SummaryThis column is from the October 2009 issue of BLADE. Click here to see what else is inside.

U.S. Customs’ bald-faced attempt to reclassify assisted openers and, by extension, possibly all folders and pocketknives as switchblades shapes up to be the knife industry’s fight of a lifetime. If you value your folding knives, you cannot afford not to read this issue’s story and take action.

The whole world of knives is watching.

• As another BLADE Show for the books is in the books, the knife show season continues to heat up. The A.G. Russell 2009 Knife Event was in the offing at press time and the ABS Expo, Chicago Knife Expo, BLADE Show West and the Knifemakers’ Guild Show are among the summer’s remaining leading cutlery events—and there are a number of others on tap as well.

Both the ABS Expo and the Guild Show will be in new venues—the Guild at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky and the ABS Expo at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, the latter city, of course, home to the Alamo. In addition to visiting the legendary mission fortress that witnessed the demise of Blade Magazine Cutlery Hallof- Famer© Jim Bowie and many other heroes, you can celebrate and buy forged knives at the Aug. 21-22 ABS Expo.

The show will commence Friday, Aug. 21 with a full slate of seminars, followed by a two-hour
preview period in which you will have the opportunity to examine all the knives that will be offered for sale both Friday and Saturday.



A new Friday-only feature will involve a single lottery box on each smith’s table in which each show VIP can enter his/her name to be drawn. According to ABS master smith Harvey Dean, the drawing differs from other lotteries in that each VIP whose name is drawn from the box on the applicable smith’s table has the option of buying any knife on that smith’s table instead of one specific knife via the one-box-per-knife method. There is no obligation to buy.

• The blade world lost two friends this past spring with the deaths of swordsmith Paul Champagne and long-time knife and gun writer Jack Lewis. Champagne had forged swords since the mid-1980s
and focused on European, Chinese and Japanese designs, among others.

Lewis’ writing career stretched back at least to the 1960s. He founded Gun World magazine and at various times edited The Gun Digest Book of Knives, The Gun Digest Book of Knifemaking and other books on knives and/or guns. He served as a U.S. Marine machine gunner in World War II. He won the Bronze Star for bravery as a combat correspondent during the Korean War. He served as a technical advisor to the movie Sands of Iwo Jima and befriended star John Wayne. Lewis also worked as a Hollywood stuntman, with perhaps his most memorable scene coming in the 1955 John
Ford classic, Mister Roberts.

According to a good friend of Lewis’, Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer B.R. Hughes, Lewis is the one
who drives a motorcycle off the pier (the scene is shown near the end of the trailer
at www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1285161241/).

• A significant drop in demand for its steels—particularly for its automotive valve steel—reportedly was the chief reason Crucible Materials Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 6. One of the leading suppliers of steel for the cutlery industry, Crucible makes the CPM (Crucible Particle Metallurgy) stainless steels that have been so popular over the past decade, as well as D2, 154CM, 440C and other steels. As for the outlook at Crucible, most everyone there is doing his/her best to think positive.

Observed one informed source: “With a little optimism and a little help from investors, I expect that Crucible will be able to keep going, though probably in some edited version.”

• Michael Janich of BlackHawk Products Group was one of several guests on a June 11 telecast of Discovery Channel’s Time Warp. Janich’s segment on knifethrowing physics showed him hurling
not just knives and tomahawks at assorted inanimate targets, but also throwing screwdrivers, barbecue forks, tire irons, scissors and more, sticking most all of them with near-pinpoint accuracy. It was highly entertaining and showcased not only Michael’s knife-throwing talent and dry wit, but also pointed up the absurdity of anti-knife laws when, as Janich demonstrated, a number of common household tools can double for a knife in a pinch.