Pre-blade Show

It’s Thursday evening  and I’m settled into my hotel room at the Blade Show.  The drive was relatively painless and uneventful.  No drama when driving is a good thing!

My wife and I went down to the hotel bar to grab a pre-dinner beer.  Let me recommend Sweetwater IPA.  It’s excellent, unless you think Bud is the beer to die for.  The beer has an amber cloudiness and the hops give it a strong citrus/grapefruit aftertaste.  I know, sounds weird, but I’ve had a lot of IPAs and this one is excellent.

It’s doubly weird to sit in the bar and watch people pull knives out of pockets, parcels, bags, boxes and sometimes thin air.  They click them open and closed, pass them around and none of the staff seems to notice.  If you’re a hoplophobe, you’d feel like a long tail cat in a room full of demonic rockers.  But then you wouldn’t be reading this blog either.

Our next stop was Ted’s Montana Grill (as in Ted Turner in case you need to drop a name) for buffalo bison steaks.  They were so tender you could cut them with a fork.  Expensive?  Look, if you come to the Blade Show, bring a little extra money and enjoy a meal out.  The food was excellent and the service good.

We returned and I found out we could purchase our VIP passes at 9 AM tomorrow.  The VIP pass gets you in the show a couple hours sooner.  I can’t wait.  If they had a midnight showing I’d be camped out in line.

I’m looking for an artsy neck knife.  Of course I want to visit most of the knife companies, as well as the custom makers and still get in the lectures.  It’s clear I need to clone myself so I can be in two places at once, so the next few days will be busy.

More later.

Blade Show Count Down

I’m thinking Blade Show.



Of course you know when it will be, right? In the days before June 10 through 12, a migration of edge lovers will converge on Atlanta, Georgia. There are great knife shows all over the country, but excluding the industry-only SHOT Show, the Blade Show is the premiere knife show in America.


I’ll be blogging about my second trip to Capital of Cut, the Empire of Edge, the Satrap of Steel. I hope you follow along. I never know what will happen. I’m staying at the same hotel as the show so I may have a better chance of interacting with the attendees.


A schedule has been released of presentations, all the better to plot your course. Of course there are a few conflicts and hidden reefs. Everyone wants to hear Ed Fowler, so the conflict between his presentation at 11am and the 11:15 demo of renaissance swords and fencing in the courtyard remains unresolved.


I’m not a Buck collector so the conflict between Jens Anso’s “How to Texture Knife Handles” and the Buck Collectors is a non-issue.


Despite my interest in Loveless knives, anytime I can hear Ernest Emerson talk, I’m going with Ernie. No question on that. He’s an interesting character (I don’t think he would mind being called a character) and a good speaker. He preaches the gospel of self-reliance and self-protection. I’m on board for that.


World War II Randalls at 11:00 sounds interesting, but I just don’t know. I just can’t get my mind around collecting Randalls, much less paying what seems like stupid money and then waiting 5 plus years to get a custom factory knife. So Practical Knife Sharpening with Ed Fowler is going win that conflict.


Surprisingly, the knife cutting competition last year was not well attended, at least from my perspective. I expected a larger crowd. I’ll be there again, but I cannot help but wonder about the practicality of it. It’s a highly specialized sport that tightly regulates the knives used. This shifts the competition to the luck and skill of the knife wielder. Most of the time that’s a good thing, but… Is the Blade Cutting Contest like Indy Car racing?


Supporters argue that the lessons learned from making 500 miles of left turns (tells you where I fall in this argument) have value to modern tire, auto body and engine design. I know a little something about Indy tires and they have no relationship to the tires on your car.


So, do the lessons learned about steel, tempering, grind and grip needed to win the cutting contest have any relationship to the knife in your pocket? I just don’t know.