William F "Bill" Moran

Bill Moran is recognized as the founder of the modern American Bladesmith movement and is credited with re-introducing the ancient process of forging Damascus (pattern welded) steel.  Moran's knives are some of the most valuable and sought after modern handmade knives.  I recently began re-photographing a number of the knives in my personal collection, among them these two Moran pieces.  The first is a rare double edge push dagger, a "Lady Margaret" named after Bill's wife and the other is a Green River style knife, one of Bill's 1997 AKI knives.

Rick Genovese Pirate Girls Engraved by Jon Robyn

Rick Genovese was/is a well known knife maker that fell off the radar for a time due to personal issues.  He re-emerged in the last couple of years and is again making a name for himself. Rick builds a knife with fit and finish second to none, his work is on a par with Busfield, Osborne, Kious and Hoel.  This little beauty by Rick has been engraved by Jon Robyn.  Enjoy.

 

Salvatore Puddu Dagger engraved by Creative Arts

I've written about the Italian knifemakers before.  Here is a piece that arrived today.

Vargas Girls by Matt Lerch and Brian Hochstrat

This knife is a project that has been in the works for over a year and in my mind for several years.  I knew I wanted a knife with Vargas Girl engraved images.  The first step was deciding which Vargas Girl images to use, they are below;

The next step was finding the right engraver for the project. I approached Brian Hochstrat.  Brian has done several other pieces for me.  He was excited by the idea so I knew I had the right engraver.  Finding the right knife to provide a canvas for the images was quite a challenge.  Brian and I discussed several knifemakers.  Matt Lerch's name came up.  Matt is a good friend of mine.  Brian had long wanted to work on one of Matt's knives.  I contacted Matt and he liked the project idea also.  We discussed the appropriate knife, Matt's Paia Dagger was it.  It was great fun working with Matt and Brian to make everything work together and I am more than pleased with the result which is shown below in this professional photograph by Buddy Thomason.

Here are some comments from Brian about the engraving; 
All the colors are inlayed metals. The yellow is obviously yellow gold, but the rest of the colors are not as self explanatory. the gray fluff on hat girls dress is palladium, the rest of the colors are all gold alloys, pink and green are standard alloy colors, but the skin tone gold is a custom alloy that I came up with for that specific use. Also the girls hair is a japanese alloy that I mixed called shakudo, which is a low karat mix of copper and gold, which creates a patina that is richer than what standard copper will produce. The scroll work is art nouveau, aka liberty scroll. The girls as you know are reproductions of Alberto Vargas, but are adapted to better fit the area provided on the knife. If you compare the engraving to the original artwork you can see the elongation of the girls in the engraving, which ads to their feminine quality and makes better use of the space the knife had to offer.

Here are pictures that I took;

Blade Show Knives

I will be exhibiting at the Blade Show June 8 -10th in Atlanta.  I will be at table 9F.  I will be bringing a number of knives that are not posted on my website, if your interested, see some of them here on Knifeology.com's Facebook Page.

Scrimshaw by Garbo

I have always been fascinated by scrimshaw work but only admired it from a distance, until a year or so ago, I decided to jump in.  There are several scrimshaw artists that do work on knives but the one who's work has always fascinated me the most is Gary "Garbo" Williams.  I have had him do three pieces for me to date.  Here are pictures of the work;

The first set is the Deer Hunter which is on a S R Johnson knife and the engraving is by Ray Cover Jr.

This set is titled the "Buffalo Hunter" which is on a Don Hanson knife.

The last set, the Gambler and the Dance Hall Gal is my favorite so far.  The knife is by Master Smith Ron Newton.

Engraving, some random pictures

I haven't posted for awhile so here are some pictures of some engraving.  I like many types of knives however, those with engraving tend to be among my favorites.  Enjoy!