BEGINNINGS

The author reflects on becoming a knifemaker and then a writer

This year I received the BLADE Magazine 2022 Publisher's Award at the 41st Annual BLADE Show in Atlanta. I am honored by the readers of BLADE who have stuck with me through the years. Without your support I would have had a very short life as a knife writer.

I well remember the day BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-FameⓇ member/then BLADE managing editor Steve Shackleford called and said Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bruce Voyles, then editor/publisher of BLADE, had read one of my first brochures, "The Using Knive and Function." It seems Bruce felt I could write something for the benefit of BLADE and its readers. I don't know if he had noticed that I misspelled Knive in the brochure's title. I imagine he did though he never said anything about it. Anyhow, I told Steve I did not know an adverb from a pronoun and was absolutely no candidate for a knife writer! Steve said editing was his job. It took a few discussions and we learned how to work together.

Let me tell you how my knifemaking and writing came to be.

SCHOOL DAYS

I first started trying to make real knives in high school shop class. I made the first ones of mild steel. They were pretty but did not cut. I graduated to using old, rusty woman timber-saw blades I bought from a local junkyard for $7 each, or $1 a foot. While that price was a little high in 1956, it was OK because the junkyard's owner, Mike Cleary, said the saw blades were from "genuine Swedish steel, the finest saw steel in the world, and "every kid knew he only sold the best!"