I'm glad I discovered this thread. Beautiful work, Rippy. What's particularly awe-inspiring, though, is your description of the process you used to create the knives. Your understated passion for the idea and the work. I've never owned a high quality knife and my use of knives while tripping is usually for filleting fish. I still sometimes use two old Rapala knives from the 70's, knives that I learned to fillet fish with when I was a very young fishing guide working at Jackson's Lodge, Waterbury Lake, Saskatchewan. (I drop the name of the camp in the vague hope that I'll encounter someone else who worked there or went there as a guest.) Those knives, fairly cheap by the standards of the time, were used by every guide I knew. 40-plus years later those Rapala's don't hold an edge for long, but I still like the shape and feel of them. I have vague memories of, as a kid, admiring bone-handled "Bowie knives" that I couldn't afford, but looked so cool to me. I don't know anything about what a high quality knife can do, or what it feels like performing tasks with it, but this thread has piqued my interest. Thanks, Rippy.
