“Play that restless melody for me again The one I’ve been so afraid of, My sweet friend. Maybe the little refrain will whisper inside the rain again Play the one with all the changes.”
Al Jarreau- “Something That You Said“
Sometime in the beginning of the pandemic I started talking like Hulk Hogan. Just before everything got shut down I had been making combat daggers for spec ops guys. They had gotten in touch with me asking for “something that you can ram through somebody’s skull.” They all had a particular way of talking to me. The first time I talked to any of them they always addressed me as ‘sir’, and every interaction thereafter was ‘brother’. I really dug that. Even though they were paying me for a service, it made me feel like we were all on the same team and working together.
‘I APPRECIATE YOU, BROTHER!!!’
I found that to be immensely encouraging as I noticed it slipping into my vernacular. The irony of all this happening while I was building them tools of combat to rain down pain is not lost on me.
As Covid started shutting everything down and civil unrest led to riots, I found most of my means of livelihood shut down. Everything was a mess and I was broke trying to pay medical bills. The State Unemployment system was, and is still, a joke. With the murder of George Floyd, and everyone already agitated from lockdown, there was lots aggression and anger. Some of that aggression and anger manifested as marches through the streets, and some escalated to shopping centers being burned down. States of emergency were declared, riot police were dispatched, curfews were instilled, teargas was launched. Most all of this was happening less than a block from where I live, and occasionally it crossed over to the front yard of my building. There were nights where I was afraid someone was going to set my car on fire, which was how close this all was. My Buddhist vegetarian yoga teacher (who didn’t eat meat because it was unkind to animals) told me she was thinking about getting a gun and this did not seem unreasonable to me.
Everyone has the potential to fall prey to their baser of inclinations and move through life as a wrecking ball, especially when a private ambulance company is overdrawing your bank account because your livelihood is shut down like a high school keg party. It was my goal to not do that. During quiet moments at that time, I would check in with myself just to see what was hanging around. I found myself to be full primal rage, an ocean of grief, a profound sense of loss, and a hair-trigger response to any perceived threat. At such a reactive time as it was not too long ago, I found that it took a tremendous amount of courage to be kind and gentle.
During one such quiet moment I asked myself if we could break every interaction down to the very simplest parts of humanity and connection, and just not worry too much about the rest. Maybe we could find a way to let go of the weight of fear and uncertainty, and surrender to the simple joy of quietly going about one’s day. As a result of stripping everything down to the simplest parts of connection during a time of extreme duress, I found myself thinking of the Spec Ops guys for whom I was making daggers. I thought particularly of how in the course of our business I always felt seen and heard, and that my time and talents were respected and honored.
The crux of the Hulk Hogan technique is that it allows the people you interact with to also feel seen and heard. For me it was something that replaced a feeling of despair and hopelessness with a sense of community and belonging. It kept me safe and connected and prevented me from being a wrecking ball, which was what I felt like most of the time. In practice it started every morning with the gentleman selling me my coffee at the market down the street.
“IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU, BROTHER!”
He got some encouragement and I got some coffee. Everybody feels better and has a bit more confidence for their day in a world that is on fire.
As I prepared for my days of shit work to keep myself from being sued by private medical companies, I did my best create disarming moments, as much for myself as the people I interacted with every day, starting with a cup of coffee. There is great power in gentleness, and after all the anger and violence I had experienced, I wanted to see what that practice looked like. Turns out it’s a bit like starting a chainsaw- a gentle but purposeful tug on the pulley cable gives you enough power to take a tree down. Pull too hard and you break the thing.
Ladies I talked to were always “Ma’am”, and anyone I believe to be identifying beyond the binary was always “Cousin”.
In focusing on my interactions with others, I found my crankiness and shit attitudes were curbed. They didn’t go away and I still found myself frustrated at the world, but those moments were much smaller and less consuming. It was much more than an affectation- I had absolutely fuck all going on and this was where I could direct my focus. After such a traumatizing time, this was a way that I could come back to myself and remember who I am and what I do.
Any sort of practice, when diligently observed and worked on, operates on a continuum. It meets you were you are and expands into everything. I was having a drink on my girlfriend’s porch one night when my girlfriend pointed out her neighbor struggling to get a washing machine off his pickup truck. Without thinking I got up and went over.
“BROTHER DO YOU NEED A HAND?!?”
…….
This two knife set was build for a good friend of mine in Tennessee. He got in touch needing something better for his kitchen. During hunting season he and his wife process a lot of deer. After field dressing, a good set of kitchen knives are good second-line tools.
When we spoke over the phone, he had said that while he had needed a set of knives, he had also wanted to throw me some business and help me to practice my craft. As a craftsman himself, he understood. He did to me what I had been doing to everybody else for the past two years, and this build was a lovely experience and testament to the courage of being gentle. I’ve detailed that experience below.
A critical mistake was made here. Rivet holes should always be drilled after the slot is cut and fitted. Lesson learned.
Fitted
Hardening the Chef.
Rough grinding.
Rough grinding on the Boning knife after hardening.
A nice radius put on the spine.
Laying down a hand rubbed satin finish.
600 grit.
Getting ready for fit up.
Sanding the Chef.
Satin.
Making sure everything lines up.
….and everything did not line up. I broke two drill bits trying to get everything lined up before epoxy cured. Epoxy cured and I have to rip everything apart and figure out what everything wasn’t lined up. This was the third attempt and everything finally went together.
Hnadled up with Ebony.
Shaped.
For the Chef we have reclaimed Cherry, recovered from an old mantlepiece.
But nothing hides the color of the lights that shine”
Joe Jackson- “Steppin’ Out”
Everyone has had terrible neighbors at some point. If someone tells you they haven’t had terrible neighbors, then it’s entirely possible they are the ones who are terrible. When I was growing up there was a family a few houses down who fell into the category of ‘bad neighbors’. They had a large and unruly German Shepherd with a proclivity for shitting in everyone’s yard with a reckless abandon. Their three kids would terrorize myself and my two brothers, and I would be remiss in not mentioning that we did a good amount of terrorizing ourselves. Perhaps in some sort of dysfunctional samsara we alternated in which house was precisely villain and victim.
There was one summer day when the oldest of the terrible neighbor brothers was doing a proper bit of terrorizing on my younger brother. He had been in some karate or taekwondo classes and was running through some katas on him. I ran to tell my mother and my mother, most likely exasperated from dealing with an entire summer of these sorts of shenanigans, told me to just go hit him with a stick. I went to the tool shed in our backyard and retrieved a crude gardening implement, with a five foot oak handle and a rusty steel fabrication on the end for digging up God-knows-what. I immediately found the oldest brother and hit him over the head, making sure the rusty steel bit was the first point of impact. Then I ran like hell.
Not more than ten minutes later there was a knock on the door of my parent house. The mother and the boy I had just brained were standing there. He was bleeding from the head and teary-eyed, but otherwise ok. Their mother was some sort of attorney in town and though I don’t know what her particular discipline was, I find it to be a small miracle that no charges were filed. Everybody ended up alright, and while the terrorizing did not stop, weaponized garden tools and pre-pubescent kung-fu no longer made an appearance. Eventually everybody got older and found better things to do, and eventually moved on to life and adulthood.
Almost three decades later I would find myself doing contract work for an event company, and one of the brothers from that family was the vendor relations manager and in charge of contracting crew. When I found out who it was that was hiring me I was mortified. I told him I was sorry for being such a shit and he just laughed and said he was an awful kid. I was always his first call for festivals and events, and he was my favorite person to work with. He eventually took another job out of state. He grew up into a real good guy and I miss working with him.
As a result of all of that, I have made a decided effort to be a quiet and unassuming neighbor.
…………
A few years ago my girlfriend and I had noticed an elderly black cat hanging out in her flower beds and her porch. In her neighborhood there were always half a dozen or so cats roaming around and we were never quite sure if they belonged to anyone or were just feral or stray. Oftentimes we could hear them fighting at night- they sounded like wildcats. None of them had collars or appeared to have homes. We thought her visitor was a stray and she certainly looked the part: slightly feral with colossal paws and claws, and a disheveled coarse coat like a saber-toothed tiger. She appeared to be going blind but managed to exist just fine. She would pop up every few days, then disappear for a couple weeks. It was always nice to see her.
It turns out she belonged to the people living a couple houses down. These people were also what you would call terrible neighbors. The main offender was a gentleman who wore not one but two ankle monitors- the kind the State uses to monitor people under house arrest. We called him Hot-Pants because every time we saw him he was wearing some of those super short soccer shorts. The police were a common presence at their house. There was one morning years ago, when my girlfriend left her house to take her children to school she found police cars blocking her driveway. Several officers were behind their car doors with weapons drawn pointed at toward the terrible neighbor’s house. Apparently Hot-Pants had gotten into a narcotic-fueled altercation and tried to set one of the women living there on fire, culminating in violent resistance when the authorities arrived.
They did have really good fireworks though. Every Fourth of July we’d sit on her porch and watch. These weren’t Roman candles or bottle rockets. They had the ones you’d see at baseball games, the big repeating ones launched from a mortar tube. Whenever they launched them we could feel the concussion three houses down. They must have had a police scanner because, from what I could tell, they never got caught. They’d be firing them off, one after another, and then all of a sudden they would stop. We’d hear what sounded like an angle grinder on metal piping. They were most likely destroying evidence. Ten minutes later two police cars would come by and we’d see them turn their lights on, and then leave after another five minutes. My girlfriend and I would sit on her porch drinking bourbon and watch all of this go down. These were some of my favorite Fourth of July’s.
Every couple weeks for the next several years we’d see the police there. One time, my girlfriend was sitting on her porch when she saw Hot-Pants in a minivan speeding down the street, with a woman clinging to the hood and beating on the windshield, all while shrieking like a banshee. While the terrible neighbors did tend toward the dramatic, most of the dysfunction manifested as late-night screaming matches, punctuated with relatively (to all the other the other dysfuntction at least) civil police visits.
After several years, the wild black kitty that apparently belonged to Hot-Pants moved onto my girlfriend’s porch full time. We were pretty sure the cat had gone completely blind by that point because she was always bumping into the furniture. I’m not sure what kind of stuff the cat was made of because she was still catching birds and making it through the cold winters that we get. My girlfriend started putting out food and water for her, and inadvertently started supporting an entire ecosystem. We’d see possums and raccoons at the food dish in the mornings and evenings, as well as Mockingjays, Cardinals, and Bluejays. Hot-pants would occasionally be walking down the road and would ask if he could have his cat back, to which my girlfriend would reply that the cat could leave anytime it wanted to. It never left.
…….
Once the pandemic hit, we started seeing a lot more of the neighborhood cats at the food bowl on my girlfriend’s porch. Honestly they had probably always been there but we just hadn’t noticed until lockdown and quarantine. Apparently Hot-Pants had five or six cats that he didn’t really feed or take care of. Among this group of cats there was a younger scrappy-looking orange kitty who started showing up more and more. He had a mangled little ear, and what looked like a little staph growth on his shoulder. He was a little fucked up and kind of skinny, but I really liked his spirit. Whenever I was there I could usually find him hiding in the flower beds. Though Hot-Pants said it was his cat, he moved onto my girlfriend’s porch with the old black kitty. I always looked forward to seeing him when I went to see my girlfriend.
Nearly all of my work had been cancelled. All of my music gigs, production work, and knife shows- all gone. The unemployment system in our state is a joke, and I never received any of the PUA money. I was still paying an ambulance bill, several ER bills, and a surgery center bill, and they could all give less than a fuck about a global pandemic and people just not being able to generate income. There were riots happening a block from where I live, complete with curfews, tear gas, and buildings being set on fire. It was a stressful time.
The only thing that hadn’t been cancelled was my part-time warehouse gig, which has always tided me over when the work I actually care about is slow, and whose federal withholding helps me take care of taxes on the knives. Anyone who works in warehousing and logistics will tell you that you are not going to be working with the best and the brightest. I spent most of the time I wasn’t working with idiots trying to figure out how to pay rent and not get sued by private medical companies. As a result I found myself cranky, resentful, and more than a little bit bitter. Everyone has been in their own little personal hell because of this debacle, save maybe Jeff Bezos and whoever is running Pfizer. I learned a long time ago that doing work that connects me to the world has always been part of my purpose, and that purpose was taken from me.
On top of this there was the virus itself. The biggest priority was staying healthy and Covid free so I could work and not get sued by private medical companies. My girlfriend and I don’t live together and we were trying to figure out what the best way to keep ourselves and the kids safe. There was a period of two to three weeks when we didn’t spend time together in person, just to see what was going to happen. I was usually sitting at home pissed off, or playing Witcher 3 (I developed a video game habit to keep me out of trouble.) About this time she starting subtly suggesting that maybe I might want to take the little fucked-up orange kitty home. She said it might be nice to have a little friend with me while we figured how to operate in this new virus-filled dumpster-fire world.
I told her no way. My little apartment is more workspace than living space and the cat would hate it and run away. Maybe he didn’t want to be inside. I told her I am a lot of things, but a nurturing caregiver is not one of them, and honestly I’m surprised she even lets me around her children. But she kept gently mentioning this kitty, and delicately placing the idea of me having a cat in my head. She told me I wasn’t working long days, or weekends, or going to the shop or making knives. She told me that maybe I had some space for this little fucked up kitty.
The smartest of women are able to do this- shepherding their partners to a decision of action, all while allowing their men to think it was their idea all along. I am not naive to this, but eventually I found I didn’t have a good reason to not bring this cat home. Even her kids told me to take him because we were so alike- we were both orange, slightly mangled, kind of diesel, and a bit cranky. So one Saturday I went to the pet store and got some kitty supplies with some of my stimulus money, and went and got the cat off her porch and took him home.
The first thing I did was set the cat carrier in front of the litter box. I took him out and set him in it. I told him this is where he would piss and shit and that was rule numero uno. No cat tinkle in the corners or little surprises on the floor. Then I took him and put him in front of his food, and told him he didn’t have to be hungry anymore. I set him on my bed and told him this was his bed too, and that he didn’t have to sleep in flower beds.
Then he went and hid in my closet for eight hours. This was probably a bit of a shock and perhaps a bit traumatizing, and I probably had less than a gentle touch. He eventually came out and settled in. I named him Jack Knife. Something simple but elegant, and with a story to tell. I called him Jack for short.
I had gotten him this super fancy raw freeze-dried gamebird cat food, because I’m pretty sure he had been eating rocks and dirt his whole life. He hated it, wouldn’t touch it. I went back and asked the guy at the pet store what to feed him and he said just to give him kitten chow. It’s not bad for cats, it just has more calories and nutrients but can lead to unhealthy weights in adults. He told me when he starts to put on weight, switch him to adult food. Man could this cat eat. I would wake up, put a scoop in his empty bowl, and go to work. I’d come home from work and his bowl would be empty, another scoop. I would get ready to go to bed and his bowl was empty again, another scoop. Every single day.
He wanted to eat whatever I was eating. He hadn’t even been home a week one night when I was having a cheeseburger. He wouldn’t leave me alone so I gave him a decent-sized chunk. He spent the next two hours throwing up all over the place and I spent the next two hours cleaning it up. Viking kitty or not, cooked and seasoned before probably wasn’t good for his digestion. You just don’t know what you don’t know.
For my birthday my girlfriend payed for his vet appointment to get shots and looked at. He wasn’t very old. The vet told me you can pretty accurately age a cat by their teeth, and Jack was only about eighteen months old. He had a small ulcerated growth on his shoulder from a tough kittenhood. The vet said it wasn’t bothering him but I could schedule an appointment to get it removed if it became an issue. The vet techs, young women in their mid to late twenties, told me he was the absolute sweetest guy. I found it amazing that a creature could have such a brutal beginning and yet allow himself to feel safe and cared for. No bitterness, no resentment, just love. I was his person, and he was my little friend during a very lonely and uncertain time.
About this time I got really into making spaghetti bolognese, with pancetta, ground pork, and veal when I could afford it. You deglaze everything with a dry white wine and finish it with heavy cream. I would give him some of the sauce in a little dish. He always purred when he ate, always. He just wanted to eat, sleep and snuggle.
Jack eased the loneliness and existential anxiety that came from the torrid state of the worlds. I would come home from whatever stupid job I had been doing that day and he would be sitting on my coffee table waiting for me. He would follow me around until I sat down and then he would climb onto me and fall asleep while I played Nintendo. I would talk to him while I worked on the very occasional knife commission I would get. He was a terrible knife maker.
He was a quiet guy, never really meowed, didn’t claw anything, and didn’t ever bite. He did particularly enjoy knocking my water glass off my nightstand, watching satisfied as glass bits and water went all over the place. He would never run away afterward- no shame in that one. I would just clean up the glass, mop up the water, and fill up his food bowl (which was perpetually empty despite my best efforts.) I lost half a dozen glasses.
For a good three weeks, I was really into making sandwiches. I would make a quickie aeoli, and use the aged smoked cheddar that they sold at Aldi. I would always give Jack a bit of the cold cuts as I was making these breaded works of art to take to work, or for dinner. Even when I got tired of artisan sandwiches and moved on to other things, Jack thought that every time I went into the kitchen I was making sandwiches and he wouldn’t leave till he got his cold cuts. So I always kept some in the fridge.
I started noticing that Jack was getting a little bit lethargic and reclusive. I called the vet to get his small growth removed, and scheduled his procedure. I felt a little guilty about not doing it sooner, but he was a tough little alley cat, and I always tried to let him be. I had gotten my second stimulus so I scheduled his procedure for the same day i got my Covid vaccine.
The vet said he did really well and he just needed to rest and take it easy, which is what he usually did anyway. I picked him up and took him home and kept an eye on him for a few days. He was not getting better. His surgery wound was great- clean, dry, and healthy. He was hiding in my closet most of the time, and one evening I found him sleeping in his litter box, which Google told me was usually the sign of a very sick kitty. The next morning I noticed some swelling in his little face. I was afraid he had an abscess in his tooth and I made an appointment with my vet to have a look at him the next day.
I got home from work that evening and he was having trouble breathing. His front legs had started to swell and he was lying on my kitchen floor. I was really hoping to make it through the night to get to my vet, whom I just love, but around 11p I gave him some cold cuts and took him to the emergency vet.
I think it goes without saying that nothing pleasant happens at an emergency vet clinic at 11p on a Wednesday evening. As I was standing in line a lady was filling out a ‘do not resuscitate’ form for her dog in surgery. When they took Jack back I sat down to wait and I could hear a lady sobbing uncontrollably in one of the exam rooms.
When they called me back to the exam room it was not good. Cancer had ripped through his little body and the vet told me he was more than likely sick even before I took him home from my girlfriend’s flower bed. The reality was, the vet told me, was that he was probably just looking for a safe place to lie down. He was also anemic, which was why he could eat so much and didn’t really gain any weight. I asked the vet if I fucked up somewhere along the line and she said no, sometimes life is just incredibly brutal for outdoor cats. She also said it was probably good I didn’t get his little growth removed sooner, because the trauma of that procedure most likely exacerbated his illness. I asked if he was hurting and the vet said no, he was just uncomfortable but there wasn’t anything that could really be done for him. She told me in so many words that Jack would not live to be an old cat and I just sort of lost it.
It sounds really silly to say because most everybody I know, including myself, lost big things during those years. Time, people, relationships, careers, opportunities- things that are just gone and can’t be gotten back. But living under the backdrop of chaos, duress, and uncertainty for an extended time can leave us a bit fragile and worn out. Things that might have been an emotional inconvenience at worst suddenly loom large. This was one such instance: in a lonely little exam room at two in the morning where nothing good happens, we put Jack to sleep.
The silver lining of shithead neighbors and devastating pandemics is that you can find big things in the smallest of places. In spite of everything that little cat was loving and sweet till the very end, and a good friend. If that isn’t grace, then I don’t know what is. I sure do miss that little guy.
Hand sanding before the forge:
Hand sanding after the forge:
These are some cedar shavings soaked in fiberglass resin. They will clean up nicely:
All material ready for glue up. Computer board spacers and homebrewed dungaree micarta:
“What is success?” poses the Copt. “It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.” ― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra
As a grown person, you are rarely ever told that you’re doing a good job. Many times we don’t have a frame of reference for how we’re doing until we’ve screwed something up and gotten yelled at…or fired. Or dumped. Or sued. Or arrested.
As a result, most of us move through life feeling like we might not be doing such a great job. While uncomfortable, this is not entirely unhealthy because it helps to cultivate a growth mindset. If you are cognizant enough to know that you might not be doing so well at whatever it is you are doing, then you are probably aware that this means there is room to grow and get better.
Ironically, the people thinking this way are probably doing just fine. Self-doubt in large quantities can be debilitating, but small doses can be a great tool. In questioning what we are doing, we have a chance to grow.
After I got out of music school, I did my best to make a living as a musician. That lingering bit of self-doubt was fuel that helped keep me sharp and at my best. I wrote music for tiny indie films, did instrumental arrangements for church Christmas programs, played on recording sessions, and took any gig I could get. Many of the best paying jobs were church gigs, especially around Christmas and Easter. I am not religious, and probably an excellent candidate for bursting into flames upon crossing the threshold of any religious building. That being said, the people are always kind, the checks always clear, and there is about a thousand years of badass sacred music written by the rockstars of the classical music world. This is partly why big churches typically end up with killer instrumental and choir directors. They are usually competitive jobs.
One Easter I got a call for a job at a massive Baptist church about 20 miles outside of the city. On Easter Sunday I showed up for a small rehearsal before playing two services. I was the only hired musician- everyone else was from the congregation or community. Immediately it was not good. The instrument parts were in different keys and the director didn’t know the cues for the giant video projector and how our music was supposed to line up. Easter is the Woodstock of church music and this was a mish-mash of cacophony. As a professional, this situation feels like being on a burning ship with no way off. Two services and four hours of this for a congregation of a thousand and no way to fix it made me want to rip my hair out.
Nobody else seemed to notice or care- and ultimately that was ok. Because in the end, voices were raised, offerings were offered, tithes were tithed, and the faithful answered the call. I got paid and went home. The takeaway, besides being able to pay my health insurance, was that, while it’s important to do the best you can, sometimes the best thing you can do is let things be what they are and sleep well at night.
This knife was commissioned by a lady I went to college with for her husband, a former Cavalier Scout in the Army and a new father. I don’t have children but I imagine being a new father, where there are so many things out of your control, can be at odds with the capable nature of a military mindset. The intent of this knife, the Scout, is to put some of that at ease. I tried to capture that duality by marrying those two parts together. The handle was made from an old piece of Black Walnut trim molding- solid, seasoned, and strong. The bolster was made from their child’s blanket, which required a lot more care and work. The blanket contained a bit more uncertainty because I didn’t know how it would turn out till it was finished. Peppered in the blanket was one of the gentleman’s old Boy Scout badges to act as a guardian to that uncertainty.
The Scout starts with a drawing:
Profiled and drilled. The four larger holes reduce weight to improve balance:
Centerline scribed on the blade. This is where the cutting edge will be:
The whole thing gets hardened before grinding. This helps prevent warping:
….and despite our best efforts, warping does occur. Since the blade is still hot from the oil quench we have some time to correct it:
Tempering- this gives the blade flex and bend, while also relieving stress incurred during the quench:
Grinding the bevels:
A full flat grind at 36 grit:
Removing the machine marks:
Satin at 320 grit. This took about three hours of handwork. Now on to the other side…
Electrochemical etching of the makers mark:
A baby blanket. I like the stripes. This will become the bolster.
It wouldn’t be a scout without a Boy Scout Badge. This particular badge shows that the younger scout has demonstrated proficiency with and is allowed to carry a knife:
The blanket is cut into equi-sized pieces and the badge into slivers. Everything will be layered with fiberglass resin and smashed together:
After the resin has cured:
A cross-section of the material and you can see the scout badge slivers. This has become one piece of material:
Drilling rivet holes after the bolsters are cut:
This piece of trim molding came from an abandoned house and is made of Black Walnut. It doesn’t look like much right now:
It makes for a better fit if the holes are drilled now before the scales are cut:
Circuit board blank for spacers:
Finally everything fits:
Prepping for glue-up:
Glued and clamped:
Profiling the handle:
Contouring for a comfortable fit. All sanding after this is done by hand:
“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:
“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.
“The way we do anything is the way we do everything.”
-Martha Beck
……..
“I guess I’ve been carrying many small things.”
-Mina Tindle- “To Carry Many Small Things”
When I was nineteen I started lifting weights. I didn’t have a particular destination or goal. The only real goal that was there was to lift as well or better than I had the day before. I paid attention to form, technique, and consistency. I got better as time went by.
Ritual was crucial. I would allow myself to be very quiet. I had a taken some dance classes in college and would do these really amazing spine-lengthening stretches. After my workout I would take a shower, sit in the sauna for twenty minutes, and then leave. I did all of this without speaking to anyone. It was like going to church: still, prayerful, and introspective.
I never made notes or kept logs. I made sure my routines and circuits were simple enough to remember day to day and week to week and so on. I kept up with this for eleven, maybe twelve years. When I felt good, I went to the gym. When I felt bad, I went to the gym.
Then about two or three years ago I noticed I was having trouble finding those quiet and still places. I had trouble getting to the gym and staying present with what I was doing. Actually I had trouble staying present in nearly all the things I was trying to do. I wasn’t sure what to do. I went to the doctor, got blood work done. I talked to a therapist. I was healthy.
My girlfriend noticed this, and put me in touch with a lady she had been studying with. She said I was probably missing a physical practice and since the gym wasn’t in the picture anymore I should at least talk to this lady, who was in the practice of Ashtanga yoga. I had watched her take a course of study from this woman to help her heal from a hip injury. She was calmer, glowier, and looked fantastic with a sort of shimmer about her. Ok, I finally said, I’ll give her a shout.
I made an appointment with this lady and we talked about what it was to practice yoga. Her name is Leigh. She told me that in this practice, if practiced diligently, transformation would occur. She said that I would notice unpleasant things rise to the surface. Things would fall away, she said, and those would mostly be the things that got in the way: bad habits, patterns of self-sabotage, and bad attitudes- the fun things. Afterwards I told my girlfriend that if I turned into some sort of New Age asshole who extolled the virtues of kale and hashtagged ‘namaste’, I would prefer she shoot me, bury me in the backyard, and tell everyone I left her.
(Quite a few months later I would find myself in front of a salad bar at a hillbilly barbecue buffet in North Carolina, and I would notice that my first thought was ‘where the fuck is the baby kale?’ My second thought had something to do with being shocked that my first thought was about kale…).
I started meeting with Leigh about every month or so and she was right. Things DID fall away. I found myself becoming very protective of my sleep and rest. I started eating better and found myself desiring fruits and vegetables, which is something completely new. I stopped going out and I didn’t miss it at all. I leaned into life a little more.
Then I noticed all the small things I had been carrying. In Ashtanga, I found that almost everything I didn’t like about myself was held out and dangled in front of my face whenever I was on the mat and often culminated in tears. I wasn’t aware of all the prickly bits I carry around on an almost daily basis: guilt, shame, resentment, rage, and impulsivity. I’ve always heard from my friends about how relaxing and grounding yoga was for them. I have not had that experience. I sobbed uncontrollably during the first week I started. I wasn’t nearly as patient as I thought I was, and definitely more judgmental than I ever believed. Sometimes I find I am so present with myself that it hurts. Unlike the gym, there is no rush of endorphins for me. I end with everything I start with and honestly, it really sucks sometimes.
This sounds like a ringing endorsement and you’re probably asking yourself “where do I sign up?”
The truth is that this is a practice that helps you to know yourself, all of yourself, and that is usually going to be painful. The growth and transformation happens when you find the pain isn’t going to kill you (although sometimes you wish it would). The idea is not to make the uncomfortable things go away- they aren’t going to. It’s to create a space to be with them and to go about your life in spite of being uncomfortable.
This blade was a commission for Leigh, from her husband. Both of them are incredibly loving and kind and supportive people. Leigh herself is an arrow, piercing those things that get in the way and always doing so with love and encouragement. She has become a very dear friend and making this knife was a pleasure.
I designed this knife for whittling. She is built for a smaller hand:
Rough cut, from O1 tool steel stock:
Smoothed out:
Centerline scribed:
Rough grinding:
Hardening:
Tempered:
Laying down a hand finish:
Just a bit more:
Spalted Tamarind:
Bookmatched:
Ready for glue:
Glued and clamped:
Shaped to fit the hand:
The Arrow:
This knife comes with a prayer, the Prayer of the Arrow, to help with all the things that get in the way:
May I be kind to myself May I be gentle toward myself and others,
And may I move through my world with elegance and grace
May I find a calm mind and go about my day with peace and serenity and
May focus manifest within that calm
Help me to let go of guilt and shame, and help me to be with my anxieties, and to
Lean into my fears and not
be intimidated by them or anything else
May I know that I have enough
Help me to see things for what they are, and to
let go of appearances and of what others may think
Help me to know strong boundaries and to act on them
Help me to not think so much or give so much weight to my emotions and desires
Help me to keep moving forward and to have faith in myself and those I care for
Please keep me safe
And let me know that I am loved
“The sword has to be more than a simple weapon; it has to be an answer to life’s questions.”
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
(you can read about the crafting of the original Operator here)
I’ve always been drawn to people who do things. The people who speak through their work and translate knowledge and mastery through their particular skill set without having to say much. This is a day and age where anyone can broadcast claims of mastery and experience to a large audience and it can be difficult to discern who has done the work to back up these claims and who is just trying to get to the bank.
In today’s vernacular, ‘operator’ commonly refers to military personnel who are at the pointy-end of things. They are the ones who are taking the orders and quietly (or not so) doing the work out of a sense of duty and service. ‘Operator’ is a title that gets tossed around and claimed where it doesn’t always belong, very similar to ‘genius’. The ones who actually fit the bill generally eschew such titles. This is usually a symptom that you are doing the work.
This blade was a commission for a military serviceman doing Ops work. I wanted to build him a tool that would serve him in the work he was doing.
There was a summer about ten years ago where I was between semesters of study. I had decided that I wanted to learn how to fix things. Many of my friends were working at Blockbusters or car washes but I liked the idea of being able to take care of things myself. I took a really awful job doing apartment maintenance for three and a half months and did just that.
It was not very satisfying. The job I took was for a rental company who owned properties in my neighborhood so I could walk to work. It was a pretty slummish company that rented to a lot of college kids. I ended up having keys to half the apartments of what was called ‘Hell Block’ of a street close by to me. The summer was when a lot of leases ended so there were many people moving in and out. As a result the streets and alleys were full of discarded furniture for most of the summer, a lot of which was set ablaze by some of the rowdier tenants. Sometimes my days started with cleaning up the ashes of incinerated love seats.
Other days started with hauling four-burner stoves up three flights of a fire escape. Most of the time was spent flipping apartments from where someone had moved out so that someone else could move in. There was a lot of painting. Flat antique white for the walls and ceilings and semi-gloss eggshell white for the trim and kitchens. The apartments weren’t very nice to begin with and after three days of work they still didn’t look very nice. I tried to remind myself to just make it about the work.
I would spend hours gutting bathrooms- ripping out drywall, removing tiling, and replacing subflooring before redoing everything. The best days were when I could work by myself and keep my own company. Bathrooms were a bit more satisfying to do because they would actually look nice when you finished them.
There was one time when a new tenant couldn’t move into her apartment because a homeless person had moved in after we had flipped it. We went in the apartment after the police took him away and found no less than eight bicycles, some smelly furniture, and a plethora of bizarre pornography. There were also footprints all over the wall. We had to repaint that one.
My boss was a middle-aged anomaly with claims of ties to the trash hauling unions of New York City. I didn’t really believe anything he said. There were four of us handling most of the work orders:
-Mark was in art school, a bit cranky, and liked to smoke a lot of pot. Oftentimes it was hard to tell whether he was stoned or not. I liked him.
-Scott had gotten back from several tours of Iraq, most recently Abu Ghraib. He was a good guy but wouldn’t get anything done unless he was told exactly what to do.
-Mario was in his late thirties and from Guatemala. He worked 7 days a week and sent most of his money home to his family. He didn’t say much but I think he missed home. The man could eat faster than anyone I’d ever met. He said that in the Guatemalan Army they only gave you three minutes for lunch.
There was also a rotating cast of derelicts who would come in and work for a week and then disappear. I never learned their names.
One of the happiest days I had was telling my jackass boss that I quit. I gave myself a two week vacation before I went back to school.
What I learned at this job was that in order to get through many uncomfortable situations with a modicum of success you have to make it about the work. It helps to find something bigger than yourself in what you are doing. The skills I was learning would serve me well much later down the line, and the money would help me buy books and live through the school year and work on my education. Everything else was just bullshit that came with the job.
To let yourself speak through the work you do, whether you are toppling Marxist empires or replacing toilets in shitty tenements- this is the lesson of the Operator. In these situations our work speaks through us but also teaches us our lessons.
The recipient of this blade may find himself in harms way and needed a blade that would serve in such situations:
Rough cutting:
Bevels profiled:
Hardened:
Hand sanding:
This is G10, a commercially manufactured synthetic material. Normally I prefer to make my own handle material but in this instance I opted for something consistently fabricated that would be failsafe in a potentially tactical situation:
The Operator, MkII: O1 tool steel, G10 scales, fabric spacers, and steel hardware.
An acquaintance brought me three knives to be restored: three beautiful old kitchen knives, a trifecta of culinary efficiency. There is a massive cleaver, a 10″ German style chef’s knife, and a 6″ French style utility knife:
They have been through the paces.
Everything breaks down at some point. As someone who will push himself to the point of exhaustion I find this to be a strangely comforting and, paradoxically, terrifying idea. There are times in life when the only way to get to the beauty that once was is to go through the worn out parts.
Wait…how did these things get worn out in the first place?
I’ve found that there are seasons of life when it feels as if the universe is screaming at you to make something happen, to make changes, to do better, and to seize opportunity. And suddenly inside yourself you can see a path to these things. You begin to feel a sense of urgency so strong that it feels like the whips are being cracked.
And so whatever your task at hand is becomes an insatiable vixen. At least this is what it can feel like.
In these moments we often neglect to take care of ourselves and then wonder why things aren’t working as they should. But still we keep pushing. And in our zeal to accomplish we can end up depleted- physically, emotionally, and spiritually, appear as shells of the amazing things that we are.
Sort of like these knives…
Restorative processes are not always pretty. Sometimes they hurt a little or a even a lot. They can be alienating to the people we care most about. And they come with the moments of hesitation and questioning and reluctance. These things are still functioning so why mess with them? Is it worth the time and work? Maybe it’s ok the way it is. Maybe if I pretend that there isn’t an issue it will all be fine. These are healthy things to ask. But are they working at their best? Are they past their prime? Are they getting any better? Absolutely not. And in this life, leaving something better than you found it is one of the sweeter things we can experience.
So you strip away the layers of rust that came from daily exposure to the elements. The wood that has become cracked from moisture exposure after years of washings has to come off. New wood is put on and sanded and finished with the deepest of love. The dull edges are honed sharp again. Everything thing is oiled and brought back to life. When you start these processes, and they are processes which can take awhile, it requires a commitment and a degree of tenacity to stick to it.
These knives were out of commission for a bit but it was necessary in order for them to function at their best. Similar things happen in us when we take the time to look after ourselves. It’s always a process and there isn’t necessarily a discernable timetable. In this particular instance the restoration took me several days.
I started by removing two of the handles:
I soaked the small French knife in vinegar for about two days. The vinegar eats away rust and corrosion but doesn’t harm the integrity of the blade. It does create a reaction with the steel that leaves this residue on the blade.
She gets a sanding with high grit paper to make sure all the corrosion is gone.
Ready for a handle:
Glued and clamped:
Ready for shaping:
Shaped:
On the initial sanding I stopped at 220 grit and applied a liberal coat of oil and let it dry overnight. Doing this makes for a more pronounced, nuanced, and beautiful grain pattern.
Working through the grits, up to 2000. I think this is 600:
Our friend the cleaver:
A vinegar bath for a couple of days:
The spine was pretty roughed up:
So I smoothed and deburred it:
Quarter sawn white oak:
The customer asked to keep the original handle for the 10″ chef’s knife. Here it is at about 120 grit:
Here it is at 2000 grit. I believe it is Mahogany:
Oiled, of the Tung variety:
Sharpening:
Stropping:
Past things made present. All restoration does is enhance the beauty within. These are ready for the kitchen:
‘In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.’
Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
I have an old friend and his name is Joe.Joe is a fascinating guy.We went to music school together.Joe is a killer rock musician, a badass chef, and is also really good at climbing trees.
This is Joe:
Joe does tree work full time at the moment.On weekends and his off days he does side work for friends.Sometimes he calls me to give him a hand.Sometimes the money is good and sometimes it is not but it’s refreshing work to do and it’s nice to be along for the ride.His clients are always happy with his work.
The work I did with Joe consisted of removing dead or sick branches and limbs, and removing branches or limbs in order to open up a client’s yard to sun.Any part of the tree extruding over a client’s house was also removed, by way of a block and tackle pulley system rigged to the tree so the branch could be slowly and safely lowered to the ground.All of this was done with regard for the tree, with chainsaw cuts executed in such a fashion so that limbs could healthily grow back.Deadwood was removed and cut flush at the trunk.
There was a quiet and zen process to a lot of this.It all started with laying all of our tools out.Joe would put on his rigging gear and I would fuel up and oil the chainsaws.He would then set a climb line high in the tree and start to ascend, lugging a chainsaw, some handsaws and some tools.The zen in this work comes from ritual.All ropes and lines are kept coiled and tidy.All brush is cut, cleared and neatly piled as soon as it comes down from the tree.If you are using a chainsaw then you are wearing kevlar chaps and the chainsaw stops as soon as you are through cutting and before you move to the next cut.If you are using the chainsaw in a tree then you have set at least three independent safety points, in case you accidentally cut your support line.These little rituals and protocols help to remove some of the thinking from the process.It creates a sort of space to be present with yourself and really feel what you are doing. In this space you can start to feel a grounding and calm in the process.It also allows you to really focus on what you are doing and helps to keep you safe. All these things gently coerce you into slowing down and this is a good thing.Tree work is pretty dangerous after all.
This space that has been created allows more mental real estate for when things get a bit hairy. There was a the time when a line came loose and giant log cut from a tree fell and put a giant hole in the client’s deck. Or the ‘how the fuck are we going to get all of this done?’ moments. Or it’s rainy or icy and you feel extra unsafe.
It’s really refreshing to feel this because it’s a microcosm of life I forget to feel at times.In this season of life, for myself and many of those close to me, sometimes you forget to ground yourself and everything feels uncertain.Life changes quickly, living gets more expensive, and what worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work today.Focus wanes, a feeling of security becomes a commodity, and one can find themselves feeling a bit daft and inadequate.This can be remedied by practices and rituals.Keeping your ropes and lines tidy, in a spiritual and emotional sense. This can be a bit of a process, especially if you come from a place where roots were shallow and conditional on things outside of yourself.
This is the lesson of the Treethrower. I came to this idea while tossing massive logs we had cut down into a firewood pile. It’s important to find roots in what you are doing. When this doesn’t happen everything can feel daunting. Often times these rooting things are right beneath your nose and, paradoxically, the last place we tend to look. Finding them, even for a moment each day, can make a world of difference in your life.
It starts with a massive bar of 1/4″ 1095 spring steel. My good friend and partner picked this up at a steel mill in North Carolina.
The angle of the blade on this design allows for much more leverage during large cutting chores.
I burned through about 8 cut off discs cutting this out:
Some half inch holes to remove weight.
Several hours later…
There is a lot of material to remove…
Full flat grind
Hand sanding before heat treatment
Into the forge:
Tempering…
This is a large piece of spalted pecan, sent to me by my wonderful cousin in Texas.
Up to 2000 grit
The Treethrower: 1095 spring steel, spalted Pecan handle scales, kydex spacers and steel hardware.
“Love suffereth long, it is bountiful; love envieth not; love doth not boast itself, it is not puffed up
It doth no uncomely thing, it seeketh not her own things, it is not provoked to anger, it thinketh no evil
It rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
It suffereth all things, it believeth all things, it hopeth all things, it endureth all things.
Love doeth never fall away, though that prophesyings be abolished, or the tongues cease, or knowledge vanish away.”
I Corinthians 13, The Geneva Bible
On the other side of fear there is love. We often here about labors of love, tough love, and doing what we have to do out of love. These are the things that are easy to talk about but much harder to describe what they actually feel like when one finds themselves in the midst of them. These are the things that are hard to deliver if your heart is not truly in them. Like a good meal, love is not something that can be bullshitted, and certainly not for an extended period of time.
Love is connection. It’s what holds things together through good and bad. It helps us to feel our light when it feels like the universe is doing it’s best to crush us. Most of us probably have parts of our lives that we look back on and wonder ‘how did I get through that?’ It’s love.
We all know romantic love with its intoxicating and consuming nature. It puts the color in our world. But beyond the rainbows and butterflies it takes a warrior to love someone deeply, to do the hard things, to fight for what is dearest to them. This is what makes the world shine.
Then there are the times in life when the light of love can go dim and your world goes dark. I found myself in one of those places a couple years ago. It was bad. I talked to a therapist who told me I was absorbing chaos. Those close to me said it felt like there was a hole in my heart. I got ultra New Age-y and talked to several light healers who told me my energies were out of alignment with love and that my heart chakra was blocked.
Though it was helpful to hear these things, it shed no light on what I was supposed to do to fix them or how difficult it would be.
It all came to head sometime after Christmas. I had lost quite a bit of weight. My friends said that I looked great but I felt awful. I was getting up and going to work and going through the motions but it felt like moving mountains. I had to get the office lady to remind me to eat.
There was a gentleman who had been coming in to pick up our scrap metal at our work for quite awhile. He was a big Puerto Rican gentleman who used to be an MMA fighter. His name was Jose and he is one of the happiest and most grateful people I’ve ever met. He used to get into a lot of fights when he was a kid and then he made it into a career. He said he stopped because he was tired of beating people up. He had dated a lady who was a Brazilian fighter. He always told me never to date an MMA fighter. I told him not to worry.
So it was around this time that I was having all these problems and he came in and just looked at me.
‘Brother what happened?’
I asked what he meant.
‘You used to be BIG and HAPPY, but now you little and sad. What happened, brother?’
We talked for a bit. Jose is a really good man. He told me to not stop loving, no matter what, that love always comes through. He told me to look up the Bible verse (copied at the top of this post), which I reluctantly did. I knew it from having it drilled into my head as a kid in Sunday school and I always thought it was cheesy. I had heard it so many times under such superficial bumper sticker circumstances that I almost forgot how really elegantly composed it is.
So I made it a point to start doing things out of love, in a way that I had never really done before. I started showing up for myself. It was really hard and it wasn’t pretty. In fact it was about as far from rainbows and butterflies as one could possibly get and still be in the realm of love. Sometimes it’s still hard and not the prettiest to look at but I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let it ever get that dim again.
This is the lesson of the Lightbringer. It was through that process that I learned that love is something you have to stay on top of and nurture even when, no, especially when it’s hard. It is living and breathing and a sort of life force that keeps the world beautiful. Even when the world makes it difficult to love, it doesn’t mean you should stop. Without it, everything can lose it’s meaning and your world can go dark.
O1 tool steel, in the process of roughing out the blank
Off the grinder at 80 grit
She is ready for heat treat
Hardened and tempered and sanded to 120 grit at a 45 degree angle
220 grit, cutting in at the opposite 45 degrees…
32o grit straight down the blade for a nice satin finish. These lines are one of the signatures of a hand finished knife blade. On the subject of labors of love, hand sanding hardened steel is no joke…
Curly Maple attached to the blade
Toward the end of the shaping, sanding, and bursting process…
The Lightbringer: O1 tool steel, bursted Curly Maple, Kydex spacers, and brass hardware
I ran into Jose at a gas station the other week. He told me I looked big again. I just gave him a hug.
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.
groundedinfire 
