Knifemaking is the building of a knife, which includes the blade, handle and other accouterments. Blades are made by either removing metal from a steel blank via a grinder – known as stock removal – and the forging to shape of hot steel into a blade in the process known as bladesmithing. Other parts, including bolsters, guards, pommels, etc., are needed to complete the finished knife.
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In light of the devastating fire allegedly started by an amateur knifemaker, BLADE doesn’t want anyone else to learn bladesmithing trial-by-fire style, literally.
That’s why we want to hear about your accidents in your knife shops. There’s no shame, and you can remain anonymous if you’d like. The point is prevent someone else from making the same mistake.
The focus here is on safety. Preventative tips are welcome, too.
Your contributions will be used in an upcoming BLADE feature. Thank you!
In his story, How To Make a Sushi Knife, in the August 2015 BLADE®, ABS master smith Wally Hayes explained how he achieved the texturing on the blade’s surface. The reason for the texturing is to create air pockets so food does not stick to the steel.
For blade material, he used 90-thousandths-inch-thick 15N20 carbon steel from New Jersey Steel Baron.
“First, I cut the blade to shape, around 7 inches long,” he wrote. “The tang is about 4 inches. I take one of my old hammers and cut a cross hatch into the face using a side grinder with a cut-off wheel. Then I heat up the blade in my forge and hammer a textured finish into the steel. This takes about five heats and is lots of fun! I put dents into both sides of the blade and then make sure it is straight.”
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of BLADE magazine, which you can download here.
Over a quarter century after John Rambo burst onto the big screen and changed cutlery history forever, it is near time for the character created by author David Morrell to cut a worldwide cinematic swath with his indomitable knife once again.
As BLADE® was going to press, the fourth installment of the Rambo movie series, Rambo (aka Rambo IV) a Lionsgate film, was due to be released at movie theaters on Jan. 25, 2008. Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay, directs and stars in the movie that finds Rambo living a secluded life working as a snake catcher in Thailand some 26 years after Rambo first appeared in First Blood.
The Rambo blades have certainly made their mark in the world of knives. For the first two Rambo movies, First Blood (1982) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), the legendary “Arkansas Knifesmith,” Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer© Jimmy Lile, created the knives.
For Rambo III (1987), Stallone called on Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame knifemaker Gil Hibben to create the knife.
For Rambo, Stallone once again called Hibben to help create a new knife for the movie. Stallone had a basic idea of what he needed and the knife was written into the script as an integral part of the movie. Hibben made at least five prototype versions of the piece before finally arriving at the design that will be used in the film.
In October 2006, Hibben began designing the knife. At first, the blade exhibited characteristics of the Rambo III model.
“My first one had a slot in the blade [as in the Rambo III knife] but in a machete or old Chinese sword design,” Hibben recalled. He also made a modified version in which he removed the top lug of the guard.
Stallone reportedly liked the blade design but said it was “too perfect.” He wanted something much more crude looking, as if it had been pounded out quickly from the limited resources Rambo has at his disposal in the movie.
It was back to the drawing board for Hibben.
“The blade size was originally 10 inches and Sly faxed me some pictures of some of the knives he’d seen from the cutting competitions,” the Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer explained. “He liked that style, so I made one up. It evolved from a 10-inch blade to a 12-inch one. It evolved from several sizes and shapes until I got what he liked.”
To make it authentic, Hibben forged the next few prototypes from pieces of a truck leaf spring. Since there was agreement on the basic blade design, next came the question of the handle and finish of the knife.
Hibben thought about what materials might be available to the character in the movie. He considered leather, wood, paracord, tape and even seat-belt webbing for use on the handle. The second prototype had a wooden grip wrapped in green paracord and an enclosed sheath. Hibben also made a third prototype with a leather-wrapped handle.
Again, the studio said it needed something more crude looking.
Prototype number four was a very simple design with a cord-wrapped handle. Hibben made one with green cord and one with black cord. It was close to being right, but the finish was still too slick to have been quickly forged as it is in the script.
Finally, Hibben decided that, considering John Rambo’s skills and experience and the materials that the title character would have available, the knife would have a cord-wrapped handle, perhaps covered with tape for additional grip. The blade would be marked with depressions from the hammer blows from being forged quickly without time or resources to put a fine finish on the blade.
“So I took it out of the heat treat and beat the heck out of it,” Hibben recalled. “I really made it look like Sly made it.”
Following the Rambo knife tradition, it would be a large, heavy blade with a thick spine. Assuming that Rambo would not have time or materials to make a new sheath but would still have the sheath from his previous knife, he opts to cut the end of the old Rambo III sheath to accommodate the larger blade and broader tip of the new knife. This is the knife and sheath in Rambo.
The 12-inch blade is forged from a 3-inch piece of quarter-inch-thick D2 tool steel. As you might imagine, such a knife is somewhat heavy—2 pounds worth—so Hibben made some lightweight aluminum versions for Stallone to use when need be for safety’s sake during filming.
Since the movie was shot in the corrosion-inducing environs of the jungle, Hibben said he put Renaissance Wax on the non-stainless D2 to protect the blade from rust.
“There was a lot of rain there,” he noted. “Luckily they got out before the monsoons hit.”
The cord-wrapped handle is covered with black tape for additional grip. Eighteen inches overall, the knife comes in the modified Rambo III sheath.
At press time (in 2008), Hibben was offering a handmade version of the knife in all the original materials—though with nicer sheaths—for $1,250. It is called the “J.R.” There will be 100 in all, with 25 of them already having been sold.
Synthetics continue to surge in light of the growing scarcity of some natural materials.
According to Chris Hartman, a 37-year veteran in the family business at Masecraft, the buzz about two synthetic materials, Richlite and Raffir, continues to grow.
“These product lines are totally different from each other, and they work like other materials that our customers already use, so the transition is easy,” he maintained.
Distributed domestically by Santa Fe Stoneworks, Raffir is a resin-preserved material used in jewelry and other products also.
“It works well in fine handles and accessories in which aesthetics are of great importance,” Chris advised. “There are several categories. The first, Raffir Fiber, is a composite material of neutral plant fibers cast in resin.
“The second, Raffir Metapol, has aluminum fillers shining through a deep resin matrix. Raffir Noble is a composite material with fine brass and bronze-mesh layers encapsulated in a translucent epoxy resin. The last two categories, Raffir Fossil and Raffir Wood, are genuine rare fossils and fine-grained wood blocks that have been filled with a unifying and strengthening resin through a high pressure process that stabilizes the materials.”
The finished Raffir fossil and wood materials maintain the original structures of the untreated substance while obtaining the mechanical advantages of the homogeneous resin compound.
The Raffir materials are worked with the same tools that most knifemakers already own, therefore little or no additional investment is required.
Richlite is a durable, versatile and sus-tainable material made from recycled, resin-infused paper and pulp derived from trees that have been harvested responsibly, Chris says.
Complete with Forest Stewardship Council Certification by the Rainforest Alliance and GREENGUARD Certification, it is also antimicrobial, which is a benefit in food preparation.
“Richlite is tough enough to build skateboards and skateboard parks, so it will take a beating and hold up to the elements,” he added. “Richlite is made in the USA and actually costs less than other like materials. It is similar to working with Micarta, G-10 or carbon fiber, and many of our customers are familiar with them. Customers appreciate that they are no longer inhaling carbon-fiber or fiberglass dust, which some of our customers just don’t like dealing with.”
New composite laminates and hybrid materials are on the horizon, and their growth is steady.
“Even though they are mass produced,” Chris said, “they can still be individually unique. They are stable and available in sizes that can easily be used in CNC cutting for production, or can still be cut and worked with standard tools and be handmade.”
Read more about hot knives, knifemaking and collecting in the BLADE 2018 Knife Guide. Download it here.
Is a U.S. Army Ranger made or is he born? Is it the training he receives that makes him a Ranger, or is there some innate quality in him that draws him to Ranger training in the first place? If you tell former U.S. Army Ranger Sergeant Kyle Gahagan (pronounced guh-HAY-gan) that he doesn’t have the proper credentials for full-time employment with your company, he’ll proceed to acquire three doctorates. If you were to suggest that he not go to work at the auto-body shop if the pain in his right arm is so bad that he cannot hold a toothbrush, he’ll go anyway and tape a hammer to his forearm. If you crush his 10-year-old spirit by telling him that the knife he spent hours making is no good and throwing it on the ground, he will one day use that craft to not only heal himself from the emotional ravages of war, but to help heal other veterans as well. Never tell an Army Ranger he cannot make a knife.
Kyle doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t want to be a soldier. As a boy, he would dress the part and play army for hours. He came from a military family with a grandfather who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and a father who retired as a full Colonel after a near-three-decade career in the Army’s Armor branch. Kyle was born in Colorado and lived in Kentucky and Germany, but from ages 8 to 11 the family lived in Savannah, Georgia. He would see the then-black-bereted Rangers of the 1st Ranger Battalion, who were stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, and he knew that’s what he wanted to be. “I thought they were the coolest guys on the whole planet,” he said.
Kyle got his first knife from his maternal grandfather when he was 5. It was a little Old Timer pocketknife to go with the shotgun he got for deer hunting. “I hunted with my grandfather until he couldn’t hunt anymore,” he said. His father transferred back to German, so Kyle saw him infrequently. It was his grandfather who spent time with the hyperactive boy, teaching him how to hunt and build things, how to work with his hands. At 10 his grandfather handed him a piece of aluminum and told him to go make something with it. It was his first attempt at making a knife. Although not an easy material to be cutting and grinding on, he crafted something resembling a knife. There was no heat treating involved, he said with a rare chuckle.
As Kyle learned more, he once spent a long time forging a knife. He hammered painstakingly to forge-weld steel for the blade. He made a wooden sheath, carefully lining up the wood grain. “I was so proud of that knife,” he said. He took it to an area knifemaker. That maker couldn’t stop telling him how bad it was. He threw it on the ground. “It crushed me,” Kyle said. “I didn’t make another knife for about 20 years.” He didn’t even tell his grandfather what had happened. “I think he thought I just grew out of my interest in it.”
In 1999 at the age of 19, Kyle enlisted in the Army with a Ranger contract. He was engaged when he went in and was married in between basic training and Airborne school. He went into the Ranger Indoctrination Program and Ranger school and was assigned to his boyhood heroes’ unit, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. But then 9/11 hit and he was being deployed back to back. He did two deployments in Afghanistan and two in Iraq, but because they blend into what amounted to nearly three years of being gone, he can’t quite recall the order. He was a SAW gunner in Afghanistan, he led a team for a while, and in Iraq, he was an S3, which organized training operations in the rear and coordinated missions during combat.
During one training session, Kyle was giving a private a block of instruction on the M203 grenade launcher. It hit a buried mortar not 15 meters away. They were able to determine that the grenade had not had sufficient time to arm itself, so the mine had caused most of the damage. Kyle received shrapnel wounds to his face, chin, neck and right leg. In a parachute training jump Kyle got his right arm entangled in his rigging, which led to a torn tendon and debilitating tendinitis. His unit was involved in the Jessica Lynch rescue, but the mission that had the most impact on Kyle was the Ranger rescue of a Navy SEAL team on the third day of Operation Anaconda, a sweep of al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shahikot Valley of Eastern Afghanistan.
Although not on the mission, Kyle lost three friends on the firefight atop Takur Ghar Mountain: Rangers Marc Anderson, Bradley Crose (with whom Kyle attended paramedic school) and Mathew Commons. You can read about the harrowing battle for Roberts Ridge in Sean Naylor’s “Not A Good Day to Die, The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda” and in Malcolm MacPherson’s “Roberts Ridge, A Story Of Courage And Sacrifice On Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan.” Kyle can go for days without thinking about his brother Rangers, but then something in life will remind him that they’re not here to live their lives.
Kyle would have stayed in the Army, but after seeing his parents divorce and his father remarry two more times, he knew he didn’t want to lose his wife over his career choice. He felt it wasn’t fair to Dana, so he transitioned out in 2004. Their daughter, Zoe, was born right after Kyle got out, and their son, David, was born in 2011. At first Kyle wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He worked in an autobody shop, but when the pain in his right arm, exacerbated by a bone spur on his clavicle, got so bad he could barely function, he knew he had to find other work. “On my last day, the pain was so bad I couldn’t hold a hammer—I couldn’t hold a toothbrush.” He taped the hammer to his forearm and at the end of the day told his boss that he just couldn’t do the work anymore.
He was at the right place at the right time to land a job as an IT (information technology) contractor for Lowe’s, developing three data centers, one in Texas and two in North Carolina. When Kyle applied for full-time employment, the company told him it could not hire him because he lacked a degree. So, he went back to school. His mother was a teacher, so education has always been important to him. In the end, “100 percent and then some” in keeping with the Ranger creed, he came away with three doctorates, two in education and one in psychology.
During this time Kyle was an administrator to a local college, a school principal and eventually an acting superintendent. His frustration grew as he continually tried to hold students and parents to high standards. Kyle ensured that the children had what they needed to succeed, but if they didn’t follow the rules, they faced the consequences. He felt undermined, however, by a politically-correct environment in which his decisions were often overturned. Eventually, he just quit.
When Kyle was a school administrator, his chief financial officer asked him to make a knife he could give to his future brother-in-law as a wedding gift. Kyle was reconnected with that kid who had became engrossed in making the best knife he could make. “I enjoyed the process,” Kyle said. He began making knives “as a hobby.” Although he may not have recognized it at the time, that sounds like too casual an approach for a craft that would end up tying his love of knifemaking, education, psychology and his warrior brethren together, giving him a new mission in life.
In 2013 Nate Bocker began Resilience Forge in Virginia. Nate served in the Army with the 249th Engineer Battalion. The active-duty sergeant sought a way to help the wounded warrior community. He thought by teaching veterans the skill of bladesmithing they could hammer out some of the issues associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, receive appropriate physical therapy for some injuries and have the foundation of a new skill they could expand into a trade if they so chose. Nate’s first student christened the program Blade Therapy. Kyle then launched Resilience Forge North Carolina and began implementing standard operating procedures so that the non-profit could expand nationally. No matter where a veteran attended, they’d know that the program would be the same.
The irony is that there is no structure to the program. Veterans when they’re transitioning from active duty or medical care into civilian life don’t have a schedule. “My door is always open,” Kyle said. All a veteran has to do is call ahead and he is there to provide counselling in the active environment of the forge. “Sitting on a couch and talking doesn’t work with the military mindset. They want to be producing something,” he said. Lots can unfold in the course of making a knife in one of Kyle’s classes. Take the 96-year-old veteran who was on Omaha Beach on the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. “He couldn’t do much,” Kyle said, but it was only a couple of weeks after visiting Resilience Forge that the veteran’s wife called. “She said, ‘I don’t know what you did, but my husband is happier.’ He had opened up to her,” Kyle said. And now Kyle is happy too. He’s found his new mission.
He knows what it’s like to reach that point where it’s darkest. Where the trudging goes on incessantly, you feel miserable physically and mentally, you’re exhausted and there’s no clear purpose to your life. Irrespective of his constant advancements career-wise, Kyle knows the heartbreak of remembering lost buddies. Anderson had been a school teacher. “We all face it,” Kyle said. At one point the emotional and physical pain was so bad that he walked away from the one thing that could have ever compelled him to leave the Army: his marriage. That lasted six months. There is a point, even in knifemaking, when the challenges seem to go on for too long, when things don’t fall naturally into place, when braking the blade seems nobler than letting it crack under stress.
Kyle taps into each veteran’s ability to adapt and overcome. Even though he’s teaching a physical skill, he’s giving veterans back their confidence, their ability to overcome and adapt. He helps them find their flexibility, their resiliency, their ability to fight back and achieve self-sustainability again. He can’t tell the veteran what his new mission is, but he can guide and support him while he figures it out. And that knife that they thought they couldn’t finish becomes a token of what they’re capable of accomplishing.
Kyle’s plans, not surprisingly, are big. He currently puts veterans up in area hotels. He’d like to get a camper that he could use to haul a mobile forge to VA hospitals. He could use it for sleeping on those trips and to accommodate veterans when they’re at Resilience Forge. The VA is now sending patients to him. He sees the program expanding across the country, and eventually, Dana leaving her insurance agent job and working with him. He hints at perhaps another doctorate, and in 2018 he’ll be testing for his American Bladesmith Society master smith rating in Kansas. He uses a power hammer when he’s forging his own knives, but he teaches by hand. He’s hoping to stave off another tendinitis surgery, but he can feel his tendinitis getting worse. Like many veterans, his battle for coverage continues. Even so, his mission is crystal clear, and he is happier than he’s ever been.
To make a donation to Resilience Forge North Carolina, you can access gahaganknives.com through Paypal, or you can mail a check made out to Joy To The World Foundation to Kyle at the address below. The Joy To The World Foundation provides administrative services, such as tax preparation, to non-profits.
Kyle Gahagan, Ed.D Ph.D
Gahagan Knives
200 Preachers Bottom Drive
Moravian Falls, NC 28654
336-467-1244
[email protected]
www.gahaganknives.com
Facebook: Gahagan Arms
If piling-up issues of magazines seems like a waste to you… If you feel like you don’t have time to read a magazine… If you like the stories we offer in BLADE, but want a more economical option, then a digital subscription is the answer. An annual subscription to BLADE is $17.98, $4 off the print price.
If you could apply a motto to VMX Knives it would be: Let’s have some fun. At least that’s the impression you get after talking with co-owners James Robert Buckley of Maverick Customs and Kyle Vallotton of three-generation-strong Vallotton Custom Knives. Rob and Kyle became friends online. For BLADE Show 2017, Kyle—sporting a new do—invited Rob, whom he calls Buckley, to share space at the Vallotton table. But due to a confluence of issues, Kyle, who is known for his butterfly art knives, had no balisongs at the table this year. Rob, a machinist and welder before getting into knifemaking, asked Kyle if he’d look at a design he’d come up with for a balisong. Kyle liked it. The men agreed to make the knife together, Kyle bringing his expertise in the art-balisong industry to the newcomer and Rob offering to show Kyle what he knew about machining steel. It wasn’t long before a work flow was ironed out and the VMX-1 was brought from paper to reality, a baby born of blue mohawks, butterfly knives and buddies.
Rob Buckley grew up in Glasgow, Kentucky, about 45 minutes northeast of Bowling Green. While in high school and working at a family-owned cabinetry shop, he came to a realization: “I hated wood,” he said, laughing. But he took college-level courses in welding and machining. “It got me,” he said of metalwork. At 17 he entered the Army, wanting combat medic, but settling for infantry. He sustained injuries that would require surgery before continuing his training, so he accepted the proffered medical discharge. Returning home, he landed a machining job in Dickson, Tennessee, where his parents were living at the time. After those few months as a manual machinist and welder, he moved back to Glasgow to work as a certified welder. Six months later he took a position at a magazine printing plant, staying for 10 years. He left for a computer numeric controlled (CNC) machinist position, but he found operating the computer-programmed mills and lathes not as satisfying as hands-on metalworking. Three years ago he began making tools, then later knives, full time.
Kyle Valloton marks the third generation and fifth family member to be making knives under Vallotton Custom Knives. He began in the shop when he was 10 years old. He took some time off to test jobs away from the family business, such as telephone sales representative, but by the time he was 23, he knew he wanted to make knives for a living. He grew up in Umpqua, about an hour and a half south of Eugene. His grandfather Butch was an innovator in the tactical folder and automatic knifemaking world. The Vallottons hold 15 patentable developments with seven still-running royalty contracts. Vallotton innovations appear in numerous production knives, from Gerber to Spyderco.
Kyle’s dad, Rainy, made his mark in the high-end art-knife market, and Kyle’s specialty is the butterfly knife. He taps into both his grandfather’s exactitude in specifications and his father’s artistic flare. Kyle’s demeanor exudes good-natured enthusiasm and a sense of fun without being reckless. He contemplated attending BLADE Show 2017 sporting a blue mohawk, but wasn’t sure how it would go over. Finally, he decided to do it. “Let’s have some fun,” he said. “Everyone loved it.”
The balisong segment of the knife community is a microcosm of the knife industry itself. There are those who use the knives in the practice of Filipino-style martial arts; those who use the knives in a mesmerizing display of twirling and tricks, resplendent with the individual’s unique style; and those who collect the knives created as works of art. In addition, because many states have laws preventing the sale of balisongs—only trainers can be used by residents of those states. Kyle mentioned that he follows Knife Rights‘ work to overhaul outdated knife regulations in numerous states.
Rob jokes that he knows just enough about flipping balisongs to cut himself. In fact, VMX Knives will sell you its butterfly knife without an edge if you prefer. At any time, you are welcome to send it back if you decide you want to go with a live blade.
Rob got his tattoo artist, Zach Burcham of West Main St Tattoos, who designed the M logo for Maverick Customs—named after Rob’s son—to come up with a logo that incorporated a V for Vallotton with the M for Maverick, and the VMX Knives logo was born. It is representative of the gold-leafing in signs of yore in the style of David Smith, for example, but with a modern twist, which is exactly how this team approaches their design.
Right now, whichever of the two are ordering supplies in the course of their personal knifemaking businesses purchases whatever VMX needs. They split those expenses 50-50, watching the price of titanium as it fluctuates. At present, Kyle machines the profiles and handles then sends them to Rob, who likens what he receives to model car parts connected to their frames by plastic tabs. “From the sheet I surface everything flat, chamfer holes and shape the tops by hand,” he explained. He also applies any final finish, such as anodizing, and machines some internal parts. Currently, the blades go back to Kyle for hand-grinding, hollow on the belly and convex on the point. Soon unused equipment at the Vallottons’ will be heading Rob’s way so he can also do the grinding. Once all the components reach Rob’s shop, they’re ready for clean-up, assembly, packaging and shipping.
“They are the strongest folding knives,” Rob said of balisongs. “There’s no locking failure; the pin stops it from closing.” No matter how tight tolerances are, owners will often loosen up butterfly knives for better flipping. “So it’s like a chain-link fence,” Rob said. He and Kyle are striving for a knife that is as tight as a bushings-and-washers construction can be while still allowing for smooth flipping action. In the future, they hope to offer a bearings model, as well as a limited-run high-end model.
The balisong community is an entity all to itself within the knife industry. Both Rob and Kyle acknowledge the achievements of others who started where they are now, while simultaneously carving out their own space in the market. Bladerunners Systems, which goes by BRS, started out as “flippers making flippers for flippers,” Kyle explained.
“I met the BRS boys before they became BRS,” he noted. “They are a bunch of balisong enthusiasts and great guys doing a great job.” In Kyle’s opinion BRS excels at using overlay materials that look cool and grab the attention of the crowd. “They are a big production company making a decent knife.”
“They make a great product,” Rob agreed, adding that butterfly knives made by Bali-Song Inc. (1979-1983), which became Pacific Cutlery Corp. (1983-1987), which became Benchmade (1988 to present) are well made as well. In fact, he owns a Benchmade Balisong 53 Mangus and a Spyderco Spyderfly.
Kyle explained the partnership’s goals with the VMX-1. “What I have been doing and am now doing with VMX is simplifying and changing the norm,” he commented. “We are a small company making a very high-quality knife for the same price, and it’s custom-to-order.” Kyle wants to change the way flippers think about flippers. “I want to push boundaries and change things for the better. It’s what I wanted to do when I started making balis.”
It is obvious from their banter, that Rob and Kyle enjoy ribbing each other and genuinely respect what each brings to the project. The online acquaintances who developed a friendship and started a business together have also seemingly adopted each other’s families. Only Rob does not flip balisongs in front of his impressionable son, he admitted with a laugh.
Contact James Robert (Rob) Buckley, VMX Knives, 111 Corner Ave., Horse Cave, KY 42749; 270-576-4392. You can view the work of Rob on Facebook at Maverick Customs and Kyle’s work along with the work of other Vallottons at Vallotton Custom Knives.
If piling-up issues of magazines seems like a waste to you… If you feel like you don’t have time to read a magazine… If you like the stories we offer in BLADE, but want a more economical option, then a digital subscription is the answer. An annual subscription to BLADE is $17.98, $4 off the print price.
David McConnell is a stamping press repairman who hopes to convert to full-time bladesmithing soon. His first knife, was a cheap Wal-Mart special. Over the years he got frustrated with the lack of quality in such knives and began thinking about making his own. He knew he could make a better knife for himself, and he did. Only his buddy loved it so much that he bought it from him, David said, laughing.
The self-taught bladesmith has been making knives for 11 now, including tomahawks and axes. “I like to make hunting knives and more traditional stuff,” David noted.
He is an avid grouse and deer hunter, as well as and ice and fly fisherman. He lives in Kalkaska, Michigan, with his wife and 15-year-old son.
Contact David McConnell at 989-858-6344, [email protected] or on Facebook at North Woods Forge.
If piling-up issues of magazines seems like a waste to you… If you feel like you don’t have time to read a magazine… If you like the stories we offer in BLADE, but want a more economical option, then a digital subscription is the answer. An annual subscription to BLADE is $17.98, $4 off the print price.
