Knifemaking: managing it and the Directeur

August 27, 2018May 8, 2019 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“…also he had learned that a person could be happy with having done the best they could under the circumstances. It didn’t always have to be bright and shiny and impressive to the outside observer.”
― Ellen Airgood, South of Superior

When I was twenty-two I took a summer job at the the university I was attending. The School of the Arts at the university put together a three week summer residential program for high school kids. For three weeks in July, roughly a hundred and twenty teenagers would come to the university, live in the dorms, eat in the dining hall, and take classes in their respective art disciplines taught by real college professors. This was a way to give kids a little taste of what art school was like, and hopefully to get them to apply to the university when they graduated. I did this for eight summers and it was one of the best jobs I ever had.

High school kids who were interested had to submit portfolios and go through an application process. There were disciplines for sculpture, photography, dance, theatre, fashion design and merchandising, filmmaking, digital animation, and drawing and painting. Some of the applications were pretty hysterical.

The University hired forty other college students like me to be counselors in the program. We were there to keep the students safe. Students were divided up amongst us. We would stay in the dorms with them, take them to their classes and meals, make sure they were in bed when they were supposed to be, and come up with activities for them to do. Our presence was designed to keep bad behavior to a minimum. We had a week of training to go over protocols and procedures. There were university policies that handled underage alcohol in the dorms, as well as drugs, and what to do when students went missing or fell ill. There were a group of grad students who were our bosses and handled disciplinary issues. Nearly everyone at the program was between the age of fourteen and seventeen, not legally adults, so these policies and procedures were important.

The kids moved in and for three weeks we were their caretakers. We took them to class, ate dining hall food with them, and came up with evening activities for them to do as only art school kids can do. We made themed dances- my personal favorite was “Merry Christmas Taylor Swift: Live from the Galapagos Islands”, and everyone dressed accordingly. There was “Dress Your Counselor Night”, where one of the more attractive male counselors wound up shirtless and in a dress. On the weekends we took kids to museums, and to some of the nearby restaurants. Counselors took some of the kids on morning runs. One time I bought my kids a bunch of Nerf guns and we went to an unoccupied floor of the dorms and had a giant battle. Kids were always working on their art and we helped and encouraged them. I scored the music for a film one of the kids was working on for class. We kept everyone occupied and mostly out of trouble. Mostly.

Every year there was pretty predictable behavior. With a little bit a freedom the kids would start to push boundaries- they were teenagers after all. Some kids would go vegan during the program and then get sick because all they were eating were french fries and Captain Crunch. Other kids would dye their hair or cut it all off, and then we would have to explain to a parent why their little Jessica had a purple buzzcut. The lactose intolerant kid would order a large cheese pizza and fart up the dorm. Some kids were figuring out their sexuality and we delicately did our best to be supportive and help them along their path.

We had a lot of kids with…peculiarities? One kid with irritable bowel syndrome had to get his mom to overnight him his homeopathic diarrhea medicine from New York because he had left it at home. There was a Saudi Arabian boy with Aspergers Syndrome who terrified all of the girls because they thought he was yelling at them when he tried to talk to them. One year we had a kid from the Make-A-Wish foundation come who was on kidney dialysis- his dorm room looked like a medical lab. Another year there was a girl acting out horribly the whole time and we couldn’t figure out why until we called her mother. Turns out her father had left the family six months before to live as a woman, and this little girl was pissed about it. I worked with a team of really awesome people and and no matter the situation or issue, nobody ever had to shoulder anything by themselves.

Every so often there were really awful kids that we had to send home. We called one kid’s father at midnight on a weekday because he was smoking pot in his room. That kid was gone by morning. Another kid decided to throw a frozen water bottle out of his 14th floor dorm window at ten o’clock at night. It smashed the windshield of a car driving on the street below. The police came and woke up everyone on three of the floors to find out who did it. That kid ended up getting sent home and having to pay for the guy’s windshield, but he did avoid a felony charge.

By the end of my tenure at this summer gig I was supervising all of the counselors and everything that went on in the dorms. I had graduated but it looked good for the program when Alumni were involved. The money was good and it fit into my schedule. The only person I reported to was a tenured professor who was the program director, and she trusted everyone to do their jobs. I was on the hiring team and doing all of the scheduling for the counselors’ shifts. I ran a lot of the training, wrote policies for the program to help it run better, and wrote itineraries for staff meetings. I handled disciplinary issues and procedures and when kids fucked up, they dealt with me. I made changes as I saw fit. For example, in the earlier years the other counselors and I would all go out and get hammered after we put the kids to bed, and then stumble back to the dorms wasted. No longer. Funny how things change when it’s your ass on the line.

I’ve never really considered myself a very good manager or administrator. I’ve also never been great at following the rules or being a team player, and I’ve always struggled to fit into corporate and traditional workplace scenarios. In the instance of this job I just tried to make sure everybody was safe and all the institutional ‘t’s and ‘i’s that kept everyone safe were crossed and dotted. It wasn’t always cheeky and fun. There were two separate summers where I was going through really awful breakups, and another summer where there was a death in my family. I would still DJ dance parties and take sick kids to the Urgent Care facility and make sure everyone was ok. The responsibility and sometimes difficult tasks were worth it.

Because in spite of all the shenanigans, and the calling of parents, and confused teenage sexualities, and homeopathic diarrhea medicine, the vast majority of these kids left our little three week program at our state university really inspired and ready to do kick ass things, and a lot of them have. That felt really good and was what kept me there all those years. I grew a lot. I made lifelong friends. I met my girlfriend, though I didn’t know it at the time. I learned what it was to run something and to have people back you up.

I’ve worked for a lot of crummy managers, people who are ready to throw you under the bus and only care about how they look to the company they are supposed to represent. A real manager is someone who knows how to steer their organization toward its goals while inspiring their people and navigating through all the stupid things that get in the way. This is the lesson of the Directeur.

The Directeur was a commission for a lady who has been running restaurants and events in Washington DC for the past decade. It’s probably similar to working at an Art School summer program but I’m sure the stories are much better, as only Washington DC can provide.

A quick design for an 8″ chef’s knife, in the German style:

Profiling the blade:

Hardening the steel…

…and oil quenched.

Grinding the bevels:

Hand Sanding:

The blade is then soaked in acid to etch the steel. This knife has a Hamon line, meaning the cutting edge is at full hardness while the spine is a touch softer. This gives the blade durability. You can start to see the line forming:

For the handle, I started with a computer board blank for spacing material:

Cut, drilled, and pinned:

It’s important to remember to keep it casual. Blue jeans layered in fiberglass resin should be a good reminder:

Black Walnut, milled by a man of the cloth from rural Virginia:

Piecing it together:

Clamped. You can see that lovely Hamon on the blade:

All glued up:

Shaped:

Helping the grain to speak:

The Directeur:

….this knife came back to me with a cracked handle, which can happen with natural materials. I removed the old handle and put a new one on it:

May you manage your circumstances to the best of you abilities. The outcomes and experiences are absolutely worth it.

Knifemaking: being your own cheerleader and the Stag

November 23, 2016December 15, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“You’ve just got to pat yourself on the back and keep moving. Ain’t nobody else gonna do that for you.”

-Gordon Russell, chef

The other week, early in the morning, I got a knock on my door. It was the police. My car alarm had been going off for the past hour and the officer said there had been quite a few calls about it.

We walked over and I turned the alarm off and disconnected the battery. As the officer was leaving he said that someone had been kind enough to leave a note for me on my windshield. I found a piece of paper under the wiper and read it. I’m not sure what I was expecting. After I read through all of the expletives, I saw that it was signed by “I Hate You”.

Beautiful. Somebody hates me.

I tried to go back to sleep but I had a hard time. I knew I wasn’t the first person to have their car alarm go off and I probably wouldn’t be the last but I was having a hard time figuring out what “I Hate You” expected to accomplish through their eloquently worded salutation to me. Those sorts of things written to you by a stranger don’t feel nice.

Later in the day I found it to be really funny. I kind of wish I had kept the note.

So what do you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of toxic outrage? Or of violent vitriols or virulent viscosities or even vicissitudes of the most vicious varieties?? This is where you have to be your own cheerleader. Because we’re going to screw up at some point, maybe say or do something in poor taste or offend someone’s sensibilities. People can be awful- much worse than notes on cars. And hiding behind the veil of social media, people often write things that they wouldn’t necessarily say to someone’s face. So when someone says or does something dumb, it can be often accompanied by a slurry of shame-dumping and rage. Before long any sense of civility or compassion goes out the window. If you find yourself on the receiving end of these sorts of shenanigans, it’s best to pat yourself on the back and just keep rolling. These are the hard things to master in life, but they are worth it. It’s important to keep moving forward.

This blade was a commission for a gentleman who is a cheerleading coach. His wife asked if the knife could have an essence of an old Buck fixed blade he had as a kid so I took that into the consideration of the design. ‘The Stag’ is a bit of a double entendre. In the animal world a stag can be much larger than a buck, and this knife has a bit more heft than its commercial counterpart. But on the other side you sometimes have to go stag, by yourself, and give yourself the things that the world is not always going to give you.

The other day I was working with a lady who was late because someone parked her car into her spot. She said she didn’t even have time to write a nasty note. I very gently told her that not writing that note was probably for the best…

I did two designs for this knife, based on some of the Buck fixed blades. I went with the bottom drawing:

Wet sanding:

This is after heat treat, slag all removed, at about 600 grit:

Satin:

Walnut for the handle:

The Stag: O1 tool steel, Walnut handle scales, fiber spacers, and steel hardware:

In the words of a dear friend, just pat yourself on the back and keep moving

Much love to Kent Huffman for the beautiful leatherwork and to Taylor Huffman Bernard for the beautiful woodburning. Finished knife photos by James Bernard and his superior camera.

Knifemaking: learning your craft and the Maestro

October 29, 2016December 2, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“This is Mr. Beethoven. Do you hear that? You don’t? This doesn’t move you? Well that’s ok baby, you can always go sell shoes.”

-Doug Richards

This knife was a commission for one of my former teachers and good friends, Doug Richards. I first met Doug when I was fifteen. I had been accepted to a summer residential arts program and went to study music and trombone. I was there with about 50 other musicians and vocalists from across the state. One of the classes I took was run by a jazz saxophonist, who also played every wind instrument known to man. To help us learn about jazz he brought in a very passionate man to speak to us about Duke Ellington, one of the great American composers. This man was Doug.

This particular class was at 8am and we had all been up late doing God knows what, as teenagers away from home living on a college campus are wont to do. Doug noted this and suggested that if we were tired and didn’t have time for the Duke then we could leave and take a nap.

This took us all aback. We all paid attention as Doug put on an Ellington video and proceeded to dance around the room, deigning us with the story of the music and the man…and every member of the band. The man has an encyclopedic knowledge of music and the lore around it.

I ended up coming to university to study with him. He taught a two year course of study on how to write big band music. That was the course description anyway but it was so much more than that. In this class I learned how to listen, really listen, to music. I learned how to discern the masters from the dilettantes. I learned what moved me and the mechanisms of the sounds that held me in those places. Amidst all of this I learned how to compose and arrange music that sounded like me, and no one else.

What I learned most from Doug was the importance of craft. Craft encapsulates art. Without it, your art isn’t as articulate as it could be and your vocabulary to put what you want to say out into the world is stunted. I started to see this all over in my world- in the people I would work with, in the music I listened to, in the food I ate, and the films I would watch. I paid attention to the manner in which things were put together. I spent hours working on assignments from Doug, exercises in craft, to the point where I would seriously question my life decisions. Often times I felt that these exercises didn’t leave room for any emotion. Over and over I heard “Do not emote” when we approached these exercises, but then I would hear something that Doug had written and it dripped with emotion. Was this some cruel joke?

It was not. In time we were told to write things. I would think of what I wanted to say, write it down, and the craft I applied would make it blossom. Almost without even thinking about it. You just know what to do. The way that a warrior knows to make the kill, or a seventh grade guitar player knows to hit the distortion button. And so I started devouring the craft. I studied classical orchestration with Doug, orchestrating Ravel piano scores for wind ensembles. I played in a Stravinsky ensemble he ran and we worked through pieces the likes of which I’d never heard.

As an adult I remember all the lessons from this man. I always try to remember craft, and to practice it. Like a good meal, or good music, or good love, craft is not something that is easily bullshitted. In a world where quality is often compromised for time and quantity, craft stands out. This is the lesson of the Maestro.

The stories of this man are legendary. Here are a few:

-Most of us had heard of Doug doing one-handed pushups before rehearsals back in the day. Somebody mentioned it to him one day before a rehearsal and he dropped down and did 17. None of us could do any…

-When we were rushing the tempo on a piece of music in rehearsal, Doug told us to slow down or we would get a reputation with the ladies.

-There was a limited edition of a recording re-released and Doug told me that I needed to have it. When I told him I didn’t have the money he suggested I get a paper route…

– Before one performance, Doug made an announcement: “Ladies and Gentleman, please take your cell phones, pagers, and all of your other electronic jive out into the lobby, throw them onto the ground and step on them because I don’t want to hear any of them during this performance. Thank you.”

Doug asked for a chef’s knife, for the kitchen. I started with a piece of thin stock O1 tool steel: