The BLADE Blogs

The blogs of the BLADE editors, Steve Shackleford and Erin Healy.

If You Attend or Value the BLADE Show, ACT NOW!

Folks traveling through Georgia to the BLADE Show (www.bladeshow.com) need to help pass SB432 so they can enjoy such knives as the Zero Tolerance 0777, the Blade Magazine 2011 Overall Knife Of The Year®.

 

The Georgia House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee hearing on SB432, a bill that would establish Knife Law Pre-emption in the state, will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20, Knife Rights reported.

 

    Knife Law Preemption would protect all law-abiding citizens who carry knives from the patchwork of inconsistent knife laws from jurisdiction to jurisdiction while traveling through the state, including those who will be traveling to the BLADE Show (www.bladeshow.com) June 8-10 at the Cobb Galleria Centre outside Atlanta.

 

    Once again, we need your help to get this bill passed. Your calls and emails made a big impact passing SB432 in the Georgia Senate. Now, please call or email and ask the members of the Committee to vote YES on SB432 when it is before them for consideration on Tuesday.   

 

    If you are a Georgia resident it is best that you call ALL the committee members below. If you can’t call, at least email.     

  

    If you are a BLADE Show attendee from outside of Georgia, please email ALL of the committee members (listed below) and ask them to vote YES on SB432.  

    IMPORTANT: In your email or when you talk to each Representative’s secretary, tell them that that you are a BLADE Show attendee or exhibitor and that the BLADE Show represents MILLIONS of dollars to the Georgia economy. It also represents many hundreds of JOBS in Georgia. All those hotels and restaurants we stay at and eat in during BLADE Show employ many hundreds of people, and SB432 will help support the BLADE Show! You deserve to not have to worry about local knife restrictions when traveling to and attending the BLADE Show, and even a single unjustified and highly publicized arrest could adversely affect BLADE Show attendance!   

    Use Email SUBJECT: Please Vote Yes on SB432 

Ann Purcell – Chairman Dist 159 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-5139

Willie Talton – Vice Chairman Dist 145 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-5116

Bob Hanner – Dist 148 – [email protected]  Phone: 404-656-7859

Bill Maddox – Dist 127 – [email protected]  Phone: 404-656-3947

Jay Neal – Dist 1 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-5138  

Billy Horne – Dist 71 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-0287

Scott Holcomb – Dist 82 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-6372  

Gloria Frazier  -Dist 123 – [email protected]  Phone: 404-656-0265

Kevin Cooke  -Dist 18 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-0325  

Darlene Taylor – Dist 173 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656- 0177

Yasmin Neal  -Dist 75 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-0265  

Doug Collins  -Dist 27 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-7737

Tim Bearden  -Dist 68 – [email protected] Phone: 404-656-0287

    It is much, much better to email each member individually, but if you cannot, below are all the email addresses which you can copy and paste into your email:

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 

    CALL or EMAIL TODAY! 

    For more click on www.KnifeRights.org.

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+ssfb031912#BL1SU.

BLADE Show: Euro & Asian Sword Seminars

Watch those who know how use a selection of swords to recreate the way they actually were employed in combat in the days of yore in the fast-paced “Historical Swordplay Techniques” by the Reinhardt Legacy Fight Team at the BLADE Show (www.bladeshow.com) May 31-June 2 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

The team will present seminars on both European and Asian swordplay techniques. The European rendition will be Saturday, June 1, at 12:30 p.m., and the Asian version will be Sunday at 10 a.m. Both seminars will be conducted in “The Courtyard”—the parking lot of the BLADE Show’s host hotel, the Renaissance Waverly.

 

Led by such team members as Pembroke “Whit” Williams, David Lanyon and others, the Reinhardt Legacy Fight Team is named in honor of Hank Reinhardt, swordplay guru and genius behind Museum Replicas, a long-time sword, armor and accouterments retailer out of Conyers, Georgia. Hank searched the world over for the finest swords and armor for sale in the MR catalog. He was legendary for his ability to spar with swords, and retained much of his quickness and technique well into his later years. His swordplay seminars at the BLADE Show beginning in the early 1990s and up until his death in 2007 were replete with fast action, lavish costumes and the best in sparring swords.

 

Today, the Reinhardt Legacy Fight Team carries on Hank’s legacy, training those interested in historic swordplay techniques and conducting seminars at any number of events, including the BLADE Show. Equipped with the latest in safety equipment, masks and more, members of the team take turns squaring off in spirited sparring sessions, demonstrating the techniques used in days gone by. Some of the sessions get quite frisky and are always entertaining to watch.

 

Get there early to secure a bleacher seat.

 

The BLADE Show will present the Reinhardt Legacy Fight Team's seminar on historic swordplay.
Whit Williams explains historic swordplay to patrons at last year’s BLADE Show.

Loveless-Parke Is Part Drop Point, Part Skinner

Spending a day with the Loveless-Parke drop point would be like spending a day in the park. What I love about this knife is that it is a drop-point hunter, but it has that high grind and skinner-like hump along the blade spine toward the tip. 

Only 36 knives bearing the Loveless-Parke logo were ever produced (Parke was an investor in Loveless’s knifemaking business for a short period of time.) This knife, made in 1967, is an example of that effort. It features a brass singe guard and stag handle with a hidden tang. And because I was born in 1967, it’s all that more sweet to me.

The knife photo is by Hiro Soga, the knife is from the John Denton collection, and it was featured in the book Knifemaking With Bob Loveless.

Sweet Simplicity Featured In Knives 2013 Book

My second Editor’s Favorites pick from the Knives 2013 book is included for its sweet simplicity. Don’t let the straightforward, integral form of Billy Mace Imel’s dagger fool you, though, the lines flow symmetrically, with rounded edges along the grip, a pointed pommel and penetratingly pointed blade.

Only mother-of-pearl interrupts the shapely, blackened 01-tool-steel dagger. (SharpByCoop.com photo)

The knife is featured on page 86 of Knives 2013. Click here to order your copy today!

Knife Of The Day XXV: Jody Muller’s “King Arthur”

As Mel Brooks says in The History Of The World, Part I, “It’s good to be the king.” And Jody Muller’s “King Arthur” dress locking folder, the 25th installment in our “Knife Of The Day” series, resembles Brooks’s remark.

    Boasting damascus forged by Jody, a handle of carved ancient walrus ivory, and 24k-gold and copper inlays, the knife gives Camelot a whole new dose of cool.

    For more information on the knife, click on www.mullerforge.com.

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. Click on http://www.shopblade.com/blade-magazine-one-year-subscription-us for more information.

BLADE Show Recap BLADE Out NOW!

Tim, Anne and Chris.
(From left) Tim, Anne and Chris Reeve basked in the limelight after Chris was inducted into the Cutlery Hall Of Fame© during the BLADE Show. (Piotr Makuch image)
Emerson Mutant debuted at the BLADE Show.
The Mutant from Emerson Knives, Inc., was one of many factory knives that debuted at the BLADE Show.
BLADE Show has record crowds.
Record numbers of knife enthusiasts turned the BLADE Show into a feeding frenzy of cut.
Hunters by Timberline, White River Knife & Tool, Steel Will and Boker Arbolito.
Gracing the new BLADE are new fall hunters, from left: two Timberline/Russ Kommer models, the Jerry Fisk Sendero repro by White River Knife & Tool, the Steel Will Druid 220 and the Boker Arbolito Sendero

The BLADE Magazine 2015 Knives Of The Year®, the 2015 BLADE Show recap, new BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© inductee Chris Reeve and much more highlight the November BLADE®, on newsstands now!

The world’s finest knives descended on Atlanta for the 34th Annual BLADE Show, and the best of the best blades were on display for record crowds to drool over in the Cobb Galleria. Among the knives were the winners of the Knife-Of-The-Year Awards for the factory knife industry. See which knives won—one of the winners is this issue’s cover knife, the Desert Fox by Fox Knives—and also the best in the show’s custom knives and much more in respective stories on pages 12 and 46.

Few modern knives have had the impact of the Sebenza by Chris Reeve Knives, and the man who serves as the company’s namesake took his place among the industry’s elite when he was inducted into the Cutlery Hall Of Fame the Saturday night of the BLADE Show. Chris’s good friend, custom knifemaker/designer Bill Harsey, gave the speech inducting Chris, and it was one of the more popular inductions in recent memory. Get the details on page 22.

Rick Hinderer has been one of the knife industry’s great success stories. He has worked hard over the years and catapulted from a relatively unknown maker of art knives to being one of the industry’s leading makers of tactical folders—and one of the lottery movement’s biggest successes in the process. He has opened a new 14,000-square foot facility to bring more of his knives to his many fans. Learn more on page 28.

Also this issue: what’s hot in custom tactical fixed blades of the stock removal variety; a test of the Johnson Adventure Blades SEEK 3.5 and Battle Horse Knives Large Workhorse; a field test of four of the latest hunters by Timberline (a Russ Kommer design), White River Knife & Tool (a Jerry Fisk design), Steel Will and Boker Arbolito; a plethora of factory knives that debuted at the BLADE Show; a test of four new bushcraft models—the Condor Tool & Knife Final Frontier, CRKT Saker, ESEE Camp Lore RB3 and TOPS Scandi Woodsman; and much more.

Help USA Knifemaker Help Harvey Victims

Harvey and makers
Donate now to USA Knifemaker’s program to assist full-time makers’ shops flooded by Hurricane Harvey.

Help full-time knifemakers whose shops have been damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Harvey through a program initiated by the folks at USA Knifemaker.

A leading supplier of knifemaking equipment, materials, tools and other products used to make knives, USA Knifemaker’s assistance program is designed to help full-time knifemakers—and with floodwaters continuing to rage in and around Houston, Texas, the effort comes not one moment too soon.

“We would like to help our knifemaker brothers that have been wiped out to get back on their feet,” notes Tracy Mickley of USA Knifemaker. “This isn’t about advertising. This isn’t about making us look good. This is about doing the right thing and about helping people in need. If I could do this quietly I would, but I can’t. These guys need your help and I am going to bang the drum as loud as I can to get some help headed their way.”

USAknifemaker.com will match donations up to $2,000 in knifemaking supplies for full-time knifemakers that have lost their shops to the hurricane and flood. “If I can manage more I will but right now it’s the best I can do,” Mickley writes. “If public donations do not reach $2,000 for the match, we will still give out the full $2,000 in the form of gift certificates to USAknifemaker.com. I hope we can max this out to $4,000 plus.

“We will give $250 gift certificates to eight—at the minimum, we hope for at least 16 or more—full-time knifemakers that have had their shops destroyed by floods. It’s not enough to restock a shop. I get that. I also understand there are hundreds, maybe thousands of part-time makers that also have had tragic losses and I wish we could help everyone. Those makers that depend on knifemaking as their primary income can use our help as a community.”

Makers and Harvey
If you know any full-time makers in the Houston area whose shops were damaged or destroyed by Harvey, you can help through USA Knifemaker’s assistance program.

Send a check, cash, use Paypal or a credit card. “We will cover the Paypal and credit card fees,” Mickley notes. “We will total up the donations and match up to $2,000 to be given out as gift certificates to eight full-time makers. If the total of public donations exceeds $2,000, we will compile the extra and give out as many $250 gift certificates as the funds allow. One-hundred percent of donations will be given out. We will recap all activity on Knifedogs.com for full transparency here.

“We are asking you to provide names and contact information of full-time knifemakers in and around the Houston area that you know who have lost their shop or had significant shop damage. We do not need a list of random names of makers in the area. We need to know who got hurt in this. We will have to filter out opportunists so we will require proof of loss in the form of pictures of their shop and a short description of damage. To be clear, we aren’t ‘covering’ any other losses. There are other agencies for that. We are trying to help those that lost their knifemaking shop.

“I am hoping for a lot of interest and support,” Mickley continues. “I will have a thread on Knifedogs.com to track donations, candidates and awards, and to keep this transparent. I welcome your input and suggestions on how the knifemaking community can step up and lend a hand. Post your comments and suggestions here.”

 

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