Knifemaking: befriending what tries to hurt you, process and mistakes,and Brigid Marsal

I build the road and the road builds me"

African Proverb

I think about this saying often.  Sometimes you work and it's hard to see progress until you look back and see how much road you've built.  Maybe you think about giving up until you look back and realize the only way to go is forward.  Parts of the road may be shoddy or weak or bumpy but it came from you and that is a beautiful thing.  It's a process and sometimes parts of the process are bumpy and shoddy.  I've found the bumpy parts are the most sacred because that's where the deepest lessons are.  It's important to not skip or ignore the bumpy parts and to be with them as fully as you are able.  This is sometimes difficult or even painful but it is often times the only way to move forward.

I started building a forge to harden my knives.  Her name is Brigid Marsal.  In Celtic folklore, Brigid is the goddess of fire and fertitlity among many other things.  Marsal is a make of pizza ovens.

This is not my first attempt at making a forge.  Brigid 1.0 was a woodstove at the warehouse that I fueled with charcoal and bellowed with a shop vac on reverse.  It was loads of fun but never quite did the job.

Funny story.  This summer I was on a pretty hellacious job with Fred and Mr. Al in a mall in Kensington, Maryland.  The mall was set to be demolished and we were there to extract some safe deposit boxes, some dental equipment, and a gigantic Marsal double stack pizza oven.  One of these stacks alone weighed about two thousand pounds and they were covered in a brick facade.  There really wasn't a lot of room to work because the kitchen was built around the ovens.  So here are Fred, Mr. Al and I trying to wrestle this monstrosity onto our crank lift which is really only rated for maybe eight hundred pounds.  The lift breaks, the monster of an oven comes crashing down and I had to dive onto the counter to avoid being crushed.

We all collected ourselves and found that there wasn't any way to move these ovens without help.  It took another trip up there to get the ovens and thankfully I was not invited to go.  The ovens came back, were rebuilt, and sold.  There were a few of the heat stones left over.  Fred gifted two of the unbroken stones to me to build a forge.  Turning something that nearly kills you into something that works for you- I like this idea.

Here are the devil stones:

According to Fred they are liquid poured and can handle temperatures of up to "infinity degrees."

They are also ridiculously difficult to cut.  They are dense and stubborn and have a tendency to crack if you don't go slowly and patiently.  The satisfying part is to see how far you've come.  

What starts as this:

Becomes slowly cut away into this:

And you have to do it one pass at a time, evenly.

The idea with this particular design is to create a vortex of heat to bring the knives evenly up to critical temperature- about 1500 degrees.  To do this I cut the stone into square- or as close to squares as I could get them.

many hours later...

I put a two inch hole into three of them.  There is no quick way with stone.

On one of the pieces I added a half inch hole in the side for the blow torch.

I lined the stones up to give it a go....

Pretty, but not quite vortexing the way I would like...

So the forge doesn't work the way I had planned.  What I found was that the stones, which hold heat very well, are not so good at reflecting the heat, which is what I need.  There is still another forge to build but I am going to use the Marsal stones somehow- to remind them that I am not so easily crushed...reminders of bumps in the road you build and sacred lessons along the way.

Knifemaking: fear, flaws, and the Precedent

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” 

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Ah fear.  What I've learned about fear is that, contrary to what Mr. Herbert says, fear makes one human.  Fear means you are feeling the proper spectrum of emotions.  Fear helps you to think through things rather than blindly charging into them.  Fear keeps you alive.

The real mind-killer is resistance to fear.  Not doing what you know is right because you are afraid.  In my life this resistance is what keeps me feeling stuck, keeps me going in circles, and keeps me from loving at my full capacity.  It is this resistance that leads to patterns of negative thought, that fear is wrong, and that at the bottom of it you are somehow wrong or flawed.

The idea of being flawed is something that operates on a deep level.  A flaw by definition is something that is marked as a fault or imperfection.  In my own life I tend to find the flaws in things.  Maybe I am am looking for validation of my own flaws.  Lately I have been pausing with this and I find that I can reframe it into something else.  As long as I can operate from the level of my heart I find that I am not flawed, that what I perceive to be flaws are beautiful little signatures of being human, of lessons I am still learning, of ways to move forward.

When one gets to the bottom of what they find their flaws to be and sees the beauty in them this provides a springboard to move forward.  It doesn't mean that the fear is gone.  There is fear of making mistakes, fear of failure, fear of letting people down, fear of letting yourself down.  This is all ok.  I breathe all of that in and step forward.  This sets a Precedent and is the inspiration for this blade.

Part of moving forward was to order a bar of O1 Tool steel.  I found this bar in itself was rather exquisite.  As far as steel goes he is soft and forgiving to work with.  He can be hardened up to be very strong and tempered to be flexible.  It's not a stainless steel.  He can rust so care and love are a requisite.  

I wanted to make a knife that I felt would cut through the resistance of fear.  I found this to be a microcosm of my being at the moment and my intention was to remove from the bar everything that was not me.  It came out looking like this:

I found some plans for a filing setup to help guide me in making a clean grind.  It is a slow process but also a meditation.  Slowly removing that which doesn't need to be there and finding the beauty in that which is slowly revealed.  Often I find myself counting the strokes of the file....

This where the blade is planed level by drawing a file across.  Here is where I find out how even my grind is.  What I've learned is that if I hurry through filing on the jig then I spend that much more time draw filing the blade level.  Best to take that extra time counting file strokes on the jig and spend less time draw filing.

After that comes sanding to polish up the blade before heat treat.  I've found that I don't mind a rougher finish.  I like seeing rogue file blemishes and the grind on the steel.  

So here is the Precedent, ready for heat treat (which is a lesson I'm still learning....)

The lesson of the Precedent is to find courage in your fear and beauty in your own human condition.

Knifemaking: the supernatural, matters of faith, and the Spellcaster

That is supernatural, whatever it be, that is either not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect, in nature, from without the chain. [Horace Bushnell, "Nature and the Supernatural," 1858]

Of late there have been lots of areas in my life that require a bit of faith.  I've spent a good amount of time looking into matters of faith and where my own faith lies.  What I've found is that even in the simplest things there is faith.  Getting in your car is an act of faith...because honestly every time you do you are stepping into a motorized death machine.  Our cars operate on thousands of tiny explosions, fueled by a fluid of combustible vapors that even static cling can ignite.  Then there are the people operating these machine- people facing hundreds of distractions from screaming children to phone calls to just plumb not paying attention.  What is it that allows one to arrive at their destination unscathed?  A well regulated auto industry?  The due diligence of traffic enforcement?  Our expert driving skills?  A combination of all three?  Yes.  But maybe there is something outside of the normal chain of cause and effect that could be at play.  Maybe arriving at your destination could be considered a blessing or a miracle, be it the grocery store, a wedding, a funeral, a job you love, a job you hate, or anyplace.  Maybe there should be a bit more celebration.  Maybe what we perceive as mundane is actually quite profound.  Maybe I am over-thinking all of this....

It is with this overactive frame of mind that I approached the Spellcaster.  She is made from a piece of carbon steel that came from a bedframe, which I think is a beautiful story.  Essentially she comes from the dream realm, something supernatural in it's own right.

At work there are people of many different ethnicities and cultures- Sikhs, Sicillians, Greeks, Ghanaians, the whole spectrum.  The other month at work I was running an auction pickup at a job site and several customers with a large order showed up at 4:30p- precisely the time i was scheduled to leave.  These gentleman were devout Muslims- shrewd businessmen but very sweet people.  I was a bit cranky at having to stay late on a Friday.  That crankiness was exacerbated when at 5p two of the three gentleman slipped off to pray which substantially slowed the loading of their many wares.  I had to pause and after that pause I became aware of my crankiness and realized it might be because I felt there might be a lack of faith and devotion in my own life.  I was witness to a tremendous act of faith and devotion, even though they had slipped off to pray in a place unseen.  

The Spellcaster is also a prayer and an act of faith, it's namesake drawing inspiration from entities and beings that operate far outside of the normal chain of cause and effect.  

This is pre-heat treat, no rivet holes, raw stages.

The lesson of the Spellcaster is to allow oneself to witness and experience acts of faith, not in spite of but within different religions or creeds.  This sharpens my own faith.

    

Snow days and the importance of letting yourself be

I've always enjoyed a good snow day.  I like the idea of everything slowing down. I like how quiet it gets and how the familiar gets cloaked in white, allowing one to see it in a totally different perspective.  Most of all I like the stillness of it all.  Living in the fan you can always tell who decided they weren't going to drive or go to work by the layers of snow on all the cars.  I find this to be very calming.  

One of my favorite things to do is to go drive places in the snow.  Just to see everything in it's moment of winter culmination.  With all this snow we've had I try to make it to the woods.  It's quite stunning:

I think what I love most about all of this is that everything just is.  The trees don't complain, the river doesn't get anxious, the trail isn't bothered by the snow.  They're all just in their moment.

This is the point where I become quiet.  And I don't really notice it.  So often there is the tendency to feel like there isn't enough time or enough isn't being done and I lose my moments being consumed by those things.  Doing.  Always doing but not necessarily accomplishing.  I want for more of the quiet of being and It seems so elusive at times.  Then there are times when it is right there, familiar and loved, like a worn book you've read dozens of times.

Then there is the state of becoming aware of these moments of being and trying to hold onto it rather than just let it be.  In trying to hold on to these these things I find this is where I suffer- probably where many people suffer.  I aspire to be more like the trees- bending in the breeze, bathing in the rain, and being patient under a blanket of snow.  Continually growing and present with all of the elements in their world all while being deeply rooted.

There were deer out today.  I'm sure they are out everyday but they are especially conspicuous in the snow.  I really wanted a picture, because seeing deer running through the snow doesn't happen in my world as often as I'd like.  They are fast.   I walked some more.  After awhile there was a deep moment of stillness and this happened:

Ethel and Geraldine.  And then they were gone.  Apparently Thursdays is bingo day at Pony Pasture...

Moments and being and snow days.  Doing is important but if it's a full time job then you miss all the nuanced bits of your world and life becomes extremely uncomfortable.  It's a beautiful thing to slow down and surrender to those moments.

how to make a fire part II: splitting logs and finding your intention

Intention is defined as the act of mentally steeling yourself to get something done.  In researching intention, there were several instances where it was synonymous with a goal or an aim.  This is not true.  A goal is something external to be gained or achieved.  Intention is internal: it is the seed from which goals, the realization of goals and many other wonderful things may come.

So it follows with preparing your fuel.  You've gathered your fuel and some pieces will be quite large and will need to be split.  Split wood burns hotter- a log will smolder.  

Splitting wood is alot like life and at the bottom of it all is intent, follow through, and faith.  Form can be learnt, an axe can be honed, strength can be gained but if your core focus is not on fueling your fire then you will find yourself cold and in the dark.

Place your intention.  A locksmith's intention may manifest itself in the belief that the lock wants to open.  A pickpocket's intention may manifest itself in the belief that the purse wants to be lifted.  My intention manifests itself in the belief that the log wants to split.  Even if it takes ten strokes of the axe.  If it doesn't split the first time you go again.  Remember to guide the axe down and add your strength to it's weight.  If it doesn't split this time you go again.  Follow through.  How are your shoulders?  That is intention speaking to you, sometimes quite loudly....

Rest when you are tired, drink when you are thirsty.  And remember your intention.  The log wants to split and you are there to help it.

Splitting is a lot like life.  You set up your logs, place your intention, work through fear and frustration and maybe a bit of anxiety, find your faith and flow, and you watch the woodpile grow.

Always remember your intention.  

Deep love to Mike and Jen Acevedo for letting me explore this and focus my intention, and allowing me to split wood in the dark and rain. And for feeding me afterwards.

  

how to make a fire part I: proper fuel and preparation

fire is life.  it can provide us with the means for many things we need in life- light, heat, a means to cook our food, and illumination in the darkness to recognize friend or foe.  sometimes our fire goes out.  sometimes we get so caught up in the light, the beauty and the heat that it turns to ash and we find ourselves sitting in the darkness.  it is much easier to take some time and be mindful of our fires than to have to struggle in the dark and cold to find tinder, kindling, and fuel and to start over.

when you head into camp, or a mountain hall, or even someone's backyard and you sit in front of the hearth, the fireplace, the brazier, or the woodstove, it's easy to take for granted all the care and love that has gone into bringing the fire to a roar or allowing the coals to quietly burn hot.  you don't see the hewing of timber, the sweat from splitting, or the patience and knowledge that went into building it and the restraint and discipline to ration the fuel when fuel may be in short supply.  it's easy to bask in front of someone else's fire.

these are meditations on how to care for your own fire, how you nurtured it from nothing but a spark to heat and vitality.  this is how to keep it burning hot and what to do when it may go out.  just as a deed to piece of property represents many layers of bureaucracy, time, and money, a hot fire represents time, care, and love.  it all starts with preparation and intention.

1.) prepare in daylight.
things are familiar in the daylight.  you can see clearly.  always do your preparation when you can see clearly.  there will come times when this is not possible but when it is within your control always prepare under the light of the sun.

2.) gather much more fuel than you may deem necessary
this is based on the simple fact is that it is good to be prepared.

3.) gather your fuel from a large area.
don't waste your time with twigs and sticks when by venturing a bit further out you can find a more plentiful supply of large pieces of fuel.  don't limit yourself.  there will always be storms and winds that will blow down large limbs- nature provides for us.  in the mean time canvas a large area and you will be glad that you did.  don't exhaust the supply in an area close to you- you may need it later

4.) be mindful of what your fuel is.
it may be easier to gather the cord of poplar that is near your camp, but it will be cold tonight and poplar doesn't burn as hot as the dried oak that may be a bit further out in the woods.  take the time to seek out that oak, and enjoy the beauty of things around you as you do it.  notice the sweat on your brow and the smell of bark on your hands.  take comfort in the fact that though you may be tired now from your gathering you will be warm and comfortable in the evening.

so all these things might be easy to intellectualize and quite a different matter to put into practice.  often i find myself not taking these steps and finding my fire close to going out.  sometimes it does go out and i've had to brave cold nights in the dark, all things that could have been prevented.  i find myself often struggling with intention, where to place my focus, and where my own love is.  oftentimes these days i find myself worrying more about the coming cold night than how best to prepare for it.  i wrote these things out to remind myself that the day does come again and when it does, the time should be taken to do these things.  this is ultimately where the love is.

fuel your own fire.  you will be warmer for it.

working with steel, staying sharp, and other pointy things...part 1

a couple of months ago i decided i was going to make knives.  i just really like knives.  after buying and carrying all different kinds and selling quite a few of them (because in retrospect, buying $200 knives isn't the best fiscal idea...), making knives feels like the thing to do.  

i found i was reading a lot of knife magazines and online blade forums, going to every knife retailer in central virginia, sharpening all my friends' knives, and asking strangers with visible pocket clips what kind of knife they were carrying (even in crowded bars, and a police officer once...he had a benchmade presidio).  i just really like knives.  not in a nutty self defense way or 'it's my right' way.  some people are just really into breakfast cereals.  or electric football.  these sorts of things make the world go round.

working with metal has been extremely liberating.  the finished blade came from a process of learning, studying, observing, asking a lot of questions, making mistakes and just going for it.  the process is important.  there are parts that are tedious and difficult and frustrating but every part of it is beautiful and significant- even when i screwed up, which happened repeatedly.  it's important to be present and mindful in all those steps- something might be missed or neglected or an important lesson might not be learned.  this process reminds me to do those things in life as well.

i used the bare minimum of tools.  there is a lot of expensive equipment out there that i would love to have and i did use an angle grinder and a gigantic drill for some things.  for now i use these simple few.  it feels good to work with these simple things:

two files, calipers for measuring and proper eye and lung protection.  

i spent a good amount of time looking for steel and i found this sheet and saw a knife in it.

 nope, nobody's going to miss that...

i want all my knives to have names.  this one is called the Archer.  something that an Archer might carry- a light, last ditch tool for someone who keeps it light and deadly efficient.  i shaped it to something i thought would pair aesthetically with a bow.

the handle curve imitates a bow...

hit this thing with the angle grinder...

after a lot of filing....smooth out the edges...

and even more filing.  it feels good to file and find the beauty hidden beneath.  nothing to think about but filing...

 jimping to give your thumb some grip

i found with metal you have to be slow and steady.  when you drill rivet holes you have to go slow because if not the metal will heat up and possibly be damaged.  so go slowly, cool the drill bit and add some oil or wd-40 to ease the bit as it cuts the steel....

so heat treat.  this hardens the blade.  the idea from what i've learned is that when heated up to a critical state the molecules in the steel shift in a way that makes the steel very hard- after a good heat treat a file won't be able to do anything to the blade.  i needed a forge, so i used a special fire pit and a shop vac put on reverse to get the fire hot enough..

...during which time i lost a lot of arm hair and melted a bit of the shop vac...

 the molecules need to be frozen this way which is why it needs to cool quickly...but not too quickly.  water could crack this particular steel so i used oil.  when you put a 1500 degree piece of metal into oil too quickly it will ignite...

much love to the beautiful person who trusted me not to set her backyard on fire.  trust is important...

 reminds me of salisbury steak... 

the blade is very hard at this point but extremely brittle.  so they get tempered to be flexible.  we could all use a bit of tempering now and again i think...

 this toaster over won't be seeing actual toast anymore....

making the handle- my favorite part.  i found some hollow stock at a hobby store and cut them to size to rivet...

...then i consulted with my stock of smelly things.  epoxy, you'll do quite nicely...

 then i attached my handle pieces.  tolerances were on point- well done me!  i like oak a lot.  it is strong and wise.  don't fall asleep under an oak tree..

it was like a stinky metal sandwich...

into the vise we go...why haven't i mounted that thing to the table yet?

time to rough it into shape....

...with this thing....

 so after a tickle on the belt sander it looks like this...

 sanding.  man i love sanding.  starts with 80 grit and ends with 1500 grit.  so subtle you don't even know it's done till you're already finished...

well hello, sunshine!

 also awesome- staining.  seeing the beauty that's already there and just bringing it out...

after a lot of work, patience and love here is the Archer.  there will be many more knives to come...