Knife News Wire

Knife Skills Movie Nominated for Oscar Award

Knife Skills is a documentary about an upscale restaurant staffed by people fresh out of prison with zero culinary experience. It’s not a knife movie like the ones BLADE normally covers, but blades do play an important role. 

On the knife front, the larger point to be made is about the intentions behind the use of a knife. Here is a group of people with serious criminal records. In another context, that could be dicey, but here it isn’t. It takes the air out of arguments for regulating knives according to specs.

Knife Skills also shows how knives can create collaborative spaces for the sake of art, business or leisure. Can a restaurant function without knives? Why do the best chefs on Earth also seek the best knives? You can’t separate food and people so long as there is a tool with a cutting edge, and that means knives. The relationship is so essential that even convicts can be trusted to preserve it.

The documentary caught the attention of more than just BLADE, too. It received a 2018 Oscar nomination. We’ll see if a knife movie brings home the big award on March 4, when the awards ceremony takes place.

Knife Skills didn’t hit theaters in a wide release, but you can stream it on Amazon Prime for a couple bucks.

Heads up: The trailer above contains some coarse language. 

Happy 30th Birthday, Outdoor Edge

Denver-based Outdoor Edge turned 30 years old last month, which means it’s still clinging to the spirit of its 20s but contemplating middle age while holding down a mortgage and a couple kids. (In lieu of a birthday card, BLADE respectfully submits that joke.)

Outdoor Edge won a BLADE Magazine Knife Of The Year® in its debut year at the 1988 BLADE Show in Knoxville, Tennessee, with the Game Skinner. As BLADE‘s Steve Shackleford points out, that went on to be one of the most knocked off knives ever. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Less copied is the way Outdoor Edge got its start, simply because it’s so challenging to build a knife company from the ground up. From its news release:

From its humble beginnings as a one-man show with four prototype samples, [David] Bloch’s company, Outdoor Edge, has grown significantly in the past thirty years. Currently, the company has 24 employees and offers more than 120 products. Originally based in Boulder, Colorado, the company moved to a larger facility in Denver in 2010.

BLADE wishes Outdoors Edge 30 more great years of success! 

New York Times: Knives Make Excellent Gifts

For being based on an island that prosecutes electricians for carrying pocketknives on the job, this is a refreshing change of pace for the Gray Lady. A NYT article about gift registries favors knives and knife accessories as foolproof (and inexpensive) options.

Who can blame them? If you have a kitchen, you’ll use a knife. Heck, even if you don’t have a kitchen, you’ll probably use a knife at some point. 

From the article:

Choose a few high-quality knives instead of a knife block set, as sets tend to have a lot of filler knives that you don’t need. Wirecutter suggests three different knives for the average cook: chef’s knife, paring knife and serrated knife.

Throw in a cutting board while you’re at it, too.

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How Much is a $75,000 Knife Really Worth?

Does it need to be said this $75,000 pocketknife is a William Henry? Because it is. It’s so pricey, Forbes featured it here.

Comments on social media asked how it’s possible to know the price of a knife before it’s sold. Who’s to say it isn’t $50,000? After all, it’s not like a $75,000 knife is mass-produced. It’s unique.

Three things:

• High-buck knives are usually commissioned before they’re made.
• The market-rate for the materials and labor are easy to price out.
• Something’s price is always what someone else is willing to pay for it. That someone else might not be you.

Disruptive Model Emerges for Financing Knife Start-Ups

Knifemaking start-ups face a tougher time securing financing because of backers’ leeriness toward “weapons.” Crowdfunding, where companies appeal directly to consumers for backing via pre-orders, is one way around this. Kickstarter is the best example of this approach.

Bolstering this business model are affiliate programs that dole out a cut of pre-order sales. This is sometimes disguised as editorial on news sites. This sort of backdoor marketing offers a pay-as-you-go approach that is appealing to start-ups with limited advertising budgets.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach. It’s just different, and worth considering if you’re starting a knifemaking business.

Here’s an example from Business Insider.

Quoting “Crocodile Dundee” Lands Restaurant in Lawsuit

You know the line, but here’s the clip anyway:

Best not repeat that line in formal marketing if you want to avoid legal trouble. Australian restaurant Grill’d allegedly used the famous utterance on its knife sleeves. From The Daily Telegraph:

Hogan claims the “knife line” — as it’s referred to in the claim document — is valuable because it has been “heard by the many consumers in Australia who have seen the Crocodile Dundee movie” and “has been featured, mentioned or referred to on television, in print, on the internet, and in popular culture”. He claims Grill’d has used the line “without the licence of either of Rimfire or Mr Hogan”.

Read the full story here.

United Kingdom Sentencing More Minors for Knife Possession Crimes

I’ll let this quote from The Guardian article do the talking. Read it carefully if you don’t get it at first.

The number of 10- to 17-year-olds cautioned or sentenced for knife possession offences has risen by 16% since this time last year.

Read the full article here.

Video: The Knifemaker Supplying the World’s Greatest Chefs

Business Insider profiled Chelsea Miller, a knifemaker cranking out blades for “name” chefs around the world.

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Knife Used to Free “Cocaine Smuggler”

The United States Coast Guard is used to intercepting drug runners, but it wasn’t expecting a sea turtle shepherding cocaine bricks across the ocean.

During their 68-day Eastern Pacific counter drug patrol, the crew of USCGC Thetis rescued a large sea turtle entangled in $53 million worth of cocaine. Read here to learn more about this patrol: https://t.co/x9VCINZ25I pic.twitter.com/Zhddcb4lgg

— U.S. Coast Guard (@USCG) December 21, 2017

All joking aside, this is yet another reason to keep a knife handy. You never know what you’ll come across. Good job, Guardsmen.

How to Bone Out Venison Shoulders

You’ll never appreciate a sharp knife as much as when you’re butchering. This video from sister pub, Deer & Deer Hunting, shows why with a tutorial on boning out venison shoulders.

Save the neck for me, Clark.

Trendy Knife Blocks

Knife blocks don’t get much attention in the world of knives, but designers are nonetheless pushing forward with new takes. Perhaps this is overdue, as this article in Business Insider points out:

When you think of a knife block, you may envision the traditional, slanted wood block that sits on your counter. There are many excellent blocks in this style, but none of them made our list. The main problems we have with the classic block is that it is difficult to clean and you can’t readily view the type of knife you are grabbing for. There are plenty of modern styles that sufficiently address these issues.

Check out some of the knife blocks catching eyes here.

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