Long-time knifemaker Glenn Marshall has passed away after a knifemaking career that spanned eight decades. He was 92.
He was laid to rest today, Sept. 21, in his hometown of Mason, Texas.
Glenn started making knives in the 1930s only to have his knifemaking interrupted by World War II. He joined the Navy and served as a demolition man, including surviving an explosion on Okinawa that cost him an eye and an ear and his spleen and gall bladder.
He knew knifemakers from Harry Morseth to Joe Kious. He said Kious makes some of the finest knives anywhere, and that Joe’s shop is so clean, “You can eat off the floor.” Glenn also admired the work of Tom Overeynder. Glenn recalled how long, long ago, Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer© Bob Loveless approached him at his show table and asked him how to make knives. “I told him a few things and gave him a copy of one of my patterns,” Glenn recalled. (He passed away less than three weeks after Loveless.) Glenn was especially fond of Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer© Bill Moran. “Every time I saw him I wanted to hug his neck,” he noted. He said he liked D.E. Henry, too.
Glenn made fileworked lockback folders in a style reminiscent of the 1970s and ’80s—which should come as no surprise, of course—and fixed blades for hunting, camping and other uses. He said he liked native woods for handles, especially desert ironwood, mesquite burl and others. Since he had only the one eye—a 92-year-old one at that—he said some of his knives “might have an extra scratch or two.”
No matter how many scratches he or they may or may not have had, Glenn Marshall and his knives will be missed by many very, very much.
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