Blade Show Day 2 Roundup

Howdy folks, I just got back from the Kizer Meet&Greet. I have about 30 minutes or so before I want to head out. It has been a butt-kicker of a day, but incredibly productive.

Regular KNIFE Reader Steve T. arrived shortly after the show opened. I neglected to get a picture with him, but did get one of hime with Ethan and John Becker…

We walked around for the better part of an hour, I showed him some knives had written about on the blog or in my Knife News column in recent months. One place we stopped was Heretic Knives, where we found Anthony Marfione showing off his latest OTF to a couple of kids…

While I was there, I became more than a little enamored with the Manticore OTF in with a Mandalorian theme and incredible fat carbon opposite scale.

I find it hard to believe, but I am quite taken with this knife for some reason, and I am not quite sure why. I have never been a huge OTF fan, don’t watch Mando, and do not like to spend more than $150 or so on a factory knife. Something about it connects with me though.

Canadian Knifemaker John Wilson and his wife made the trip down.

He was the last apprentice of Bob Loveless before Bob passed. If you are reading this before 11am Sunday, there is still time to try to win his knife…

Click the image to enter

He’s great freinds with Edmund Davidson, master of the integral blade.

And his tattoo game is on point.

Probably the funniest moment of the day came shortly after I visited with Australian Bruce Barnett, whose work has appeared in the Artistry In Knives section of the print magazine. He just won the new member of the year award from the Knifemakers Guild, and has a beautiful Lock-back Sowbelly Whittler – a knife which is not supposed to exist. I borrowed the knife to show Mark and Bruce Voyles, and they debated the name. Mark gave a list of things that were wrong (from a description POV, from a technical execution POV, the knife is near flawless). As Mark is going on, Bruce turns to me ands says, “Tell him that Bruce Voyles would list it in his catalog as a “Lock-back Sowbelly Whittler”, essentially ending the argument for me.

Really entertaining moment.

Changing gears, I have a new article to write.

Can you guess what it is about?

If one is looking for a trend at the show, you can do worse than a plethora of utility blade knives, some of which are really nice. I won’t go into a ton of detail, but want to highlight the fact that the Reate is the fidgetiest thing I have played with this week, the Ramon Chavez OTF Chub is a phenomenal piece of machining, Civivi has added one to their Elementum line, and even custom makers like Mykel Piper of Banzelcroft Customs and Gavin Hawk are getting into the genre.
Mykel makes some fully ground knives, but has found a niche making really nice handles for Stanley blades.