Announcer 0:03
Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast your weekly dose of knife news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your hosts Jim Person and Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco.

Jim Person 0:16
Hello fellow Knife Junkie and welcome to episode number 59 of the Knife Junkie podcast I'm Jim Person and I'm Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco, welcome to the podcast. The podcast is the place where you nice newbie or a Knife Junkie can learn everything you need to know about knives and knife collecting by hearing from the makers, the designers, the manufacturers, the YouTube reviewers, whoever it is the movers and the shakers of the knife industry. We like to talk to them and we get to hear those interviews right here on the Knife Junkie podcast our weekend edition. And Bob another good interview for us coming up today. You want to tease that just a little bit.

Bob DeMarco 0:55
Yeah we speak to another knife hero of mine, Michael Janich. He's the designer of The Sypercoo Yojimbo, the Spyderco Ronan and the famed Spyderco Yojimbo 2, of which I have two. And he's also the creator of martial blade concepts, a form of martial arts and knife fighting and knife self defense that he cobbled together through years of experience in a myriad of Filipino martial arts. So he's well informed knife self defense, and

very interesting talking to him. He's a very analytical guy. So it's interesting to hear about these, these these kinds of topics from an analytical perspective.

Jim Person 1:36
Quick question for you ... you mentioned in that, that tease that that intro, if you will, that you had to have the Yojimbo two models so if a knife has a number in it, like three or four or five, does that mean you have to buy that number of knives, it's in the title?

Bob DeMarco 1:53
I think it does. And you know what, that one of my favorite knives is the hinderer XM 25 For Oh my Yes.

Jim Person 2:01
How many of those do I only have to get moving on that? Well, at least you took one of the numbers, you know? Hey, we've got some other exciting news I before we went on to get into the Michael Janet interview, some things we've been kicking around for a while, but you want to spill the beans on what's going to be happening later this week on YouTube.

Bob DeMarco 2:21
We're calling it Thursday night knives live knife show at 10pm we're going to have guest hosts we're going to have just a bit of banter and a lot of high production value. It's going to be a beautiful YouTube show.

Jim Person 2:36
And it's not going to have me

Bob DeMarco 2:38
so no but but you're going to be working your sorcery behind the scenes. There's some there's there's some stuff Jim's very excited to be doing and I'm very excited to be a part of it.

Jim Person 2:49
Yeah, well and I'm excited for it because it's going to truly be you know, the The Knife Junkie is getting together and talking and you know, just some of the things that you've got planned, you know, like, weekly or You know, a regular Battle of the knives kind of feature but you know, kind of doing specific topics for each show. So again, that's coming up this Thursday, it's going to be November the 14th. And as Bob said, 10pm Eastern Time, Thursday night knives on YouTube. So this is your chance if you are not yet subscribed to the Knife Junkie YouTube channel, please go and do that now because that way you'll get notified when The Knife Junkie goes live. Go to The Knife Junkie. com slash YT Subscribe. That way you don't miss any episodes of Thursday night knives or any of Bob's knife review videos and that kind of thing.

Bob DeMarco 3:38
Jim, I keep thinking of this show, like a news pundit show where you see a couple of Windows popping up and you see people getting in the weeds about things as important as lock bar interface and things as important as steel compositions, and really, really getting into the weeds.

Unknown Speaker 3:55
All right there. You heard it. Let's listen for it or and watch for it on YouTube. Thursday night knives live on YouTube. You're listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. Call The Knife Junkie at 724-466-4487 with your questions or comments.

Bob DeMarco 4:11
I'm here with Michael Janet famed, combative knife expert and designer of the Yojimbo to buy spider CO, very famous Syperco knife. Michael, thank you for joining us on the Knife Junkie podcast.

Michael Janich 4:23
Thank you for the opportunity appreciate. Oh, it's my pleasure.

Bob DeMarco 4:27
So as we mentioned before we started rolling, you're the designer of pretty much my favorite all time spider co knife and I have a few of them. And I know that you have optimize this knife design for self defense. It's a great utility EDC knife, but it's also Optima optimized for self defense. And the thing I wanted to ask you first and foremost is when I think of fighting knife I think of oftentimes I think of something long, slender instead Or something recurred with a lot of belly or or a sweep? Why did you choose that Wharncliff style blade that sack style.

Michael Janich 5:08
What it really comes down to is when you consider a knife for self defense, the first rule that my system Martial blade concepts what I teach right up front is a logical self defense when it comes to knives. And one of the main things that people need to accept is that you are going to fight with a knife who actually cares. So you can look at fighting knife design, and you can kind of go off in the weeds theoretically or if you weren't down by any kind of legal considerations if you're designing something for military application for Battlefield type of thing for martial arts application, you can do whatever you want, but when you start looking at the laws and what you have to look at is what are the blade length considerations that need to be concerned about and what can i realistically carry on a daily basis. So look at something that is convenient, something that is practical, something is legal, and then you say okay, now based on those parameters, I want to design a knife and I want to come up with the blades. style that allows me to get as much cutting performance as much destructive capacity as I can, given the limitations of what I've got to work with. And that's where the Warren could really shines.

Bob DeMarco 6:11
So why is that? You know, you think of a big sweeping upswept cemetery is something that can share with with great efficiency. The Wharncliff is kind of the opposite in terms of blade shape and geometry. Why did you What's that about?

Unknown Speaker 6:30
The simplest way to explain it is it cuts with full power all the way to the tip. So when you think of that, the human body is built to move in arcs. Okay, so all of our joints are basically designed to allow us to move in arcs when you are cutting with a knife, even if you try to make it a straight emotion as possible. So to be some type of an American motion. So what you have to think about is the blade is the end of that arc and it's basically trying to define the the end of the radius of movement. Well, if you have anything that has belly to it, what ends up happening is the article motion of your arm. And ultimately the curve of the upswept point will run parallel. And once something is running parallel, it's no longer applying pressure into the world. It's no longer cutting any deeper. So when you think about youtility, nice when you think about Exacto knives, these are things that are designed to cut with full power all the way to the point. And the Wharncliff does exactly the same thing. No matter where you make contact on the edge, it's going to cut with full power will continue to cut with full power until it reaches the very tip. There's no point where that upward sweep starts to diminish the force in buying into the world.

Bob DeMarco 7:34
That's actually beautifully stated. I intuitively understand the concept but whenever I try and describe that, yeah, it you get full power all the way to the tip. And something about the Yojimbo too. I always kind of thought it was a wolf in sheep's clothing, in that it was the kind of knife that I could pull out of my pocket and if I needed to justify why I had it, I could say Well, it's a work night because it looks like a work night. It looks like you mentioned a large exacto knife. But it's got that wicked hollow grind, and it's got that perfect handle in that thumb swell. It is really optimized for, for gripping tightly and and, and using.

Michael Janich 8:17
And I also use one for utility purposes all the time. So what's great about the Warren Cliff style is if you want to cut with power, most of the power cutting here to do is at the heel of the edge. So closest to the end, that's where you have the most leverage, you can cut the full force. If you need something that has more of like a scalpel type precision, then you simply choke up on the blade and use a tip. So it literally gives you that flexibility as a utility knife as well. You can do everything from taking the splinter to cutting full force, and it does all that does it equally well.

Bob DeMarco 8:49
So before I was mentioning, intuitively I have I have my intuition has certain ideas of what the perfect sort of self defense blade shape would be. And like I said, It harkens back to Bowie's and Persian style blades and dramatic upswept yet the Vikings use the sacks or scram sx I can't remember yes as as their not only their their everyday tool their everyday carry knife just for utility but they also use that obviously in fighting so it should be no surprise that Warren cliffs are not you know I don't know if you're aware of this but after after the Yojimbo two came out everything was worn Cliff for a while everyone wanted to warn Cliff blade and you know it kind of seemed like a little bit like fashion but really it's it's it's turned out that that these knives are great for everything.

Michael Janich 9:42
But what's what's interesting is when you look at kind of the tactical worn Cliff without being, you know, patting myself on the back. That has been kind of a cause that I've been pushing for a long time when you go back to my very first spider co designs which was a spider girl Ronan and The first generation Yojimbo when I when I first had a chance to design and I was actually with Masters of defense knife company way back in late 1997 came out in 1998. And I designed a knife in a lot of ways, kind of based on what you were just saying a moment ago, which is, Hey, I think of a bowie knife, I think of something that has to have belly to the edge. And all of these things that were common wisdom or so we thought, based on repeating what we were told. So I designed that knife, it came out great was called The Tempest for masters of defense. And it was it was a great opportunity. I was very proud of it. When I had an opportunity actually designed a knife for custom knife maker by the name of Mike stone, he asked me to design something, and Mike said, Hey, I want you to design the ultimate neck knife. What I started doing in my Marshall blade concepts teaching. Again, I focus very heavily on the logic. So the first element of logic is you'll fight with a knife you actually carry. The second element of that logic is that you have to be able to quantify the destructive capacity of your actual Karina, what can it do? What kind of damage can cause so one of the things that I started doing was I created a target called pork man. It's basically you get about a five pound, ideally five pound if you can get it. Pork Tenderloin or pork roast, you butterfly it, wrap it around a piece of doll rod, tied down with a bunch of butchers one and wrap it with about 30 layers of saran wrap. So what you have is something that pretty closely replicates like a human bicep, tricep, the upper part of the forearm or the lower part of the thigh, which are the primary targets would go after then you would put some denim over the top of that and you cut in what that allows you to do is to take the knife you actually carry and quantify its destructive ability. So what I started doing before I designed the knife for Mike Snowden was I pulled out everything I had my collection, bought a bunch of pork, fired up the barbecue at the same time, and basically did a bunch of pork man testing in as scientifically as possible, try to quantify how differently Cut in the knife that actually cut the best out of my collection was a spider Cobra was actually one of the old Cena Fanta models now. Yeah, so we look at the setup on a design. It's a worn Cliff design. And I was trying to figure out okay, why does this thing cut better and we started looking at the mechanics I started looking at sling blade side by side overlay one over the other what I realized is as soon as you have that, that belly sweeping upward, especially in a short knife, what ends up happening is that curve runs parallel to the curve of motion of your arm and at that point diminish the power of the cut. So that was what really kind of inspired me to start exploring the the Warren Cliff design that led to my original snotty Ronan design, which was a customer then spider co picked that up as a fixed blade. South lesser then said hey, we need to do a folding knife because we're primarily known for folders. So I designed the the first generation Yojimbo and back then people would look at it, it was just like what the hell is this? This is no, this is not a tactical knife. This doesn't look right. It's been a number of years really consistent effort through some of my knife designs and through education and teaching, getting people to embrace that once they cut with them, once they see the effects of the cut, that's what converts people first or, you know, they find it strange that the worn clip would be the the blade of choice But again, it's based on lots of lively cutting this,

Bob DeMarco 13:25
if you don't mind my saying the Yojimbo to versus the Yojimbo one I'm speaking strictly is that aesthetically but I can extrapolate just from holding the Yojimbo to and how amazing it feels. It seems like the Yojimbo to is definitely a more elegant, nuanced and effective version of the first design.

Michael Janich 13:47
That's definitely true. You know, and that's why the second generation designs That's why, you know, ideally, we get better with everything we do. We're not we're doing something wrong. So the whole idea is that You learn from your experience, you learn from the shortcomings of what you may have done before, and you try to make it better the second time around. And yeah, I agree completely GMO two is a much more evolved much more refined design. It's,

Bob DeMarco 14:13
like I said, my favorite spider code. So when I think of Marshall blade concepts, I think of some of the earlier videos I saw with you. And I think in a comic cut the sea cut to the thigh. Tell me about Marshall blade concepts and where it comes from what your background is.

Michael Janich 14:30
When I first got involved in the martial arts, back when I was a teenager, the thing that scared me the most when we started training was being attacked by somebody with a knife. It seemed the most unpredictable, it was the hardest to deal with. And the techniques that we were learning really, were not very practical. So we would learn these techniques. We get good at them. We try to torture test them and pressure testing and training, but they really didn't work very well. So I went to my instructor and they said look, our counter knife techniques suck. I want to learn something better. And his response was if you want to learn how to defend against a knife, learn how to use the knife. Okay, that makes perfect sense. Let's do some knife fighting and this is mid 1970s really all that was around at that time was kind of legacy World War Two stuff a lot of the historical stuff that was out there. And then there were two books that came out in the 1970s it was the Complete Book of knife fighting and secrets of modern fighting by David Steele when those came out, read them cover to cover was trying to learn as much as possible soldier Fortune magazine came out David Steele was writing articles for them. And I was trying to do as much research as I could had some fellow students we got together and we would spar with guys beat the snot out of each other will wouldn't Tonto knives and stuff like that. But there was really nothing out there that I could find it was a good organized curriculum as far as learning how to use a knife defensively. And then I heard about the Filipino martial arts. So it's like okay, this has to be the mother lode of information. supposed to have all this great edged weapon, skills and everything. But this time I was in the army I joined the army and actually ended up being stationed in Hawaii. There's a large Filipino population. So I figured, okay, I'm in a great place to be able to pursue this and within the Filipino Chamber of Commerce, said, Hey, I'm, you know, US military station here in Hawaii. I'm looking for this doctor and Filipino martial arts. They gave me several names, I started calling around and soon as I expressed any interest in knife stuff, I just did hang up. Nobody wanted to teach me any knife because I was not Filipino. It was something that they reserved for their culture, and they will not teach outside their culture. So in researching the arts, the Filipino martial arts are based on the idea of using the same basic mechanics, the same techniques but adapting to the attributes of the weapon. So I was an intelligence analyst for the military, and said, Okay, fine, let me learn their stick stuff because it would, they would actually teach stick and I had one instructor who accepted me to learn to stick started learning that and adapting that tonight. For that happened to the attributes of the knife. So that was a long analytical process was basically taking Filipino stick work trying to express that with a knife and trying to learn as much as I could from whatever little tidbits I could find. And then years later, when I finally got to work with people who had learned the Filipino knife arts firsthand, they're looking at me saying, Where did you get your nice stuff? I said, Well, you know, certainly didn't get it from Filipino instructors because they weren't forthcoming with it. At that point. They're like, well, this is legit. This is this is solid. And I started teaching a little bit started sharing some of that. And the most interesting things that I ran into one of the turning points for me, really, I was working for Paladin press. I'd run out and presses video to production department for 10 years and had written a book on my fighting, essentially the book that I wanted. Back when I was first learning knife fighting a practical course. And I was contacted by a guy who had been attacked by his boss's boss attacked him with a knife. He defended himself disarmed the boss. The boss grabbed him by throat was kind of strangling. This guy grabbed the knife and they fought for about five minutes in the process. He stabbed his boss over 50 times with a six inch blade. And this guy was basically arrested for first degree murder. And he said, I want you to help me in preparing my case, my defense as far as claim my claim of self defense. So I had access to all the coroner's reports I had access to the police reports, all the the forensic evidence and everything else. So I took my analytical skills and sat down and went through this. And in the process what I realized this guy had a six inch blade and he is running into this guy's torso repeatedly and the guys not stopping. So a lot of what I thought I knew as far as you know, the common knowledge of my stuff, you stick somebody the torso, they burst into flames, and

that's what I thought my stuff was all about. This totally disproved all that and I realized that the human body is a lot more resilient. Then we give it credit for Especially if you're trying to stop somebody with a knife, the conventional way of doing it was all wrong. So what I did was I took my Filipino martial arts knowledge. I then went to the medical community and started to work with trauma surgeon and started to work with physical therapists who work with people who had industrial accidents and things like that busted out Grey's Anatomy and dug into that and try to understand how the human body works. Then based on the knife, I could actually carry the type of destructive capacity I have for that knife, and then essentially the scale of the human body, what parts do I need to cut to shut people down effectively and decisively. So that's kind of where she came from.

Bob DeMarco 19:38
That's brilliant. That came from your analytical mind that came. To me that reminds me of the thought that you only really know how to hurt someone, whether it's physically or psychologically, once you realize and admit to yourself how vulnerable you are, are psychologically and physically. It's only through knowing what your own limitations are that you can kind of transpose that on to someone else and use it to defend yourself or hurt them, you know,

Michael Janich 20:06
offensively or defensively. Exactly. You understand vulnerabilities, we also understand your destructive capacity. So going again, back to the core logic of MBC, you'll fight with a knife you actually care. You have to understand the destructive capacity that you need to accept the fact that stopping power is your goal. lethality is secondary, although you're authorized and justified in using lethal force. What it comes down to is if you don't stop that person, and they kill you a mutual slain isn't good enough to be able to stop that attack decisively. And then what you have to do is understand human anatomy. So you take that disruptor capacity the knife, he said, Okay, now I understand the human body, what can what parts do I need to cut or puncture to be able to achieve that is the thing to stop.

Bob DeMarco 20:51
So you use the term stopping power, which is something I hear used with firearms frequently. 45 has stopping power, you know, late Right there. So what does that mean with a knife, especially after you tell me the story about a man who stabbed his assailant 50 times before the guy would stop? What is stopping power with a knife?

Michael Janich 21:11
Well, first of all, the fact that you heard it many times is exactly why I use the term. So when it comes to self defense when it comes to, again, the practicalities of modern self defense. First of all, you have to solve the problem, which is you have to stay alive and survived the attack. Secondly, you have to be able to justify your actions legally. So we look at the legal requirements for self defense, you're basically allowed to use a commensurate level of force. So if somebody throws a punch at you, you can throw a punch back. If somebody pulls a lethal weapon, then you justified in crossing that bridge and drawing a lethal weapon yourself. That's the only time when you're in fear of death or grievous bodily injury. That's when you're justified in using a lethal weapon. When it comes to stopping power, because that is the legal requirement. That's also the term that we want to ingrained in our students. That is What we want to always Express as our intent in defending ourselves what we're trying to do, I was trying to stop the sailor. I wasn't trying to kill him, I wasn't trying to bleed him I wasn't trying to there was there was no other intent there other than to stop him. Now going back to the the mechanics of that process with the night, what's interesting about it is when you look at the Filipino martial arts, there's a tactic that's commonly used called the things. So when you think of the arm as being a snake, and the hand holding the weapon, the weapon basically represents the thing of the snake. So defending the snake means that you would essentially cut the form literally with you're actually targeting is the flexor tendons of the rest of the flexor muscles on the inside of the four. And you're basically disconnecting the mechanical connection that allows the hand to close. So muscles pull on tendons to move bones. If you can actually separate attendance or seven the muscles deeply enough mechanically, that process stops and at that point, the hand would open the weapon would fall. So in the Filipino martial Arts in their battlefield, traditional application, the idea is defending the snake, which means you literally disarm your attacker, and then you kill it. From a self defense standpoint that goes from lawful self defense to assault with a deadly weapon to murder. So when you look at even people who trained in the Filipino Martial Arts in the traditional sense, and they say, Oh, I'm going to apply this in modern self defense. Well, we've all heard the saying, you'll fight the way you train. Well, if you actually train that way, you may be very skilled but may not have the presence of mind to be able to stop once you've discerned your attacker. So at that point, you now have an unarmed person who no longer represents a lethal threat. And you continue to cut and thrust into everything else that you've trained to do, that essentially kills that person at that point. So now you've gone beyond the limitations of reasonable self defense and your present.

Bob DeMarco 23:56
That's that's a really interesting conundrum there because when you're doing training, you don't want to stop early with the thought that, you know, you don't want to stop your technique now, because this guy might still have juice, he might still come after you want to keep moving until the threat has stopped. But when you're training, everything's hypothetical, you know, you don't really actually see the effects of this hypothetical cut or that hypothetical cut or thrust. And once you have them on the ground, and their wrist is locked up, and you continue to, you know, several the arm and stab into the neck or whatever else you're doing, you're you're practicing that so that you keep flowing until, until that threat has stopped. But like I said, That's hypothetical. In a real life situation, one little cut might change the tide of everything.

Michael Janich 24:45
Exactly. And again, when you look at modern self defense, how many people are going to be out there with cell phones, how many surveillance cameras might there be? So you can try to say that oh, I did this and this and this, but there may be video evidence there. And they're going to be analyzing that that and look at it. reframe that video and say, Okay, at this point, what were you thinking at this point? What were you thinking? And what you need to do is to focus on the idea of stopping. So what I do and MBC again, looking at the the medical side of it, because there's a lot of misinformation out there as far as the medical aspects of using a knife in self defense at all. Well, a lot of it goes back to WE Fairburn and get tough, the original timetable of death, there was huge misinformation in that basically all of that is, is crap. With all due respect to his memory and everything, there's no scientific basis for anything was in that. So what I did was I basically looked at it in simple terms and I said okay, defending the snake works, because mechanically, you're cutting muscles or you're cutting tendons, then let's extend that same process to other body parts. So we do is we consider, essentially the flexor tendons and the flexor muscles form to be the first target priority. The reason that's first is if somebody is extending a weapon toward you, they're giving you that target. So you have to work for it. The second target priority is the bicep and tricep. So essentially what you have of the muscles that bend and flex, or bend and extend the elbow. So what that gives you is the muscles that control articulated motion of the arm that allows them to wield a weapon effectively. And then the real go to shot is the quadriceps muscle at the front of the five just above the knee. And that's what extends the knee joint and allows somebody to support weight. So we call that basically a mobility count. If you cut that quadriceps muscle, they cannot support weight anymore. They dropped one knee and at that point, you can create distance and create safety.

Bob DeMarco 26:39
So here's a question with that technique. In particular, actually, I like that because it stops, you know, kind of like defending the snake you're defending the whole snake that the guy can't get

Michael Janich 26:49
to you. You're looking for more friends.

Bob DeMarco 26:51
Right, right, exactly. But I know that there are and I don't know my anatomy that well, but I know that there are some big arteries in those thighs. I take it From that, you're just trying to hurt that muscle, but you're not trying to get that artery.

Michael Janich 27:04
Well, again, what what's interesting is MBC is involved. One of the things that I've tried to do, since I came up with the basic concepts for MBC, it has continued to evolve as, especially as I've taught more and more medical professionals, I've learned more and more every time I have an opportunity to teach. For example, teaching for the International School of tactical medicine was huge for me, because these are trauma surgeons, SWAT doctors, these are the guys that have seen more knife and gunshot wounds than just about anybody out there. When I had a chance to teach for them, I can ask them you know, hey, am I off base on anything? Is there anything from you know, my premise as far as the use of the ninth and self defense that is illogical or just doesn't hold up scientifically? They're like, nope, you're you're definitely on track. But then it was interesting work with a guy who was a neurologist was also a class three firearms dealer. interesting combination, but when I was was teaching MBC for him. He stopped me along the way. And he's like, you know, you're talking about the muscles and tendons and he says you're perfectly accurate. As far as that goes, your knowledge of anatomy is sound. But do you realize what you're doing neurologically? Don't Please tell me and he said, Well, what you're doing or logically his nerves basically do two things. One is you have sensory perception goes back to the brain. So when you touch something you feels is hot, cold, rough, smooth, wherever it is, that sensory perception of it. Of course, the other side is the brain telling the body what to do, and specifically telling body parts. The essentially the brain sends out its electrical impulses. When you want to move your arm, your brain tells the muscles Hey, contract to move the arm. Well, when you cut the nerves, again, what you have is an instantaneous result. And the higher you go on the arm, the higher you go on the limb. The closer you get to the root of that nerve, the more profound the effect. So what we have in NBC are three layers of stopping power three levels of stopping power. First is the mechanical level, which is essentially the muscles in the tendons. The second one is a neurological level, which is basically cutting the nerves that now allow the brain to control the muscles. And then the third level is essentially cutting the arteries. So we know that all of those things are co located. So if you were to cut the bicep, for example, if you cut the bicep and you cut your that are cutting the inside of the arm, you would also cut essentially, the median nerve, the ulnar nerve, the nerve cluster that runs out the arm interface all the muscles of the arm and tells it what to do. You'd also take the brachial artery. So one cut would literally give you all three levels of stopping. But the misconception that people have is the bleed out rate. So what people believe is and again, a lot of this goes back to Fairburn. Fairburn was wildly exaggerating the how short how shorter time period is from the time that an artery a separate until some somebody believes out. Again, all of his stuff was not saying that The sound and it's wildly inaccurate. So what we end up doing the stopping power, the instantaneous stopping power that we achieve and MBC is based on cutting the muscles in the tendons and the nerves, and then you get time delayed stopping through explanation essentially bleeding somebody out. So we realized that we accept the fact that, you know, all three targets are co located. But again, we're focusing on specific targets for specific reasons. The the arteries are basically ancillary, it's just a byproduct of the rest of the technique. Okay, so that's not necessarily the the goal at all it depending on what level you're going for, in terms of stopping power, we acknowledge it, but we don't count on it. So again, what's interesting when you look at Fairbairn stuff, so for example, he will talk about the carotid artery and this is again, where you have huge misconceptions in the martial arts and knife world, because you'll hear cliches like going for the juggler. Okay, well, the juggler is a vein So if you go back to eighth grade biology and you say, okay, veins, take deoxygenated blood and low blood pressure back to the heart, things actually have check valves in them to help the blood get back to the heart. Then it's run through the heart runs through the lungs, it's oxygenated, and then it's pumped back out into the body under high blood pressure. That's what arteries are. So arteries are what you want to cut if you want to bleed somebody. So the idea of even saying, going for the juggler means that you really don't know what you're going for. You're kind of misguided to begin with because what you really target if you were cutting the neck is the carotid artery, which is close by but not the same thing. Right, right. Well, according to Fairbairn, if you cut the carotid artery, he said that basically five seconds later, you'd be unconscious in 14 seconds later you'd be dead. That's bullshit.

So what it comes down to is you have to look at first of all the one side of the carotid artery carotid arteries bilateral so you have one on each side of the neck, one side is basically seven and a half percent of your blood flow. So At any 1.7, and a half percent of your total blood volume is flowing through that. What you have to look at is, when you lose 20% of your blood volume, you essentially go into shock. At 30%, you're going conscious because there's not enough oxygen going through your brain to keep your conscious and at 40% blood loss. At that point, you basically don't have enough oxygen going your brain to keep it alive. And at that point, you start to die. So what you have to think about is, what is your heart rate? How much blood is being pumped out by your heart with each stroke, what's called stroke lung, and then based on the amount of blood is being lost, in this case, seven and a half percent with a separate carotid artery. How long does it take you to bleed to 30%, which is where you go unconscious and essentially be functionally stopped, right? At 220 beats per minute, the average person is going to take them about 68 seconds to bleed on consciousness with a separate crowd. So you got over a minute that somebody is arms length armed with lethal weapons, trying to kill you. You think you're done?

Bob DeMarco 33:04
Yeah, with adrenaline in your thinking it's 14 seconds. They got another 60 another 55 seconds in there

Michael Janich 33:13
that that the 14 seconds according to Fairburn was death.

Bob DeMarco 33:16
So in the age of the gun this is this is a big thing I hear about because I, you know, I love the Filipino martial arts and I love the the aesthetics of knife martial arts. I love the concepts behind it. I love the movement, I love training it, and I hear a lot. Well, I would just pull out my gun and shoot you and I say, well, I've got a gun too. That's not the point. But what do you say to people when they question the validity of martial knife training in the age of the gun?

Michael Janich 33:47
You hear that a lot. You know, the first thing that I say is okay, do you actually have a concealed carry permit? Well, you know, I've been meaning to get one. I was going to take a class. It's like Okay, great. So basically the only thing you're shooting officer Mouth at the moment, you're disqualified. That's a good one. If they have a concealed carry permit, it's a Okay. Are you carrying you carry consistently? Well, you know, it's kind of uncomfortable looking for the right holster, and you get this litany of excuses where it's like, Okay, again, back to the logic of defending yourself with any kind of a weapon. Whatever you carry on a daily basis, is what you're going to actually use if your attack. So if you don't have a gun, if you say, Well, I would just shoot him. Okay, great with one with the gun that's back in your gun safe. The guys going to hang out, wait for you to drive home, come back, shoot him. It doesn't work that way. So with a knife, part of the reason that I became so, so passionate about knives also was that I lived overseas for my five years, because I live in Hong Kong lived in Bangkok was traveling all over Asia. And even though I was assigned to embassies and consulates over there, I couldn't legally own a firearm because I was a foreign national. I certainly couldn't carry one I was working basically in Vietnamese refugee camps and other places around Southeast Asia, many of which were, a lot of their population was actually northeast gangs. So there were just like, you know, prisons here, you had a lot of improvised edged weapons, a lot of violence going on those camps. And I was also traveling alone, traveled from Hong Kong to the Philippines, spend lots of time in the Philippines on my own. The Philippines at that time, was very active with the National People's Army, the NPA and they were actively targeting Americans. So I looked at it and said, Okay, I would love to be able to carry a gun. I love to be able to defend myself with a gun, but it's simply not allowed. It's not something that I can do with the knife. I had a diplomatic passport and never check my bag so I can carry whatever knife I wanted to. In Thailand, I had to get out of jail free card. It was it was great as far as my security, but the gun simply wasn't an option. Look at a lot of people these days even if they do carry on a regular basis. is if you travel, sooner or later you're going to go to someplace where it's a non permissive environment. You don't have reciprocity. Or if you have to travel overseas again, you're you're back to square one.

Bob DeMarco 36:10
Yeah, yeah, I think obviously gun is a great weapon. And if you haven't on you more power to you, obviously. But I mean, I have a, I have a carry permit, and I never carry a gun. It's just too much and it's not I'm not quite sure I'm willing to take that on. Whereas I carry multiple knives on me all the time. And maybe it's because I have the training with that I don't really have tactical gun training. I remember a seminar with guru Danny in Osaka he was talking about this was right after 911 he was talking about how he had to change up his airplane carry and how he would he carry a drafting kit with him, a nice metal ruler, and some mechanical metal mechanical pencils. And he busted them out and started you know, doing cinema Wally with them or whatever. And and showing how You know, these are, these are improvised and these are not ideal. But if they're all you're allowed to have, they will have to do and, and if your mindset is strictly projectile, if your mindset is strictly I will defend myself with a gun because that's the most powerful and efficient weapon out there and why bother with anything else you might get caught flat footed,

Michael Janich 37:23
and also what it comes down to. If you even if you have a carry permit, if you are a good shooter from a marksmanship standpoint, do you actually have gun fighting skill, which means if you have at this point everyone wants to chime in with well the Tueller drill, 21 foot rule, all that kind of stuff. Again, you have to look at the history. So there's huge misconceptions about what the 21 foot rule is. In simple terms, all it was was an exercise in relative distance and timing. So Dennis Tueller when he was teaching his recruits Salt Lake City PD. Basically, they said, Hey, sorry, how far away Do we have to be if someone comes running out? with a knife, we want to be able to draw and shoot before they reach us. Their Qualification Course was already seven yards. So it just so happened that it took the average person about a second and a half to two seconds from a standing start to run seven yards to sprint, that distance, that also took about a second half to two seconds for them to draw from their duty holster and get around center mass. So what they looked at was, hey, it's about seven yards to have a mutual slain. You know, at that point, essentially, he's reaching you at the same time that you're shooting him and it's a wash. That doesn't mean you win. It doesn't mean that your shots are going to stop him before he gets to you. And really what that is today was trying to teach was you need to have other options you need to be able to, to move and shoot so you can create distance you can move offline, you can you know use different tactics to be able to ensure your safety. But what ended up happening was when that was coined as a 21 foot rule when masa, you broke that up for SWAT magazine. You called it the 21 foot rule. And as soon as was coined as a rule, then it's like, oh, well, there's somebody who's got a knife in it within 21 feet, you get to shoot them. No, you end up with all these misconceptions. The bottom line is if you look at YouTube, you look at videos of people actually attacking other people with knives and other contact distance weapons, what they do is they move up real close, they get to the point where they can, you know, lunge one or two steps and then attack, that's the reality of the pack. So even if you have a gun, going to your gun initially for your initial response is going to get you killed. What you have to have in our empty handed skills that allow you to stay alive long enough to earn your draw, and then use the gun. And most shooters don't have that they do ludicrous stuff like speed rocks, and all that kind of crap. And what it really comes down to is, again, you're back to that mutual slain type of thing. There's a lot more to it than just being able to shoot from a marksmanship stand.

Bob DeMarco 39:58
So describe What martial blade concepts is? And also do you integrate guns into that training?

Michael Janich 40:08
I do. So Marshall big concepts what it really is. Again, it was kind of what I had hoped for four years ago when I first got into this stuff, when I really wanted to learn how to use a knife as a practical self defense weapon, because I didn't have access to anything else. So it really is a it's a practical self defense system that is designed to empower the average person to have skills that you can use to defend your life. It also is sophisticated enough it has enough depth to where you can also consider it to be a martial art if you want to pursue it with that mindset. So we have a lot of the same training drills you have in the Filipino martial arts. We have our specific take on there and our specific interpretation of them, but you can train it as a martial art if you want to but it all goes Back to the defensive application, a brother art of that and going back to my original inspiration for getting into knives. We also have what's called counter ugly concepts, which is the empty hand against knife. And both of those share a lot of the same body mechanics. And both of those also provide a platform for the shooting side of what we do when I went to work for Paladin press back in 1984. Basically what I was hired to do was to start their video production department, but also work with Chromebooks. So Colonel Applegate, for those who don't know who he is, he's basically the close combat trainer for the OSS offices, he took services, which is the predecessor of the CIA. So he was personally charged by Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS during World War Two, to set up the military intelligence Training Center, and essentially train all the US spies that we sent overseas during World War Two. So he's a close combat Legend when you look at the Applegate Fairburn, folding knife, the applicant favorite and fixed blade, the smash it, the numerous knife designs out there. And when you go back and look, the Colonel's legacy was legendary truly and working with him was it was a huge privilege. Well, his thing was point shooting. So he believed that kinesthetic alignment of the gun not using the sights was the way to go in common

Bob DeMarco 42:25
point shooting does that just refer to literally pointing your finger basically,

Michael Janich 42:30
well, there again, when you get into the semantics of this, it becomes kind of a deep rabbit hole because all the decided fire shooters will come out immediately starts in that you know that spray and pray and all this other stuff. When you look at point shooting the way that I define it is kinesthetic alignment. So where it comes down to is being able to use your natural ability to orient the gun through pointing and through body orientation to be able to get when you look at The term aiming aiming simply means aligning a weapon with a target. So it's a way of aiming without using the sights. And again, that's, that becomes a deep rabbit hole in and of itself, but I had the opportunity to work with Colonel Applegate and also Jim Cirilo Jim Cirillo was a former who's a member of the NYPD NYPD stakeout unit. So he was as far as contemporary modern gunfighters, who's involved in 17 gun fights firstly killed 12 people and one of the most amazing shots that I've ever seen, and he was a hardcore sided fire shooter. But he also believed in kinesthetic alignment and the ability to shoot the gun using what he called alternative citing methods. But a lot of what I do as far as my approach to shooting handguns, is based on what I learned from Colonel Applegate and Jim Cirillo, it's a little bit of a hybrid that is combined with the body mechanics from NBC and CBC

Bob DeMarco 44:00
That doesn't surprise me about the the kinesthetic alignment concept. Because if you're playing a game of, you know, racquetball or whatever, you're not thinking before you hit the ball, your body is reacting, your body is thinking, and then maybe on analysis afterwards, your mind catches up. But really, you know, especially if any sort of expertise in a given area, physical area, like maybe martial arts, you're not thinking before you intercept that knife, you're you're doing and then later kind of reconsidering so that that sort of alignment without the site makes sense to me as a non tactical shooter that that sort of makes sense to me.

Michael Janich 44:42
Well, an easy way to think of it. Have you seen the weaver stance so the weaver stance is basically where you have one arm is bent, and it's basically pulling with isometric tension on the other arm. So usually, both arms are bent, slightly different variations on this, but it's an asymmetrical platform. When you Compare that to the saucily stings were both arms are extended fully, well, your arms are always going to be the same way. So when you extend your arms, and you essentially lock out your elbows or come close to locking out your elbows and then you simply orient yourself with the thing that's trying to kill you, which is what you'll do anyway, under stress. You simply point your entire body at whatever it is you want to shoot, right? So when you think of things in simple terms, the I saucily stance is much more of a natural, instinctive, kinesthetic alignment of the gun than the weaver stance would be, because it takes it takes into consideration and builds upon your natural instinct.

Bob DeMarco 45:41
So who is coming to your Marshall Britt played concepts, seminars. I know I spoke with Alan Dershowitz recently and, and he came to two or three day seminar you had in Colorado recently. Who are the folks that come by these seminars,

Michael Janich 45:59
it a lot of cases We'll have our people who have trained in other martial arts and have kind of gotten disillusioned with the traditional martial arts approach. The martial arts have gotten a lot better. But it used to be you think back to you know, kind of The Karate Kid type of stuff. The wax on wax, wax off everything. We jokingly call it wax on wax off is martial masturbation, if you don't know what you're doing, and you're simply going through the motions of a martial art with no clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve, you're wasting your time, you may be doing it for artistic purposes, you may enjoy doing it for you know, the health benefits and everything else. But when it comes to self defense, every movement that you do should have purpose, and you should know what you're trying to achieve. So in many cases, what we have are people who kind of been through that process and they're like that I trained for years, but I wasn't sure what this movement was for this technique didn't work and they just really didn't feel that it was the shortest route to self defense. Many Any of those folks also the way I kind of consider self defense, there's four pillars. So you essentially have your physical attributes. So your, your strength, your reflexes, essentially your athleticism, and then you have skill, so your actual combative skill, then you have weapons, you have your mindset. Well, as we get older, what ends up happening or if we get injured, our physical attributes diminish, hopefully, we've been training so our skills get better. But what ends up happening is people when they're younger, it's like, Okay, great. I've got physical attributes, I don't need that much skill. I've already got a bad attitude because I'm young. So the mindset is there, they don't need weapons, and they fight very well. Whatever you get out of the byproduct or the, the output of these four pillars is almost like an equalizer on the stereo. Whatever comes out at the end has to sound good. Well, this case it has to be hit that threshold of being able to defend yourself and be effective self defense. Well, as folks get older, the physical attributes diminish that at that point to start looking at why I need to cheat, I need a weapon. If I get to that point where I'm up against, you know some guy who's younger, stronger, maybe a couple of multiple attackers something like that they hit that point where they did do some soul searching realize no longer have the physical attributes to fight empty handed. And I need something to to work as an equalizer. So many cases will have people who do that. We get a lot of shooters, in many cases will have shooters who will show up and they'll have a knife in their left pocket and it's all you know, that's my weapon retention tool. So, somebody goes to my gun, I'm gonna use the nice to cut them off. It's okay, show me how you draw your folder and open it one handed. With your non dominant hand ready go while you're holding your pistol in with your lawyer in a engage in a tug of war over your pistol. And that never goes well. And then he realized oh, okay, you know, in many cases what you'll have our people who have concealed carry permits but don't carry on a regular basis are looking for weapons more convenient. They traveled to places they get it done the math, they figured out, I go to places where I don't have reciprocity. I go to places that are non permissive environments where carry of a gun is not permitted. So you start looking at all these things and it's usually people who've, who've done some research, have done the math, look at it and say, You know what, the knife could be a viable option for me. So it's usually folks who've done a little bit of soul searching a little bit of research.

Bob DeMarco 49:26
It's kind of a hard place to get to I would imagine I'm, I've always been a knife lover, and I've done Filipino martial arts for for a while, but it's, I would imagine, it's a hard place to get to, if you're, if you're not necessarily an enthusiast about it, and you don't think about it. Or maybe the the movements Don't, don't seduce you or knives are not interesting to you. And it's just a practical thing. I could see how approaching knife combat ups could be difficult because it's so visceral and personal.

Michael Janich 49:58
It is. It's It's also one of those things when you look at shooters, they get used to simulating something that is a pretty brutal gruesome thing, you know, shooting another human being. But they basically boil that down to I just put two holes in a piece of cardboard. And it's the same thing. Well, it's not. So they've come up with this, you know, kind of very sterile clinical way of simulating something that they say, Okay, at this point, I'm good to go. Because I got two shots and center mass, it's in the a zone, I'm good. When you start talking about, Okay, I'm going to, you know, cut this guy, and I'm going to cut to the bone, I'm going to cut his quad to the bone, I may take his femoral nerve and his femoral artery in the process. Even for for shooters, that can be a little bit too much. But it's one of those things where again, you have to, you have to be able to cross that, that that mental gap, if you will, and say okay, this is what I'm willing to do. Some people can do that. People can't some people do it as a curiosity. And you know, as soon as we start getting into the realities of the mechanics, they find it off putting go through the motions for the rest of the day and you never see him again.

Bob DeMarco 51:12
So coming full circle, you train in Filipino martial arts and other styles and you develop your own concepts and then you develop your own knife. And you work with spider CO, what has that been like?

Michael Janich 51:24
It's been great. I just celebrated my 10th anniversary as a spider co employee. So I've actually been affiliated with spider co since 1999. And OpenStack. Lesser since 1989. Just started teaching for spider co back when NBC was kind of in its infancy back then, and it's been great, especially coming back, being a full time employee with them. They were kind enough I had been working with Black Hawk products crew who's managing both masters of defense and Black Hawk blades. Essentially, they were prepping the company to sell it to a company called ATK. And one of the ways that they made their profitability look a little bit more attractive was to get rid of all the middle management. So when I got kicked to the curb from Blackhawk, I went to spider Cohen asked them if they you know, had any opportunities, and they essentially created an opportunity for me. And I'll always be grateful for that. They brought me on board and essentially it's allowed me to continue to work with a couple of industry industry I love and also pursue teaching, writing. I have been doing the best defense TV series 10 of the 11 series 10 of the 11 seasons of the best defense under spider co-sponsorship, so

Bob DeMarco 52:40
we've been very good to me the Be warned knife. Was that you?

Michael Janich 52:43
Yes. Okay. That was that. That was cool.

Bob DeMarco 52:46
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's that's a that's not mastered of defense that those blacklist Blackhawk, right. Okay. Yeah. It seems like Well, I've seen you in in a number of The SHOT Show and blade show videos working at the spider co booth there. They just seem like an amazing outfit. I mean, how many different designers they bring into their mix but but also the innovation that comes out of that house. I was watching your video a video you put up on the Yojimbo, too. And you're talking specifically about the compression lock, and how

Michael Janich 53:26
optimized it is for well, especially for a tactical knife or or a knife. You don't necessarily want to fold on your hands. Not you not that you want any, too. But in a situation where you might be drawing the Yojimbo to actually do some some of that kind of work. You're talking about the compression? What about the compression lock? Over say what people kind of consider its sister but to me, it's kind of the opposite the liner lock, how do those How do you differentiate, so they both use a split liner if you will. Basically is a spring that extends laterally across the thickness of the blade. The big difference when you think of a liner lock, which you've got, when you open it up, you're essentially looking at hold it edge up, you're looking into the inside slot of the handle, the ramp on the blade faces toward the end of the handle. And essentially, the liner is pressing up against that ramp. When you apply pressure to the blade to try to close it. What ends up happening is one of two things one is either the ramp will slide completely off the blade, or if it starts to bow because it's not strong enough, it will eventually give up the blade close with a compression lock it's different mechanism as far as the vectors of force, so the ramp faces upward. So what I mean by that is, if you were to open the knife and you had an edge down, you're looking at it from the side, the ramp on the back of the blade faces upward instead, and it faces directly up toward the stop the night So the stop pin is what as you open the blade essentially it keeps the blade from extending too far it limits the travel of the blade. Well when the liner comes across onto the ramp, what it's doing now is it's coming across onto the ramp itself, but the top of the liner is held captive by the stopping. So the reason it's called the compression lock is when you try to apply pressure to close the blade. Now what you tried to do is not push the liner on the way you're actually trying to crush it. Between that Upward Facing ramp and the bottom of the stop mechanically its waist or so when you look at spider go does testing for all of its locks. blocks that are what are called MBC rated so MBC the original MBC was actually mercial Blake craft which is a term that Southwest coined when I left or stopped teaching for spider go and went to work for Black Hawk I changed my MBC commercial blade concepts so I can maintain the accurate and not having any conflict of interest there. But something that is MBC rated according to spider holds 200 inch pounds of pressure per inch blade length. So basically at back strength, it's very difficult for the human hand to hold on to it and apply that much pressure. So the compression lock is one of the few locks that is MBC rated. And the low Jimbo is MBC rating exceeds 200 pounds of pressure per per inch blade. It also puts the lock release into the soft part of the web of the phone. So when you're gripping the knife, you can grip it as tight as you want, and there's no danger of accidentally releasing the lock. Whereas with a liner lock, especially if it has a cut out that allows you to release the lock your index finger rest right on lock release. So if the knife twists in your hand at all, it's very easy, not for the lock to give up but for you to actually inadvertently release the lock and the closing your fingers.

Bob DeMarco 56:50
So basically to get a compression lock to fail you would have to have an Will you would have to be strong enough in your hands a to hold on to it. Be while that small piece of liner that is spring loaded as the as the lock is being crushed between the blade Tang and the stop pin, which seems kind of impossible not impossible, but certainly impossible to hold on to while that's happening.

Michael Janich 57:19
Yeah, whatever, whatever you would be doing with a knife in your hand at that point, the odds of you losing your grip, the nice looking out of your hand and letting go completely are a lot higher than you actually compromising a lot.

Bob DeMarco 57:32
Okay, so I'm going to ask you what, what other knives obviously the Yojimbo to is you know is the knife, that's the one you've designed and that's, you've designed that to your specs. What out there. If you can think of one, what other knives call to you in such a way that that you would want to use them in such a situation. When when people ask me about what are the best knives for self defense

Michael Janich 58:00
You know, you have all these different knives up here. My first answer is find a knife that has a matching trainer. So you can develop skill that narrows the field. Tremendous radically. And I mean, you're, I mean, you probably are down now to about one to 2% of all so called tech lies out. So when you really want to narrow the field, that's the quickest way to do it. Because now it's like, if I actually want to train which you should of course if you can rely on something as a defensive weapon, you have to have a training tool that matches so once you pare everything down, one of my favorites is a spider go delicate. I've carried delicate and indoors for years and years and years. The delicate is still my back pocket knife is one of the three knives I carry every day to GMOs in a delicate so the delicate Warren cliff is is one of my go tues So once that came out in one Cliff profile, the old super ground one way, jumped in my pocket.

Bob DeMarco 58:58
That's funny. I'm not surprised. That's a cool looking that delicate with it. I love the way that looks. I don't have one but with that swooped down towards the tip.

Michael Janich 59:08
Beautiful. And again, you know, it's it's the same cutting mechanics, it's the same logic and everything else simply applied to a little bit different platform. It was a delicate what's nice about it for left handers. The fact that it's a pack lock operation is completely extras, there's a four position clip so you can easily set it up for left side carry.

Bob DeMarco 59:27
You can get it waived if you want or you can put a put a zip tie on there if you want.

Michael Janich 59:32
Yep or the Have you seen the five by five combat solutions. They're both on and call it a pickpocket. It's basically a screw on waves. They do a really nice job of those machines really nicely done. So they're doing those for delegates and indoors as well.

Bob DeMarco 59:49
Nice. Well, So Michael, if people want to get in touch with you or find out where you're giving seminars find out more about you more about your knives and your designs. Where should they go?

Michael Janich 1:00:01
best place to go is Marshall Blake concepts com so Marshall like martial arts blade concepts calm. And that is my website. The way that it's organized it will kind of take you to all the different things that you might be interested in. So if you are interested in DVDs, it can point you to my DVDs, which are sold through stay safe media. If you're looking for digital videos online, that will point you there. If you're looking for the seminar schedule if you're looking for. I also have a complete instructor locator. So I have an instructor certification program and MBC. Of course, the best way to learn any martial art is to regular training with the certified instructor. So if you go to the instructor locator, it's broken down by country and state. So if you are in New York, you're looking for you know, I want to find it MBC instructor so if you scroll down to New York, you look to see who's available there and figure out who's close to you.

Bob DeMarco 1:00:54
And I would also be remiss if I didn't ask you Do you have any other night concepts or knife designs in the hopper that you're working on. You don't have to like bust them out right here. But are you working on another, another knife? People are so happy with this Yojimbo to

Michael Janich 1:01:12
call. First of all, for folks who are fixed blade fans, in addition to the origin go to there is the Roman two. So there is a fixed version of that that is literally the same exact profile, not quite as as pointy a peek at the top. But that is a fixed blade version of the same same design. And I guess I can talk about it now because there's been some talk about it on the forums and stuff. I've had some people come back to me and say I love the GMO but I've got really big hands, and I need something that's going to fit my hand better. Can you make a bigger version so I've designed a bigger version? and basically they asked me what I want to call it. So I'm calling it the little jumbo,

Bob DeMarco 1:01:52
Jumbo. It's awesome. Alright, little tongue in cheek.

Michael Janich 1:01:56
But Perfect. Okay, so the Yojimbo like I said, one of my absolute favorite knives and definitely my favorite spider co knife. But I also love big knife so I cannot wait for the Yojimbo, what kind of blade length Do you think it's going to be right around four inch? Yes, three quarters of an inch longer. Thank you sir Yojimbo and tried to make the ergonomics sort of fit normal size hands, but it will also easily accommodate the greens as well.

Bob DeMarco 1:02:24
That's cool. And and one of the things one of the greatest improvements, I think from the Yojimbo to the Yojimbo to was the the blade to handle ratio, which I know you've also definitely considered because you like this to be kind of a win and closed position to serve as a sort of mocking war or a little hand stick thing, but also be able to open up but you don't want too much extra handle without the blade

Michael Janich 1:02:50
because that's just what people want. Again, if you go if you go back to the the first generation, there's an interesting historical perspective that goes along with that. So when I was Designing the first generation Yojimbo. What I wanted was something that would fit my hand Give me the ability to strike with the peanut butter the weapon. But also at that time, this was pre September 11. So at that time, FAA regulations where you could carry a four inch blade on a plane under heightened security, they reduced it to three inches. So I did the research on the FAA regulations. And I said, Okay, I'm going to do a three inch blade, but I want to make sure that I have a full size handle. So when you look at the first generation of Jimbo, people like What the hell's wrong with this thing, there's not enough blade. Again, it was designed pre September 11. It wasn't released until after that. But it was designed prior to that time, it was designed specifically to allow you to be able to carry it on a plane at that time with those regulations. Of course, the world has changed drastically since

Bob DeMarco 1:03:49
the good old days.

Michael Janich 1:03:51
Yeah. But you know, that's, again, it's like anything else. A little bit of historical perspective goes a long way. A lot of cases helps you understand things a lot better.

Bob DeMarco 1:04:00
Well Michael Janet, thank you so much for coming on the Knife Junkie podcast I appreciate it it's been great speaking with you I've you've been on my radar I've been watching your videos and buying your designs for years and I was very excited to talk to you sire, it's been a pleasure

Unknown Speaker 1:04:16
It's been a pleasure for me as well thank you so much for the opportunity absolutely

Announcer 1:04:20
Ever visit the knives online in the hopes of satisfying your need to possess them in the real world. Then you have a problem ... you are at Knife Junkie!

Jim Person 1:04:29
back on the Knife Junkie podcast episode 58 another one in the books great interview with Michael Janich and you know for the knife newbie guy here definitely a different interview you know for for me getting getting more into the as you said the analytical and you know, that kind of thing.

Bob DeMarco 1:04:46
Yeah, I guess. I guess some of these conversations can get it can make the squeamish run for cover and I'm not calling you squeamish, but I mean, you know, it's not often we talk about bleeding. You know, even though this is a knife show But the way Michael Janich comes at it, it's not it's not torrid at all. He's not he's not fantasizing about getting in knife fights. He's talking about the actual realities that people especially law enforcement officers have to deal with, and how the knife can actually play into it and what better way to approach something as emotionally fraught, and, and just sort of mysterious as a quote unquote knife fight, best approach it from the most analytical and most scientific angle as possible. I thought it was fascinating kind of deconstructing the Fairbairn Sykes, the sort of model the get tough model, you know, you get hit in the carotid you bleed out in 13 seconds, that's it, you know, lights out, and actually demystifying some of that stuff. So basically, I really admire him for his sort of research and his analytical approach to this thing that could be a very intense and emotional experience.

Jim Person 1:05:56
For we wrap up like to remind you that if you're shopping for knife and you want to save some money we've got a way for you to do so if you'll just go to The Knife Junkie comm slash he baits that way you can save money anytime you buy a knife or really buy anything online the use of eBay actually allows you to earn cashback for all of your purchases stuff you're buying already or special purchases that you want to use so just go to The Knife Junkie comm slash eBay sign up for free the next time you're shopping remember us he beats The Knife Junkie dot com slash eBay it's The Knife Junkie. com slash eBay, Bob The Knife Junkie podcast episode number 58 in the books ... a final quick word from you.

Bob DeMarco 1:06:40
Go out and check out a Wharncliff if you don't have one. If you don't have one in your collection, check out a Yojimbo to or any other kind of Wharncliffy blade and see how useful they actually are.

Jim Person 1:06:50
There you heard it, as I said a knife drop from The Knife Junkie. We're out of here.

Announcer 1:06:54
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