Now and again, you've got to get away from it all to, as they say, recharge the batteries. Even when you thoroughly enjoy what you do, it's a bit like eating icecream - eventually, you can get too much of a good thing. loan and I don't see what we do for a living as being just a job, but more a lifestyle-livelihood where everything we do is somehow integrated into one unique concept, albeit a complex one. Like all work worth doing, things get a bit hard at times, but that's the trade off for trying to accomplish what you want from life to justify your existence, if that is your objective. The good news is we get the opportunity to communicate with some really interesting and nice-to-know people in the course of running our knives-related concept.
So at short notice we went to Sweden and England for three weeks. We couldn't afford the time and had not budgeted funds, nor had we properly planned an agenda, but we went anyway. Damasteel of Sweden, with whom we have strong connections, invited us to attend a business conference and lO-years celebration of the company's existence. At first, we politely declined, then had second thoughts about the significance of the event, both to the Damasteel Company and to ourselves. What the heck... we hadn't travelled overseas for a few years and we were in real danger of getting stuck in a rut.. .let's do it!… continued page 3

Cover pic: Knights of St John Bowie custom crafted by the late George Lee Sye and sold on October 10, 1979 to the late Bill Nioa, the founder of Nioa Trading in Queensland. 
The Rubaiyat in the picture is a famous works by the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. 
Spencer photo - Copyright 2005

Basically, there are two kinds of collectors, those who I collect for their own enjoyment I and those who speculatively collect bladeware. The first tend to keep the knives that they purchase and are usually contented with their collection. The other kind think they can make money from their investment by reselling the knife.
Generally, the contented collector is a person who understands the work involved in making a knife and can appreciate art in its many forms and they usually have a particular style of knife -fixed blade or folder - that they like to collect. These two groups then break down into many sub-groups, for example, those who collect according to blade length, blade shape, handle material, mechanisms, tactical, hunting, art knives and so on, or knives made by certain knifemakers. ....

Australia's biggest regional show, the Cairns Show, was this year held in wild, unseasonal July weather, but this did not stop the 'banana benders' from celebrating their 10 I" annual agricultural outing in this Far North Queensland tourist centre. Situated under shelter at the Heritage Centre, a popular spot for show visitors, was the Forge Welding & Knifemaking show stand. The stand was manned by experienced smiths and makers demonstrating blademaking to interested spectators that dwelt a while to watch them ply their fascinating trade.

The third in a short series of True Tales From An Old Timer 
A Good Day For A Payment

One stinking hot day up country we had finished work early and I was just about to go out the door when the Boss told me he thought that it was about time I got a hair cut... Now the local barber was just a couple of doors away and so I wandered up there. He was just finishing up and was about to take his apron off when I walked in. With a little bit of coaxing and cajoling he told me he would do it, but that it would cost me not money, but a couple of pints of West End. Knowing how cranky the boss would get next day if I turned up at work without my hair cut, I agreed. After he had finished he locked up, looked up and asked if this was a good day for his payment.

Knives aren't really dangerous - but stupidity is. My first _emorable encounter with a knife ended up with me in the emergency department swearing I'd never again try decapitating the top off a plastic bottle of cooking oil with my spouse's razor sharp professional chef knife! Knife cuts hurt and stitches hurt just as much, if not more. Yet several years later I unexpectedly found myself knee deep in metal filings as the most recently recruited member of my father's knifemaking team, helping him turn out an array of cool-looking hunting knives for an upcoming Melbourne custom knife show; beefy buffalo skinners and scary cooking cleavers. All thoughts of surgical stitching gone from my mind, I found myself really loving it.
How did something like this happen? How could I, the proverbial girl next door, who had previously only ever filed her nails and ground her teeth - acquire what some would call a 'sick' obsession with steel? And yes, mutate into one of that special breed of people who gleans satisfaction from hand filing barstock with an eight-inch bastard [file].

The 1864 Sheffield Flood - by Keith Spencer

Shortly before midnight on March 11 a hundred and forty one years ago Dale Dyke Dam burst its bank sending a wall of water gushing down the River Loxley valley and crashing into the city's cutlery district. At least 250 souls were lost on that black wintry night when the river-based industries were gutted. The damage in the wake of that awesome flood was utterly devastating!
The Loxley is one of six significant rivers and brooks that flow down from the Peak District (central highlands of England) west of Sheffield. Inevitably they all form part of the River Don where it enters the city at Neepsend, just upstream from Kelham Island, which is best known these days for its fantastic museum on the cutlery and steel industry of yesteryear. The River Don disappears under the city, where it flows in a semi circle, surfacing again as it moves away towards the east, before meandering off in a northerly direction.

From Joe's Crystal Ball  I 

Milspec- with Paul Bergen
Fangs of  the Fliers

 The most potent weapon in a modern military arsenal is the fighter jet. Most offensive or defensive operations rely up on team effort to produce strategic results; a forty million dollars supersonic combat aircraft is under the control of a single individual. It goes without saying that such a person must fulfil the very highest criteria for flying. The selection and training cost incurred by advanced nations for such an individual is massive.
Tom Clancy, the noted author of several non-fiction military guides, as well as a host of best selling technothrillers, states in his Fighter Wing publication a figure of two million dollars to select and train each pilot to combat readiness (1995 figures). This figure doesn't count the additional hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on fighter support, plus keeping them combat worthy for the next five to ten years. For instance, just one hour of real-time practice flying for an F/ A-I8 pilot is counted in several thousand dollars.

M.O.P. Mother of Pearl - by Joan Renton-Spencer William Dampier first struck soundings off the Abrolhos Islands (near Geraldton) and then sailed north, past the Dampier Archipelago off Nicholls Bay in 1699. He took a quick look around and then sailed west away from his disappointed in what he had seen.  He did not realise that the hull of his ship hovered over one of the worlds richest pearling beds.  It was on this same isolated part of the coast that the Western Australian pearling industry was to be first established 150 years later.  
Tiny wooden wind-driven craft had continued to creep up the west coast from Fremantle once the Swan River Colony was established in 1829, and it was only a relatively short time after settlement when the pearling beds of the north were discovered. A Perth firm was given the exclusive rights to dredge the shallow banks and sea bottom of the Shark Bay area by Governor Fitzgerald, the fifth administrator of the new colony, on the condition the Government would be paid 1/8th of the value of shell recovered.  But back in London, the Secretary of State for Colonies soon heard of the marvellous ‘find’ and had no intention of allowing a profitable new industry to remain under colonial control. He granted a concession to an English company to work the lucrative beds.  

In 1981 the late great George Lee Sye was quoted as saying: " One can only wonder whether the next generation of Aussie makers will spare a thought for the man who went to America, saw what was possible, and came back to his native land determined to make it happen here". 
If this was America, Lee Sye by now would have had his rightful place in a hall of fame or suchlike., but for some unfathomable reason Australians allow icons to slip into the mists of oblivion. Indeed, reluctance exists to pay due acknowledgement to the accomplishments of those deserving recognition.  Moreover there is a tendency to resent rather that respect someone who dares to lift their head above the herd in a genuine attempt to advance an industry or organisation. For the benefit of new generation custom knifemakers that have emerged in this country, this is the historic dawning of the modern era of Australian knifemaking.

The combat fighters of  the eighties and nineties became known as the tactical fighters of the new Millenium. The term fighter when applied to knives essentially catagorises the fighting knife type in the same way that knives are categorised as hunters, capers, skinners, campers, folders, Bowies, tantos, boot knives and so on. Each knife has a particular shape and style and intended purpose.

Born in Malaysia, Jason Cutter immigrated to Australia about 18 years ago and made his first knife out of a file in 2001. Jason is a maker who started out as a customizer of knife blanks, a good way of inducing yourself into knifemaking before designing and constructing your own shapes and styles. Absorbing himself  in his spare time learning and labouring at the art of blademaking provided the balance Jason needed at a time when he was studying at Melbourne University. Having graduated with a medical degree in 1994, he was heavily engaged in post graduate training to become a Psychiatrist. 

Samurai Sword Secrets

Lots of knife-minded people send in all sorts of interesting information to Knives Australia, for which we are grateful, but occassionally something really special lobs onto the editors desk. A mutual friend in the knife industry aimed Phil Hilzinger and me at each other on the phone. Not directly connected to the world of martial arts, I only had a vague knowledge of this man and his work. Philip mailed me a DVD copy of Sword  Secrets of the Samurai, a 3-hour classic of authentic Samurai sword mastery featuring My Hilzinger, a genuine swordsman with over 45 years of experience in a Japanese clan's art that spans 800 years.

While most of the knives in my small collection are modern tactical knives, my latest acquisition has quickly become one my favourites. After many months spent searching, I recently managed to acquire  two Puma Universal model Jagdmesser (hunting knives that fold): one made in 1966 and the other in 1975. Manufactured in the golden-era of Puma Werk in Germany, I was fortunate to find them in mint condition. I have had a few Puma knives in the past, but never the flagship of their  folding knife range - the Universal model Jagdmesser.

Dust - the silent killer! Every time we turn on our beltgrinders or pick up a piece of abrasive paper to shape hardwood knife handles, healthwise, we put ourselves at risk. Some timbers are known carcinogens, while others just irritate our our eyes and noses. I for one am allergic to Walnut, yet other knifemakers can roll in wood dust with no effect whatsoever, so I devsied a system of dust control for me to use whilst working on wood using abrasive materials.

 An Old Fashioned Close Shave - by Joan Renton-Spencer Back in January 2003 (Knives Australia Summer 03)  we found a handful of barbers in Australia who were capabale and willing to offer advice, sell razors and strops, and encourage the odd pocket or two of people who were perpetuating the raditinoal shave with a cutthroat razor. While collectors continue to seach second hand stores, garage sales and grandad's belongins for the old cut throat razors of yesteryear, the world resurgence of blokes who want to feel sharp steel on their face has finally reached Australia. Today, some of the old ways have been found worth preserving.
In an age where almost everything seems disposable and replaceable , and time is amongst our most valued commodities, lathering up., stropping blades and then shaving with a cutthroat razor seems to be out of step with the speed of the 'modern' world, And that's just the point.
...cont. page 21