being

Knifemaking: appearances, politics, and the Buffoon

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‘Mr. Croup smiled. “You find us funny, Messire Marquis, do you not? A source of amusement. Is that not so? With our pretty clothes, and our convoluted circumlocutions—“

Mr. Vandemar murmured, “I haven’t got a circumlo . . . “

“—and our little sillinesses of manner and behavior. And perhaps we are funny.”

Mr. Croup raised one finger then, and waggled it at de Carabas. “But you must never imagine,” he continued, “that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous.”

And Mr. Vandemar threw his knife at the marquis, hard and accurately. It hit him, hilt first, on the temple. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his knees buckled. “Circumlocution,” said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. “It’s a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity.” ‘

Mssrs. Croup and Vandermar- from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

1095 spring steel

  
I hardened this after grinding about 2/3rds of the way through.  I planned on grinding him rather thin and didn’t want to risk warping during hardening…
Deepening the plunge…

I have this buffoonish shirt that I don’t think I’ve ever worn…

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After the fiberglass resin…

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The Buffoon:  1095 spring steel, homebrewed linen Micarta handle scales, Kydex spacers, and brass hardware

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buffoon

Be mindful of how we present ourselves to the world, and be wary of what those presentations may conceal.  There could be something deadly underneath.  This is the lesson of the Buffoon.

Knifemaking: surprises, overthinking, and the Persuader, Mark II

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“Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” he exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.”

Eugen Herrigel- Zen in the Art of Archery

(You can read about the crafting of the original Persuader here)

From the age of about ten to seventeen I went to boy scout camp every summer.  It was there I learned many skills crucial to developing into a balanced and well-rounded man.  Anything deemed flammable was generally set on fire.  Coffee cans were made to be hammered into camp stoves.  The person who showered the least won summer camp.  We put crawly things in each others sleeping bags.  We dealt with wolf spiders the size of small paper plates.  There was a Warhammer race every year.  Think of a track and field baton passing event, but substitute a baton for a 20lb ‘hammer’ built from logs by pubescent boys and humped around the five mile circumference of large lake.  We had a contest to see who could go the longest without using the latrine, which was all fun and games until one of the boys went to the hospital for a bowel obstruction.  Then the contest was to see who could use the latrine the most.

I learned firsthand that the boom of a sailboat mast was named so because when the wind changed direction it would swing around and boom, crack you on the head.

Then there was the summer I got dehydrated and learned that nobody is joking when they tell you to drink lots of water.

I snuck my Walkman with me.  At 12 years old there isn’t a whole lot better than being on your own in the woods with nothing but you, the trees, and your Tears for Fears cassette.

I took a rifle shooting class.  The counselor was one of only two women at camp.  They called her ‘Books’.  Or maybe it was “Boots”.  All the counselors had silly nicknames and any semblance of political correctness was blatantly disregarded.  Books had glasses.  To be fair, there was also a counselor with non-congenital dwarfism that everyone called “Oompa”.  He got fired for sneaking liquor on to camp…

So anyway, rifle shooting class with Books.  Turns out Books was a zen master.  For a class with a bunch of pre-hormonal boys, there weren’t many rules.  The only rule I can remember is never point your gun at anything you don’t intend to completely obliterate.

We were then given rifles.  Books sat us down at the rifle bench and showed us how to load and aim.  She told us to find our target in our sights and then, most importantly, to relax.  Inhale deeply, she said, and on the exhale squeeze the trigger.  This was also very important: squeeze don’t pull.  Slowly.  We were told that when the shot goes off it should surprise us.  If we missed our target, Books told us not to worry about it and just compensate for it on our next shot.

I wasn’t a very good shot and I haven’t shot a gun since then.  But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

For one I am generally not fond of surprises.  I like to know what I’m going to have to do and how to best prepare for it.  Even at the age of 12 I was not fond of any surprises involving a death-dealing boom stick and shooting always made me kind of nervous.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that life can be a death-dealing boom stick, for better or worse.  In trying to anticipate the shot, you are trying to control something outside of your control.  This results in you getting in your own way instead of letting things be what they are.

I think Books was trying to get us to let go and trust ourselves and to let the shot fall where it may.  This is the lesson of this incantation of the Persuader.

I made the original Persuader without thinking too much about it.  The main grind is a sabre grind.  I grind all of my blades freehand and as it turns out it is really difficult to get a uniform, symmetrical grind on a 2in wide piece of steel.  But I didn’t know this the first time round- I just did it.  When I tried to do it again I kept overthinking everything and ruining it.  There were two or three between the first one and this one that got scrapped.

When I think about the times I have been most successful in life I realize that those were the times when I wasn’t overly attached to specific outcomes or trying to manipulate the experience or anticipate every bump or snag.  In those times I was dog-ass tired or I was just enjoying myself.  I squeezed rather than pulled, I was surprised, and the shot ended up where I intended it to be.

1095 spring steel

Ready for the forge:
  Hardened:
  Chisel grind up top
  

I made the handle material out of an old pair of jeans:

After a bit of time, pressure, and fiberglass resin…



 At around 400 grit or so….

This stuff takes about twice as much sandpaper to polish than wood…

The Persuader, Mark II: Etched 1095 spring steel, homebrewed denim Micarta, and steel hardware

  

Relax.  Squeeze, don’t pull.  And it’s ok to be surprised.

Knifemaking: hardening and tempering and the Hound, Mark III

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“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

― Leo Tolstoy

One of the main things that drew me to the craft of bladesmithing is the process of heat treating- the process that hardens and strengthens the steel into something strong and functional.  I find it to be a reflection of the male psyche.  The steel comes to you soft and impressionable- just as we are when we are young.  It’s much easier to work the steel when it is soft, or annealed, than when it is hardened.  You then shape and grind the steel as you see fit- this is growing up and finding your place in the world.  Depending on how well you are or are not equipped, it could take a long time.  Through a process of slow heating and quick cooling the steel becomes hardened- our adult selves.  Though it is extremely hard, it also extremely brittle- it will shatter if dropped.  This is where the process stops for some people.  A brittle blade looks like a knife, feels like a knife, and will cut like a knife.  Appearances are deceiving and without proper tempering this piece of metal that resembles a knife will crumble under stress and will be unsalvageable.  So it is with some men.  When crafting a blade, you don’t let it crumble- it goes straight into low heat for several hours to draw out the stress from the hardening process and becomes flexible and durable.  In the male pysche, crumbling is part of the tempering process.  This is where our flex and bend comes from.  Like the tempering process of a blade it takes a long time.  This is the ethos behind my craft.

I also find it to be a reflection of the healing process from pain, trauma, and grief.  When any of these occur it is important to be with these things, and to be with those close to you who may be struggling to be with these things.  There is a really beautiful blog by Tim Lawrence.  He says these things are meant to be carried, and that this process of carrying our pain and trauma and grief can harden us.  I’ve experienced this in dealing with my own areas of grief, and trauma, and pain.  In this hardening it felt like I lost some things.  There were times when I couldn’t find my hope, or my light, or my path.  There were times when I couldn’t find my love, my self-worth, or my joy.  Everything was brittle.  Like the steel, these things you have experienced have hardened you, affecting you deep down into the molecules of your being.  This is where tempering can happen.  It takes time.  There was an awful bout of hardening I went through about a decade ago and I couldn’t get off the couch.  For about six months on that couch I watched nothing but the Food Network.  One day, after six months of Jamie Oliver, Curtis Stone, and Mario Batali, something made me get up and start cooking.  There were roux’s of many different varieties, soups, stews, crepes, and dim sum.  I started baking bread.  I invited friends over.  I worked more, found joy, and ways to laugh again.  Pain was still there, and would come again as it always does.  Hardness was still there but there was a bit more flex and bend and less brittleness.  Those things I thought were lost had never left, most especially not the love.

I still like to cook.

There can be many things that help to temper us after a hardening.

This is the lesson of this incarnation of the Hound.  The hardness doesn’t go away- but it can be tempered into something with the ability to bend without breaking.  This is the mark of a Warrior.  Be the Knife.

Shaping and rough grinding: To create a strong blade, I took a page from the Japanese swordsmiths who crafted the weapons and tools of the Samurai.  For these swordsmiths, the process was a spiritual experience.  Every authentic Japanese blade features a temper line, called a Hamon, which translated from Japanese means “blade pattern”.

The spine of the blade is covered in clay while the cutting edge is left bare.  The blade is then hardened.  When in the fire, the bare cutting edge will reach critical temperature for hardening while the clay coated spine does not.  What results is a differentially hardened blade.  The softer spine has more flex and bend while the blade edge is fully hardened.  This makes for an incredibly tough sword that is far less likely to break but just as deadly as a fully hardened blade.

I cheated a bit and used furnace mortar instead of clay….

I gooped it onto the parts of the blade not crucial to slicing and stuck it in the oven to cure:

After the mortar is cured, she goes into the forge.

Hardened: 
  That tempering part, for flex and bend…

Thumb for scale….

Into nearly boiling vinegar.  The vinegar eats away at the softer steel of the spine faster than it does the harder steel of the blade.  What results is a gorgeous line where the softer steel meets the harder…  Handle…
  

  

The Hound, Mark III.  Etched 1095 spring steel, Texas Mesquite handle, Kydex spacers, and brass hardware.

This blade was a commission for a very dear friend of mine who waited patiently for almost a year while I got my shit together.

Be the Knife

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Knifemaking: prayer, calm, and the Snowjumper

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“Blessings always beg for calm
In spite of their silvery arms”

Maritime- Calm

I pray a lot.  I really started about a year ago.  Growing up I thought it went along the lines of “Dear Jesus, please give me a pony.” I didn’t really understand prayer until pretty recently.  You can pray to Jesus, or whatever divine being you have faith in so long as it is bigger than yourself.  I talk to the Universe.  I didn’t talk to the Universe for a long time.  I found that I really needed help with the simple things.  There was little help in books, on the internet, or from people (books and internet both come from people, and nobody REALLY knows what’s going on).  So I started asking the universe for help.  This has never been easy for me because I try to do everything myself.  Instead of powering through everything, I would try (the operative word is try) to be quiet and still and ask.  The first thing I asked the universe for was guidance.

“Universe, please give me guidance.”

A week later I lost my job.

You have to be careful what you ask for because if you are expecting something specific you are probably going to be disappointed.  Once I got over the shock I tried to find more quiet spaces and ask for more simple things that could help me.  Universe, please help find peace.  Universe, please help me to trust.  Universe, please help me to know strong boundaries.  In certain situations I kindly ask the Universe to help me not fuck up.  And so on and so forth.

Most recently I have been asking the Universe for calm.  And the Universe has given me calm but something hasn’t been quite right.    The calm is there, I can project it, but I don’t feel it in me.  In areas where I find the calm but don’t feel it, I gently ask the Universe to help me to accept it.

None of this is overnight.  There is no flash of enlightenment or instant nirvana.  So I ask the Universe to help me find patience.

A few weeks ago we had a giant snowstorm.  There was somewhere between 12 and 18 inches.  I love snowstorms.  It is calm embodied.  Everything slows down and gets very quiet.  Many people stay home, the city shuts down, and nothing has to happen.  It happened on a Friday and all of my work got cancelled.  My girlfriend and I decided to get snowed in together.  We went to the store and stocked up on supplies and then headed to her place to batten down the hatches.  Then after a little while we noticed the heat wasn’t working.

I love this woman deeply.  I love how she makes things nice.  I love how she plans things.  She is talented and good at many things I am not, and will help me with those things.  She owns every bit of herself.  She is vulnerable and I see how empowering that is.  She is kind to my various maladjustments and occasional dysfunctions and the other parts of my being that I don’t love so much.  It’s far from perfect but it continues to bloom and makes me a better man.  Throughout all of this she is exquisitely beautiful and profoundly elegant and quite often gives me butterflies.  There are also things I am good at that help her.  Situations like heat and snowstorms are two of those things.

Back to the heat.  It was a full on snowstorm and it was glorious.  We went and picked up a kerosene heater from the warehouse where my workshop is.  We helped a couple of people get their cars unstuck.  We saw how beautiful everything was.  I have a 1997 Nissan Pathfinder with good four wheel drive and strong heat and we slid around a bit.  I found it to be very calming.

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I have a friend who does heating and HVAC work and he is a great guy.  He is also a workaholic.  I gave him a call to see if he could talk me through troubleshooting the system and he was actually up the street working.  He said he would be right over.  His wife must be a very patient woman.

Sure enough he got the furnace fired up.  I asked him what his price was for coming over and all he asked for was a couple bucks for gas.  That didn’t feel right so I offered to make him a knife.  He was down.  He likes to hunt and seems rather unfazed by the elements so I designed a skinner and named it the Snowjumper.  It is a winter blade.  I found some spalted Tamarind, which is a bright wood.  I used tin spacers: they are nearly the same color as the steel of the tang and are concealed in the way that the snow conceals the earth.  I also used steel rivets to match the spacers.

1095 spring steel:

 

    Hardened

Tempered:
Spalted Tamarind:  Those dark lines are actually where a fungus has eaten it’s way through the wood.

Time lapse of the handle fitting:


The Snowjumper:  1095 spring steel with a phosphoric acid etch, Spalted Tamarind handle, tin spacers, and steel hardware:

 

  Hidden tin spacers…

Be careful what you pray for.  Calm may come in a way you least expect it.  Accept it.

This is the lesson of the Snowjumper.

Knifemaking: being where you are and the Whiskey Jack

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 ‘There are a lot of good places,’ said Whiskey Jack. ‘That’s kind of the point. Listen, gods die when they are forgotten. People too. But the land’s still here. The good places, and the bad. The land isn’t going anywhere.’ 

Neil Gaiman- American Gods

A couple months ago I was working a Christmas show for the Ballet in town.  About midway through the three week run they started planning for next years show.  They were redoing some of the backdrops, which are gorgeous, and they had flown in an artist who paints them.  I was the one to pick him up from the airport.

I didn’t know any of this.  I was told to go pick up a gentleman at the airport and given a phone number.  A large French gentleman got into my rental car.

He apologized for his delayed flight.  I’ve heard that the French appreciate bluntness so I asked him what he was here for.

He told me he was a painter and that he was here to look at the scenery backdrops.  A backdrop is a large painted background that the dancers perform in front of.  They set the scene for the different locations in the ballet’s story.  Here is one from an opera rental company in Utah:

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The French gentleman said he sort of stumbled into this profession.  He was a painter living in France.  He fell in love with a ballerina and they married.  Sometime after this he was asked if he would paint for the scenery department.  Gradually this became his livelihood- painting settings for the theatre.  He now lives in New York.

He told me that it wasn’t always like this.  He said his passion was painting monsters- not the horror movie kind but something a bit more fantastical.  Since he was a child he said he’s always loved monsters.  He struggled to sell his work.  He went through a divorce.  He moved to a new country.  But he was always painting, be it monsters or backdrops.  He said that he went ten years without doing any scenic design, but he was always painting.

It’s these things that help keep us sane and help us to be where we are and to get through the hard things that we need to go through to grow as people.  They help us to remember that we don’t have to go anywhere or shy away from our experience as long as we have something to ground ourselves in.  This is what I got from that conversation with that gentleman.  This idea is also where the namesake of this blog comes from.

This is also the lesson of the Whiskey Jack.  ‘Whiskey Jack’ is an anglicized version of Wisakedjak, a trickster deity with a strong heart in Native American Folklore, specifically of the Cree tribe.  Whiskey Jack is a character in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, believing that no matter what happens the land is still there regardless of what we do to ourselves or others.  There are things we do and make and say and write that exist outside of the tedium and mental minutiae of our modern world.  Things that help us to keep our center when our hearts are breaking or it feels like everything is crumbling.  Things to help us be with our joy and to be with our grief.  They don’t go anywhere.  Remember these things, the beautiful things we do, when the world has made you weary.  I try to remember this when I am exhausted, when I don’t want to get out of bed, or if there are jobs or conversations that I really don’t want to do or have.

This large French gentleman’s name is Alain Vaes.  Please check out his work.

I started with 1095 steel and worked out a 6in bowie style blade:

 Full flat grind

 

HardenedLots of sanding… 

I like a heavy blade but I put these big holes in to lighten it just a bit.

This is one of my absolute favorite shirts.  I’ve worn it all over the country.  There are kind souls in my life that told me while the armpit stains are endearing, I probably shouldn’t where it out in public lest I scare small children….

….so I made it into handle material.  It’s not going anywhere either.

Clamped

The Whiskey Jack: etched 1095 spring steel, homebrewed Micarta scales, brass liners and hardware.  Shaving sharp, he is built to be used.

 

Be where you are, and keep doing whatever it is that helps you to stay there.  This is the lesson of the Whiskey Jack.

Knifemaking: going deep and the Kingfisher

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“When a needle falls into a deep well, many people will look into the well, but few will be ready to go down after it”

-African Proverb

I went to music school.  I was shown many ways to teach myself to be good at things.  I spent many hours in a practice room by myself, many more hours in front of a piano composing and arranging, and even more time listening.  To everything.  The education I got reached far beyond any classroom or practice space.  Life becomes those spaces.

Learning how to listen to things was the biggest lesson I learned.  When you listen, really listen, not just hear, your world opens up.  You notice all the nuanced bits of wonder.  As life gets busier and more complicated I still have to remind myself that it’s all still there, that it hasn’t and won’t go anywhere.  That within a world that holds a good deal of pain and sorrow for everyone there are also things that move and stir the soul, but they don’t always sit on the surface of our awareness…

There was one class that really opened things up and is sort of the inspiration for this writing.  It was called World Music, which is a rather vapid title for an experience that was so much more that.  It was taught by a very wonderful and kind man, one of the more enlightened people I’ve ever met.  Classes started off in silence and darkness, with the ringing of chimes.  Sometimes ambient music was played, or Tuvan throat singing, or guitar players from West Africa with rhythms I had never heard before.  There were many books to read, records to check out, and some of the most real discussions on being and the human condition that I have ever experienced.

It was during one of these discussions that something came up, and I don’t quite remember the context but it has stuck with me.  In the course of the discussion, it came up that our professor’s spirit animal was a dolphin.  He said that he was at the beach surfing when he was sixteen and nearly drowned and shortly thereafter found he related deeply with the dolphin.  The dolphin is able to dive very deep but always returns to the surface to breathe.  He told us he built his whole philosophy of teaching on that premise.

This is something that has been with me for awhile.  Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and go deep.  When you are exhausted, when it feels like life is more than you can handle, when you need to heal.  You can handle a lot more than you think you can but the tools and nourishment you need don’t always sit at the surface.  That doesn’t mean the process of finding these things doesn’t hurt like hell or isn’t terrifying at times.

Take the Kingfisher bird, for example.  To get the food it needs to sustain itself, it has to dive far beneath it’s comfort zone.  They sit on their perch overhanging the water and when they see their prey they dive, eyes closed, into the deep.  I think about this and wonder what is going through his little bird brain before he hits the water…

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This is the lesson of the Kingfisher.  You close your eyes, you dive deep, and you come up with something nourishing.  Repeat as necessary, adding faith and a bit of courage as required.

I wanted to make a filet knife, something to help me dive.  I made her out of a thin piece of bedframe steel.  She has a 6in blade.

I initially ground two of these, but one didn’t turn out.  I left it soaking in the acid too long (for a deep etch) and there wasn’t much blade left….

My very dear friend James did the handle on this one.  She has Mora wood scales and brass hardware.



 

My good friends Mike and Jen using the Kingfisher to de-bone a goose… 

Sometimes you have go below the surface of things to find what you need.  This is the lesson of the Kingfisher.

Knifemaking: magic, noticing, and the Conjurer

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“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

― W.B. Yeats

With most things in the world, there are many behind-the-scenes forces that help things to happen.  Take a blossoming flower.  Beautiful, fragrant, and simple.  But behind all of that is a team of unseen helpers going about their existences- honeybee’s to pollinate, an ecosystem of soil for roots to take hold, and a concoction of nutrients within that for nourishment.  There is rain, meteorological patterns to govern the rain, and atmospheric conditions to govern those.  The beautiful blossoming flower couldn’t do what it does without these things, but that doesn’t make it any less magical, or detract from it’s wonder.

Life is a microcosm of this.  For everything in our lives, magical or otherwise, there is a team going about busy existences to make those things happen.  It’s important to notice these things.

A few years ago I started getting calls to work big shows.  Rock concerts, comedians, people of Youtube fame: acts big enough to fill coliseums and large concert halls.  My job title in these instances is Production Runner, a gofer, someone who knows where to find things and can make problems go away.  I’m the guy who gets someone coffee, or picks up prescription strength fungicide for professional wrestlers, or buys lumber for stage carpenters.  I’ve worked for a huge number of these acts.  Sarah Bareilles is very sweet, Taylor Swift’s bodyguards are terrifying, and Bill Cosby told me I was a connoisseur of elongated bullshit.

These performers are like the flower.  Most of them are who they are because they do something special that resonates with people, something fragrant and colorful and moving- magical even.  But like the flower there is also an army of forces working very hard so that these performers can do what they do.  There are truck and bus drivers, lighting designers, electricians, sound technicians, board operators, music directors and musicians and a slew of pencil-pushers and smooth-talkers to bring the flowers to the masses.  There is even magic in what all of these forces are.

One of the first shows I worked was on the set of a two day DVD filming at a local concert hall.  It was for a well known ventriloquist and was to be shown on a national TV network.  It was exciting.  After it was all over there was a director who needed a ride to DC to visit his brother before he flew back to Los Angeles.  Being ever the cash opportunist I offered to assist.

In the I-95 traffic we had deep conversations of politics, sex, and music.  He was telling me about a production he was watching from backstage in LA.  It was a Stevie Wonder performance being filmed live for television and there was a performance of “My Cherie Amor.  He had heard this song hundreds of times before but this performance of “My Cherie Amor” moved him to tears.  He couldn’t explain it.  Why was that one time so moving and special?

I told him that it was probably because he hadn’t really stopped to listen before, or maybe not in a very long time.  There wasn’t anything else to do at that moment and he was able to hear a legend do what made him famous, to hear this beautiful man conjure deep things through his very simple gift.

This is the lesson of the Conjurer.  To see the magic in the simple things.  To conjure your own magic through the simple things you do in your life, because that is where the magic really lives.  The flipside is to notice that the magic is there.  It’s what puts the color in this world.

She is made from a bar of 1095 spring steel
Rough grinding  

Ready for hardening

Hardened and scaly

  Tempered

Brass for the liners 
  
The Conjurer: 1095 spring steel, Mora handles, and brass liners and hardware  

 

When the director gentleman and I got to DC he gave me his card.  I went home and googled him.  This man was responsible for many magical musical productions and television shows and his name was shown prominently on each of them. Turns out he is quite the celebrity in that world and for good reason.  If I hadn’t taken the time to notice I could have missed a special experience and the simple but beautiful conjuring that this man did.  He helped me to see my own conjuring and magic.  This is the deeper lesson of the Conjurer.

Knifemaking: mistakes, tedium, pizza ovens, and the Cynewulf

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“I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing here, so we’re going to figure this out by denial and error”

Frederick Pritchett, Jr.

I spent two years working in the warehouse of an auction company.  They specialize in used restaurant equipment.  All aspects, from tables and chair, mixers, slicers, refrigeration, the whole lot.  I kind of fell into this job and ended up managing the inventory and auctions.  But before that there was a lot of grease, dirt, rust, and burnt pizza…

A couple years ago I was in a tough place and I needed money.  A good friend of mine said I could come work for his auction company.  One of the first things they put me on was cleaning three commercial smokers.  They had spent three months festering in a hot warehouse and smelled of what I believe a sauna full of garbage trucks eating month old Vietnamese food would resemble.

It was here that I met Fred.  As I stood there with three stinking smokers, pondering my life’s decisions, the service tech came by and told me the best way to get those clean was to mix some bleach and ammonia together in a spray bottle and shake it till it got hot (“But don’t hold on to it for too long or it’s liable to explode”).  Then I was to saturate the interior, let it sit in the sun, and then hit it with the pressure washer that got up to two hundred degrees.  All while not breathing in the fumes.

I did all of these things and sure enough they got clean.  I hated myself a little bit.

The main thing I learned working here was that there are many ways to get things done.  Some ways are less insane than others, but then sometimes life calls for the insane.  Sometimes the insanity is all relative.

I also learned that in any sort of business one has to adapt to what makes money.  If that doesn’t happen then you’re dead.

One of the owners is second generation Italian and as it would follow many of the company’s customers were Italian.  They liked to support one of their own.  For awhile there were a lot of Italian restaurants opening up and these gentleman required pizza ovens.  Pizza ovens are heavy, expensive, and take up a lot of space.  Pizza stones for a double deck oven will set you back at least $600 and if not properly seasoned will crack or break.  It was decided that we would rebuild used ovens.

Here is where the adaptation of making a profit and the insane got together for a tumultuous marriage.  At first.  After awhile things settled in.  Fred was at the helm of this operation and we all moved bravely forward.

The first step was obtaining a used pizza oven.  We travelled far and wide.  One time Fred and I did a marathon drive to a closed restaurant in Florida, extracted a 3,000lb set of Baker’s Pride ovens, threw them on a trailer, and drove back.  Fred is really good at moving heavy things and makes it look effortless:  I’m pretty sure his ancestors built Stonehenge using nothing but Druid redneck ingenuity and several barrels of barley wine.

We would then strip it down to nothing.  Exterior paint was taken off and everything was sanded.  Everything.  For a solid month we cleaned out every Home Depot within a 20 mile radius of most of their abrasives.  Figuring out how to get the exterior paint off was tricky at first. Stripping the paint off the first oven we did was a bitch.  First we tried a blowtorch.  A pretty big one.  It didn’t work that well and made everyone smell of burnt pizza.  Then we tried every sort of angle grinder attachment known to the universe.  There was no quick way to do it.  All of the inner structural pieces had to be sanded as well.  Somebody would have to put on a paper suit and climb into the behemoth and sandblast it.

In the process of anything worth doing you encounter tedium at some point.  When tedium mixes with not knowing exactly what you are doing, self-doubt can settle in.  It becomes hard to focus and in this lapse of focus mistakes happen.  This is where many people either give up or figure it out.  We couldn’t give up because then nobody got paid.  Fred kept us all on task, for better or worse.

It is also in this tedium that you can find out a lot about yourself.  How you operate and what lies at the bottom of that self-doubt.  If you can be with that long enough you can start to blossom.  The things that used to hurt you start to help you.  I found myself making these really kick-ass playlists and began to appreciate the nuance of Barry Manilow.  When I got home completely covered in shit I would take a viking shower and cook myself something special.  All of the other side jobs I had became a pleasure.  I would see myself as a warrior, bravely defending the honor of the Oven of Pizza, and all of those who came before her.

I would go in and stare these things down everyday.  Sometimes it was overwhelming, sometimes time flew by.  Days of sanding, painting, polishing, going to the metal shop to have a piece refabricated, or having a special tap set ordered.  It was an adventure.  I’m glad Fred was in charge because I would have told the Italians to figure something else out.

Another area of tedium was polishing.  I spent many hours with a Scotch brite pad and 000 steel wool trying to make these things shine.  This was about the time Mr. Al joined us and as fate would reveal he is actually the Stainless Steel Whisperer….

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After Fred put new burners and controls in they would be ready for delivery.  It was a sprawling process.  At the time I stopped working there, the process was down to a week and a half to two weeks, start to finish.  They ship them all over the country now.

 This is the lesson of the Cynewulf.  Life can be a sprawling, tedious process.  It can be hard to stick with something and not being able to see where it is taking you can make it harder.  Instead of seeing yourself as the warrior you start to see yourself as the oppressed.  Momentum can turn to stagnation and focus can lapse.  You begin to question your life decisions and maybe sometimes you hate yourself a little bit.

I find myself in these places more often than I’d like.  And what I’ve found is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This blade took me on a journey.  I had to start over after I had spent quite a bit of time on it and I got really frustrated.  The name Cynewulf means “Royal Wolf”, which relates to the regal bearing and balance of this blade but also to the ability to not get stuck in one’s mistakes or complacent with one’s successes.  It’s quite large at 8 inches and 13 inches overall.  It was really tricky to heat treat in my little forge.  I hammered it through some 2×4’s just to make sure she was ready for the world.

1095 spring steel

A rough grind
Ready for the forge

Phosphoric acid etch…

 The Cynewulf: 1095 spring steel with an acid etch, Cherry handle, and brass hardware. 

  

  The Cynewulf, with her fallen sister…

I gave this to my chef friend to try out and he ended up buying it on the condition that I customize it to his specifications, which I did.  You can already see the patina starting to reveal itself from the potatoes he sliced…

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Work through the tedium and pay attention your mistakes.  Even the kingliest and queenliest people make them and there are many possibilities in them.  There may be some pizza in it at the end…

Knifemaking: the courage to be and the Ace

/ ballardmidyette / 1 Comment

“If you love something, you know what the best in the world actually looks like.”

James Altucher

 

This blade was a commission for a six-year old boy who lives on a farm.  His parents are close friends of mine.  They have several acres of property in Montpelier, which is about 40 minutes outside the city.

I go out there as often as I can, usually just to get away from the city.  They have goats, chickens, ducks, pigs, and other animals.  I keep turning down offers to hunt.  I’m not much for guns or shooting things but I have made knives for them to skin and clean with, and I will always eat whatever they brought back, provided it’s already dead.

I’ve known this little boy since he was about three.  He loves to play and is curious about almost everything.  He asks questions that I don’t really have the answers to but I always answer him as best I am able.   He is open and fearless and kind.  He loves his family and everyone close to him is a dear friend.  He sees the best in everyone and wants to help as much as he can.  I have to remember to watch my mouth when I spend time with him.

As an adult I see this as profound and courageous and often inspiring.  This what I would call the Courage to Be.  But as a little boy he is only doing what he knows how to do.  He just loves and in those moments I can feel that whatever he has going on is pretty much the best thing ever.  As a former little boy, I know this feeling well.

I was out there recently for dinner and he showed me where he had lost a tooth.  I asked him if the tooth fairy had visited him and he lost it and screamed “THERE IS NO TOOTH FAIRY” and ran out of the room.  Apparently, his mother explained, he had found out the tooth fairy does not exist.  She said he threw her two dollars at her and demanded his tooth back.

His little world was shaken and he wasn’t afraid to let the big people know how he felt.  Sometimes I wish I could get away with demanding my tooth back…

I was out there the other day and his father needed a hand installing a new washer and dryer.  I had this little boy help me while his father did chores.  He kept asking me when we were going to play and make things.  I couldn’t lie to him.  I told him I had to help his dad and I might not have time for play.  He wasn’t very fond of my games- break the water line with the channel locks, hold the door while I cart out the old dryer, hand me a screwdriver.  I thought we were having fun.  I like hanging out with this little being, even when there is much to do.

And then this little boy had a meltdown.  Tears and everything.  “All you do is work,” he says.  “Maybe you work and save some time for play and then maybe you won’t be so tired,” he says.

I asked him if he would like a hug, and he said yes.  I didn’t tell him I had come out there to have his mother help me with my resume.  I didn’t tell him that his parents work hard and sacrifice so he can play and learn and Be.  What I did do was put him on my shoulders and tell him to hold on tight.  He said he wasn’t scared.

This is the lesson of the Ace.  To find the Courage to Be, even when the grown-up world has dimmed your shine and made it painful to love without condition.  To know what the best in the world looks and feels like, even when you have trouble paying your bills, or sorrow makes you weary, or there are many moments when there isn’t enough of anything.  To know that while you are not going to get your tooth back, you don’t have to like it or settle for anything less than you believe you deserve.

I had traded a skinning knife and a small paring knife for some supplies from his parents.  This little boy found them and said he wanted one.  His parents found a two-foot machete in his play fort.  The little boy said it was for “keeping bad guys away.”  I have seen no bad guys in the vicinity so it must be working.  They asked me if I could make a small knife with a blunted edge for him to carry and learn with.  I then asked the little boy what kind of knife he would like.  I received a drawing and a strict set of parameters, the last of which required that it be a sword.  Right little man, I’ll get right on that…

This is what I came up with.  A blade for a smaller hand.  He’s an inch across at his widest point.  This is the smallest blade I’ve ever made.

full flat grind…

 …hardened and tempered…  

testing for handle fit…  

  The grip is a piece of Mahogany floorboard

The Ace: O1 tool steel with a satin finish, Mahogany handle and brass hardware.


I made a small leather sheath for him to carry it with.  The blade is blunted and I ground the tip down per his parents request.  He’ll grow into it and I’ll build him another one when he’s ready.

Take note of the little ones.  Try to find your Courage to Be.

Knifemaking: power in the small things and the Petit Poucet

/ ballardmidyette / 1 Comment

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”

― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

 

When I was twenty-one I took a summer job in a cabinet shop.  I was in between semesters of school and had made some pretty significant life changes, at least for a twenty-one year old.  I had transferred colleges and I decided I wanted a summer job where I would learn something useful.

This particular cabinet shop did custom work.  Everything was built to order.  The owner was a friend of my family’s.  On my first day I was introduced to everyone in the shop.  It was noisy in there, with all the fans and sawdust collection systems, and everyone heard my name as “Bernard” instead of “Ballard”.

I didn’t find this out until later, after everyone had been addressing me as Bernie for at least two weeks.  I was just happy to not be called college boy.

I was hired to sweep floors, which I did for approximately one hour on my first day.  After that hour I was handed a reciprocating saw and told to cut up a stack of pallets.  When they found I still had all of my fingers, they gave me other things to do not involving sweeping the floor.  From then on I did whatever was asked of me, still happier to be called Bernie than college boy.

I built drawers for desks to go in lawyers’ offices.  I would be on a crew of four guys to build an army of receptionist desks for a medical complex.  I built a mile of L-bracket to mount cabinets in an insurance building.  When you work in a shop with over a million dollars worth of tools and machinery there isn’t a whole lot that you can’t build.  The owner liked to make money and I can count the number of times he subcontracted jobs out on one hand.

This was one of the best summers of my life.  I didn’t hang out with anybody.  I didn’t go on any dates.  I got to work at 7:30a and left at 4:45p.  When I got home I would practice my horn for four hours in my parents’ basement and then go to sleep.  Then I would get up and do it all over again.

I found myself spending full days on a panel saw, a massive contraption designed to rip and crosscut full sheets of plywood.  It cut everything perfectly square.  You see these at Lowes and Home Depot but this machine made those look like Tinker Toys.  This particular one was made by a Nordic company that specialized in making badass cutting tools.  It cost about thirty grand and when it broke down they had to pay a company service tech from Pennsylvania $600 an hour to fix it, which included drive time.  Clearly we were all in the wrong business.

I was given a cut list for each job.  Some of these lists would be casework for an entire building, others just one or two pieces.  I cut all the cabinet pieces by hand, within a 1/64th of an inch, which by industry standards is a pretty large margin.  The real tricky bit was cutting cabinet doors and drawer fronts.  These cuts had to be cut short to accommodate for the laminate that would cover the side edges of the door.  This was to allow the doors to fully close once the edge had been covered in laminate and for the drawer fronts to have the proper reveals once installed.  When I would get to the doors and drawers on the cut list I would know to cut them between 1/16th and 1/32nd of an inch shorter than what was written, depending on the type of laminate being used.

I cut hundreds of these things without incident.  Then one day I screwed up.

The boss called me over.  Shit.

I had sent over four doors that I hadn’t cut short, in this instance it was 3/32nds.  They had been laminated, drilled, installed with ungodly priced hinges, cleaned and finished.

“Bernie, you fucked up.  Let me explain to you the depth of your fuckup.”

He proceeded to tell me that not only had I wasted my time, but I had also wasted the time of everyone involved in those doors, plus materials, wear and tear on machinery, saw blades, electricity, and by default, company time that we weren’t ever going to see again.  With everything involved those doors came to about $240.  A piece.  He instructed me to take them and throw them in the dumpster, but to do it one at a time, and to use that time to reflect on the breadth of my folly.

Four long trips to the dumpster.  I was mortified.  Everyone else thought this whole ordeal was hysterical.  I made sure to not overlook the doors and drawers in the future.

The summer came to an end.  I went back to school with a deeper appreciation for both higher education and the people who build the things that make life possible.

There is much power in the small things and sometimes you only find this when you overlook them.  Sometimes they are absolutely necessary.  Sometimes they make the world a bit sweeter.  Small acts of kindness to yourself and others, small acts of gratitude and compassion- these are the stuffs that can give the world its particular hue.

This is where the Petit Poucet comes in.  I have been designing kitchen knives and also watching Jacques Pepin cooking videos.  There was one of these that struck me where he had all these beautiful knives at his disposal, some quite large and impressive, but he prepared a gorgeous meal using only a six inch utility knife.  Petit Poucet roughly translates roughly to Tom Thumb, a very small person who was able to accomplish large things.  It’s important to not overlook the small things.  This is the lesson of the Petit Poucet, a small but mighty kitchen blade.

I started with a bar of 1095 spring steel

After rough grinding and heat treat.  Thankfully he didn’t warp.

Keeping it cool during finish grinding…

 I had some Bloodwood that I found to be striking the Petit Poucet: Acid etched 1095 spring steel, Bloodwood handle, and brass hardware.
  
  
  

Mind the small things- the big things will turn out that much better…and you will save four trips to the dumpster.

P.S.- the man I worked for was possibly the best boss I’ve ever had, and one of the most decent men I’ve ever known.  We still talk from time to time.  He keeps saying he has a place for me in his business and asks me how I am with finance.  If he only knew…