Making Knives, the History of the Bowie Knife, and the Rambo Knives

now let me tell you about knife making making knives for fun is a lot of fun I mean you know it's it's like a kid playing in mud uh you you may get really dirty but boy there's just a a world of joy in it okay that's making knives for fun make lives for a living is hard dirty [Music] work I've been a fan of the buo knife since I was a kid uh Washington Arkansas is a home of the buo knife the Heyday of knife making in America occurred in the frontier period when the Mississippi River was the western part of the United States in places like this this hinder lighter Grog Shop people would gather and they would transact all sorts of business especially with uh cards and uh gambling and alcohol and with buoy knives Arkansas early on was perhaps uh associated with these self-defense knives more than anyone in the country in fact these knives as early as 1834 were sometimes called Arkansas knives which was then expanded sometimes to Arkansas toothpicks the Arkansas toothpick uh was the the Riverboat Men And They carried them up and down and picked their teeth with the Arkansas toothpick but the Gentry carried these uh elegant knives on their hip under their waist coat and there is one case in Kentucky where the tailor did had one sleeve shorter than the other and this fellow killed him with buoy knife and they went to court and he was justified it was universally accepted that when you traveled particularly in the western part of the United States up and down the Mississippi River Valley area you were armed there were many either real or perceived dangers in this area the Advent of the steamboat added a lot of Mobility to these Travelers and if all these people were armed then the local communities felt a little perhaps uh intimidated what happened was that the people here in these communities began to arm themselves there's cases when the people required if you went to the theater they would collect you buiz when they let you in the theater you know they were always all the genti people had bo enough if you were a lawyer or a merchant you'd want a nice looking weapon perhaps even with a precious metal silver or something like that and James Black of Washington Arkansas was one of the earliest makers who responded to this Market need thanks to several writings we know of James Black we know that he was a Smith in Old Washington Arkansas which was a jumping off place for Texas he was actually a silver pler trained as a silver pler but he became a black Smith and then uh he started making knives there was a question over the years as to whether James Black really made these knives but uh there's one particular knife that came down through Thomas hubard a judge in Hempstead County to his stepson Augustus Garland and then down through the carrian family Steve carrian uh and then ultimately to uh this Museum a direct line which proves the the kind of knife that James Black made and affirms all the stories about black that had gone on over the years it is almost Beyond even debate that he made a knife for Jim Buie there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that that black made a knife for one of the buo brothers yes many people think that a buoy knife is of one pattern and actually most any large knife was called a buoy knife back during the 1830s and James Black apparently favored a guardless coffin handle knife the outline looks like a basic kitchen knife any kind of knife but then what he did to make it uh nicer for the gentleman you might say is to um wrap uh the end of it in silver to add a little silver here and there plating uh including uh this little plating on what they call the rasso area you can see that James buy traveled to New York three times 1826 28 32 for sure and if he had a knife he could have them made by the the Eastern makers and the next thing you know they have jumped the o ocean and now you have coffin handle knives made in in Europe once these design ideas got to Sheffield England they were translated into many more buoy knives or Arkansas toothpicks than were ever made in the United States the English would provide all sorts of interesting embellishments whether it was a cross guard with eagles wings representing the eagle rampant uh of uh the United States or uh patriotic slogans that were etched into the blades of uh some of their knives um or other elements which would appeal to the American Market uh trying to sell as many Sheffield knives back to the United States the point of origin in recent years there has been something of a Revival of uh of knife making and you might say a a sort of second golden age of knife making in America Arkansas of course is in the midst of that Revival with the blades smithing school in Washington Arkansas saw with u the Custom Knife maker Jimmy ly this is the buoy design uh this is Jimmy ly's own version he was never trying to copy the original buoy uh but this is a crown stag buo uh it was made in 1976 and of course he love buoys because it went back to history I first met Jimmy ly in the mid 60s uh Jimmy builded himself as the Arkansas bladesmith and originally Jimmy was a bladesmith and he forged his blades later on he made his knives mostly by stock removal he doodle and draw all the time he could he could draw pictures and especially of knives and guns watching television he did that all of his life always carried a pad wherever we went and we had been planning for two years to go try not make him fulltime and uh he said if that's what you'd like help me do we'll try it and it was I I pushed him to help let's go in This Together there was an first article that was written about us was 1970 in the Arkansas Gazette a full page show in Jim Jimmy at Old Washington in the old um blacksmith shop making knives and showing a display on Monday morning they did us a favor he was fired and they took his truck and he comes home and says we are now full-time knif makers J jmy as far as I can remember at this exact time was the first full-time knif maker in Arkansas for sure we had a banker in Marlton Arkansas that loaned us $1,000 on a 66 chevet car that had 100,000 miles on it to go in the knife business now you talk about a leap of faith most knife makers back in those days weren't fulltime you know what I mean they did it as a sort of a hobby the gun digest um of guns jont T Amber was a friend of Jimmy's through the gun industry and they and this group contacted us and said they wanted to uh put an additional story in there on custom knives would we be interested and of course we were and they held the book up three months for us to build the few knives that went in this book and um in the book is some of our our work along with bo randle's uh work and sever several other Uh custom makers and here is our buo and here's our Arkansas toothpick that article was an important turning point and it had all these knife makers it it had signe in Alaska had Jimmy ly had kite Fisher uh Bill Moran of course this book put us on the worldwide map and we we did in 10 months in business because of this book um we thought would take four years this is the patented locking uh folding Hunter and of course this one has scrimshaw on it by James Stewart there were two sides deds knife that means you know that's 600 things you've got to come up with and well I mean think but there so many ways you can make a deer run you know turkeyy walking or turkey flying it's turkeys the turkey he picked a subject and for me to work on you know put on the knife and other than that he let me do whatever I please you know we started with 12T bar stock we traced our patterns out on the metal you cut your pattern out on that metal cutting band saw from there uh you grind your sides you're actually taking metal away come up with your shape then from there you're you're doing your finishing up and your polishing from that you're you're nice is put in a heat treat furnace you have to do your own heat treating to be able to make sure that uh you can guarantee your KN this is what Jimmy wanted to do if it broke it was his fault if you take care of one customer you got 10 comes back some of his customers have been King Carl Gustav of Sweden Richard Nixon Gerald Ford John Wayne Johnny Cash and even Bo Derek but his latest customer has been responsible for putting Jimmy L's work into the motion picture business we met this man in Suppa California Joel Thorp he had one of the biggest gun stores in Los Angeles Joe had a lot of friends in the movie industry Stallone got to visit with Joe telling him that there was going to be a movie started out he said I want something nobody else is done Joe said oh I know the guy in Arkansas that will make you tonight he's just a country boy that's that's what he does for a living his M knce he called me one day and said he wanted to knif like no one else had so I designed this one this was the final design I made several prototypes and uh but this is what was the original first Blood knife suddenly combat knives whatever a combat knife is appeared and they had Hollow handles and they had saw teeth on the back of the blade the idea of a saw blade on the the back of a knife is asinine totally it makes it impossible to use the knife for its basic function I mean it looks Fierce you got to remember we didn't know anything about lighting and about Mo Movies he didn't know anything about knife making the knife for Rambo First Blood Part Two The 100 serially numbered knives were of this configuration with this being black with bright edges to reflect the light since many of their shots were filmed at night and it features the cross guard screwdrivers also and the compass in the butt and the storage area in the handle Mr stonean said the knife was the star so that was that was a shot in the arm for the knife industry worldwide boy did it sell knives thousands and thousands tens hundreds of thousands of knives are any of those knives in use no Jimmy of course did a land Office business selling rep replicas of his Rambo KN Jimmy was a success in the knife business uh and successful in his life he was the type that was comfortable around anybody young or old rich or poor whatever he could talk anybody's language and he could make anybody feel comfortable good night man but he was even a greater human being there ain't never going to be another man like that did I that I not in my life I'll never see one he was probably the second best knife salesman among knifemakers I have ever known and the best is Jerry Fisk Jerry travels the world I mean he's he goes places works with knife makers in all around the world kind of an ambassador of knif making isn't he yeah and he is also a first R blad Smith he does superlative work and he's the only knife maker ever to be named a national living Treasure by the University of North Carolina Jerry Fisk has become perhaps the best known of all the current blad Smiths uh in America it's kind of interesting you'll see some of the guys will get into this oh my goodness you know you get $10,000 for a knife I'd only have to make three a year and you know well there's drawback to that is well one you got to sell them but number two is I've never seen anybody get into it for the money that stayed very long it's just ain't worth it okay here we go what I did I started two pieces of steel or actually three you always do an odd number but what you do your two outside ones will be a plain steel and your inside steel will be a similar in other words it will have nickel Chrome something in it that will resist the acid when you get to that point so you bring it up to the Knife temperature which is say it be about 21 2200 de and you hit it lightly if you hit it too hard it'll bounce off itself won't well you have it hit it to light and it won't stick so you have to learn whatever size Hammer you have to hit it with just the right amount of pressure the only way to learn that is have a big scrap poile so you you well those together and then you'll simply we like this one we drew it out twice as length we cut it folded it over on itself so we started out with three layers and it doubled itself each time so the next time we had six we had 12 24 48 and we took this one to 96 layers after I had welded it cut it with the chills and folded it and it just laying there cold I beat it really hard with a hand Hammer to knock it scale loose if you don't break that loose it that will prevent you well and our flaws all in there borax when we sprinkle on it it basically turns to in a sense molting glass and if you have impurity scales and Etc it acts as a vehicle when you smack it it acts as a vehicle to carry out those impurities with it I went ahead and forged the point down on it and a distal taper that's the taper that would when you look at it our B laying this way when you look at it on the edge it will taper from the handle thinner and thinner to the point just like a fishing pole this this way when the guy uses the knife it will Flex better it's not just parallel you would always Forge your point first then what we did is I established the length I wanted my Cutting Edge and then began to draw it down about half of its thickness that way I can set the pattern in this is manipulated in other words you just randomly fold this thing and then you will Forge in your actual pattern or cut it in what we've done we've set our pattern in it so now what I'm going to do is take it over the grinder and I'll grind our profile in other words the outside of it I'll take the lumps and bumps and off of it and see what I got the blade thickness is about like this you got to remember it when it looks pretty thick at this point but you got to remember You' got to grind down to the bottom of that pattern so you're going remove twice this already we'll put it in acid and we'll kind of Slash it around for about a minute and that will be enough to bring the actual pattern out in there but you can see right where we started right here you can see the angles M and the sweeps of it so that' be the the entire length of it but it takes about an hour for it to get to its full depth that's going to look good when it's all said and done some some folks seem to think that Jerry is lucky but I'm here to tell you that Jerry pretty well makes his own look he works hard it's got to be something that you're dedicated to do and so because it's a tough a tough occupation Jerry Fisk has made Jerry Fisk okay um AG Russell has made AG Russell well AG Russell got here because of of the black Arkansas Stone I had owned an Arkansas Stone since I was young uh and in those days there was nothing finer for sharpening knives AG Russell was a part of that uh Revival too in Arkansas he started the marketing particularly and the the creating U of organizations related to the promotion of this customiz making if you want to know anything about the knife business or what will sell or what won't sell you talk to AG Russell only a handful of knife makers make money and I try to help them make money AG Russell is probably the number one most important person that we've had in the KNE business today he he didn't start KN maker Gil but he G he he hunted and scraped up this group of people and got them all together and took him to which you probably heard his story but he took him to Las Vegas and uh without him it may have taken another 20 years to get them together might have not ever got them together I looked at these people as friends of mine but they weren't friends of each other I saw him sit for as much as 8 and 10 hours a day calling all the writers that he could hustle up the gun writers to write about knife makers me corage Sigman Bob LS whoever in the 60s and70s my phone bill could run $2,000 a month I was a gun nut so when I talk to gun Riders I knew what I was talking about with guns and I became a source for them of information on knives and of course what I was doing was trying to promote handmade knife makers but the idea that someone would collect literally hundreds of knives for a collection can be traced in large measure to AG Russell I I have what would have been called at one time a fertile mind what I can do is is take a a knife and with some minor changes in curve and angle make something that's more pleasing to the eye I prefer these lines now this is integral Hilt and butt uh a very slight uh curve here I I don't like extreme recurve they're impractical they're hard to sharpen and and they don't function well as a knife very early in the game he got the idea of Designing folding knives with particular motifs and issuing them in limited numbers I carry one of these every day uh we have shipped uh probably 7 8,000 of them to uh troops in Iraq and Afghanistan uh that gives me certainly as much pleasure as any of them but you know I'm not done yet I know because I was there without him you wouldn't have this business we got today it wouldn't exist this handle is the doer handle because he does it on like an 8 in wheel he will find techniques or build Machinery to do things that other people sit around just wondering uh why why can't I get this done in in 1860 they didn't have belt Grinders didn't have a good choice of Steel so how how in the world can I take this piece of Steel and and shape it into a knife I know how I'll get hot and I'll pound that damn thing and I'm going beat on it until I beat it into the shape I won't if it kind of like rolling out a piece of dough and then cutting Donuts out uh today the steel mill rolls it out and we don't have to pound on it and beat on it we saw the blade out we grind it and make a knife at it we lay a ke of Steel up and roll it through here and cut a piece off then we heat we use these hardened patterns here we'll lay on them and and drill the holes grab them Tha them out and then go to the grind and profiler we do not disturb the original grain pattern in the steel we don't beat it stretch it move it around we use what the steel mill has done for us after he rough Cuts these on the saw he comes here to this grinder the buffer you see all of our buffers are built by us they're all DC controls this is where all the hand grinding is done in this shop right here my customers question me often do you do all the work Bob do you well hell no you wouldn't be able to buy a $200 kniv for me if I did we probably make 2500 knives a year that's not a lot of knives it's a lot for handmade here's where we do our handles that's our K2 that's one of our first knives that we we did after we got into the uh utility knives what we like to call Bare Bones there there no nonsense about them we take off everything is not needed we heat treat normally 20 blades to a bat we don't send our stuff out to work in this shop got to be a carpenter electrician a fabricator a welder we don't make one knife at a time I don't know what people talk about my God my knives are great I'm making one at a time that's got nothing to do with a good knife today who's important I think I'm important I'm selling more KNE than anybody in the state of Arkansas my my knife shop and my knife business is my is my main reason for living without it I'd probably waste away I'd be like an old razor I just drive for nothing left I decided at an early age or an early point in my knifemaking career that I was not a knife maker so I decided that I would leave the knife making to knife making if they' leave the riding to me and uh so I've been riding professionally since about 1950 51 it is back breaking work handles it's hard the fortune is Fun the grinding is dirty I hate straight lines I try to bend them every way I can you know making a living is relative it depends on what you call a living there's living and that's good living and I make a good living making [Music] not it's 40 43 but it's still it's still cutting it's still shaved so uh it's a great life if you don't weaken [Music]

Channel: A.G. Russell Knives

Views: 412,352

Keywords: ag russell, james bowie, bowie knife, history of the bowie, Rambo Knife, knife making, knife makers, A.G. Russell Knives, Jimmy Lyle knife maker, Damascus knives, English Bowie, ag russell bowies, Rambo survival knife, Rambo knives, Making Knives

Id: BpZC0Fs-zjc

Length: 28min 59sec (1739 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2016