masculine

“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

“Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.“

Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm

I had a dream where I met my feminine identity.

I was in a busy open air train station with one of my best friends. It was busy and it must have been cold because everyone was bundled up. From almost nowhere came a woman, small, but with hair the color of autumn and a lot of fire to her. She wore a loose fitting white Henley t-shirt, weathered jeans that were rolled up to mid-shin, and walked barefoot. There was a lion cub walking by her side. She also wore a long knife on her hip.

We didn’t speak but there was something very familiar about her. She was exquisitely beautiful but I didn’t desire her- I knew this being was a part of me. She paused for a moment, long enough for the lion cub to nuzzle my leg. Then they were both gone.

In the weeks leading up to this I had been reading a lot about women. The way many of them flow with emotions, and are incredibly adaptable to a variety of things the world deals them. I found this lady who does workshops for women, helping them to appreciate men. Her name is Alison Armstrong and her website is here. She has a lot of podcasts and in listening to her explain men to women (warning: she knows all of our secrets), she revealed many things about the fairer sex. Definitely worth checking out.

I think a lot of tension that comes from men’s interactions with women is that there is an expectation for them to complete something in us. What we don’t realize is that all those things we are looking for in women are already inside us- they just get buried. Society and culture tells us that men have to be this thing, stoic and unfeeling, and if you’re anything other than that you are less than. The Bible says women are to be quiet and subservient. There are a slew of women’s magazine articles with explicit instructions on how to make him love you more. Conversely there is a shitload of literature written for men on how to keep her by your side, how your six-pack abs will fix your love life and how to resolve your relationship woes in six painless steps.

To me this is total bullshit. We can’t find balance with another person till we find balance in ourselves. You are already complete, there is balance within you and you need no one to fill a place in you which you perceive to be empty. In the same way, it is not your responsibility to fill someone else’s emptiness, regardless of what society, modern media or ancient texts try to tell you. Balance yourself and everything else will compliment you.

Once things come into balance, fruition can occur. Seeds need the proper balance of temperature, moisture, and soil composition to germinate. A storm needs the proper meteorological conditions to develop into a force of nature. From this place of stability things can blossom outward. The possibilities are endless.

To the autumn-haired lady that lives somewhere inside of me: thank you for the lessons. This blade honors those lessons.

She has a gentle recurve on the blade- this helps to keep the knife edge from wandering too far when slicing through large volumes of material.

So here we are- fierce curves that betray a keen edge…

After heat treat… She is properly tempered- the blue near the spine of the blade means there is some flex and bend while the grey color near the cutting edge is hard and edgeworthy. Too much of one or the other and the blade will be brittle and prone to shattering, or won’t be hard enough to hold an edge. Proper balance is key…

I chose Cherrywood for the handle of the Lioness. In Celtic lore, Cherry possesses both masculine and feminine properties.

This is the blade that the autumn-haired woman carried. Gentle but strong, beautiful but functional, simple but so much depth… The way to fruition is to find a balance of the things within you. Don’t worry, it’s all there. Just have a peak around…this is the lesson of the Lioness