Knifemaking: prayer, calm, and the Snowjumper

February 5, 2016February 13, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“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.

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

February 2, 2016February 11, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

‘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:

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

January 22, 2016January 30, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“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…

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: soldiering on and the Rio Bravo

January 18, 2016February 21, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

― John Wayne

soldier on: phrasal verb with soldier. to continue doing something although it is difficult

–Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Thesaurus

This blade was a commission for the father of a gentleman who is a professional videographer. I came to know this gentleman after building a knife for him. He called and asked if I could make a blade for a very special person- his father.

When I first met with the client, we talked for about an hour. He showed me a short film he had made about his father, his father’s deep love of football, and how it brought the two of them closer as adults. The film was quite stunning. The NFL thought so too- it won their family tickets to the Super Bowl.

In the film, he told his father’s story of how he lost a chance to play for the Baltimore Colts, losing out to Johnny Unitas. What followed was a strained relationship where the client really didn’t get a chance to know his father. The film documented how football brought bonding and healing. He asked if I could make a blade with an element of the game that his father loves.

I felt quite a bit of anxiety in making this blade. I had to design it and give it a life for somebody’s loved one whom I had never met before. It took a very long time because I really wanted to make the right statement. The recipient of this blade is a man’s man, stoic, and has taken his licks. He has a bit of cowboy in him- John Wayne was mentioned during our talk. I named it the Rio Bravo after the John Wayne film. Wayne was 51 when he starred in the film but still kicks a lot of ass.

I write this from a man’s perspective. As a man I have a hard time dealing with difficult emotions and I think most men would agree that it is a bitch coming to terms with them. They don’t go away, they just sit and fester if not dealt with. In dealing with them we often fall apart, have meltdowns, withdraw, avoid, and sometimes leave a path of destruction. You want to succeed, to have a purpose, to leave your mark on the world, and make things right. When that doesn’t happen you can find yourself questioning your self-worth. I don’t have children but when there are little ones looking up to you and watching you I imagine it adds that much more pressure.

The lesson of the Rio Bravo is that no matter what you soldier on. The only way out is through. You show up, you do the work, you laugh, you cry, and you take the bitter with the sweet. I crafted this blade for a man who has done all of that and serves as an inspiration of what soldiering on earns you.

The beautiful part of this commission has been seeing how inspiring the healing can be. A son did this for a father where there was pain on both ends. The client showed me, a stranger, this incredibly vulnerable and moving film. It’s hard to imagine the courage it took to make that film and to put an intimate story out into the world.

I loved working with this client. There were multiple conversations about designs and materials. He is an artist and we can talk about concrete things in abstract and obtuse ways. At the end of it he always told me to do what I thought and that he trusted me. This is where I started:

Some jimping for grip, and a nod to the laces of a football.

Rough Grind

Hardened…

….and tempered

I wanted something with the feel of a football…

I cut it into strips and glued it together….

…and it failed miserably. Still, I really wanted to work the leather in. That’s the spirit of football even though it isn’t pigskin. I was also really into the idea of having a part of something that once walked the earth be a part of this blade. I wanted this to be a very masculine blade, with a southwestern theme. For me it doesn’t get much more manly than the combination of Texas Mesquite, leather, and steel. I put in some thin tin spacers for a bit of sparkle.

I have a cousin in Texas who is a woodturner with a sawmill. He handpicks cutoffs with the most gorgeous figures and sends them to me. When I’m using his wood for a handle it’s like Christmas morning- think of opening your favorite Christmas present, only you get to do it for two and a half hours. Thank you Bill Cockrell. You are a very good man.

The Rio Bravo: etched 1095 spring steel, Texas Mesquite handle, leather and tin spacers, with steel hardware.
I carved in some laces:

Soldier on, cowboy. You never know what tomorrow may bring.

Knifemaking: armor, mobility, and the Archer II

December 29, 2015December 29, 2015 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.”

― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary

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

We all put on armor everyday. Some of us put on more than others. Sometimes it physically manifests. Hard hats, steel toes, wingtips, neckties. Some ladies refer to their makeup as war paint, another type of armor. Other times it’s more subtle and subdued- the way we carry ourselves, our use of vernacular in particular situations, and the image of ourselves that we present to the world. All these are things we do to protect ourselves.

A few years ago I had a temp job working construction over the summer. The company I worked for had a contract to build all of the temporary structures for the Boy Scout National Jamboree. I spent almost four months driving to a military base in the middle of nowhere. I use the term base loosely. It was really just a giant campground guarded by military police, and all of the campers carried semiautomatic weapons. In four months I used a flushable toilet maybe three times. The cast of characters I worked with were a colorful lot.

My boss was a Brazilian Jui Jitsu master. He got to work before everyone else and ran five miles on base. Some people have coffee before they start work. Our mornings with him consisted of tapping out of sleeper holds, arm bars, half nelsons, and doling out mollywhops of a variety I’ve yet to experience again.

One of the other gentleman did a ten stretch for first degree murder, which nobody found out till the work contract was almost up. The base knew he had a twenty year-old felony and vetted him for a base pass. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but military bases generally don’t mess around. He did good work and kept to himself. He was married to a florist and had a house in the country.

Then there was the gentleman who had just gotten out of jail for beating the the hell out of a guy with a tire iron. He was drunk and thought the guy was stealing his car. He was there trying to pay off the lawsuit and lawyer’s fees.

Another gentleman I worked with had severe anger management issues and was there because he was dating the company owner’s daughter. He had a degree in English and was trying to get into law school.

There was Jose from El Salvador who had four children and was still madly in love with his wife. He taught me filthy things to say in Spanish.

There were two football players on break from a small conservative college. They said they were there earning beer money.

Then there was me. My car had died and I needed to buy a new one.

I spent four months with these guys, riding around in the back of a decommissioned deuce-and-a-half, building things, and hearing stories that I’m still not sure if I believe or not. In these sorts of work environments a decent amount of posturing and exaggeration is to be expected from almost everyone. Despite their checkered backgrounds, these guys were not terrible to work with. Nothing felt unsafe except for the blistering heat, the bird-size mosquitos and the morning mollywhops to which I became adept at parrying.

Just to be safe I would put on some armor everyday- a bit of bravado, a bit of flash, a bit of the grandiose. My nicknames reflected that. The Viking. Sledgehammer. Red Devil. I was lifting a lot of weights and I was not a small man. It helped enforce some social boundaries. At the end of the day I could usually take it off, or so I thought.

The type of armor a lot of these guys wore- they couldn’t take it off. This was how they lived and you could feel that they had worn this armor for a very long time, so much so that it became a part of their being. There were scuffles, gruff talking, machismo. Everything was laced with an extra scoop of testosterone.

When you wear heavy armor you are shielded from many things that can hurt you. The drawback is that you shield yourself from the things that help you as well. You block out grief but you also block out the serenity that in time comes with it. You block out pain but you are also blocking the healing that follows. You can become a shell of yourself. The armor becomes limiting. You can’t move and you become horribly stuck.

What happens when you do decide to take the armor off? When you aren’t hiding behind any sort of bravado or grandiosity or gestures or facades? There comes a point where it becomes more painful to live with the armor on than off. You take the armor off and let the world in. All of it. The world becomes overwhelming. You’ve put on a different set of armor, something that allows you to breathe and move and serves you in a much deeper capacity.

This is the lesson of the Archer. To lightly armor yourself so that you are protected, yet you can still hit your marks with a deadly precision. You can move farther and faster and feel much more deeply. You become more aware and but find that you require a different sort of care for yourself and this may feel foreign. You feel pain more acutely but the healing becomes more available to you. The things you put out into the world feel more genuine.

For this blade I wanted something long, sharp, and elegant. I designed her for the kitchen. She is ground thin and a bit more fragile- at one point I dropped her on the concrete floor and the tip blunted a bit. After a bit of grinding she was alright.

The Archer, Mark II: 1095 spring steel, Sapele handle, brass hardware

Take your time and adjust to this new armor as the world opens up to something beyond posturing and mollywhops. This is the deeper lesson of the Archer.

Knifemaking: magic, noticing, and the Conjurer

December 25, 2015January 19, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“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: creating space and the Pas de Deux

December 10, 2015January 2, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“You want to make two knives that become one. Or perhaps one knife that becomes two.”

Igor Antonov

Over the years I’ve quite a bit of production work for the ballet company in town. Building things, running a shuttle, being part of a crew that makes something special happen. My most favorite part of the work I’ve done is a program called Lecture Demonstrations. This is a fancy name for kiddie shows; in-school performances, where the company puts on performances for the children. The company manager would line up shows at elementary schools and take care of all the administrative details. I would show up to the ballet, load up sound equipment, props, costumes, and half a dozen dancers into a minivan and go to an elementary school, chat with school administrators, set up the sound system, wire up the lead ballerina, start the show, and punch the mic and music cues. After the show everything would get torn down, packed up, and loaded into the minivan along with myself and the dancers. Then we went to the next one.

The performance was an adaptation of “Coppelia”, made easily digestible for second graders, complete with talky bits and a question and answer. The kids enjoyed it.

I feel most people who have seen any sort of ballet video or performance have seen the lady in the tutu dancing with the man in tights. This is called pas de deux- French for “step of two”. Man and lady dancing together. Very simple on the surface.

Over the course of a month and a half we did two of these a day, four days a week, plus rehearsals. After watching about 60 of these shows, I found that I really looked forward to the two sections of pas de deux in the program. I loved the balance of the masculine and the feminine. I loved the interdependence of the dance- they are both separate entities. The beauty comes when the feminine surrenders to the masculine. The masculine leaves a certain space for her to shine, for her to be what she is. In doing what she does, the feminine leaves space for the masculine to be what he is. Trust permeates throughout. They both have their own identity but together they do things that individually they could not.

I had an idea for a knife. There is a wonderful Ukrainian gentleman on the artistic staff who would come to these performances and give notes and critiques to the dancers on how the performance could be better. He also gave me critiques on the the technical side of things. After one of these critiques I told him what I do and how to work the pas de deux into it. “Ah,” he says, “You want to make two knives that become one. Or perhaps one knife that becomes two.” I had to think about that for a couple of months.

To flow seamlessly between separate and together- this is the lesson of the Pas de Deux. To leave space for things to be what they are while maintaining one’s own identity. It is in this space that intimacy exists and blossoms. To be so secure in oneself that submission requires small effort. Sometimes we hold on to things so tightly that there isn’t any space for the things we need. Sometimes there is a great amount of space and everything may seem to sprawl and lose form. Always, at the end of it all, everything ends up where it is supposed to be.

I chose to make one knife that became two.

First the feminine…
Rough grind Hardened

Purple Heartwood

Here is where I had to take the handle off and put a new one on. I couldn’t quite get that little tail to bond to the tail of the tang. In the next picture you see the new handle with two little brass rivets.

Now the masculine…

Hardened

Tempered

Tulipwood for him

Now the stinky part…

The Pas de Deux, a kitchen pair: 1095 spring steel

The feminine is Purple Heartwood with brass hardware

The masculine is Tulipwood with brass hardware

Embrace the space. You and your partner, in whatever form they may take, will both shine.

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

December 9, 2015December 16, 2015 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“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….

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…

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

December 7, 2015December 7, 2015 / 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: braving the storm and St. Elmo’s Fire

November 24, 2015February 10, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.”

Paulo Coelho

St. Erasmus, or St. Elmo, is known as the patron saint of sailors. The namesake of this blade refers to a meteorological phenomenon that results from an electrically charged atmosphere that occurs during thunderstorms. It manifests itself as a series of blue sparks, with the mast of the ship acting as a conductor. During storms at sea, sailors would often observe St. Elmo’s Fire. It has always been symbolized as a sign of the Divine, and sailors knew that they were looked after when it appeared.

I made this blade with idea of it being a seaworthy vessel- something that has braved many storms and still has its spirit intact. Sometimes we brave so many storms that we forget how to enjoy the calm. Instead of having a life of calm punctuated by storms, it becomes a life of storms punctuated by calm.

The important thing to realize is that beneath the churning waves and far beneath the thunder, lightning and winds is an entire body of calm. And that there was calm before the storm and there will be calm after.

This isn’t to say that storms aren’t dangerous but they do come with their lessons. I’ve spent a good amount of life in a state of anxiety anticipating storms. Some of us have been conditioned to live in constant turbulence, lest we not be prepared for the foul weather. Over time, we stop differentiating between the calm and the turbulent seas and create a maelstrom where there is none because we haven’t ever known what that calm feels like. Shifting this type of thinking takes time and a good deal of work. To be perpetually worried of the storms robs you from fully enjoying the moment and the beautiful things that occupy the vast majority of time between. Ultimately you can’t control the Nature but you can control yourself.

This the lesson of St. Elmo’s Fire. To allow the storms to pass and to have faith that you will find safe passage through the rough waters. To feel your own calm in the midst of chaos. Oftentimes you can find out what you are really made of within that chaos.

This blade was a commission for a very old friend who did a lovely photoshoot for me. We’ve often talked about storms and how to get through them.

I did a series of kitchen knife designs and this one was sort of a wild card. Functionally she is a German style chef’s knife. The clip in the blade gives her some forward momentum. The drop in the handle rests comfortably in the heel of the hand, and also follows the natural line of the forearm through the wrist. The finger choil provides a comfortable resting place for the lower three fingers if a traditional chef’s grip is preferred.

The blade is 7.25″ long. Blades these long are a continual challenge for me to grind. If ground too thin they will warp and possibly crack during heat treat. On blades this large there is grinding before and after hardening and tempering.

I love working with Mesquite. It has a fiery bouquet.
St. Elmo’s Fire: 1095 spring steel with a phosphoric acid etch, Texas Mesquite handle and brass hardware.