Day 2 blade 2016

The calendar retired people use works remarkably well at the Blade Show.  There is only yesterday, today and tomorrow.  By the end of the second day you’ve seen just about everything and plunked down your hard earned cash, at least I hope you have.  There will be no bargains on Sunday, Day 3.

Esnyx paid $500 to have an empty table for half the show.

By noon Saturday Busse was down to 2 knives and 1 tomahawk.  Microtech has only the knives nobody wants and many of the custom knife makers have sold all their knives. 

 Some manufacturers don’t sell at this show.  Neither Spyderco nor CRKT sell, partially to prevent their retailers from taking it on the chin, partially to reduce the shipping problems.  There are some nice discounts from vendors.  It’s also a lot to pack, ship and return to the main warehouse.  Benchmade does it, but then they only sell to brick and mortar stores.

Busse and empty counter by noon on day 2

Shipping has its own risk.  I overheard Emerson Knives ‘lost’ all their custom knives they auction off.  They just disappeared in transit.  Of course it doesn’t take much to look at the label and read Emerson Knives Co. and Blade Show and realize there’s a lot of easy-to-convert loot in that box.

James Knife, a relatively new company with very modern and clean lines, reported that two of their knives disappeared during shipping.

At some point, after the 150^th table, you realize that for most knife blades (let’s exclude the art and fantasy knives) form and function are bound into a tight circle.  There can only be so many variations of a blade.  You’ll soon find yourself only noticing the handles.  Here the range of materials, finish, shape and combinations give the artist more latitude.  Don’t believe me?  Entire displays are devoted to just dyed wood.  But there is a cure for this.  Visit Mickey Yurco’s table.  He has a table of innovative blades and impact tools that is actually joyful to look at.  He’s always one of my favorite stops.

Sandy Brady, the scrimshaw artist, had her work on display.  She had several CRKT turtles (now discontinued) in which she replaced the original plastic shell with scrimshaw ivory.  They are just wonderful.  She’s also very active in the effort to prevent the ivory ban.  It’s not that she hates elephants, it just very little of illegally poached ivory finds its way to our country.  Most ends up in China and other Far East countries.  Banning ivory from animals that died between 1980 and 40000BC has no impact on today’s conservation efforts.

Micky always has a fun table!

Sandy's wonderful artwork

I bought a few things as did my wife.  I’ll have pictures later. There is an old parable about packing.  It says lay all your clothes and money out on the bed before packing for vacation.  Leave half the clothes and double the money.  It is so true at the Blade Show.  While there are few bargains, they aren’t cheap.  I purchased a handmade auto.  The handle is specially laid-up carbon fiber.  The maker uses a double strength steel coil spring for positive opening.  All the load bearing points are stainless steel imbedded in the carbon fiber.  The opening button is oversized and requires a spring loaded safety to be retracted before it functions.  Each knife is numbered with its own unique serial number.  Most of these knives are made for two government contracts, the FBI being one.  I suspect the eight he had to sell were contract overruns and he offered a great deal.  Still they were not cheap!

The aisles were filled with people, and it seemed attendance was up.  This year the new products were labeled ‘no photos.’  The new product area is where companies display some of their newest products which they hope will be award-winning world beaters.  I guess Blade got tired of having bloggers releasing images before they could.

I went to hear Murray Carter talk about sharpening knives.  He’s an interesting person.  He claims to have sharpened 125,000 knives all by hand.  He uses two water stones for basic sharpening, a course and a fine. 

Murray and his elaborate sharpening system, a bucket, board, towel and a stone with two grits

With these two stones using a seven step method he gets razor sharp knives.  He believes that all knife blades should be thinned and the only acceptable grind is a flat grind.  Grind angle?  Don’t make him laugh.  The best angle is the angle that works the best for your purpose.  Since it only takes him a few minutes to resharpen, he’ll try one angle then another and see which works best.  Sort of suggests having a pocket full of knives with different purposes written on each.  He’s very pragmatic about sharpening, but he has the reputation for it.

I stopped at ZT.  They make amazing factory knives.  I picked up one which has both a flipper and a thumb stud.  The flipper worked fine, but using the stud I couldn’t get the blade to move.  Now, I don’t know why the thumb stud is present, as it doesn’t work.  Maybe, at least in my imagination, there is a legal reason.  “Yes, your Honor/Officer/Boss, it has a flipper that lets you open it lightning fast, but it also has a thumb stud so this knife cannot be an auto/dangerous ordinance/ballistic/forbidden by the Geneva code of ‘civilized’ warfare.”

ZTs!

So I asked one of the sales reps about why it doesn’t open with the stud.  He seized the knife out of my hand, muttered some words indicating I didn’t know if my ears were bored or punched and dug his thumb deep into the space between the stub and frame.  With a mighty effort that turned the knuckle of his thumb white and caused me to move out of the way of the debris that would surely result from his exploding joint, he couldn’t could get the knife to pop open either.  And with finger speed and dexterity that would only be seen with the top tier of prestidigitators, he managed to roll his thumb over onto the flipper and pop the blade open.  He muttered a few words about grit and discovered something else somewhere else that needed his immediate attention.

The knives at the Blade Show are amazing, but it’s the interpersonal interactions that are so much fun!

Here’s a few photos!

Blade show 2016

Big time Buck collector!

Knives from Painted Horse

Blade Show 2016 Day One

The first day of the Blade Show came off without a hitch, at least from my perspective.  By the end of the day I got a lead on a new article for Knife Magazine, and found out my Benchmade article will be published in the July issue, so that’s all good.

I purchased a tactical tomahawk from the Australian company Hardcore.  Since the story from 9/11 of the window washer who battered his way through a plaster wall to save himself, I’ve been wondering what I would do.  This is even more significant because of work.  In the almost five years I’ve been there, they have never had a fire drill and when I asked about where my department meets for a head count following a disaster, nobody seemed to know.  I think self rescue should be my middle name.

We lined up about 10 o’clock for the opening at noon.  Two guys (women have more sense) lined up at midnight the previous night to be the first in.  Men 3 and 4, it was reported, lined up at 2am.

What was the rush?  There are many answers.  Microtech has some very good deals on autos you could cash in on if you got a couple thousand set aside.  Same with Busse.  They have a huge following.   There are quite a few custom knife dealers with high end prices and only a few knives to sell.

I could not get to see any Microtech knives, the line to buy was too thick.

Many of these knives will re-emerge on the resale market in a few days.  The prices will be higher and many will disappear quickly.  It’s hard to believe the following some knife companies have.

At noon they started letting us in the main door.  You had to have either a VIP pass or pay an additional $20 to get in early.  We had passes.

Shadow Tech has released their first folder.  Right now they are all made by hand and have an interesting construction.  John wanted special components togive it more strength and improve on its performance and he’s got a pretty nice knife.  I expect a few modifications over time; nothing is made perfect the first time.  His karambits are very interesting.  The large handle maybe bigger than many other manufacturers, but it feels solid and locks open when you hold it.  John and Dave have designed several interesting ways of snapping them open during the draw.

The new Shadow Tech folders

I was disappointed by CRKT last year.  What a difference one year has made.  They have some very exciting new knives which should be reaching the market soon.  CRKT always over-engineers their knives and I didn’t see any change in that.  This could be the year you should buy a CRKT.

I stopped off at a new company called James.  They have two ‘gentleman’ knives they are offering.  The lines are very modern and the knives are very nice.  The name reflects their belief that this is the style knife Ian Fleming’s Bond (not the movie ones) would carry in the casinos at Monte Carlo.  They are design engineers and not machinists, so it’s been an interesting adventure for the two of them.

James Folders

We stopped long enough to see one knife from Popl Custom.  It was quite lovely and a table auction starts at $5000.  That’s dollars, in case you were confused.  I didn’t even touch it to get a better picture.

It is a crappy picture, but I was afraid I touch it and the handle would fall off, I'm not buying that thing!

No Blade Show is complete without demos and classes.  I sat in on one by Abe Elias on machetes as bush knives.  While I’m not ready to rush out and buy one (I already have one in the basement) it’s amazing what you can do with one.  Abe talked about proper cutting, safety and showed techniques to accomplish many of the basic cutting techniques.  It was well worth the hour.

I also paused long enough to watch a short demo of knife grinding with a Burr King grinder.  It was like the 4^th of July as it shot sparks everywhere.  The really impressive thing is how smoothly the demonstrator moved the knife grinding the edge.

More Blade tomorrow.