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When a real knifemaker makes a knife, he/she starts out with a design, then sits down and starts working towards it. I start out with a design, then I sit down and start eliminating ways that don't work.

What's a j-weight?

If I can't find you from your "maker's mark", it may be good for your ego, but it doesn't do us (the public) or your sales any good.

Look at the top of the forum. Click on "Knife Making Supplies". Carry on.

A compass! A compass! I forgot the damn compass! AND BIG OLE TEETH, BIGGER IS FASTER SAWIN'! AND A SHARPENING STONE THAT WEIGHS THREE POUNDS (and will break the first time you jump off a cliff onto a wildcat) IN IT'S OWN CUTE LITTLE MINI-SHEATH!

...or make a hollow handle and fill it with fishhooks and twine.

On cooking boards, I've read that the standard for the balance point is an inch behind (away from the blade) the point where the blade becomes the handle. There's at least one brand of knives that build their handles hollow, then fill them with sand until they meet that standard and seal them.

Handgun, Defensive Handgun. Never taught any long gun, there are a lot of people a lot more qualified than I am on long guns. (That's actually true for just about anything, though.)

Yes, still do.

I've never owned a diamond stone. Why do they have that metal grid over them? How can you sharpen with that grid?

I've said exactly the same thing to students in other sports: diving, sailing and shooting. "The more experience you bring the class, the more you'll get out of the class." On the other hand, all those sequences have also convinced me that the fastest way to go from zero knowledge to some...

Yup, just starting out. I've spent exactly two and a half hours at the forge at Pratt. I followed directions and made a thingy that was supposed to be a heart, but mine looks sort of like chopped liver. My wife's looks a lot better than mine does. So far, we've established that blacksmithing is...

Thanks. One of the ladies teaches a Damascus class at Pratt, and apparently they have some kind of custom press built for Damascus. One of my aims there is to build myself a set of Damascus wood chisels, (like every other woodworker I know, I've never owned a complete set of chisels) so I'm...

Okay, next question. I don't own forging equipment. Rather, before I buy anything, I'm taking a series of classes from a place that recognized among artists here in Seattle: pratt.org. Pratt is dedicated to all artists, not just blacksmiths, but they teach a fairly complete blacksmithing...

I've read that some folks don't like some forges because they create hot spots. Okay. So tell me this: don't all forges create hot spots? What are the bad things about hot spots? (I've looked at the forge I use the most, and I think it has a hot spot or two, but I usually move the metal...

I never saw a tablesaw with a guard until I was around twenty.

No one in America "pays their own tab" when it comes to health care.

Or I could do what 96 of them did (probably nothing, smoke cigarettes, use table saws that have no guards, drink cheap whiskey, drive drunk, chase cheap women) and be fine. Or I could stay out of coal mines altogether, ban smoking in my house, pay others to cut wood, drink nothing but filtered...

Speaking as a guy with six decades behind him, breathing perfectly uncontaminated air will eventually kill you.

I actually meant my comments to be approval of both the knife and the mark; the knife because it's a simple, honest working blade and the mark because it's big enough to actually read and contains enough information in a language I speak and read (as opposed to some obscure code or a font that's...