One of the benefits of working for a mining company with sites all over Australia and NZ is you get to collect quite a few Frequent Flyer points. So after returning from Blade 2010 Qantas was keen for me to return to the US again for only $322 return. How could I refuse?? It just happens that the inaugural Rocky Mountain Knife show in Boise, Idaho was on the weekend following the Adelaide Custom Knife show and my mate Bill Burke MS was only too happy to have me back again.

Quickly rounding up a few extra blades to take for both shows it was off to Adelaide where I had a very successful show as well as winning best forged blade. Headed off to the US on the Monday and arrived with a shiver as Boise was getting a decent sprinkling of snow. Up bright and early hoping to harvest an elk before the season closed but was beaten to the shot so ended up assisting with the skinning of the beast. Bill skinned the animal with one of his small 52100 pronghorn skinners which was onto its 3rd elk with out the edged being resharpened. Pretty good steel when heat treated properly. I took a couple of bearings over with me that I just happened to have a good supply of and forged out a blade and heat treated it with Bill’s recipe and sure enough they are 52100. I gave up cutting rope after approx 100 cuts, my hand was getting sore from holding the tang. The edge was still fine.

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On Wednesday 8/9/10 I visited a rural property at Kilkivan in Southern QLD (about 50 km west of Gympie) to observe an Engraving School.

The difference with this school is that it is a Machine Engraving School (G.R.S Graver Max etc.) conducted by a G.R.S Instructor named Jeremiah Watt from the USA.

There were 9 students doing the course; 2 were Knife Makers and the rest were in the horse industry (custom saddles and bridles, rodeo belt buckles etc, all applied with silver and engraved).

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