Watch Nova on PBS tonight as Ric Furrer takes you through the creation of the legendary Viking sword known as the “Ulfberht.”
Specializing in the forging/making of steel via the ancient methods, Furrer has conducted seminars and demonstrations on how to make steel from sand at a number of venues, including the Batson Bladesmithing Symposium at the Tannehill Ironworks in McCalla, Alabama.
Little is known for sure about the legendary Ulfberht sword. Believed to have been made somewhere around the 10th century, the Ulfberht is described thus by the late Hank Reinhardt (pictured above in a photograph by Patrick Gibbs at a past DragonCon event) in his The Book of Swords:
“Sometime early in the 10th century, the ability to produce a large enough bloom of steel to make a full sword was developed … [The resulting] steel swords also had a slightly different shape [than their predecessors]. Instead of the edges being parallel, there was a defined slope to the point. The point was still rounded but the slope put weight closer to the hand, thereby making them somewhat quicker on the stroke and on the return. These new swords all had the name ‘Ulfberht’ engraved on the blades. It’s fun to speculate how this sword was developed and who this person was.”
To understand why the Delavan Family and Plaza Cutlery won the BLADE Magazine 2016 Industry Achievement Award at this year’s BLADE Show, join us in a trip down memory lane.
The Delavan Family and Plaza Cutlery are the winners of the BLADE Magazine 2016 Industry Achievement Award. From left: Lois, Dan and Pam Delavan inside Plaza Cutlery in 2007.
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It was over 42 years ago that Del and Lois Delavan, along with their son Dan, fresh out of the Army, opened Plaza Cutlery, a brick-and-mortar retail knife store in what is today the South Coast Plaza Shopping Resort in Costa Mesa, California.
A few years later Dan married Pam, and Pam took to knives as only a Delavan can. One of the keys to Plaza Cutlery’s remarkable longevity is that Dan and Pam have a passion for knives that is genuine—and the people who buy their knives and the vendors who work with Plaza Cutlery know it. It is a passion Dan and Pam come by honestly, a passion shared by Dan’s dad, Del, who became a Case salesman in 1959, and Dan’s mom, Lois. After Del passed away, it was Lois who took up the torch and became one of if not the first female traveling sales reps for Case. She helped run Plaza Cutlery until she, too, passed away just a few years ago.
It is retail knife stores such as Plaza Cutlery supporting both custom makers and knife companies over the decades that have helped make the knife industry the dynamic entity it is today. Whether selling knives to customers face to face or via their well-stocked and constantly changing website, the Delavans—in addition to Dan and Pam, their son Andrew, their son Bryan’s wife, Yuko, and Dan’s brother Russ—are known throughout the cutlery industry not just for their vast knowledge of knives, but also their reputation as straight shooters when it comes to providing the best in knives and customer service. It’s hard enough to maintain such a knowledge and reputation for just one year—it’s a monumental achievement to do it for 42.
An all-inclusive ivory ban that would target ancient ivory such as mammoth and mastodon in addition to elephant ivory likely will pass without your help by the end of day today, Dec. 27.
A proposed ivory ban would include ancient ivory. Kevin Casey uses ancient walrus ivory on his bowie. (SharpByCoop photo)
A Presidential Advisory Committee that met on Dec. 16 recommends a total ban of ivory within the USA to the task force on Wildlife Trafficking. The ban would apply to the sale of all ivory in any form and include pre-ban and antique ivory in knives, guns, musical instruments, pianos with ivory keys, etc. The ban would affect collectors, makers and anyone who sells within or to the USA. The committee will file its report on Dec. 28, so any entreaties opposing the proposed ban must be e-mailed by no later than today in order to be registered and considered before the report is filed.
The address to send your email to is [email protected]. Copy and paste the following letter—though feel free to tailor it as you see fit—to an email, and email it to the above address:
Dear Advisory Committee,
I stand against a total ban of all ivory sales in the USA.
As called for in the Presidential Executive Order, I ask that the recommendations continue to allow for “legal and legitimate commerce.”
The ivory market in the USA is stable and/or declining, and seizure records indicate that a high proportion of the seizures were personal effects lacking the correct paperwork, not the so-called blood tusks reported on by the media. The Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) analysis indicates that the amount of ivory by weight seized annually has not increased in recent years. We are not the consumers of the poached ivory. Therefore, banning ivory sales within the USA will do nothing to save the remaining world population of elephants.
The CITES MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) September 2013 report analysis, page 64, states, “Africa’s elephant populations are managed sustainably,” and that in 2013 the quote for permits for legal elephants was 1,350 animals. There is legal trade that can be monitored with DNA testing and permitting. Enforcing and policing a ban would require funds that should be used to support the ban on imports already in effect.
I fully support CITES rules, closing international borders to elephant ivory trade, a law already in effect that should be fully supported and enforced. I stand against a total ban of all ivory commerce within U.S. borders, a decision that would be an enforcement nightmare. Like Prohibition of the 1920s, it would cause a new wave of illicit commerce where a legitimate one now exists. Museums, antique dealers, collectors, artisans and individual citizens have invested in a legal and valuable material. Sanctioned trade in ivory that is legal (culled and pre-ban) and comes from unthreatened sources (mammoth, boar, warthog, antique and recycled products) can pose no possible threat to elephant herds in the wild.
I believe our mutual goals are the same and a solution can be reached. Please keep the focus where it belongs. To increase the elephant population, the killing must be stopped in Africa and at its borders.
The Ohio Classic Knife Show hopes to build on the momentum of recent knife shows as it holds its annual event today and tomorrow.
Both the California Custom Knife Show held this past weekend and the Knifemakers’ Guild Show held last month were successes by a number of accounts, and the Ohio Classic hopes to build off their momentum as well as some of its own.
For instance, purveyor/collect Jon Ukman noted of the Cal show, “It was outstanding! I bought about 70 knives—and that is a good show.” Purveyor Dave Stark of Steel Addiction Custom Knives also had words of praise for the Cal show. Meanwhile, ABS bladesmith Johnny Perry, who helped display a collection of Bill Moran knives for the Moran Foundation at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show last month, said the Guild Show was a good one as well.
Held at the Pritchard-Laughlin Civic Center in Cambridge, Ohio, the Ohio Classic runs from 1 o’clock this afternoon until 7 tonight, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow. In addition to some of the custom industry’s top makers, the show will include some leading factory knife exhibitors and also a cutting competition tomorrow. In addition, Jeff Fournier from Mule Team Canvas will give a demo on canvas dying.
Exhibiting knifemakers include Tom Downing, Blind Horse Knives, Ryan Daniels of Queen Cutlery, Phillip Booth, Wayne Hensley, Pete Crowl, Andrew Demko, George Trout, Mickey Yurco, Greg Gottschalk, W.C. Johnson, James Downs, Thad Yeater, Gary Wheeler, BLADE® field editor Kim Breed, Lon Humphrey, Craig Steketee, Mark Carey of Spartan Blades, Bill Behnke and many others. Also exhibiting will be Charles Turnage of Turnage Productions, photographer Terrill Hoffman, purveyor Jerry Schroeder, Pop’s Knives and Supplies, Brad Vice of Alabama Damascus, Brad Stallsmith of Peters Heat Treat and many others.
EdgeCraft Corp. Founder, Chairman and CEO Daniel D. Friel, an acclaimed inventor, world-renowned for engineering the best-selling Chef’sChoice® brand of small kitchen electrics, passed away on September 21. He was 92.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our founder and beloved friend Dan Friel. He was a brilliant businessman, inventor and pioneer who forever changed the fundamentals of knife sharpening,” says EdgeCraft President Sam Weiner. “Building an enterprise that in a few short years became the world leader in sharpening technology is a true American success story. His unwavering commitment to quality and innovative excellence is a legacy that will live on through his family, friends, employees, the products he invented and the consumers who enjoy them,” says Weiner.
Born in 1920 in Queenstown, MD, Friel received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from John Hopkins University in 1942. He began his career on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago where the first atomic reactor was assembled. Friel then spent 39 years with the DuPont company where he helped pioneer such products as Riston® Dry Film Photo Resist, used in the manufacturing of circuit boards. At the time of his retirement from the company, he was the Worldwide Director of Instruments and Biomedical Products.
At the age of 65, Friel founded EdgeCraft, highlighted by the launch of its first Chef’sChoice® electric knife sharpener in 1985. Friel’s technologically advanced sharpener immediately earned the acclaim of food experts and chefs worldwide including Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey, Jacques Pépin and Julia Child.
“Dan Friel literally established sharpeners as a separate and important product category in the worldwide consumer market,” says Weiner. Today, the Chef’sChoice brand is not only recognized as a market leader for professional knife sharpeners, but also for advanced cutlery and other upscale kitchen electrics including tea kettles, waffle makers, and food slicers.
Friel’s brilliance as inventor and businessman spanned decades, and two distinctive careers. During that time he authored numerous technical papers and hundreds of U.S. and foreign patents on his work at both DuPont and EdgeCraft. He was active with EdgeCraft Corporation until the last week of his life. He was also a founder and chairman of the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory located in Mt. Cuba, Delaware. He was a man of several passions who had an insatiable curiosity for all of life’s beauty and wonder. These passions led to several other personal achievements including pioneering the first high-speed photography studies of hummingbirds and most recently inking exquisite watercolor paintings.
Friel was married in 1943 to June, who passed away in 2008 and remarried in 2010 to Carolyn Blish. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, and three children, Barbara Holme of Denver, CO, Patricia Friel of Chadds Ford, PA and Daniel Friel Jr. of Kennett Square, PA, along with six grandchildren.
Steve Shackleford published his book “Spirit of the Sword.” in 2010. ISBN-13:978-1-4402-1156-0
For the serious blade collector, sword fighting enthusiast, and overall lover of things edged, I found this to be one of the more readily accessible books concerning swords, I have read in a long time.Shackleford has spent the past 25 years writing, and editing for Blade’s Guide to Knives & their Values. He has authored thousands of articles about edged weapons.
In his foreword, Shackleford says, “Bruce Voyles once told if he did not the answer to a knife question, he knows someone who does. Similarly,since so many of today’s knifemakers also make swords, I figured I could call on them for answers if need be. I hope you will agree that the results of this book indicate I met with success.”
With a 238 page, page count it has a mere seven chapters. It is absolutely filled with full color photographs of various sword types, with close up detail pictures. The first chapter gives a nice overview of the sword making world, and its attendant market. Shackleford then does something that most writers of a book would not do, he allows contributors to insert their technical skill into his book. Most notably by Sword Smith Vince Evans.
In Chapter 2. entitled: European Vacation-Sword Style! Evans is an award winning custom maker of swords and knives. His chapter details his travels through England, Scotland and Ireland. He breaks up the chapter with discussions on such sword types as the Windsor, Askeaton, and Drayton.There are several color photographs of such sword types as a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon sword, Evans recreated, from an example from Gilling West on display at England’s Yorkshire Museum.
Chapter 3 is authored by John Clements. Clement’s chapter deals with the resurgence of period accurate sword fighting techniques. Clement’s explains the reality of sword fighting as opposed to the Hollywood version most have stuck in their psyche. Helping to define his presentation, Clement’s uses illustrations as varied as Albrecht Duerer to Hans Talhoffer. Clement’s also uses various swords from modern sword makers as examples of the types used historically.
The aspect of this book I like the most, is its ease of reading. If you are new to collecting swords or looking for a historical example of a sword, this book is very informative, without being a pure academic exercise. One of the more compelling portions of the book is a 128 page guide to sword and knife makers. The index includes, their physical address, telephone numbers and their web address if, they have one. It also showcases some of the more exotic samples of various the sword smiths listed in the index.
I would rate this book as a “Must Have” for any serious Modern Medievalist. It should be used as one of your first “Go-to-Books” when you need to answer to one of those tickling questions, you are having trouble with.
Steve Shackleford maintains a blog on blademag.com.
This is my first book review. If you have any suggestions or would like me to review another book. Please do not hesitate to contact me at: [email protected]
