I posted this already elsewhere, but it deserves to go here too.
If you live anywhere conceivably close to Tilley, this is the best thing you can do this weekend. I won't likely be able to attend again this year, as I'll be back in Texas, but I attended the one Jim hosted last year, and it changed my life. That isn't an exaggeration.
I had arrived in Canada a few months before for a year long work assignment, and had assumed that I'd have to take the whole time off from knife making. I heard about this Hammer-in through the grapevine and made sure I could attend. While there, I met Jim and his wonderful family, as well as several folks I have long considered to be unofficial, online mentors, including Bruce Bump and Steve Culver. I also met lots of other great folks, some of whom I will always consider to be friends, even though we interacted only for this weekend (Dana Hackney falls into this category). There were 50-70 Canadian knife makers in attendance, and they showed me a side of Canada I'd not seen (city folks everywhere aren't very nice, apparently, but rural folks are gems, and seeing this changed my whole outlook concerning Canada for the better). I became friends with Jim, and since then have had the opportunity to return to his place and learn to make damascus. I later spent a weekend at Jim's with Ed Caffrey, making damascus and forging blades (which I'd not really done much of), and have had other opportunities to get in good shop time with a lot of other makers. I have been blessed to have been embraced by the Canadian knife making community, and this is where it started.
It's unlikely that all of these good things will happen to you if you go to this hammer-in, but it is, like many such events, a place where wonderful things can happen. As many have said, it is the people in the knifemaking community that are the greatest reward of being part of it, and I've gained some lifelong friends. I can't imagine what a year in Canada would have been like if I hadn't gone. To top it off, as a maker I am years ahead of where I would have been had I stayed in Texas, and it all started because I went to this event.
