Knifemaking: softening and connection; and the Gun Dog

November 11, 2020December 10, 2020 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“How we fall into grace. You can’t work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.”
― Rick Bass, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

I wouldn’t have ever really considered myself a dog person, not really. There is an appreciation and respect for all animals, both wild and domesticated, and whatever creature I meet I try to let them know that I see them- a deep namaste and acknowledgement of being. But as far “being a dog person”… I’m just not sure I have whatever that is.

A couple of years ago my girlfriend said she was thinking about getting a dog. I told her don’t do it. My only reasoning was that we were all very busy doing interesting and challenging work, her kids were getting older and doing more things, and everyone was tired all the time. I figured it would probably be best if we held onto every ounce of emotional energy that we could.

In spite of my reasons, which themselves came from a lovingly practical and pragmatic place, she did not listen to me. This lady is one of the most unfailingly capable people I know, a wonderful mother, with the uncanny ability to make everything around her better than it was before, even on her worst days. It was no surprise when she brought home a several-month-old rescue puppy. This dog was a lemon drop beagle mix with the biggest ears I’d ever seen. She seemed to be equal parts fruit bat, luck dragon, and polar bear.

The local animal league had told my girlfriend that this dog and her sister had been found abandoned in a barn. The puppy’s sister had some sort of severe muscular dysplasia and had found a home. My girlfriend’s puppy had a little bit of this, but much less so. She moved around fine but a closer look showed her front half didn’t quite work together with her back half.

When I met her she was still adjusting to her new home. She was terrified of doorways and dinner plates. She didn’t want to leave whatever room she was in and when she did she scuttled through like something was going to get her. If you were to put down a plate of puppy chow in front of her she would back away as if it were going to bite her. In spite of all of this she was a deeply loving and affectionate dog which was amazing considering the shit sandwich of a beginning she had been given. At that moment, shortly after meeting this dog, I felt something soften toward this wonky little barn dog that was part fruit bat, luck dragon, and polar bear; this sweet little creature that I told my girlfriend not to get.

Over the next few years I would tell this dog that I was sorry I told her mom not to get her. She had grown into a rather stunning animal, and her front half worked together much better with her back half. Doorways weren’t too much of a problem though her old nemesis the dinner plate still gave her pause. I found myself very attached to her and, though she was very much a lady dog and a product of my girlfriend’s deep nurture, I would find her to be the loving presence that I didn’t know I needed. The dog just loved everybody.

A couple of years ago I had a table saw accident that left me needing reconstructive hand surgery. It was incredibly stressful and emotionally grueling. All of my work and projects and everything I was so busy with would come grinding to a halt for the next few months. My girlfriend moved me into her house for a week and took time off work- thankfully the kids were away at summer camp. My girlfriend’s dog never really left my side. I remember the dog licking my gimpy hand every so often and then pressing in to me and going to sleep, which prompted me go to sleep. I don’t remember much of that week, except my girlfriend smiling and her really sweet dog. It sounds really silly, and perhaps it was the massive amount of post-op hyrdromorphone I was prescribed, but I figured I should probably take the example of the dog that I told my girlfriend not to get and find a way to dig in a little deeper with her and the kids.

Connection can be a struggle and there’s no manual on the right way to go about it. Sometimes it takes a sweet dog after a traumatic event to help you see what you should be doing. Part fruit bat, part luck dragon, part polar bear (everybody is good and healthy, including my hand and the dog I told my girlfriend not to get). If a responsible adult in your life tells you they want a dog, you should tell them to go right ahead.

This knife was commissioned for a retired gentlemen who trains English Setters for hunting. Hunting Dogs, or Gun Dogs as they are called have been around for centuries. Particularly, the training of Setters can be traced back to Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester in the 1500’s. It was commissioned by a loving daughter, and has “Pop Pop” etched on the flat of the blade from his grandchildren.

Removing material in the handle make for a more balanced blade.

Everything profiled out. Being that it is made from thinner stock, it will go in the forge as is to prevent warping during hardening.

The blade needs to come to critical temperature, which is around 1500F. By the colors you can see that it is almost there.

After the quench. There wasn’t warpage but I still clamp it in the vise at the areas where it would typically bend. When it comes out of the oil it is around 300-400F, and during this time any major warps can be corrected before it cools.

The bevels have been ground in and machine finished to 120 grit.

This has been hand sanded up to 600 grit, finishing with vertical pulls. This will get etched in acid to provide a scaffold for the patina to build, and also give it a more rustic look.

Electro-chemical etching using nail polish, some salted vinegar and a nine volt battery with some alligator clips. This allows me to essentially burn text onto the steel.

A pair of Carthartt work dungarees, probably about 10 years old.

Instructions for Care:

Your knife is made of high carbon steel, which means it will take a keen edge, hold it a good while, and will be easy to sharpen. It has been etched in acid and shipped to you coated in food safe mineral oil. It will stain and patina and tell the stories of the places you’ve been. Be sure to keep your knife clean and oiled when not in use. Should you find any unpleasant surface oxidization you can remove it easily with a lightly oiled bit of 0000 steel wool, or a coarse rag with a bit vinegar on it. She is built to be used, so don’t be shy about getting her dirty.

You can read more about Gun Dogs here, as well as find more resources on this very old tradition

Knifemaking: therapy for large men, Buddhism with the boring parts left out, and the Rumfoord

November 20, 2018January 21, 2019 / ballardmidyette / 1 Comment

“I was a victim of a series of
accidents, as are we all.”

Malachi Constant, from Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan

A few years ago I went to see a therapist. I was stagnating. I had lost my job and was doing all sorts of ridiculous things to make ends meet. Over the course of about six months I floundered about. I worked security for outdoor festivals, fixed toilets in a friend’s apartment buildings, and did tree work with another friend.

I remember being baffled by the whole situation, and feeling like a victim of unfortunate circumstance. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to happen.

Knives were not doing well. As I was sitting there staring at my belly button and not doing anything about my situation, it was suggested by those close to me that I go talk to someone who could help me. That was the last thing I wanted to do.

After some consideration, and a good amount of trepidation, I called a counseling office recommended by my insurance company and I went in for an appointment.

I remember sitting in a very Spartan office, with lamps suggesting a mood of emotional intimacy, and an institutional nightstand with a box of off-brand tissues sitting on top of it. My therapist walked in. He was a large African-American gentleman, crisply dressed, and carrying a folder.

He asked me the formal therapist/patient questions: what I hoped to accomplish in our sessions, and what it was I hoped to gain from our time together. The truth was that I was a little stuck. There were things about myself that I missed, a spontaneity and ease of being that I had lost. I knew where I was and I knew where I wanted to be but I didn’t know how to get there. Also there was a lot of emotional clutter and traumatic bullshit in the way. I told him all of this.

‘I think I can help you with that’, he said. ‘As for the emotional clutter and everything else in the way- I think it’s time to let that shit go’.

So we began. Nearly every two weeks for about a year, and then maybe once a month for the year after that. My therapist was technically a licensed clinical social worker who specialized in substance abuse counseling. I didn’t have any substance abuse issues- I had simply told the administrative lady at the office that I was most comfortable talking to a middle-aged man, and this gentleman had an opening. He didn’t wear a suit like all the other therapists. His dealings with addicts, I found, left him with a particular knack for getting to the root of personal problems , and a no-bullshit way of going about it, like a sort of Krav Maga of psychotherapy. I come from a place where you didn’t talk about how you felt so to voluntarily talk about things that were bothering me was, and is, something that is incredibly uncomfortable. And honestly I wasn’t looking to talk about what was bothering me- I was looking for someone to tell me what to do.

Of course that isn’t how therapy works. He didn’t tell me what to do. He would ask how situations made me feel and then challenge me. I came in one time really bothered about something and I remember him laughing at me. ‘Welp, you’re in the shit now’ he said, ‘What do you intend to do about it?’

The bluntness was empowering and it didn’t come with any judgement. This was simply how one large man was helping another large man. I would go in and tell him that my shit was all fucked up that week. And he would nonchalantly ask me if I had a plan for unfucking my shit, and that if I did not, perhaps there were some goddamn unresolved childhood issues being played out and my fucked up shit was just a manifestation of that. Then we would unpack my goddamn issues so that I could start unfucking my shit.

I would tell him that I struggled with faith that everything would be ok. He said everybody does. I told him I had a hard time dealing with disappointment and uncomfortable feelings that came from harboring resentments. I let him know I was ashamed about not being able to accept failure. He told me that all these made me a completely normal human being. Month after month he would talk me off of existential cliffs. ‘Don’t be a victim’, he would say. ‘Be a warrior.’

We talked a lot about transformation and how it can be difficult to change. I would be frustrated about something that was so deeply innate to my being that I didn’t know where to start. He would gently tell me that a person can only change so much, and some things simply can’t be changed. And then he would say that some of the things I was trying to change weren’t bad things and I should reframe what it was I was trying to do. It was a study in Buddhism, but with the boring parts left out, and a whole lot more expletives. When a sculptor wants to make a statue of an elephant from a block of stone, he simply removes the parts that don’t look like an elephant. There comes a point when you can’t remove anything else to make the stone look more like an elephant. This was what we were doing- removing (or at least identifying) the parts that didn’t serve the whole, and accepting everything else with kindness and compassion. Om Mani Padme Hum…

We laughed a lot. Lots of sad things came up, and I would get really weepy and reach for the off-brand box of tissues in that intimately lit office. We talked about music and books and art, and what it was to be a good man and what doing the right thing looked like. We usually ran over our time limit.

After a while I started bringing in the knives I was making and talking through the stories. It was like sculpting an elephant, or yourself, but I was taking away the parts that didn’t look like a knife. I was afraid it might be weird bringing big knives into a shrink’s office week after week but he told me to keep bringing them and to keep telling him their stories. So I did. I told him they were guardians that helped me to write the ridiculous experience that life has been for me. I’ve never done things the conventional way, or even the smart way, and bringing your handmade knives in to help you talk about your story with your large African American psychotherapist probably falls into at least one of those categories. He was always kind to that part of me. He told me to keep building little sharp guardians and to keep writing. At the end of each session I would shake his hand and thank him. ‘No, thank you,’ he would say. He said he always looked forward to seeing me on his schedule and to what I would come in and tell him. I think he dealt with people much more fucked up than I was.

I started seeing him less frequently. I found, slowly and when not crippled by self doubt, that I was getting to where I wanted to be and was able to find what I needed in myself. I was doing good things and feeling alright. He told me that much, and that nobody really knows what they are doing anyway, and he was always there if I needed him. He also told me to keep my knives sharp.

Every so often, when I’m about to do something dumb, I’ll hear that man’s voice telling me not to be a dumbass and I’ll think twice…

Sometimes one may know where they want to be but don’t always know how they’re going to get there. The journey to that destination is often the most interesting part of making it in the world. This blade gets it’s name from one of my favorite books, The Sirens of Titan, where the main character is at the mercy of the whims of chance and destiny (and also aliens), but through the grace of the almighty chonosynclastic infundibulum, ends up precisely at his foretold destiny. Along the way all of his core beliefs are challenged and his world is completely upended, yet there he is at the end of it all. This is the lesson of the Rumfoord.

This knife was built for a gentleman who was waiting a very long time for it:

Heating can cause warping. A sophisticated setup for straightening…

Roughing in a full flat grind:

Removing all the machine marks…

…to achieve something a bit more pleasing. A smoother finish helps the blade to move through food better.

An acid etch to force a patina. This helps with corrosion resistance on the high carbon steel.

A PCB board blank from a server chassis. This will be spacing material for the handle:

Texas Pecan, from my cousin Bill:

Drilling out the rivet holes:

Laying out the handle profile:

The handle near the ricasso, at 40 grit:

The handle near the ricasso, at 1500 grit:

Glued up:

Profiled:

Shaped:

Smoothed:

The Rumfoord:

Knifemaking: The Things That Come to Us- A Restoration

October 30, 2017October 31, 2017 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“i imagine that yes is the only living thing.”
― e.e. cummings

There are many things that come into our own personal worlds- children, possessions, problems, blessings and a myriad of others. It’s not so important how or why they enter our lives, but what we do with them. It expends a great amount of energy to ponder what we may have done to deserve the painful and traumatizing events that come to us, and an equal amount of energy is wasted when we wonder if we are worthy of the good things that are brought our way.

Because when we start dwelling on the why’s and how’s, we tend to become overwhelmed and lose sight of what best needs to be done with what comes into our lives.

And within that judgement of why and how, we start to say no to things. We become afraid we may be hurt, or that we may fail ourselves or those we care about. Perhaps we are afraid of making ourselves unsafe. Whatever the reason, in saying no we shut ourselves out of the blessing may be inside of a painful situation. We say no to what may be a path forward because it is dressed as something unpleasant. It is then that we become prisoners in our lives instead of seeing the ways we can be shaped and grow. We should say no to things that are harmful and do not better us, but it’s always good to say yes to what life brings us.

The summers are slow for me, and sometimes I have to get creative in the ways I support myself. I end up saying yes to many opportunities that under normal circumstances I would decline, usually due to time constraints, time away from loved ones, or a high probability of bodily endangerment (or a combination of all three). Over the years the things I’ve reluctantly said yes to have usually been the most rewarding.

One of the times I said yes this summer was to a tree job in rural Virginia. I was on a crew to cut down a huge dead tree. Removing dead trees can be dangerous. Rotting can occur in any number of unseen places of the tree, causing structural instability, and the tree may not fall where or when you desire it to fall. This particular tree, though dead as a doornail, fell exactly as it was supposed to.

The client was an artist, and brought us French-pressed coffee. We talked for a bit and I told him about making knives and how I got my materials. He told me that he had some slabs of black walnut and that I was welcome to them. They had been milled by a neighboring man who had run an abbey in South Korea, saying ‘yes’ to whatever fleeing defectors and dissidents from the North that the world brought their way. Later he sent me an article about the man who cut the wood, you can find it here. Black Walnut is expensive and isn’t something to normally fall into one’s path, so, in the practice of saying yes, I happily took some.

A week or so later I said yes to doing a bit of work on a good friend’s farm. My friend is a busy lady and sometimes needs a hand with the upkeep of her property. She and her family are good friends of mine. I worked for her son for several years and like to get out to their property as often as I can. It’s really beautiful:

She had a set of knives she wasn’t sure what to do with. They belonged to her late husband, and came to him from his grandfather, who was an Austrian immigrant. He came to the United States in the early 1900’s and made his living as a chef, choosing to say yes to a new world and a new life. She told me she’d like to have them restored so they can go to her children and stepchildren to remember their father. I told her I would have a look at them and see what I could do.

Tools of the trade, from left to right: A carving knife; a fish knife; a French slicing knife; and a 12″ chef’s knife

So these knives came to me, at least a hundred years old, and of deep sentimental value. I started by removing the cracked and broken handles.

I cleaned up the corrosion and oxidization from the blades, but left much of the etched patina from their years in the kitchen.

In a continued practice of saying ‘yes’ I chose to use some of the Black Walnut I got from the tree job for the handle material. It fit nicely into the story of these knives. This is what it looks like sanded and polished.

All of the handles started as thin blocks cut from the Black Walnut.

Shaping.

The filet knife was only half-tang, so I extended it with mild steel from a sheet.

I added a G10 bolster and spacer for a bit of contrast.

After glueing and sanding.

Getting the fish knife ready for glueing and shaping.

The French slicer was tricky….

…but also an elegant challenge, with its tapered tang and integral bolsters.

Finished, they came out rather beautifully:

Say yes to the things that come to you whenever possible. It’s always worth it on the other side.

Knifemaking: making your mark and the Cuchilla Pequita

November 4, 2016November 14, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Control what you can control, maggot! Let everything else take a flying fuck at you and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing.”

Cort the Gunslinger, from Stephen King’s The Drawing of the Three

The Gauchos were a group of cowboys who worked on the grasslands of South America during the 18th and 19th century. They were a people without boundaries, solitary, and existing on the Pampas of Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil. The Gauchos were a pretty wild bunch and had a lifestyle that was similar to the gypsies and travelers of Europe. Always moving from place to place, job to job, and always on the hustle. Most were nomadic and had few possessions.

They were a solitary people, yes, but when they did run into other gauchos there was usually high-proof alcohol involved. Also gambling. And prostitutes. Those three things made for a trifecta of machismo, and that usually resulted in conflict which manifested as duels. Guns were expensive and hard to come by so the weapons of choice were usually knives.

When Gauchos dueled the objective was not to kill (although fatalities most definitely occurred); it was to leave a mark, preferably on the face. A gaucho with a scar on his face had lost a duel, and all the other Gauchos knew this. He would carry this scar for the rest of his life, but looking a little deeper one can find that scars are not always a badge of shame.

There is an inherent drive to leave your mark on the world but sometimes the world leaves its mark on you. Things aren’t always the way we think they should be and in taking a risk to make a difference we can fail spectacularly. We all lose duels everyday and some of us carry many scars, both seen and unseen. Some of the most powerful and profound people I know carry scars that are both large and deep, yet these people shine brightly and leave their mark on the world everyday. They are beautiful even though life has done its damnedest to leave its mark on them. How is this possible?

I had a teacher once tell me that no one is in control. This is something that is a bit of a struggle for me almost daily, even though I know that in the grand scheme of things my sphere of control is very small. It comes down to choosing how to react to the things in our lives.

So there is a choice. You can choose to not get pissy about the holiday Starbucks cup. You can choose to not to feel like a victim because your candidate didn’t win. You can choose connection over isolation. You can choose to do something about situations that don’t serve you. You can choose to wear your scars proudly because whatever left its mark on you wasn’t strong enough to take you down. You can choose to let the things beyond your control take a flying fuck at you and fall as they may. Though we can’t always control the circumstances in our lives, we can choose how we respond to them. This is where we make our mark and is also the lesson of the Cuchilla Pequita.

There are several types of knives carried by the Gauchos. The Cuchilla Pequita is loosely based on the Cuchilla. The Spanish word for knife is el cuchillo, a masculine noun in the vocabulary. The Gauchos feminized cuchillo and applied it to their particular style of knives, which had a ‘pregnant’ blade belly and a slightly dropped point. This design is based on that style and starts in 1095 spring steel:

After grinding and hardening:

Drilling rivet holes:

Texas Mesquite:

Fitting the handle:

Fiber spacers for a splash of contrast:

Clamped:

Profiled:

Sanded up to 2000 grit:

The Cuchilla Pequita:

How we choose to react in our lives affects the impact we can make. This is the lesson of the Cuchilla Pequita

Here are some sources that were incredibly helpful:

A Short Essay About Gaucho Knives: Facón, Daga, Cuchilla and Puñal

Brittanica Online

Knifemaking: past things made present and a restoration project

August 27, 2016September 4, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

An acquaintance brought me three knives to be restored: three beautiful old kitchen knives, a trifecta of culinary efficiency. There is a massive cleaver, a 10″ German style chef’s knife, and a 6″ French style utility knife:

They have been through the paces.

Everything breaks down at some point. As someone who will push himself to the point of exhaustion I find this to be a strangely comforting and, paradoxically, terrifying idea. There are times in life when the only way to get to the beauty that once was is to go through the worn out parts.

Wait…how did these things get worn out in the first place?

I’ve found that there are seasons of life when it feels as if the universe is screaming at you to make something happen, to make changes, to do better, and to seize opportunity. And suddenly inside yourself you can see a path to these things. You begin to feel a sense of urgency so strong that it feels like the whips are being cracked.

And so whatever your task at hand is becomes an insatiable vixen. At least this is what it can feel like.

In these moments we often neglect to take care of ourselves and then wonder why things aren’t working as they should. But still we keep pushing. And in our zeal to accomplish we can end up depleted- physically, emotionally, and spiritually, appear as shells of the amazing things that we are.

Sort of like these knives…

Restorative processes are not always pretty. Sometimes they hurt a little or a even a lot. They can be alienating to the people we care most about. And they come with the moments of hesitation and questioning and reluctance. These things are still functioning so why mess with them? Is it worth the time and work? Maybe it’s ok the way it is. Maybe if I pretend that there isn’t an issue it will all be fine. These are healthy things to ask. But are they working at their best? Are they past their prime? Are they getting any better? Absolutely not. And in this life, leaving something better than you found it is one of the sweeter things we can experience.

So you strip away the layers of rust that came from daily exposure to the elements. The wood that has become cracked from moisture exposure after years of washings has to come off. New wood is put on and sanded and finished with the deepest of love. The dull edges are honed sharp again. Everything thing is oiled and brought back to life. When you start these processes, and they are processes which can take awhile, it requires a commitment and a degree of tenacity to stick to it.

These knives were out of commission for a bit but it was necessary in order for them to function at their best. Similar things happen in us when we take the time to look after ourselves. It’s always a process and there isn’t necessarily a discernable timetable. In this particular instance the restoration took me several days.

I started by removing two of the handles:

I soaked the small French knife in vinegar for about two days. The vinegar eats away rust and corrosion but doesn’t harm the integrity of the blade. It does create a reaction with the steel that leaves this residue on the blade.

She gets a sanding with high grit paper to make sure all the corrosion is gone.

Ready for a handle:

Glued and clamped:

Ready for shaping:

Shaped:

On the initial sanding I stopped at 220 grit and applied a liberal coat of oil and let it dry overnight. Doing this makes for a more pronounced, nuanced, and beautiful grain pattern.

Working through the grits, up to 2000. I think this is 600:

Our friend the cleaver:

A vinegar bath for a couple of days:

The spine was pretty roughed up:

So I smoothed and deburred it:

Quarter sawn white oak:

The customer asked to keep the original handle for the 10″ chef’s knife. Here it is at about 120 grit:

Here it is at 2000 grit. I believe it is Mahogany:

Oiled, of the Tung variety:

Sharpening:

Stropping:

Past things made present. All restoration does is enhance the beauty within. These are ready for the kitchen:

Knifemaking: finding your roots and the Treethrower

July 30, 2016August 30, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

‘In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.’

Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

I have an old friend and his name is Joe. Joe is a fascinating guy. We went to music school together. Joe is a killer rock musician, a badass chef, and is also really good at climbing trees.

This is Joe:

Joe does tree work full time at the moment. On weekends and his off days he does side work for friends. Sometimes he calls me to give him a hand. Sometimes the money is good and sometimes it is not but it’s refreshing work to do and it’s nice to be along for the ride. His clients are always happy with his work.

The work I did with Joe consisted of removing dead or sick branches and limbs, and removing branches or limbs in order to open up a client’s yard to sun. Any part of the tree extruding over a client’s house was also removed, by way of a block and tackle pulley system rigged to the tree so the branch could be slowly and safely lowered to the ground. All of this was done with regard for the tree, with chainsaw cuts executed in such a fashion so that limbs could healthily grow back. Deadwood was removed and cut flush at the trunk.

There was a quiet and zen process to a lot of this. It all started with laying all of our tools out. Joe would put on his rigging gear and I would fuel up and oil the chainsaws. He would then set a climb line high in the tree and start to ascend, lugging a chainsaw, some handsaws and some tools. The zen in this work comes from ritual. All ropes and lines are kept coiled and tidy. All brush is cut, cleared and neatly piled as soon as it comes down from the tree. If you are using a chainsaw then you are wearing kevlar chaps and the chainsaw stops as soon as you are through cutting and before you move to the next cut. If you are using the chainsaw in a tree then you have set at least three independent safety points, in case you accidentally cut your support line. These little rituals and protocols help to remove some of the thinking from the process. It creates a sort of space to be present with yourself and really feel what you are doing. In this space you can start to feel a grounding and calm in the process. It also allows you to really focus on what you are doing and helps to keep you safe. All these things gently coerce you into slowing down and this is a good thing. Tree work is pretty dangerous after all.

This space that has been created allows more mental real estate for when things get a bit hairy. There was a the time when a line came loose and giant log cut from a tree fell and put a giant hole in the client’s deck. Or the ‘how the fuck are we going to get all of this done?’ moments. Or it’s rainy or icy and you feel extra unsafe.

It’s really refreshing to feel this because it’s a microcosm of life I forget to feel at times. In this season of life, for myself and many of those close to me, sometimes you forget to ground yourself and everything feels uncertain. Life changes quickly, living gets more expensive, and what worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work today. Focus wanes, a feeling of security becomes a commodity, and one can find themselves feeling a bit daft and inadequate. This can be remedied by practices and rituals. Keeping your ropes and lines tidy, in a spiritual and emotional sense. This can be a bit of a process, especially if you come from a place where roots were shallow and conditional on things outside of yourself.

This is the lesson of the Treethrower. I came to this idea while tossing massive logs we had cut down into a firewood pile. It’s important to find roots in what you are doing. When this doesn’t happen everything can feel daunting. Often times these rooting things are right beneath your nose and, paradoxically, the last place we tend to look. Finding them, even for a moment each day, can make a world of difference in your life.

It starts with a massive bar of 1/4″ 1095 spring steel. My good friend and partner picked this up at a steel mill in North Carolina.

The angle of the blade on this design allows for much more leverage during large cutting chores.

I burned through about 8 cut off discs cutting this out:

Some half inch holes to remove weight.

Several hours later…

There is a lot of material to remove…

Full flat grind

Hand sanding before heat treatment

Into the forge:

Tempering…

This is a large piece of spalted pecan, sent to me by my wonderful cousin in Texas.

Up to 2000 grit

The Treethrower: 1095 spring steel, spalted Pecan handle scales, kydex spacers and steel hardware.

Thanks for the lessons, Joe.

Knifemaking: love, mixed martial arts, and the Lightbringer

July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“Love suffereth long, it is bountiful; love envieth not; love doth not boast itself, it is not puffed up

It doth no uncomely thing, it seeketh not her own things, it is not provoked to anger, it thinketh no evil

It rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

It suffereth all things, it believeth all things, it hopeth all things, it endureth all things.

Love doeth never fall away, though that prophesyings be abolished, or the tongues cease, or knowledge vanish away.”

I Corinthians 13, The Geneva Bible

On the other side of fear there is love. We often here about labors of love, tough love, and doing what we have to do out of love. These are the things that are easy to talk about but much harder to describe what they actually feel like when one finds themselves in the midst of them. These are the things that are hard to deliver if your heart is not truly in them. Like a good meal, love is not something that can be bullshitted, and certainly not for an extended period of time.

Love is connection. It’s what holds things together through good and bad. It helps us to feel our light when it feels like the universe is doing it’s best to crush us. Most of us probably have parts of our lives that we look back on and wonder ‘how did I get through that?’ It’s love.

We all know romantic love with its intoxicating and consuming nature. It puts the color in our world. But beyond the rainbows and butterflies it takes a warrior to love someone deeply, to do the hard things, to fight for what is dearest to them. This is what makes the world shine.

Then there are the times in life when the light of love can go dim and your world goes dark. I found myself in one of those places a couple years ago. It was bad. I talked to a therapist who told me I was absorbing chaos. Those close to me said it felt like there was a hole in my heart. I got ultra New Age-y and talked to several light healers who told me my energies were out of alignment with love and that my heart chakra was blocked.

Though it was helpful to hear these things, it shed no light on what I was supposed to do to fix them or how difficult it would be.

It all came to head sometime after Christmas. I had lost quite a bit of weight. My friends said that I looked great but I felt awful. I was getting up and going to work and going through the motions but it felt like moving mountains. I had to get the office lady to remind me to eat.

There was a gentleman who had been coming in to pick up our scrap metal at our work for quite awhile. He was a big Puerto Rican gentleman who used to be an MMA fighter. His name was Jose and he is one of the happiest and most grateful people I’ve ever met. He used to get into a lot of fights when he was a kid and then he made it into a career. He said he stopped because he was tired of beating people up. He had dated a lady who was a Brazilian fighter. He always told me never to date an MMA fighter. I told him not to worry.

So it was around this time that I was having all these problems and he came in and just looked at me.

‘Brother what happened?’

I asked what he meant.

‘You used to be BIG and HAPPY, but now you little and sad. What happened, brother?’

We talked for a bit. Jose is a really good man. He told me to not stop loving, no matter what, that love always comes through. He told me to look up the Bible verse (copied at the top of this post), which I reluctantly did. I knew it from having it drilled into my head as a kid in Sunday school and I always thought it was cheesy. I had heard it so many times under such superficial bumper sticker circumstances that I almost forgot how really elegantly composed it is.

So I made it a point to start doing things out of love, in a way that I had never really done before. I started showing up for myself. It was really hard and it wasn’t pretty. In fact it was about as far from rainbows and butterflies as one could possibly get and still be in the realm of love. Sometimes it’s still hard and not the prettiest to look at but I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let it ever get that dim again.

This is the lesson of the Lightbringer. It was through that process that I learned that love is something you have to stay on top of and nurture even when, no, especially when it’s hard. It is living and breathing and a sort of life force that keeps the world beautiful. Even when the world makes it difficult to love, it doesn’t mean you should stop. Without it, everything can lose it’s meaning and your world can go dark.

O1 tool steel, in the process of roughing out the blank

Off the grinder at 80 grit

She is ready for heat treat

Hardened and tempered and sanded to 120 grit at a 45 degree angle

220 grit, cutting in at the opposite 45 degrees…

32o grit straight down the blade for a nice satin finish. These lines are one of the signatures of a hand finished knife blade. On the subject of labors of love, hand sanding hardened steel is no joke…

Curly Maple attached to the blade

Toward the end of the shaping, sanding, and bursting process…

The Lightbringer: O1 tool steel, bursted Curly Maple, Kydex spacers, and brass hardware

I ran into Jose at a gas station the other week. He told me I looked big again. I just gave him a hug.

Knifemaking: being in the know, Hobart mixers, and the Gunny

July 10, 2016July 22, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

Leo Tolstoy

A few months ago I did a job for my friends who run an auction company. There was an auction happening at a school out in the country and they needed someone to go out and bid on two gigantic dough mixers. They weigh a little more than half a ton and are very expensive.

They look like this:

The only issue was that they didn’t know what voltage they were. Sometimes these machines have a 460 voltage requirement. These higher voltages exist to reduce wiring requirements and the need for additional electrical equipment facilities with large power requirements. The facilities that have these requirements are usually nuclear submarines or large government or corporate campuses. Most houses only go as high as 220 volts, and that’s only for the washer and dryer hook up. Unless you are operating a nuclear submarine, anything running on 460 volt power is generally going to be used as a boat anchor or scrapped.

My job was to go out and look at the specs and see what voltage they were. Anything under 460 voltage would be good to bid on and able to be resold for a profit.

I drove out to the school on an early November morning. Everything was spread out in front of a storage shed across the street from the school, separated by a two lane highway. What I saw when I got there was a cornucopia of ancient office equipment, school lockers, floor buffers, and cafeteria equipment from an era gone by. A lot of the town folk came out to see the festivities and they looked as one would expect the residents of a peanut farming community to look. I went and looked in the shed and there was even more junk- desks, old computer printers, and large pieces of cafeteria equipment designed to feed the hungry masses. It was here I found my mixers, alone with no attention from the farming community (they were busy picking over everything outside). Nobody knew there was a potentially profitable business endeavor here. Nobody else was in the know.

I went over and found the spec label. Under power requirements it said 460V. Son of a bitch.

There were two other gentleman eyeing the mixers as well. They did not look like members of the peanut farming community. They arrived in a box truck and a dually pick-up with a trailer attached. This was the competition and they meant business. These gentleman were definitely in the know with these mixers.

We said formal hellos. They asked what the voltage was and I told them, expecting them to pack up and leave.

I called Fred the service tech. He told me that some of these particular models of mixer were dual voltage and I would need to remove the top cover and look at the motor. I waited till nobody else was around, and had a peak at the motor. They were indeed dual voltage- 220v/460V. So they were worth money. They were as good as mine.

The other gentlemen did not leave. We stood off to the side waiting for the auctioneer to make his way to the shed.

When it came time to bid these gentlemen matched every bid I made. It was just me and them. We got up to 2000 dollars and the bidding slowed down a bit. The farming community were both entertained and dumbfounded. Everything else sold for next to nothing but here were these people who did not belong, wagering thousands of dollars on two hunks of metal.

As per my instructions, I stopped at 3,000 dollars. The gentleman backed their box truck up and loaded up these two pieces of equipment. They had been in the know the whole time and they came to win.

With a bit of awareness you can start to see that there is more going on in the world than you ever imagined. This sort of awareness usually helps me to be a better citizen of the universe.

There is the gentleman you may work with who tries to be everything to everyone. It is profoundly annoying. Spend 18 hours with him on a business trip and you find his brother died of a heroin overdose. All he is doing is trying to keep everyone safe in the only way he knows how. Being in the know of this helps you to cultivate a bit of compassion toward this man.

Or there is the person who is raising hell in Starbucks. You know for a fact that that person did not wake up with the sole intention of making an entire coffee shop miserable- possibly because you may have done the same thing at one point or another. There is probably something else going on that is causing this person to act this way. Being in the know helps create space for empathy for this person.

There are thousands of situations like the auction or the other two incidents. Having a bit of knowledge of things can help to create a richer existence or at least help you to know what you are missing out on at a country auction. Sometimes all this takes is slowing down and having a look around.

This is the lesson of the Gunny. It gets its name from the Gunnery Sergeant, and NCO in the Marine Corps whose job is to be in the know. Sometimes just being aware is enough to make a difference.

I started working on this knife as part of a demonstration at a show, and it was at this stage when I got back to the shop. He is made from O1 tool steel.

After hardening…

After hours of hand sanding…

Three shirts that no longer fit- in black, brown, and green

Cut into strips…

….and then pieces

Fiberglass resin…

….for a stinky salad

Put into a bag and clamped:

It comes out looking like this:

The Gunny: O1 tool steel, homebrewed camo micarta, kydex spacers, and steel hardware.

In finding a bit of awareness there can be a deeper connection to the world around us. This is the lesson of the Gunny.

Knifemaking: when things break down and the Skin Yer Dinner

June 1, 2016June 7, 2016 / ballardmidyette / Leave a comment

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands and then work outward from there”

Robert M. Persig- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

One of the major lessons of life is that things are going to break down. It doesn’t matter how well the schedule of maintenance is managed, no matter how well oiled and lubricated all the moving parts are, or how diligently things are inspected.

At some point or another things just aren’t going to work the way that they are supposed to and sometimes it takes more than just ourselves to get them repaired.

As I’ve gotten older I’m a little more mindful of this. Sort of. It’s been a bit of a process actually. I do my best to not let my things go to shit. Some of those things are easier for me to do than others but it’s definitely better than it has been in the past. Part of this tendency to let things go to shit comes from living in a consumer society. Things aren’t necessarily built to be repaired. They are meant to be consumed and thrown away. If it breaks, buy something newer and shinier and better. Fixing things takes time and often it is very appealing to go and buy a new one rather than repair what you have as best you are able. This notion goes for more than just our material possessions.

Sometimes I find myself having to repair things that I have let completely go to shit. Sometimes it’s in my professional life, sometimes it’s in my relationships, sometimes it’s my truck. It’s important to not beat yourself up (or anybody else) when something goes to shit, which it inevitably will.

My truck. I like to drive mid to late ’90s Japanese midsize SUVs because they perform really well, are built on truck chassis, and are relatively easy to fix and find parts for. Sometimes it’s a little stressful because I don’t always know what I am doing and turns into an exercise in not over-thinking. It’s also an exercise in observing how you operate when things aren’t working as they should. I did a brake job the other month. I’ve never done my own brakes before but the idea of saving a couple hundred dollars sounded good. The passenger side wheel took me two and a half hours- during which time I removed the entire brake caliper by mistake, and accidentally drained all of the brake fluid. The driver side wheel took me 45 minutes. After several attempts to bleed my brake lines of the air inside on my own, I had to take my truck to my mechanic who talks to me like I am ten years old (‘Son, why the hell did you disconnect the brake line?’).

In taking on these sorts of projects, I go through the entire spectrum of human emotion and always become more intimate with myself. It’s important to trust yourself, and to let go of the fear that you will screw something up more than it already is. To take that intention of helping something to do what it does and to manifest that into whatever you are working on.

The intimacy thing- it goes for more than knowing just yourself. Sometimes I have help on these projects. Sometimes I help those close to me on their things. It’s good to have someone who can pick up on something you may have missed, who can help you laugh, and help ease your anxieties. In these situations a lot of the masks come off and you can really get to know someone without pretense or pontification because there is a common goal. It’s reassuring knowing that when something goes wrong you can help yourself, or help somebody else, or be helped. The deeper lesson is that things will always break down, ourselves included, but they don’t have to stay that way.

This blade was a commission for a fourteen year-old boy, the son of a really wonderful friend of mine who is an HVAC technician, someone who in his professional life brings the broken and neglected into good working order. The other week my girlfriend and I were working on her HVAC system which had gone out. We put a new fan motor in and were a bit hesitant on the wiring. I called my friend, who came over and wired up the motor and rewired the thermostat on pretty short notice. His son was with him and asked me for a knife… and also asked that it be called the Skin Yer Dinner…

I started with a piece of 1095 spring steel…