About a dozen or so years ago I found myself at a dive bar on a Friday night. Richmond used to have a handful of these types of establishments, adjacent to the hardcore and punk scenes, and personned by a crew of heavily tatted and pierced ladies and gentlemen. This particular establishment was called Empire, and it has long since closed and been replaced by some non-threatening eatery where the local college students can go with their parents and not have to worry about being vomitted on, kicked in a mosh pit, or getting a contact high. But back in the day this was a place to go for cheap PBR, colorful characters, hardcore shows and a sincere and unapologetic vibe. It was one of my favorite places.
Photo credit: Parker T. via YELP
I can’t remember exactly why I was at Empire, but as I was a single dude in my late 20’s there isn’t a very good reason to examine it too closely. Two good friends of mine ran a hip clothing store up the street where they had contracted me from time to time to do some building work. They had parties there regularly and they had cute friends and I’m pretty sure that’s why I was there.
I slid into a seat at the bar and started throwing back shots of Fireball. My friends have given me shit about it for years but Fireball is the light beer of whisky (I am using the term ‘whisky’ very loosely, but that’s what it says on the bottle and there are strict laws regulating these sorts of things). You can’t really drink six shots of Jameson in forty-five minutes and still be on your feet but you can with Fireball, though you might end up in jail. A few years ago, I was in New York for some gigs and we all went to this trendy little bar in Manhattan. After trying to order a shot of the Fireball I received a look of such sheer repulsion from the bartender that one might be led to believe I had horse genitalia growing out of my forehead. They didn’t even carry Fireball at this establishment, because why would a trendy little bar in Manhattan even consider Fireball, so I DID end up drinking Jameson but that is a story for another time.
Anyway, I was sitting in this packed bar on a Friday night, desperately trying to chat up this baddie sitting next to me. All I could get out of her was that she worked in banking. She probably saw all the Fireball I was drinking and decided I was one red flag too many, which I undoubtedly was. As that conversation was tanking, someone slid into the seat on the other side of me. She was an African-American lady, with dreads, tattoos, piercings, and a gold cap on her front tooth. She asked what I was drinking and I told her Fireball, of course. She ordered two and we drank them. Then she told me I looked like I needed a haircut and handed me her business card. Then she paid her tab, got up and left. Wait, what?
……
The next morning I showed up to the address on her card, a barber shop, around 11am. There was a pool table in the middle of the place and a couple big screen TV’s, a fish tank, and a French bulldog just walking around. The tatted, pierced, and dreaded lady’s name was Dot and this was her shop. I’d gotten decent haircuts over the years but I’d never been to a barber. I told her to make me look good. She sat me down and faded me out. I had a hot towel and straight razor shave. I walked out of there fresh as hell. I had no idea I needed that in my life.
Photo credit: Dot Reid
After that I got really curious about the nature of dressing well and looking your best. There are countless style guides, blogs, magazines, and tv shows on the subject and numerous little unspoken rules that come from several millennia of human existence. But rarely does anyone explicitly say why this is something one might want to pay attention to.
Presenting oneself well is a way of adding a bit of structure to a deeply unstructured world. There isn’t a whole lot one has control over in this dumpster fire of a world but a level of groomed-ness frees up some mental and emotional real estate to better handle whatever silliness gets thrown one’s way. It’s a whole lot easier to manage your life when you feel good about yourself.
And I had reason to give this a shot because there were some really rough years in there. There were the normal adult disappointments- being passed over for jobs, losing jobs, losing people, and the inevitable professional stagnation that comes somewhere between your post-college years and middle age. For many years my main goal was to be able to walk out the door in the morning feeling confident that I could weather whatever fresh hell the world was going to throw at me on any given day. I found the least I could do was have a decent haircut.
And to be perfectly honest that shit helped a lot. When I was working for rock and roll tours and I had to talk to important executives and celebrities and rock stars, I found my own individual style to be a sort of armor against the insane personalities and impossible tasks I had to deal with. I had one tour manager tell me that I did my job with grace, and that was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. A few years ago I found myself playing in horn sections for fancy wedding bands. I would go see Dot, put on my off-the-rack black suit from Target, and go to some country club outside of DC to play a wedding reception. The door would be opened for me- ‘right this way, sir’ the valet would say, and I would go do my job. I would wager that I was the brokest person on the premises at these functions.
On one hand maybe these are superficial and trifling things to consider in the grand scheme of it all. On the other hand, we live in a dynamic and physical world with millions of people with individual minds and individual biases all operating in a complex and volatile society. As a regular moron moving through said world, I find things go a bit easier when I can find a bit of terra firma in how I feel about myself.
So I go see Dot every couple of months. I never really tell her what to do: she just clips away the hair that doesn’t look like me and polishes up the rest. And I leave her shop feeling a little bit more like myself and a little less uncertain about everything.
Photo credit: Dot Reid
Recently she said she’d like a knife. I designed something slim and made a sheath that clips into the front pocket. I did a handful of them. I call them the Dot.
I like to cut a bit of jimping on the spine for some extra thumb grip:
Scribing where the cutting edge will ultimately be.
Grind the bevels, the swedge, taper the tangs, and drill the rivit holes:
Fire in the hole:
Quenched:
Polished:
For the bolster of the handle, I made some material out of an old pair of blue jeans:
Trim to size:
Grain of the material looks good:
Getting all the handle pieces fit up and drilled. I had some burlap micarta lying around so I used that for the main handle:
Remove parts you can’t hold:
All fit up and shaped up, ready for epoxy:
Clean up after epoxy cures:
Sand forever, then polish. Here it is at about 220 grit. We will take it up to 2000 grit and then polish:
The leather work- you have to do all the stitching and shaping first, then you soak the whole thing overnight and wet form the knife in the sheath:
Sheath on left has been wet formed. It takes forever but it gives a good fit, plus it can hide unwanted blemishes in the leather you may have made in the previous steps.
The Dot:
Dot ended up liking her knife so much that she got it a tattoo of it on here face:
If you are in the Central Virginia area, you should go see Dot at Refuge For Men. Tell her the Viking sent you, she’ll get you sorted.
But nothing hides the color of the lights that shine”
Joe Jackson- “Steppin’ Out”
Everyone has had terrible neighbors at some point. If someone tells you they haven’t had terrible neighbors, then it’s entirely possible they are the ones who are terrible. When I was growing up there was a family a few houses down who fell into the category of ‘bad neighbors’. They had a large and unruly German Shepherd with a proclivity for shitting in everyone’s yard with a reckless abandon. Their three kids would terrorize myself and my two brothers, and I would be remiss in not mentioning that we did a good amount of terrorizing ourselves. Perhaps in some sort of dysfunctional samsara we alternated in which house was precisely villain and victim.
There was one summer day when the oldest of the terrible neighbor brothers was doing a proper bit of terrorizing on my younger brother. He had been in some karate or taekwondo classes and was running through some katas on him. I ran to tell my mother and my mother, most likely exasperated from dealing with an entire summer of these sorts of shenanigans, told me to just go hit him with a stick. I went to the tool shed in our backyard and retrieved a crude gardening implement, with a five foot oak handle and a rusty steel fabrication on the end for digging up God-knows-what. I immediately found the oldest brother and hit him over the head, making sure the rusty steel bit was the first point of impact. Then I ran like hell.
Not more than ten minutes later there was a knock on the door of my parent house. The mother and the boy I had just brained were standing there. He was bleeding from the head and teary-eyed, but otherwise ok. Their mother was some sort of attorney in town and though I don’t know what her particular discipline was, I find it to be a small miracle that no charges were filed. Everybody ended up alright, and while the terrorizing did not stop, weaponized garden tools and pre-pubescent kung-fu no longer made an appearance. Eventually everybody got older and found better things to do, and eventually moved on to life and adulthood.
Almost three decades later I would find myself doing contract work for an event company, and one of the brothers from that family was the vendor relations manager and in charge of contracting crew. When I found out who it was that was hiring me I was mortified. I told him I was sorry for being such a shit and he just laughed and said he was an awful kid. I was always his first call for festivals and events, and he was my favorite person to work with. He eventually took another job out of state. He grew up into a real good guy and I miss working with him.
As a result of all of that, I have made a decided effort to be a quiet and unassuming neighbor.
…………
A few years ago my girlfriend and I had noticed an elderly black cat hanging out in her flower beds and her porch. In her neighborhood there were always half a dozen or so cats roaming around and we were never quite sure if they belonged to anyone or were just feral or stray. Oftentimes we could hear them fighting at night- they sounded like wildcats. None of them had collars or appeared to have homes. We thought her visitor was a stray and she certainly looked the part: slightly feral with colossal paws and claws, and a disheveled coarse coat like a saber-toothed tiger. She appeared to be going blind but managed to exist just fine. She would pop up every few days, then disappear for a couple weeks. It was always nice to see her.
It turns out she belonged to the people living a couple houses down. These people were also what you would call terrible neighbors. The main offender was a gentleman who wore not one but two ankle monitors- the kind the State uses to monitor people under house arrest. We called him Hot-Pants because every time we saw him he was wearing some of those super short soccer shorts. The police were a common presence at their house. There was one morning years ago, when my girlfriend left her house to take her children to school she found police cars blocking her driveway. Several officers were behind their car doors with weapons drawn pointed at toward the terrible neighbor’s house. Apparently Hot-Pants had gotten into a narcotic-fueled altercation and tried to set one of the women living there on fire, culminating in violent resistance when the authorities arrived.
They did have really good fireworks though. Every Fourth of July we’d sit on her porch and watch. These weren’t Roman candles or bottle rockets. They had the ones you’d see at baseball games, the big repeating ones launched from a mortar tube. Whenever they launched them we could feel the concussion three houses down. They must have had a police scanner because, from what I could tell, they never got caught. They’d be firing them off, one after another, and then all of a sudden they would stop. We’d hear what sounded like an angle grinder on metal piping. They were most likely destroying evidence. Ten minutes later two police cars would come by and we’d see them turn their lights on, and then leave after another five minutes. My girlfriend and I would sit on her porch drinking bourbon and watch all of this go down. These were some of my favorite Fourth of July’s.
Every couple weeks for the next several years we’d see the police there. One time, my girlfriend was sitting on her porch when she saw Hot-Pants in a minivan speeding down the street, with a woman clinging to the hood and beating on the windshield, all while shrieking like a banshee. While the terrible neighbors did tend toward the dramatic, most of the dysfunction manifested as late-night screaming matches, punctuated with relatively (to all the other the other dysfuntction at least) civil police visits.
After several years, the wild black kitty that apparently belonged to Hot-Pants moved onto my girlfriend’s porch full time. We were pretty sure the cat had gone completely blind by that point because she was always bumping into the furniture. I’m not sure what kind of stuff the cat was made of because she was still catching birds and making it through the cold winters that we get. My girlfriend started putting out food and water for her, and inadvertently started supporting an entire ecosystem. We’d see possums and raccoons at the food dish in the mornings and evenings, as well as Mockingjays, Cardinals, and Bluejays. Hot-pants would occasionally be walking down the road and would ask if he could have his cat back, to which my girlfriend would reply that the cat could leave anytime it wanted to. It never left.
…….
Once the pandemic hit, we started seeing a lot more of the neighborhood cats at the food bowl on my girlfriend’s porch. Honestly they had probably always been there but we just hadn’t noticed until lockdown and quarantine. Apparently Hot-Pants had five or six cats that he didn’t really feed or take care of. Among this group of cats there was a younger scrappy-looking orange kitty who started showing up more and more. He had a mangled little ear, and what looked like a little staph growth on his shoulder. He was a little fucked up and kind of skinny, but I really liked his spirit. Whenever I was there I could usually find him hiding in the flower beds. Though Hot-Pants said it was his cat, he moved onto my girlfriend’s porch with the old black kitty. I always looked forward to seeing him when I went to see my girlfriend.
Nearly all of my work had been cancelled. All of my music gigs, production work, and knife shows- all gone. The unemployment system in our state is a joke, and I never received any of the PUA money. I was still paying an ambulance bill, several ER bills, and a surgery center bill, and they could all give less than a fuck about a global pandemic and people just not being able to generate income. There were riots happening a block from where I live, complete with curfews, tear gas, and buildings being set on fire. It was a stressful time.
The only thing that hadn’t been cancelled was my part-time warehouse gig, which has always tided me over when the work I actually care about is slow, and whose federal withholding helps me take care of taxes on the knives. Anyone who works in warehousing and logistics will tell you that you are not going to be working with the best and the brightest. I spent most of the time I wasn’t working with idiots trying to figure out how to pay rent and not get sued by private medical companies. As a result I found myself cranky, resentful, and more than a little bit bitter. Everyone has been in their own little personal hell because of this debacle, save maybe Jeff Bezos and whoever is running Pfizer. I learned a long time ago that doing work that connects me to the world has always been part of my purpose, and that purpose was taken from me.
On top of this there was the virus itself. The biggest priority was staying healthy and Covid free so I could work and not get sued by private medical companies. My girlfriend and I don’t live together and we were trying to figure out what the best way to keep ourselves and the kids safe. There was a period of two to three weeks when we didn’t spend time together in person, just to see what was going to happen. I was usually sitting at home pissed off, or playing Witcher 3 (I developed a video game habit to keep me out of trouble.) About this time she starting subtly suggesting that maybe I might want to take the little fucked-up orange kitty home. She said it might be nice to have a little friend with me while we figured how to operate in this new virus-filled dumpster-fire world.
I told her no way. My little apartment is more workspace than living space and the cat would hate it and run away. Maybe he didn’t want to be inside. I told her I am a lot of things, but a nurturing caregiver is not one of them, and honestly I’m surprised she even lets me around her children. But she kept gently mentioning this kitty, and delicately placing the idea of me having a cat in my head. She told me I wasn’t working long days, or weekends, or going to the shop or making knives. She told me that maybe I had some space for this little fucked up kitty.
The smartest of women are able to do this- shepherding their partners to a decision of action, all while allowing their men to think it was their idea all along. I am not naive to this, but eventually I found I didn’t have a good reason to not bring this cat home. Even her kids told me to take him because we were so alike- we were both orange, slightly mangled, kind of diesel, and a bit cranky. So one Saturday I went to the pet store and got some kitty supplies with some of my stimulus money, and went and got the cat off her porch and took him home.
The first thing I did was set the cat carrier in front of the litter box. I took him out and set him in it. I told him this is where he would piss and shit and that was rule numero uno. No cat tinkle in the corners or little surprises on the floor. Then I took him and put him in front of his food, and told him he didn’t have to be hungry anymore. I set him on my bed and told him this was his bed too, and that he didn’t have to sleep in flower beds.
Then he went and hid in my closet for eight hours. This was probably a bit of a shock and perhaps a bit traumatizing, and I probably had less than a gentle touch. He eventually came out and settled in. I named him Jack Knife. Something simple but elegant, and with a story to tell. I called him Jack for short.
I had gotten him this super fancy raw freeze-dried gamebird cat food, because I’m pretty sure he had been eating rocks and dirt his whole life. He hated it, wouldn’t touch it. I went back and asked the guy at the pet store what to feed him and he said just to give him kitten chow. It’s not bad for cats, it just has more calories and nutrients but can lead to unhealthy weights in adults. He told me when he starts to put on weight, switch him to adult food. Man could this cat eat. I would wake up, put a scoop in his empty bowl, and go to work. I’d come home from work and his bowl would be empty, another scoop. I would get ready to go to bed and his bowl was empty again, another scoop. Every single day.
He wanted to eat whatever I was eating. He hadn’t even been home a week one night when I was having a cheeseburger. He wouldn’t leave me alone so I gave him a decent-sized chunk. He spent the next two hours throwing up all over the place and I spent the next two hours cleaning it up. Viking kitty or not, cooked and seasoned before probably wasn’t good for his digestion. You just don’t know what you don’t know.
For my birthday my girlfriend payed for his vet appointment to get shots and looked at. He wasn’t very old. The vet told me you can pretty accurately age a cat by their teeth, and Jack was only about eighteen months old. He had a small ulcerated growth on his shoulder from a tough kittenhood. The vet said it wasn’t bothering him but I could schedule an appointment to get it removed if it became an issue. The vet techs, young women in their mid to late twenties, told me he was the absolute sweetest guy. I found it amazing that a creature could have such a brutal beginning and yet allow himself to feel safe and cared for. No bitterness, no resentment, just love. I was his person, and he was my little friend during a very lonely and uncertain time.
About this time I got really into making spaghetti bolognese, with pancetta, ground pork, and veal when I could afford it. You deglaze everything with a dry white wine and finish it with heavy cream. I would give him some of the sauce in a little dish. He always purred when he ate, always. He just wanted to eat, sleep and snuggle.
Jack eased the loneliness and existential anxiety that came from the torrid state of the worlds. I would come home from whatever stupid job I had been doing that day and he would be sitting on my coffee table waiting for me. He would follow me around until I sat down and then he would climb onto me and fall asleep while I played Nintendo. I would talk to him while I worked on the very occasional knife commission I would get. He was a terrible knife maker.
He was a quiet guy, never really meowed, didn’t claw anything, and didn’t ever bite. He did particularly enjoy knocking my water glass off my nightstand, watching satisfied as glass bits and water went all over the place. He would never run away afterward- no shame in that one. I would just clean up the glass, mop up the water, and fill up his food bowl (which was perpetually empty despite my best efforts.) I lost half a dozen glasses.
For a good three weeks, I was really into making sandwiches. I would make a quickie aeoli, and use the aged smoked cheddar that they sold at Aldi. I would always give Jack a bit of the cold cuts as I was making these breaded works of art to take to work, or for dinner. Even when I got tired of artisan sandwiches and moved on to other things, Jack thought that every time I went into the kitchen I was making sandwiches and he wouldn’t leave till he got his cold cuts. So I always kept some in the fridge.
I started noticing that Jack was getting a little bit lethargic and reclusive. I called the vet to get his small growth removed, and scheduled his procedure. I felt a little guilty about not doing it sooner, but he was a tough little alley cat, and I always tried to let him be. I had gotten my second stimulus so I scheduled his procedure for the same day i got my Covid vaccine.
The vet said he did really well and he just needed to rest and take it easy, which is what he usually did anyway. I picked him up and took him home and kept an eye on him for a few days. He was not getting better. His surgery wound was great- clean, dry, and healthy. He was hiding in my closet most of the time, and one evening I found him sleeping in his litter box, which Google told me was usually the sign of a very sick kitty. The next morning I noticed some swelling in his little face. I was afraid he had an abscess in his tooth and I made an appointment with my vet to have a look at him the next day.
I got home from work that evening and he was having trouble breathing. His front legs had started to swell and he was lying on my kitchen floor. I was really hoping to make it through the night to get to my vet, whom I just love, but around 11p I gave him some cold cuts and took him to the emergency vet.
I think it goes without saying that nothing pleasant happens at an emergency vet clinic at 11p on a Wednesday evening. As I was standing in line a lady was filling out a ‘do not resuscitate’ form for her dog in surgery. When they took Jack back I sat down to wait and I could hear a lady sobbing uncontrollably in one of the exam rooms.
When they called me back to the exam room it was not good. Cancer had ripped through his little body and the vet told me he was more than likely sick even before I took him home from my girlfriend’s flower bed. The reality was, the vet told me, was that he was probably just looking for a safe place to lie down. He was also anemic, which was why he could eat so much and didn’t really gain any weight. I asked the vet if I fucked up somewhere along the line and she said no, sometimes life is just incredibly brutal for outdoor cats. She also said it was probably good I didn’t get his little growth removed sooner, because the trauma of that procedure most likely exacerbated his illness. I asked if he was hurting and the vet said no, he was just uncomfortable but there wasn’t anything that could really be done for him. She told me in so many words that Jack would not live to be an old cat and I just sort of lost it.
It sounds really silly to say because most everybody I know, including myself, lost big things during those years. Time, people, relationships, careers, opportunities- things that are just gone and can’t be gotten back. But living under the backdrop of chaos, duress, and uncertainty for an extended time can leave us a bit fragile and worn out. Things that might have been an emotional inconvenience at worst suddenly loom large. This was one such instance: in a lonely little exam room at two in the morning where nothing good happens, we put Jack to sleep.
The silver lining of shithead neighbors and devastating pandemics is that you can find big things in the smallest of places. In spite of everything that little cat was loving and sweet till the very end, and a good friend. If that isn’t grace, then I don’t know what is. I sure do miss that little guy.
Hand sanding before the forge:
Hand sanding after the forge:
These are some cedar shavings soaked in fiberglass resin. They will clean up nicely:
All material ready for glue up. Computer board spacers and homebrewed dungaree micarta:
“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.
“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.
“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”.
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 ofviolent 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.
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.
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:
‘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.
“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.
“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.
After hardening…
After hours of hand sanding…
Three shirts that no longer fit- in black, brown, and green
Cut into strips…
….and then pieces
Fiberglass resin…
….for a stinky salad
Put into a bag and clamped:
It comes out looking like this:
The Gunny: O1 tool steel, homebrewed camo micarta, kydex spacers, and steel hardware.
In finding a bit of awareness there can be a deeper connection to the world around us. This is the lesson of the Gunny.
groundedinfire 
