Saturday is the busy day at the Blade Show. Everyone who couldn’t get Friday free comes
today. The lines to purchase passes and will
call seem to stretch to the horizon.
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| Knife enthusiasts lining up |
I
start my day with a class on decorative file work by Kyle Daily. Kyle is teaching how to do his 5 five
favorite patterns. There is a lot of
interest.
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| Kyle's Bubbles |
Nice file work can kick your
crafted knife up a notch or two in price.
The class doesn’t go the way I expect:
I’m looking for more of an introduction to handling the file. Still, there was a lot to learn. Line layout of everything in detail is a must,
as is using sharp files and dumping them when they go dull. He uses a black epoxy
to make his file work pop and it does.
The other ‘students’ wrote down every name, file description, and website
Kyle gives them. Some are hoping the
magic is in the tools and not the user.
Others want to avoid reinventing the wheel. He gave out some scrap samples of steel for
those who what to practice. I have a
couple. You never know….
Then it’s out to the show floor. There are some amazing knives and others that
are works of art. Gravity knives are
hot. Reate Knives has perhaps the
coolest gravity knife on the market.
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| Open... |
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| Opening or closing |
Balisong
flipping knives remain hot for the younger set.
Companies have come into existence dedicated solely to flipping, offering
tune-up services and customization. It
is not uncommon to see someone just standing in a corner spinning and flipping
a high-tech balisong knife.
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| Adjusting the butterfly knife so it is goldilocks right for the owner |
The show is also the place to people watch. I’ll have more on that later. In the meantime, here are a few (snicker) images
for you to enjoy.
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| No Dalmatians were killed in the making of those pants. |
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| Attendance in every aisle |
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People come to sell the $10.00 knives too!
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| Pressing hot steel |
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| In case you need to behead a water buffalo |
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| I got a lesson in sharpening at Worksharp |
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Beats me?
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My two classic Italian switchblades from KC Italy
I ended my day with a bushcraft class called “Unique and Advanced Knife Techniques” by Joe Flowers. Here
too I was a little disappointed.
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| No Joe is not pictured in these three images |
The PowerPoint
presentation he planned to give got lost. The older one we saw was buggy and the
video images distant and poor quality.
Joe is machete-centric, so smaller knives were a lesser part of his presentation. My limited experience is not too many people carry
machetes in the woods. Perhaps we
should.
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| The real Joe Flowers |
Joe is an entertaining speaker
and arrives carrying at least 30 large knives and machetes. Perhaps the most important part of the
presentation might be to work with safety stops and position the cutting as
well as your body so you will not cut yourself if the blade travels farther
than you expect. It is a lesson I learned
cutting up tires at GY tire. Perhaps that’s
the most important part of his talk.
One more day to go and then I’ll be forced back to the
normal world.
My
Apologies. It seems
the software is channeling e.e. cummings
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