Knife Showcase will be getting a redesign in the coming weeks. Not to worry, I told the workers to make sure they cover their shoes before walking on your carpet.
Help Fight 1 Percenters’ Ban-All-Ivory Law
A ban-all-ivory law supported by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and other 1 percenters is on the ballot in Washington state and will succeed unless you help stop it NOW!
The measure, I-1401, would ban not only elephant ivory but also the ivory of mastodon, mammoth and other extinct species.
Sandra Brady of the Elephant Protection Association said help is needed at the grassroots level to defeat the measure supported by rich billionaires such as Allen and other non-governmental organizations, which have raised more than $2.7 million—including $1.7 million from Allen—in an effort to pass it in the state legislature.
“It really is a David versus Goliath situation,” she observed of the fight against the 1 percenters who are supporting I-1401. She urged those who oppose the bill to write their local newspapers and use social media to voice their opposition. “On the upside we are having an impact,” she said of the grassroots effort. “On the down side, the more states that pass such ridiculous measures, the more likely other states will follow suit. This is why your help to defeat this in Washington state is so important.
“Write letters to the editors of the state’s newspapers, use your voice on Facebook and other social media. Help us get the word out that I-1401 is a bad law and should be voted down.”
A small organization, the Legal Ivory Rights Coalition Committee (LIRCC), is fighting against Allen and the other fat cats who are supporting I-1401. However, the LIRCC has no budget and relies on people contacting newspapers and working social media to spread the word. The good news is that editorial pages across Washington state are calling I-1401 misguided. While acknowledging the noble goal of preserving elephants, many editorial pages recognize the futility of a state law designed to stop crime in Africa and Asia. It would punish the state’s citizenry without stopping poachers. They also recognize the redundancy with existing federal laws that prohibit import of ivory and other endangered species, together with the unnecessary burden it would place on the state’s fish and wildlife officers.
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The Whole World Will Be Cutting
The whole world will be cutting at the 35th Annual BLADE Show. Question is, will you be among them?
June 3-5 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, the BLADE Show is the event knife enthusiasts point to year round, with many saving their knife “fun” money just for this one show where custom knifemakers, factory knife companies, and knife accessory, material, machine and tool suppliers and more introduce their latest knives and knife-related products.
Whether you’re a veteran of or a newcomer to the “sharp wars,” have your ducks in a row so you will miss as little as possible at the show. (Let’s face it, with almost 1,000 exhibitors spread out over 144,000 square feet and non-stop knife action for most of the three-day event, it’s hard to see it all.) With that in mind, here’s a short list of things to do and see:
•Get a BLADE Show Program: Available for free in the show lobby, the program will have the show’s most-up-to-date exhibitor listings so you will know how to find your favorite knifemaker, knife company, dealer, supplier, purveyor, collection or what have you. Also, check the program for special customer deals, knife giveaways, contests, live demos, silent auctions and other cool offers;
•If you don’t know, ask: Everyone’s knife family at the BLADE Show, so if you don’t know something, ask. And if the person you ask doesn’t know, ask if he knows someone who does. This includes finding out where the hottest knives are. Strike up a conversation with those in the show and ask them what they’ve seen that’s cool. You’ll be surprised at how you can find some really great knives this way;
•Check out the Knife-Of-The-Year Awards display sponsored by Smoky Mountain Knife Works in the show lobby for the entrants in the factory knife awards competition;
•To find out who wins the BLADE Magazine Knife-Of-The-Year® Awards, which are sponsored by Smoky Mountain Knife Works, the BLADE Show Custom Knife Awards and who the inductee to the BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall Of Fame© is, see the signs outside the show entrance Sunday morning;
•For the complete BLADE University class schedule—including J. Neilson’s class on how the Forged In Fire TV show selects contestants—and the BLADE Show seminar slate, see the signs in the show lobby;
•Be sure to attend the first-ever BLADE Show Women’s World Championship Cutting Competition and the 14th Annual BLADE Show Men’s World Championship Cutting Competition at 4:15 p.m. Saturday in The Courtyard under a new, sprawling tent sponsored by Burr King;
•Check out The Pit, the sunken lounge in the lobby of the host hotel Renaissance-Waverly each evening after the show, including the spillover from The Pit outside the hotel entrance, the perfect place to have fun and compare show notes with your fellow show patrons;
•Meet BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Ken Onion at the CRKT booth Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to noon.
There’s much more, of course, much of which will be up to you and your inquisitiveness in finding it at the world’s most important knife event. See you there!
Knife Of The Day XV: O’Hare Tanto
Our Knife Of The Day is Sean O’Hare’s tanto. It sports a flat-ground, 3.75-inch blade of CPM-154 stainless steel, a stabilized buckeye burl handle with a bird’s-beak butt, and a 416 stainless steel guard. Sean also made the leather pouch sheath. His price for a similar piece: $395.
“This one is a bit of a departure from my norm as it is a tanto style,” Sean noted. “I was very pleased with the way it turned out. So far this is the only [tanto] I have made. It sold right away at the New York Custom Knife Show.”
For more information contact Sean at [email protected].
For more on the latest knives, knife legislation, knifemaking instruction, knife trends, knifemakers, what knives to buy and where and much more, subscribe to BLADE® Magazine, the World’s No. 1 Knife Publication. For subscription information click on http://www.shopblade.com/product/blade-magazine-one-year-subscripti…?r+ssfb013012#BL1SU
Best BLADE Show Ever?
It seems like almost every BLADE Show is better than the one before, and the 34th annual rendition June 5-7 in Atlanta was no exception. With record crowds pouring through the doors and down the aisles Friday, an outstanding batch of BLADE Magazine 2015 Knife-Of-The-Year® Awards announced Saturday and everybody leaving Sunday already pointing toward next year’s show, it must go down as one of the best BLADE Shows if not the best BLADE Show ever.
Knife exhibitors from every continent provided an endless array of knives and knife accessories to an equally endless stream of knife enthusiasts starved for their annual BLADE Show fix, and the jampacked aisles of enthusiasts stood as testimony that all is sharp in the world of knives when it comes to the BLADE Show.
The show got off to an instructional start Thursday with BLADE University, a comprehensive slate of classes on all things knife, including how to forge, how to make handles and guards, how to grind a knife blade, how to sharpen any blade, knife collecting, Japanese sword collecting and maintenance, CAD/CAM knife design and much more. Friday enjoyed a walloping beginning, with enthusiasts in massive winding lines waiting to get into the show. Some aisles were so full that the only way to get through was to weave in and out of bodies in a sea of humanity.
The custom knife judging Friday resulted in a fantastic array of knives. For the complete list of maker awardees, visit custom knife winners.
Saturday was another busy day. Though the crowds weren’t as large as Friday, they were still quite ample, with a number of makers reporting brisk, non-stop sales. A few makers did not do so well but most seemed more than happy with the traffic. Demos included how to forge by Timothy Potier, how to throw knives by Bobby Branton, the Japanese sword demo by James Williams, and the 13th Annual BLADE Show World Championship Cutting Competition conducted by BladeSports International, won for the third year in a row by Dan Keffeler. The competition also featured the first-ever female contestant, Jessica Elias.
Saturday night’s awards reception named the industry’s top factory knives. For the complete list, visit BLADE Magazine 2015 Knife-Of-The-Year® Awards.
More Knife Awards
In addition, Chris Reeve was inducted into the BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall Of Fame© by knifemaker Bill Harsey, Joe Keeslar won the first Aldo and Edda Lorenzi Award for being the epitome of a mentor to his fellow knifemakers, and BLADE® editor Steve Shackleford received a plaque recognizing his 30 years with BLADE and the BLADE Show.
On Sunday the show came to a fitting conclusion with Collection Display Awards. Judges awards went to: young Owen Dady for his collection of Buck whittlers, Dale Eichberg for his “How The Buck Legend Began: The Very First Buck Knives,” and Jim Holbrook for his Buck Duke 500 collection. Best of Show went to Larry Oden for his “Buck Factory Production Knives of the 1960s.”
What will next year’s show bring? If it’s anything like this year’s, it will be another one for the ages.
Ballerina’s Knife Dance
A remarkable video entitled “En Puntas” (“On Points”) featuring ballerina Amelie Segarra and her “knife dance” is on www.boredpanda.com—and it is worth a watch.
At just over three minutes in length, the video starts with a ballerina putting on her leg wraps and then a pair of ballerina slippers with “kitchen knife” blades at the toe ends. She proceeds to somehow gain her balance atop a grand piano and then “dance”—though it’s more like a drag and stick of the blade shoes into the surface of the top of the piano. It’s really very good and about how you might expect such a venture to unfold—the ballerina wobbling, gasping and shouting at times as she does her best to keep her balance. The knife blades appear to be real, as the scratched surface of the piano top would attest. In fact, the top of the piano appears to get quite marred/carved up in the process.
Segarra dances what is called the “en pointe” ballet technique, the classic style in which the ballerina dances on her toes. According to the accompanying copy on the site, Segarra’s performance is “a testament to the intense dedication and sometimes physical suffering required of ballet performers.” The knives look pretty sharp, too. Exactly who made them or what brand they are we have no idea. They get to the point, though.
To see the full video, visit http://www.boredpanda.com/ballerina-with-knife-shoes-performs-en-pointe-javier-pere
Props to BLADE® contributor Stephen Garger for turning us onto this video.
For the latest in knives, knife news and the sharpest stuff anywhere, stay tuned to www.blademag.com.
New BLADE Hits Newsstands TODAY!
Get all the poop on the 2013 BLADE Show & Living Ready Expo (www.bladeshow.com)—including the BLADE Magazine 2013 Knives Of The Year® and the show’s other hottest knives—Steven “MeatEater” Rinella’s assessment of the SOG Huntspoint hunting knife and more in the latest BLADE® (www.blademag.com), on most newsstands TODAY!
Highlights include:
•Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Ken Onion and CRKT each were involved in three Knife Of The Year Awards: Onion and CRKT on the Most Innovative Imported Design for the Swindle and Accessory Of The Year for the Survival Para-Saw, CRKT for Best Buy Of The Year with the Endorser/Matthew Lerch design, and Onion and Chef Works for the Kitchen Knife Of The Year (the Ken Onion “Rain”);
•Wayne Goddard became the 50th inductee into the BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall Of Fame©;
•In the BLADE Show’s custom knife competition, John White won three awards and E. Scott McGhee two: White for Best of Show and Best Damascus for his Side-Shell Hunting Dagger and Best Bowie for his feather/stag model, and McGhee for Best Handle Design for his Puma model and Best Fighter for his Cottonmouth Blackout fixed blade;
•BLADE Show factory breakout introductions included the HEST/F Mr. DP Ti from DPx Gear, Bear & Son’s “Undead” folding stiletto on a Zombie theme, Maxpedition’s first-ever knife line and many others;
•The final installment in BLADE’s 40th anniversary series on the top 40 factory knives of the past 40 years, with the Kershaw/Ken Onion Leek finishing Numero Uno for the years 2001-12;
•A critique of four of the latest factory hunting knives, including the aforementioned MeatEater appraisal of the SOG Huntspoint;
•The favorite knives of 19-year-old Fifty Caliber Shooters Association two-time junior world champion Michelle Chestnut;
•A special trio of damascus knives made by three of the Knifemakers’ Guild’s top female makers that will be auctioned at the 2013 Guild Show; and much more, all in the latest BLADE.
For the latest knives and knife news, stay tuned to www.blademag.com.
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