by about forty stagehands. There were four forklifts unstacking road cases and half a dozen men with radios directing all of this. I joined four or five other guys at the van and start loading up carts with everything from fresh salmon to the biggest can of marinara sauce I had ever seen.

I get one of the loaded carts to take to the kitchen and it is slam full. I am trying to navigate the insanity of the loading dock and I hit a bump. There is a gallon-sized tub of dijon mustard sitting on top of the cart that I watch, in slow motion, fly off the top of the cart, hit the ground, break open, and splay all over the crew chief directing the insanity. He was not happy….

So food gets back to the kitchen and unloaded. I would spend the next four hours peeling potatoes, cutting endives, and shredding raddichio. It was surprisingly calm in there. I made sandwiches for lunches, ran dirty dishes to the wash area, and cut up more vegetables. Every time I ran into the head catering lady she would say ‘here comes trouble…’.

They were all very sweet and kind. They sent me home with a hotel tray full of baked ziti which fed me for two weeks:

This is the lesson of the Dummy. Sometimes you have to stay with your dumbassery and it will pass. Everyone is a dumbass sometimes. Thank you Universe for teaching me humility….

I started with 1095 spring steel. Here it is cut, with bevels started:

Hardened:

Wet sanding:

….for a satin finish

In gratitude for the many meals I was gifted, I wanted to work ziti into the handle:

Hulk smash:

Fiberglass resin:

Dinner is served:

The dijon mustard, a low point of my dummy day:

I used this to force a patina on the blade:

The Dummy:

With all the love in my heart, don’t be a dumbass.

Knifemaking: past things made present and a restoration project

August 27, 2016September 4, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

An acquaintance brought me three knives to be restored: three beautiful old kitchen knives, a trifecta of culinary efficiency. There is a massive cleaver, a 10″ German style chef’s knife, and a 6″ French style utility knife:

They have been through the paces.

Everything breaks down at some point. As someone who will push himself to the point of exhaustion I find this to be a strangely comforting and, paradoxically, terrifying idea. There are times in life when the only way to get to the beauty that once was is to go through the worn out parts.

Wait…how did these things get worn out in the first place?

I’ve found that there are seasons of life when it feels as if the universe is screaming at you to make something happen, to make changes, to do better, and to seize opportunity. And suddenly inside yourself you can see a path to these things. You begin to feel a sense of urgency so strong that it feels like the whips are being cracked.

And so whatever your task at hand is becomes an insatiable vixen. At least this is what it can feel like.

In these moments we often neglect to take care of ourselves and then wonder why things aren’t working as they should. But still we keep pushing. And in our zeal to accomplish we can end up depleted- physically, emotionally, and spiritually, appear as shells of the amazing things that we are.

Sort of like these knives…

Restorative processes are not always pretty. Sometimes they hurt a little or a even a lot. They can be alienating to the people we care most about. And they come with the moments of hesitation and questioning and reluctance. These things are still functioning so why mess with them? Is it worth the time and work? Maybe it’s ok the way it is. Maybe if I pretend that there isn’t an issue it will all be fine. These are healthy things to ask. But are they working at their best? Are they past their prime? Are they getting any better? Absolutely not. And in this life, leaving something better than you found it is one of the sweeter things we can experience.

So you strip away the layers of rust that came from daily exposure to the elements. The wood that has become cracked from moisture exposure after years of washings has to come off. New wood is put on and sanded and finished with the deepest of love. The dull edges are honed sharp again. Everything thing is oiled and brought back to life. When you start these processes, and they are processes which can take awhile, it requires a commitment and a degree of tenacity to stick to it.

These knives were out of commission for a bit but it was necessary in order for them to function at their best. Similar things happen in us when we take the time to look after ourselves. It’s always a process and there isn’t necessarily a discernable timetable. In this particular instance the restoration took me several days.

I started by removing two of the handles:

I soaked the small French knife in vinegar for about two days. The vinegar eats away rust and corrosion but doesn’t harm the integrity of the blade. It does create a reaction with the steel that leaves this residue on the blade.

She gets a sanding with high grit paper to make sure all the corrosion is gone.

Ready for a handle:

Glued and clamped:

Ready for shaping:

Shaped:

On the initial sanding I stopped at 220 grit and applied a liberal coat of oil and let it dry overnight. Doing this makes for a more pronounced, nuanced, and beautiful grain pattern.

Working through the grits, up to 2000. I think this is 600:

Our friend the cleaver:

A vinegar bath for a couple of days:

The spine was pretty roughed up:

So I smoothed and deburred it:

Quarter sawn white oak:

The customer asked to keep the original handle for the 10″ chef’s knife. Here it is at about 120 grit:

Here it is at 2000 grit. I believe it is Mahogany:

Oiled, of the Tung variety:

Sharpening:

Stropping:

Past things made present. All restoration does is enhance the beauty within. These are ready for the kitchen:

Knifemaking: Conflict, Trust and the Vixen

August 7, 2016June 26, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Conflict is essential to evolution“

-Paulo Coelho, Aleph

“The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else’s flaws, so of course you’re gonna spot some things that kinda need to be mentioned…“

-Alain de Botton

Conflict is an inevitable part of life. We find it in our professional and romantic relationships, in the work we do, in our places of joy and sorrow, and just about everywhere in between. We even find it in ourselves.

Merriam-Webster defines conflict as an “antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons)”. This sounds about right.

Depending on how we were raised, conflict can make us feel unsafe and insecure because we equated conflict to something being deeply wrong with us. Often we’re raised to be agreeable, to not make a fuss, to put on a happy face, and to be seen and not heard. Because of this there can be a tendency to submit to the incompatibles that arise and completely lose ourselves during moments of heated conflict. We give away all of our power and ignore our needs for the sake of resolution. There can also a tendency to run, to check out mentally and emotionally, and to avoid; all for the purpose of not having to deal with the conflict at all. Ancient fears arise during conflict: fears of not having enough, fears of not being heard, fears of being seen as less than, fears of asking for help, or fears of our needs not being acknowledged or met. Conflict can take us right back into the terror of our smaller selves.

Fear often makes us do the complete opposite of what is best for us. But in a world of incompatibles, of yes’s and no’s that are always at odds with each other, conflict will always remain. I’ve always wondered about this in the way I’ve wondered why deep sadness exists, and why pain and suffering are so prevalent.

Conflict helps us to be active participants in our lives. It seems counter-intuitive but conflict helps us to grow and be seen. In the same way that deep sadness and pain can be teachers, conflict can take us to school on how to be a decent human being.

Conflict in romantic relationships can be one of the more challenging arenas because it forces us to show and acknowledge things we may prefer to not acknowledge. It occurs when any number of our maladjustments that we haven’t dealt with or are still processing rubs up against our partner’s. Or when our partner’s maladjustments rub up against us. In many instances things are simply going to rub us the wrong way and we may not be able to articulate exactly why.

This is particularly unique to romantic conflict because there is nowhere to hide. In other arenas we can veil ourselves with busy-ness and obligations. We can keep our own counsel, hide our feelings, hold everything at a distance, and still uphold our responsibilities and navigate life somewhat successfully. Doing this with someone whose heart you occupy is likely to be catastrophic. The best thing to do is to let all of yourself be seen and work from there.

Though it may not feel like it, this is one of the healthiest things anyone can do. We are built to be close to one another and we are all flawed. To be able to say ‘I was only a jackass because I was deeply afraid and I’m working to be better because I care about this’ gains so much more mileage for trust and intimacy than pretending like nothing is wrong or powering through a conflict. When someone you love knows where you are coming from it creates a sense of safety for that person, even though it may be uncomfortable for you. Eventually you may find a sense of safety because in allowing all of yourself to be seen, it allows all of you to be loved. Trust deepens on both ends and allows for everything to blossom. This is something to stay on top of and it’s important to be ever mindful.

This blade was made after a conflict with someone I love. It was a reminder to myself to lean into conflict. Conflict is a Vixen, a lady in red, shining, beautiful, and also extremely sharp and ready to slice the hell out of you if you aren’t on top of it….

O1 tool steel, profiled:

Scribed for grinding the bevels, and a notched blade choil:

Rough grinding:

Full flat grind:

Hardened:

Sanding the ricasso after tempering:

Many hours later…

Redheart:

The Vixen:

Many things will often be at odds with each other but being able to be with all of them is at the heart of doing conflict well, and ultimately at navigating the world. This is the lesson of the Vixen.

Knifemaking: finding your roots and the Treethrower

July 30, 2016August 30, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

‘In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.’

Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

I have an old friend and his name is Joe. Joe is a fascinating guy. We went to music school together. Joe is a killer rock musician, a badass chef, and is also really good at climbing trees.

This is Joe:

Joe does tree work full time at the moment. On weekends and his off days he does side work for friends. Sometimes he calls me to give him a hand. Sometimes the money is good and sometimes it is not but it’s refreshing work to do and it’s nice to be along for the ride. His clients are always happy with his work.

The work I did with Joe consisted of removing dead or sick branches and limbs, and removing branches or limbs in order to open up a client’s yard to sun. Any part of the tree extruding over a client’s house was also removed, by way of a block and tackle pulley system rigged to the tree so the branch could be slowly and safely lowered to the ground. All of this was done with regard for the tree, with chainsaw cuts executed in such a fashion so that limbs could healthily grow back. Deadwood was removed and cut flush at the trunk.

There was a quiet and zen process to a lot of this. It all started with laying all of our tools out. Joe would put on his rigging gear and I would fuel up and oil the chainsaws. He would then set a climb line high in the tree and start to ascend, lugging a chainsaw, some handsaws and some tools. The zen in this work comes from ritual. All ropes and lines are kept coiled and tidy. All brush is cut, cleared and neatly piled as soon as it comes down from the tree. If you are using a chainsaw then you are wearing kevlar chaps and the chainsaw stops as soon as you are through cutting and before you move to the next cut. If you are using the chainsaw in a tree then you have set at least three independent safety points, in case you accidentally cut your support line. These little rituals and protocols help to remove some of the thinking from the process. It creates a sort of space to be present with yourself and really feel what you are doing. In this space you can start to feel a grounding and calm in the process. It also allows you to really focus on what you are doing and helps to keep you safe. All these things gently coerce you into slowing down and this is a good thing. Tree work is pretty dangerous after all.

This space that has been created allows more mental real estate for when things get a bit hairy. There was a the time when a line came loose and giant log cut from a tree fell and put a giant hole in the client’s deck. Or the ‘how the fuck are we going to get all of this done?’ moments. Or it’s rainy or icy and you feel extra unsafe.

It’s really refreshing to feel this because it’s a microcosm of life I forget to feel at times. In this season of life, for myself and many of those close to me, sometimes you forget to ground yourself and everything feels uncertain. Life changes quickly, living gets more expensive, and what worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work today. Focus wanes, a feeling of security becomes a commodity, and one can find themselves feeling a bit daft and inadequate. This can be remedied by practices and rituals. Keeping your ropes and lines tidy, in a spiritual and emotional sense. This can be a bit of a process, especially if you come from a place where roots were shallow and conditional on things outside of yourself.

This is the lesson of the Treethrower. I came to this idea while tossing massive logs we had cut down into a firewood pile. It’s important to find roots in what you are doing. When this doesn’t happen everything can feel daunting. Often times these rooting things are right beneath your nose and, paradoxically, the last place we tend to look. Finding them, even for a moment each day, can make a world of difference in your life.

It starts with a massive bar of 1/4″ 1095 spring steel. My good friend and partner picked this up at a steel mill in North Carolina.

The angle of the blade on this design allows for much more leverage during large cutting chores.

I burned through about 8 cut off discs cutting this out:

Some half inch holes to remove weight.

Several hours later…

There is a lot of material to remove…

Full flat grind

Hand sanding before heat treatment

Into the forge:

Tempering…

This is a large piece of spalted pecan, sent to me by my wonderful cousin in Texas.

Up to 2000 grit

The Treethrower: 1095 spring steel, spalted Pecan handle scales, kydex spacers and steel hardware.

Thanks for the lessons, Joe.

Knifemaking: love, mixed martial arts, and the Lightbringer

July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Love suffereth long, it is bountiful; love envieth not; love doth not boast itself, it is not puffed up

It doth no uncomely thing, it seeketh not her own things, it is not provoked to anger, it thinketh no evil

It rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

It suffereth all things, it believeth all things, it hopeth all things, it endureth all things.

Love doeth never fall away, though that prophesyings be abolished, or the tongues cease, or knowledge vanish away.”

I Corinthians 13, The Geneva Bible

On the other side of fear there is love. We often here about labors of love, tough love, and doing what we have to do out of love. These are the things that are easy to talk about but much harder to describe what they actually feel like when one finds themselves in the midst of them. These are the things that are hard to deliver if your heart is not truly in them. Like a good meal, love is not something that can be bullshitted, and certainly not for an extended period of time.

Love is connection. It’s what holds things together through good and bad. It helps us to feel our light when it feels like the universe is doing it’s best to crush us. Most of us probably have parts of our lives that we look back on and wonder ‘how did I get through that?’ It’s love.

We all know romantic love with its intoxicating and consuming nature. It puts the color in our world. But beyond the rainbows and butterflies it takes a warrior to love someone deeply, to do the hard things, to fight for what is dearest to them. This is what makes the world shine.

Then there are the times in life when the light of love can go dim and your world goes dark. I found myself in one of those places a couple years ago. It was bad. I talked to a therapist who told me I was absorbing chaos. Those close to me said it felt like there was a hole in my heart. I got ultra New Age-y and talked to several light healers who told me my energies were out of alignment with love and that my heart chakra was blocked.

Though it was helpful to hear these things, it shed no light on what I was supposed to do to fix them or how difficult it would be.

It all came to head sometime after Christmas. I had lost quite a bit of weight. My friends said that I looked great but I felt awful. I was getting up and going to work and going through the motions but it felt like moving mountains. I had to get the office lady to remind me to eat.

There was a gentleman who had been coming in to pick up our scrap metal at our work for quite awhile. He was a big Puerto Rican gentleman who used to be an MMA fighter. His name was Jose and he is one of the happiest and most grateful people I’ve ever met. He used to get into a lot of fights when he was a kid and then he made it into a career. He said he stopped because he was tired of beating people up. He had dated a lady who was a Brazilian fighter. He always told me never to date an MMA fighter. I told him not to worry.

So it was around this time that I was having all these problems and he came in and just looked at me.

‘Brother what happened?’

I asked what he meant.

‘You used to be BIG and HAPPY, but now you little and sad. What happened, brother?’

We talked for a bit. Jose is a really good man. He told me to not stop loving, no matter what, that love always comes through. He told me to look up the Bible verse (copied at the top of this post), which I reluctantly did. I knew it from having it drilled into my head as a kid in Sunday school and I always thought it was cheesy. I had heard it so many times under such superficial bumper sticker circumstances that I almost forgot how really elegantly composed it is.

So I made it a point to start doing things out of love, in a way that I had never really done before. I started showing up for myself. It was really hard and it wasn’t pretty. In fact it was about as far from rainbows and butterflies as one could possibly get and still be in the realm of love. Sometimes it’s still hard and not the prettiest to look at but I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let it ever get that dim again.

This is the lesson of the Lightbringer. It was through that process that I learned that love is something you have to stay on top of and nurture even when, no, especially when it’s hard. It is living and breathing and a sort of life force that keeps the world beautiful. Even when the world makes it difficult to love, it doesn’t mean you should stop. Without it, everything can lose it’s meaning and your world can go dark.

O1 tool steel, in the process of roughing out the blank

Off the grinder at 80 grit

She is ready for heat treat

Hardened and tempered and sanded to 120 grit at a 45 degree angle

220 grit, cutting in at the opposite 45 degrees…

32o grit straight down the blade for a nice satin finish. These lines are one of the signatures of a hand finished knife blade. On the subject of labors of love, hand sanding hardened steel is no joke…

Curly Maple attached to the blade

Toward the end of the shaping, sanding, and bursting process…

The Lightbringer: O1 tool steel, bursted Curly Maple, Kydex spacers, and brass hardware

I ran into Jose at a gas station the other week. He told me I looked big again. I just gave him a hug.

Knifemaking: being in the know, Hobart mixers, and the Gunny

July 10, 2016July 22, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

Leo Tolstoy

A few months ago I did a job for my friends who run an auction company. There was an auction happening at a school out in the country and they needed someone to go out and bid on two gigantic dough mixers. They weigh a little more than half a ton and are very expensive.

They look like this:

The only issue was that they didn’t know what voltage they were. Sometimes these machines have a 460 voltage requirement. These higher voltages exist to reduce wiring requirements and the need for additional electrical equipment facilities with large power requirements. The facilities that have these requirements are usually nuclear submarines or large government or corporate campuses. Most houses only go as high as 220 volts, and that’s only for the washer and dryer hook up. Unless you are operating a nuclear submarine, anything running on 460 volt power is generally going to be used as a boat anchor or scrapped.

My job was to go out and look at the specs and see what voltage they were. Anything under 460 voltage would be good to bid on and able to be resold for a profit.

I drove out to the school on an early November morning. Everything was spread out in front of a storage shed across the street from the school, separated by a two lane highway. What I saw when I got there was a cornucopia of ancient office equipment, school lockers, floor buffers, and cafeteria equipment from an era gone by. A lot of the town folk came out to see the festivities and they looked as one would expect the residents of a peanut farming community to look. I went and looked in the shed and there was even more junk- desks, old computer printers, and large pieces of cafeteria equipment designed to feed the hungry masses. It was here I found my mixers, alone with no attention from the farming community (they were busy picking over everything outside). Nobody knew there was a potentially profitable business endeavor here. Nobody else was in the know.

I went over and found the spec label. Under power requirements it said 460V. Son of a bitch.

There were two other gentleman eyeing the mixers as well. They did not look like members of the peanut farming community. They arrived in a box truck and a dually pick-up with a trailer attached. This was the competition and they meant business. These gentleman were definitely in the know with these mixers.

We said formal hellos. They asked what the voltage was and I told them, expecting them to pack up and leave.

I called Fred the service tech. He told me that some of these particular models of mixer were dual voltage and I would need to remove the top cover and look at the motor. I waited till nobody else was around, and had a peak at the motor. They were indeed dual voltage- 220v/460V. So they were worth money. They were as good as mine.

The other gentlemen did not leave. We stood off to the side waiting for the auctioneer to make his way to the shed.

When it came time to bid these gentlemen matched every bid I made. It was just me and them. We got up to 2000 dollars and the bidding slowed down a bit. The farming community were both entertained and dumbfounded. Everything else sold for next to nothing but here were these people who did not belong, wagering thousands of dollars on two hunks of metal.

As per my instructions, I stopped at 3,000 dollars. The gentleman backed their box truck up and loaded up these two pieces of equipment. They had been in the know the whole time and they came to win.

With a bit of awareness you can start to see that there is more going on in the world than you ever imagined. This sort of awareness usually helps me to be a better citizen of the universe.

There is the gentleman you may work with who tries to be everything to everyone. It is profoundly annoying. Spend 18 hours with him on a business trip and you find his brother died of a heroin overdose. All he is doing is trying to keep everyone safe in the only way he knows how. Being in the know of this helps you to cultivate a bit of compassion toward this man.

Or there is the person who is raising hell in Starbucks. You know for a fact that that person did not wake up with the sole intention of making an entire coffee shop miserable- possibly because you may have done the same thing at one point or another. There is probably something else going on that is causing this person to act this way. Being in the know helps create space for empathy for this person.

There are thousands of situations like the auction or the other two incidents. Having a bit of knowledge of things can help to create a richer existence or at least help you to know what you are missing out on at a country auction. Sometimes all this takes is slowing down and having a look around.

This is the lesson of the Gunny. It gets its name from the Gunnery Sergeant, and NCO in the Marine Corps whose job is to be in the know. Sometimes just being aware is enough to make a difference.

I started working on this knife as part of a demonstration at a show, and it was at this stage when I got back to the shop. He is made from O1 tool steel.