This weekend I did something I've been wanting to do for a while and the only regret I have is that I didn't do it much sooner. It was my brother's birthday a few month ago and this year instead of giving him another knife I've decided to go with an experience instead. He started this a few years back when for my birthday he arranged for us to take a class in ocean fly fishing and then going to fish. We had a lot of fun and I thought that something like that would be great too for the both of us. My brother is excellent with his hands and has more experience with using tools, but we both share our passion for knives of all sorts. A few month ago someone here mentioned Fell knives and when I went to check them out I realized that they offered classes and that the shop is driving distance for us. I contacted Nicholas and we arranged the date for the class. I didn't really know what to expect and was kind of nervous about it since I've never forged anything and even though I am ok with sharpening and hand tools, power tools are a whole other thing. The first thing we noticed was how charming and down to earth Nicholas is. He gave us a few guidelines, basically assume everything is hot, even if it doesn't look hot it probably is. After that we went straight to making, he didn't spend hours explaining how things are done, but instead said lets go you will learn as we go and things will become clear. I really, really like his teaching approach, he went in parallel with us making a similar knife to ours. Spoiler alert, his turned out better. He guided us every step of the way, but didn't interfere and didn't make knives for us just guided with a few words and explanations. He seemed very relaxed and at ease and made us feel relaxed. Every time we thought we screwed something up he told us it wasn't a big deal and was fixable. He is an excellent teacher and his way of teaching really worked for us. He is also a very knowledgeable and pleasant person. He clearly has lots of experience and knows what he is talking about, but at the same time is very easy going and doesn't throw his superior knowledge in the student's face just answers questions and gives pointers. He managed to get a doofus like myself to go from a piece of 52100 bar to a functional knife within a day, I am very surprised he somehow managed this. I would highly recommend his classes and I hope I can take more.
Some things I've learned in no particular order.
1. Steel cools faster then you think when you need it hot and stays hotter longer than you think when you don't.
2. Hot steel moves differently than you think and you need to think ahead as you forge to eventually get to the shape you want.
3. Everything is freaking hot.
4. The closer you get to the end, the easier it is to screw up.
5. Everything is freaking hot.
6. Forging and knife making is so much fun.
7. Forging and knife making is really hard.
8. There are a million ways to screw something up.
9. There are many ways to fix screw ups if you have someone knowledgeable by your side.
10. Everything is freaking hot.
Bottom line, it was a great experience and we had a blast, I would highly recommend this to people in the area. Nicholas is a great guy. I always had healthy appreciation for knife makers, but I can appreciate even more how hard it actually is. It is a lot of fun, but to make knives for a living is really, really hard and you have to be passionate about it and love it, because it is really, really hard.
Here are some videos of my bro that he posted
Some things I've learned in no particular order.
1. Steel cools faster then you think when you need it hot and stays hotter longer than you think when you don't.
2. Hot steel moves differently than you think and you need to think ahead as you forge to eventually get to the shape you want.
3. Everything is freaking hot.
4. The closer you get to the end, the easier it is to screw up.
5. Everything is freaking hot.
6. Forging and knife making is so much fun.
7. Forging and knife making is really hard.
8. There are a million ways to screw something up.
9. There are many ways to fix screw ups if you have someone knowledgeable by your side.
10. Everything is freaking hot.
Bottom line, it was a great experience and we had a blast, I would highly recommend this to people in the area. Nicholas is a great guy. I always had healthy appreciation for knife makers, but I can appreciate even more how hard it actually is. It is a lot of fun, but to make knives for a living is really, really hard and you have to be passionate about it and love it, because it is really, really hard.
Here are some videos of my bro that he posted
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