The Knife Junkie Podcast is the place for knife newbies and knife junkies to learn about knives and knife collecting. Twice per week Bob DeMarco talks knives. Email Bob at theknifejunkie@gmail.com; visit https://theknifejunkie.com.
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Announcer [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast. Your weekly dose of knife news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your host, Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco.

Bob DeMarco [00:00:16]:
Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DiMarco. On this edition of the show, I'm speaking with L.T. Wright of L.T. Wright Knives. Lt Wright Knives are known to be some of the most sought after outdoors and bushcraft knives on the market. And having had a chance to check out his large northern hunter, loaned to me by a generous viewer, it's obvious why his work is beautiful to both the eye and the hand. And his knives excel at every manner of outdoor, domestic and hunting tasks. He started out making hunting knives but broadened his vision and scope. And with the help of a loyal customer base, he's honed in on his own knife making niche.

Bob DeMarco [00:00:57]:
We'll meet L.T. and talk about his path getting here, but first be sure to like, comment, subscribe and hit the notification bell. You can also download the show to your favorite podcast app so you can listen on the go. Also, if you'd like to help support the show, you can share it or go to Patreon and see what we have to offer there. Quickest way to do that is to go to the knife junkie.com Patreon or scan the QR code on your screen again. That's the knife junkie.com slash Patreon

Announcer [00:01:24]:
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Bob DeMarco [00:01:37]:
L.T. nice to have you on the show, sir.

L.T. Wright [00:01:40]:
Hey, well thanks for having me. I appreciate that.

Bob DeMarco [00:01:43]:
It's my pleasure. I've been, I've been, I've been observing your knives for a long time and as I mentioned up front, had the chance to check out the large northern hunter and man, it really impressed me. But then just doing some research into you a lot impressed me. You've been a knife guy or interested in knives since the very start.

L.T. Wright [00:02:06]:
Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I've always been, like you said, interested in knives. I was very lucky growing up. My dad was a hunter so I got to experience knives through him. He liked knives. So naturally, you know, you kind of gravitate to what your dad likes. I mean that always happens, right? So when we, when I was very little I he take me hunting and I remember one of my very first Christmas gifts was a knife of some kind. You know, I don't, I don't recall exactly what that was.

L.T. Wright [00:02:41]:
But getting to go in the woods with my dad, the funnest part of the day was two things. He let me play with my knife when we got to wherever we were going to hunt. And then I got to eat lunch in the woods. I don't know why. That was just like, you know, you sit there and it's like, dad, can we eat lunch yet? Son, we just got here. You know, it was that kind of thing. So then he'd let me play with my knife. I could whittle a stick or some things.

L.T. Wright [00:03:03]:
And that was just a really fun thing. So that's kind of where my knife journey started. Definitely with my dad, there's. There's no doubt about it. And I, you know, growing up, I remember laying at the bottom of his refiner looking through Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, not at the articles, at the ads, because I wanted, if you remember the, the US Navy knife or the USMC knife, it was like 10 bucks. The old K bars back then in the 70s. And I would just stare at that quarter page ad going that night. You know, I can just remember doing that.

L.T. Wright [00:03:40]:
It was, it was such a good time.

Bob DeMarco [00:03:42]:
What do you think it is about knives themselves that had the young LT Wright, the boy LT Wright, so fascinated.

L.T. Wright [00:03:51]:
Tarzan. Straight up Tarzan. Okay. I mean, as a kid, you know, my grandfather was a big Tarzan fan. So I'd get to go over there on Saturday afternoons and you'd have the matinee and he'd always be watching Tarzan. Tarzan had a loincloth and a knife and the guy survived his whole life with that. So it kind of set you on a journey right there. So definitely that was kind of what it was.

L.T. Wright [00:04:15]:
And my parents, I played in the woods with my friends a lot and we were allowed to carry a knife out into the woods. So I had an old, you know, hurt. Actually. I got my, my father left, let me have is Hertz knife that used to be a catalog and they had a knife in there and it was again, five or ten bucks. And literally it's a version of a, an old hickory butcher knife. So it was kind of, you know, again, this is in the early 70s, so I'm super happy. It's about a 4 inch blade, very Kephart design. And I still have that knife to this day.

L.T. Wright [00:04:52]:
It's downstairs. So I, I definitely, I was really into that. But it was, it was definitely Tarzan getting the play in the woods with my friends. We'd run around with our knives and again, just weren't really bushcrafting. We Were probably just sharpening sticks and throwing them. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:05:13]:
Your mention of Tarzan. I've talked a lot on this show about how for me it was Daniel Boone, Grizzly Adams, Land of the Lost. A lot of those shows in the, in the 70s, guys always had knives on their, on their belts and it meant self reliance. You know something about that?

L.T. Wright [00:05:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. There is no doubt that a knife definitely opened a lot of doors for me as a young person later on studying martial arts and stuff. Knives, the defense of and the use of that intrigued me quite a bit too. So going from hunting into the, I guess you would call it the tactical side of things a little bit. And then from there it went into the bushcraft. You know, bushcraft was a, and still is a very large part of what we do.

Bob DeMarco [00:06:02]:
So tell me about the martial arts aspect. That is not something that I was thinking of.

L.T. Wright [00:06:08]:
Well, just that was the other thing, you know, when you were a kid. About that time was the series Kung fu was on TV with David Carradino, you know, the 70s. So I got very interested in the martial arts and was lucky enough that I spent my whole life pretty much doing one form or another. So as you're doing that again, weapons defense, learning how to defend yourselves against knives, sticks, guns and stuff is an important part of that journey. And in that was learning how to use the knife in an offensive manner if you ever had to. So that was kind of where that went. But today it's more for me cooking bushcraft, still hunting, but I have to say the most use of my knives today are in the kitchen with my wife. She'll push a whole pile of vegetables over on my side and say, let's put these in jars.

L.T. Wright [00:06:59]:
And, and I gotta be honest, man, I love. We put on some music and I will stand there all day with a cutting board and cut vegetables and fruit. I, I, I just love doing that.

Bob DeMarco [00:07:10]:
That sounds blissful. That's like a good Sunday at our house. Except we eat it, we eat it immediately instead of jar.

L.T. Wright [00:07:18]:
Well, yeah, we, we spend a lot of time. We, we have food prep Saturdays and it's one of those things, you know, we try not to, we try to use everything. She's making soups out of the skins of this, that and the other vegetable and, you know, or broth and we're filling jars and dehydrating, you name it, we're putting stuff up.

Bob DeMarco [00:07:38]:
So how did it come to be that you thought, well, maybe I can make these things?

L.T. Wright [00:07:43]:
Well, it all started again. You had the Love of knives pretty much all the time. You know, as a young kid, we all carried a pen knife, you know, a two bladed something or other. Probably a case of some sort when I was very, very young or the Barlows. Barlow was. I remember having a whole bunch of them as a kid. You know, that was, that was something. And then as you got into it a little more, I, I kind of happened along this idea.

L.T. Wright [00:08:16]:
I wanted to make a knife for my dad. It was literally that. And I was thumbing through some magazine. It might have been Blade. Uh, you know, that was the other thing. I would go grocery shopping with my wife and back then we had really good magazine racks on the curve. Yeah, I mean, right. So I, I say we would go shopping.

L.T. Wright [00:08:39]:
She would go shopping and come and get me when she was done and say, you know, grab the one you're buying and let's go. So. And then they would have knives illustrated, they would have tactical knives, they would have Blade. Probably a couple ones that I've even forgotten by then. So I would just sit there and thumb through them. And I believe I saw an ad in there for a company that's no longer in business now. It was called Koval's Knife Supplies and they happened to be out of Ohio. And I thought, wow, it'd be kind of cool to make my dad a knife for Christmas.

L.T. Wright [00:09:09]:
So I ordered one of their kidnaps. You know, not in. But this has nothing to do with me becoming a knife. This was literally, I was making a Christmas gift for my father. Being professionally, I was a carpenter and we were interior trim carpenters. So we had a good idea about fit and finishing woods and doing different stuff. Yeah. So I thought, I'm gonna get this and I'm gonna use some wood from one of the job sites or something and make him a nice knife.

L.T. Wright [00:09:38]:
Why I ended up doing that and it turned out really, really nice. And I was very happy with it. I thought the fit and finish was real good, so gave it to him for Christmas. Never really thought anything more of it. I'm not even sure if I had planned on making myself or not. Then I just started messing around with some old pocket knives, you know, just getting the rust off on practice and sharpening, you know, you know, just. It was loose. Just learning, teaching myself how to tighten it up.

L.T. Wright [00:10:06]:
Just, just really plain, seriously, like go to work, come home at night, you know, eat supper and go downstairs for a little bit and just mess around again, not thinking about making knots. So my dad takes his knife to work and he was A project manager on a construction site at that time. And he showed it to a couple of guys, and guys went, man, I want one. Would he make me one? And he goes, I don't know. I can ask him. So it turned out that he had a few of the guys there wanting to make. Have me make them a knife. I'm like, dad, I don't make knives.

L.T. Wright [00:10:44]:
And he said, well, just do what you did for me. I was like, okay. You know, so I. I got a couple more and put them together and didn't really know how to charge for them, so I just come up with a number, and the guys scooped them right up. And I'm like, wow, that was pretty cool. I didn't have to work hard for that, you know. And then that I dawned on me as, like, you know, out of all the hobbies I had, you and I were talking about guitars and stuff. They never really pay you back.

L.T. Wright [00:11:11]:
You spend a lot of money on hot rods. Okay, I have. I spent. I went down that rabbit hole, and I still have one out in the garage. Guitars, you know, there's just stuff that you just. You spend money on. Well, here I am. I.

L.T. Wright [00:11:25]:
This little kind of hobby. Now, when I say hobby, I've only made a couple, right? But it is like something I made, and the guys wanted to give me money for it. I was like, well, that's kind of cool. So I was kind of interested. And then I started talking to my wife about it, like, hey, this nice thing, you know, she looks at me, she goes, all these hobbies you've had all your life, you know, the martial arts. You spend tons of money doing that. Guns, collecting knives at the time, you know, again, cars, guitars, all that. She said, you're not.

L.T. Wright [00:11:59]:
No house money goes to this hobby. Oh, okay. I was like, all right. So literally, she said she set the goal for me. Or. Or the boundaries. Like, if you're going to be messing around with this knife thing, it better pay for itself. Yeah.

L.T. Wright [00:12:14]:
I was like, okay. Well, but surprisingly, to me, it was kind of easy to get it to pay for herself. So I'd get a couple kit knives. And then another thing that I did early on to teach myself how to do things was, you know, that late at night, if you stay up, you can buy these 50 knives for $50. Yeah, well, some of the guys would buy that, and they would go to a gun show and then sell them off for a few bucks a piece. Well, I would go to a gun show and I'd buy two or three of Those things, bring them home, bust the handles off of them, take my hand grinder and regrind a profile, change the shape, and then put new handles on them just to practice fit and finish. Because I had nothing invested. And surprisingly, people wanted those.

Bob DeMarco [00:13:02]:
Oh, wow.

L.T. Wright [00:13:02]:
You know, after I did that, so I was like, okay, 20 bucks. You know, I'm just. Just trying to make my money to where I'm breaking even. I don't. So it was a real interesting start into this hobby. And after I. I made a few of the kit knives, I got enough money to. To I.

L.T. Wright [00:13:23]:
I might be able to buy a grinder stuff. And about that time is when I had the opportunity to meet R.W. wilson. Okay, so the story behind that. My. One of my buddies was going to a gun show local to our house here. And he goes, you want to go? I was like, I don't. I've been to a bunch of gun shows.

L.T. Wright [00:13:46]:
Like, like, all right. So I went up with them, and I'm just walking around, got my hands in my pocket, you know, not really wanting to buy anything, and I came across this table I'd never seen before, and it had a whole bunch of knives and tomahawks on. And I was just intrigued. I was like, wow, this is really cool. And I'm just kind of looking around, the guy's sitting there. And I. And I kind of was, boy, I sure would like to know how to make those, you know, just half kidding. And he just went, well, I can teach you.

L.T. Wright [00:14:17]:
And I went, what? He goes, I can teach you where you live. I said, I live right over here. And he goes, well, I live right over here. We're 10 minutes apart. He said, I can teach you. I said, well, that sounds good. And he says, why don't you come over tonight? I was like, seriously? He's like, yeah. So I.

L.T. Wright [00:14:35]:
I again, real. At that time, I didn't know really who he was. I just knew that whatever, he knew how to make knives. He was very, very good. So I got the opportunity, told my wife, like, hey, I gotta go. I gotta go check this out and go see what's going on at least. I said, at least then I know what kind of equipment or you know, what I need for a grinder or thing. Yeah.

L.T. Wright [00:14:55]:
So I went over there, and when I walked into his house, on the wall, there was a bunch of tomahawks fanned in an array. And I was like, wow, that is really cool. I said, what is that? And he nonchalantly just looked over his shoulder. He goes, Those are the tomahawks I made for the movie Jeremiah Johnson in seven. Oh, no way. No, dude, I did exactly what you just did. I went, nah, are you kidding? And he turned around and walked into the shop. And I'm standing there dumbfounded, like my favorite movie of all time.

L.T. Wright [00:15:32]:
And you made the call. Are you kidding me? Seriously, like, who is this guy? I was like. I started hanging out. I would go over. At that time, my job quit at about 2:30. I was home by 3:30. I was at RW's by 4:30. It was like, I come home, kiss the wife, what chores need done, eat dinner.

L.T. Wright [00:15:53]:
And then I went over his house almost every night. Now, he did not let me do, like, make the night. Okay. But what he did do was let me watch and just simply, like, cut stuff out. So I would be on the bandsaw and I would get to cut the knives out. All right? And that was a. That was a lot of fun. He.

L.T. Wright [00:16:26]:
He would take a bunch of steel and weld it together so it's like five blades thick. And then he would take and grease pencil the top of it. And I would stand there on a bandsaw. And if you ever ran a metal bandsaw, number one, it runs slow with one piece of steel. Well, imagine if you're pushing five pieces of stacked steel through there. But that's how he did it. He just weld each edge, and then you would just cut out all five blanks at once, and then you were done. Okay.

L.T. Wright [00:16:54]:
So that was. That was a. A really cool thing. Well, what would happen is. And I would just get the band because it moved so slow. I could stick my hand way over here and run it on the bandsaw. And then I could look over his grinder and watch him grind. So I was kind of doing two things.

L.T. Wright [00:17:11]:
I was cutting out these blanks for him and I was grinding. So that was a very good training tool for me, that. And his name was R.W. wilson, if anyone ever gets a chance. Sadly, he's passed on, but he made some fantastic knives and tomahawks. He was very well known for his tomahawk. Matter of fact, I think. Well, it was in the 70s.

L.T. Wright [00:17:36]:
He made, I believe, 500 tomahawks, the Texas Rangers, for one of their anniversaries. And I. And when he went to present that to them to make the tomahawks, he had a tomahawk with him. Well, I own that tomahawk.

Bob DeMarco [00:17:52]:
Oh.

L.T. Wright [00:17:52]:
So I had. I have serial number 000. So I'm pretty proud of that, that is pretty amazing.

Bob DeMarco [00:18:00]:
You apprenticed with him basically, even though maybe you didn't call it that, but. So what was the first knife you made and you know, from scratch? And what was that process like, including design? How did you make your first knife?

L.T. Wright [00:18:17]:
I started out making what I would consider patch knives. If you're into muzzleloaders. Yeah, the patch knife is just a cutting knife. And I saw this design again by going to the gun shows. You know, I go to the gun shows and there were people selling, you know, replica antiques or, or just some patch knives they had, they had made or some things. And I really was intrigued by that. The acid etched look of them. Maybe they had bone handle on them, maybe they had a little bit of antler handle on them.

L.T. Wright [00:18:47]:
And I started making patch knives. Well, at first I really didn't know any steel suppliers or anything, so I would just use old saw blades because again, I was a carpenter. So I had all these old used saw blades that were no good. And I went out and I bought a. Well, first I would just bring them home and take my angle grinder and cut them out. Just literally cut them out as close as I could get them, put them in a vise and then just grind them down the shape. And my first teaching myself how to. How to grind.

L.T. Wright [00:19:19]:
This was a little bit pre RW. Again, carpenter background. I have a 2 by 21 belt sander. Turn it upside down in the vise, tape the trigger on, and I'd stand there and grind this way on a little 2 by 21. So I'd go to Sears, we had a Sears here at the time. And I'd buy all the. The roughest grid I could find, whatever it was, bring it home and just wear them out. And that's how I taught myself how to grind.

L.T. Wright [00:19:48]:
And it looks as bad as what you think it might because they were wrong, they were rough. But it was a great place to start and practice. It was the practice, the repetition. It's like anything you gotta stand. People ask me like, how do you get good at grinding knives? I said grinding knives. I mean, there's no other thing. I can tell you all the way. I can show you every intricate, this, that or the other.

L.T. Wright [00:20:12]:
You have to stand in front of that grinder, you have to make those mistakes and you have to learn how to fix them. It's like, how do you get it?

Bob DeMarco [00:20:19]:
How do you get good at punching reps?

L.T. Wright [00:20:22]:
Exactly. Reps.

Bob DeMarco [00:20:24]:
So let me ask you this. A big hurdle for a lot of people who want to get into knives and, or want to get into making knives is, oh, I can't afford all the equipment. What did you learn from taking the. The 2 by 22 or 2 by 21, whatever you said that was, and jury rigging it so that you could grind. What did you learn from that? Very rudimentary sort of way of doing it.

L.T. Wright [00:20:50]:
Yeah. And this goes for. If anyone is listening and they're like, man, it costs a lot of money to get into the hobby or into the business. It depends on how you look at things. And that goes for anything in life. You can make it hard by the way you think about things, or you can make it a little bit easy by becoming creative with stuff. And one of the things that started for me was exactly that. I used that 3 by 20.

L.T. Wright [00:21:16]:
It's like a 3 inch by 21 belt sander. Turn it upside down, duct tape thing on, and I'd plug it in and out. That's how I kept it run. All right. I did not have a drill press. I had a hand drill. And I found at a yard sale something that you could take it and put hose clamps on the side of it. And it had it and it turned it into a drill press for a year.

L.T. Wright [00:21:38]:
That's how I drill holes in handle. So I could do it with that. I would buy my bone at Kroger's and the dog out. I would get the dog bones, bring them home, grind them in half, get my wife's crock pot, heat up some dye, leather dye that I had in a mason jar and drop them in that mason jar and let them sit in there for a week or two. My pins again, I'm carpenter background. I used four penny nails. So if you find one of my original patch knives from, you know, 2000, 2001, they're that rough looking old hickory pieces from the stairs that we would build or something. The bone, old elk antler, you name it.

L.T. Wright [00:22:25]:
That's what went on as the handle. I actually had an old cracked bowling ball that I found one time. And I cut the bowling ball off and used the bowling ball pieces for handle material on knives and early days. You know, if you're creative now, you can go out and you can spend 3, $200 on a knife grinder. You can and that you'll have a fantastic tool. But if you start from the beginning and you, you teach yourself these rudimentary ways to do it, even if the only thing you have is a mango grinder, put it in your vise and start working your bevel you know, you gotta, you gotta have a steady hand. You just got to learn how to do that.

Bob DeMarco [00:23:04]:
And you have to have a steady hand to use a great grinder also.

L.T. Wright [00:23:07]:
You absolutely do. You're absolutely great.

Bob DeMarco [00:23:10]:
Grinder doesn't mean, you know, that. There's a word that I've been thinking about a lot recently that get. You get, that gets used a lot these days, which is deserve. Oh, I deserve this, or I deserve that. And to me, deserve means you've earned it. And in a way, it's the same with something like a tool. You know, you can. You may have earned the money to, to buy the best grinder out there, but in a way, getting there through a harder path means you deserve that grinder in.

Bob DeMarco [00:23:41]:
In a more real way to me, than just coughing up the cash flow.

L.T. Wright [00:23:45]:
Absolutely. There are ways to get around doing. Again, I didn't have disc grinders or belt grinders to start with. And when I finally did get a drill press, I bought a bunch of little drums and I would put them in the drill press and I would use those little drums to grind the hand or, you know, to shape the handle to get it cleaner yet. So there's, there's always a way to get something better. You know, a lot of hand work, put it in your vise and you're sitting there, you rip sandpaper, and you just sit there and pull it back and forth across the handle. There's a lot that you can do from there. You don't need a grinder to sharpen.

L.T. Wright [00:24:25]:
You just when you're done, you sharpen with stones. You know, it's. It can be done. I. I mean, I'm here to tell you, I. My first shop, I went full time making knives under my front porch of my house. This is. I didn't have a building.

L.T. Wright [00:24:42]:
I didn't have any address other than literally my front porch. And my front porch is the size of a bathroom. I can touch the two walls on one side like this, and it's eight feet across this way. And that is all that it was. And I had all my tools in there, and I quit my job and went full time from that place right under that stairs.

Bob DeMarco [00:25:05]:
So what was it like quitting your job and. And diving into knife making full time?

L.T. Wright [00:25:11]:
Oh, it was nuts. Absolutely not. But I, I'd done it a few times in my life, so it wasn't, you know, I get a bug and I just say, this is where we're gonna go for a while. But again, as the hobby side got more and I guess better here. What happened was, as I told you, my wife said, hey, if you're gonna buy knife stuff or do this knife thing, you have to make the money somewhere other than our house budget. So I started making some knives and the patch and eyes out of the old saw blade. And I would go to the gun show on Saturday. Where I live in Ohio, I can be at a, to a gun show any Saturday or Sunday, probably within an hour's drive.

L.T. Wright [00:25:55]:
So that was easy, right? Some were big, some were small. I would just take whatever I had made, go to the gun show and sell most of them, if not all of them. I was doing quite well again, had to price down low because my goal was to buy another piece of steel or to buy another piece of handle or to buy that first grinder that I was talking about. So that's kind of where, you know, when you step into the business and all of a sudden these, this hobby is starting to turn into this, this business. And again at this time, I'm still not thinking this is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. I'm a carpenter. I'm building high end staircases. I'm, I'm doing fine.

L.T. Wright [00:26:38]:
I like what I'm doing. I love doing spiral stairs. You know, it was a cool thing. But at some point kept going. And we go to. My wife, Elaine is like, Elaine. I come home from work and I work until 11 o' clock every night and every Saturday and Sunday I'm at a show and I have a list of, of orders a mile long. And I'm not even the nightmare.

L.T. Wright [00:27:03]:
That's just it. It literally happened without forcing it to happen. And then all of a sudden we got to the point where I, I went to her one day and I went, I think we can do this for a living. And she looked at me and she went, okay. And I would look, we didn't even talk about it. Now understand that I'm a regular Joe. I got a nice job, you know, I got a house payment. I got a kid in school getting ready to go to college.

L.T. Wright [00:27:36]:
I got two vehicle payments. I'm just, I'm just a regular guy, you know, and I paycheck stopped on Friday and I better have money coming in on Monday. Yeah, so, so that is exactly. And when, that is, when you're up against something like that, you learn very quickly. Now, I was always a hustler or a hustler or I would hump very good. I'm, you know, I have a good work at yeah. So I just knew you hit the ground running and you just don't look back. And when you hit that obstacle, man, you just hurdle it.

L.T. Wright [00:28:12]:
You figure out how to go around it, go over, go under it, whatever you have to do, and keep getting after it. And some days, you know, you make some money. Some days you didn't. And some days were quite lean. There was times I went to a show and didn't have enough money to get home had I not sold a night. But you know what? That. That it. It makes you into something that I'm very proud that I turned out to be.

L.T. Wright [00:28:42]:
You know, you appreciate every moment of it when. When it's like that. It was nothing. No gimmes. You know, you went out there and you worked at it and did your best and kept earning it. Yeah.

Bob DeMarco [00:28:56]:
Okay, well, I want to check out some of your knives. We've been talking for a half hour. We haven't even looked at your knives. But I want to say, okay, there's got to be something in the water. I grew up in Northeast Ohio, and I've had a lot of knife makers on this show from Ohio. I think it's a great knife state.

L.T. Wright [00:29:13]:
Oh, as do I. As do I.

Bob DeMarco [00:29:17]:
And I want you to show us some knives. And then I want to ask you about your logo. I think that is such a cool story. But first, let's. Let's check out some of the knives you've got. I mentioned the large northern hunter. I don't know if you have one of those.

L.T. Wright [00:29:31]:
I don't. I have a small. And. And all. In all fairness, I. I brought home some stuff that this is about all we have in stock right now. Okay. And some of these are my own, so I was just like, yeah, I'll show them this one.

L.T. Wright [00:29:44]:
But I do have a small northern here. So this is our small Northern hunter. And the large is. Is very similar. It's just a bigger version of this. Yeah. This knife is an AE BL steel, which is a stainless. One of my favorite steels to use.

L.T. Wright [00:30:02]:
It's a great size. This started out as a hunting knife, but it is quite useful in the kitchen. We have a lot of people that use this as a kitchen knife because of the shape and ease of use. And you. You mentioned you had had a large and orient or you. No, no. One of my loaned me one, so.

Bob DeMarco [00:30:25]:
Session for a couple of weeks and.

L.T. Wright [00:30:27]:
Right, right, right. Yeah, it is a. Both sizes are a. A very good pattern for us. We get them made, and they are literally sold out. Thank God, we have a good fan base and a good dealer base. So. So we.

L.T. Wright [00:30:42]:
We have a few right now, and I brought one home. But that is one of. One of our most popular models for sure. Our Genesis, which is our most popular model. I don't even have an example to show you.

Bob DeMarco [00:30:55]:
So what kind of knife is that?

L.T. Wright [00:30:57]:
It is a Kepharten design. That's the Bushcraft, the Scandi Grind. That is what I call our flagship knife. That is our most popular. We make more. More of that knife that in our gns, which again, I don't have an example to show. You have a few other things here.

Bob DeMarco [00:31:13]:
I think on your web landing page you have a schematic. That knife right on your web page.

L.T. Wright [00:31:20]:
I think it is. Yeah, I think it is the Genesis, right?

Bob DeMarco [00:31:23]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

L.T. Wright [00:31:25]:
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I believe it is. Yeah. Now this is what we call our Frontier Valley. Cool. Now this Frontier valley, we were talking about the patch knives earlier. Yeah, the Frontier Valley came kind of out of that look and idea. So it just did a little bit of a modern version.

L.T. Wright [00:31:44]:
So you can picture this as a patch cutting knife. Good size. Again, this is used for field dressing game, you know, camp chores, kitchen. This is my wife and I paring knife in the kitchen. We have a few of these. So this knife is. Is a great using knife. This one, we actually.

L.T. Wright [00:32:06]:
We make our own Kydex. So this one has the Kydex on it and the slide lock. So we have the slide lock set up on that. But yeah, the Frontier Valley is a great knife. This is a good user, this. Oh, there you go.

Bob DeMarco [00:32:24]:
Yeah, that's so cool.

L.T. Wright [00:32:26]:
Yeah. Yeah, we found that picture was one of the drawings. I was like, hey, we got to put that up. It's kind of cool. I like that. Yeah, right on. This is our camp mop. And this is another one of those we just.

L.T. Wright [00:32:42]:
And the reason I have this is this is a dealer's knife that's getting shipped out tomorrow. I just happened to see it and brought it home. This is a CPM3B knife. So these, if you start looking at our dealers, the. They will be having these this month, as they're going out this month, sort of.

Bob DeMarco [00:33:00]:
And again, last month. Design.

L.T. Wright [00:33:02]:
Yes, yes, very much. And, and again, because. Because of, we kind of gravitated toward the Bushcraft side. The, the Nessmuks and the Kephart styles. They're very much, you know, something that we. We sell quite a bit of.

Bob DeMarco [00:33:18]:
So I'm. I'm A non hunter. I've done a little bit of camping, but not in a long time. Would you say that Bushcraft knives can easily double as hunting knives?

L.T. Wright [00:33:28]:
Now when you get into something like that it may be more in tune with what goes grind. They are. I do not have a Scandi grind here with me today but a Scandinavian grind is a chisel grind. Okay. So it literally is like a wood chisel. So a lot of the Bushcraft guys love that for stripping wood and doing it quickly. So spiel dressing with the Scandinavian grind absolutely can be done and it can be done extremely well. But you may if you had the option a saber grind as.

L.T. Wright [00:34:01]:
As this is a saber grind or a full flat grind. As you can see here, the grind goes all the way to the top. Those would be more tuned for field dressing game just because of the geometry of the blade. Okay, okay. And again not. And to, to. To say that in reverse you can do Bushcraft with the flat and the saber but the scan is going to do the wood much, much better and much quicker. It's.

L.T. Wright [00:34:32]:
It's like the, the rifle, pistol and shotgun. Okay. Fantastic tools when you use them where you're supposed to use them. If I take you elk hunting and hand you a 12 gauge shotgun and there's a 600 yard shot, we're not going to have a good time. But you can't blame the gun for them for the use. So the same thing you're going to go out and you're going to do a lot of Bushcraft and take a Scandi because and size it properly. You know those are things that sometimes people overlook. They just think the knives are indestructible and magical.

L.T. Wright [00:35:11]:
Now you. You know the right knife for the right job and that is the best way people if turns a switch on. When you say a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, they're great. When you use them where they're supposed.

Bob DeMarco [00:35:24]:
To be used right in the alley with a, with a. With a deer rifle is probably not the way to go either.

L.T. Wright [00:35:30]:
Exactly. There you go.

Bob DeMarco [00:35:33]:
I. I want to talk a little bit about fascinating story behind your logo and I, and I think that that, that kind of, I don't know lends itself to the spirit behind lt. Wright knives in general. Tell us a little bit about that.

L.T. Wright [00:35:51]:
Sure. The. The POW house is what we call that is the logo. The little tiny house. That logo I hand drew quickly, I am pretty sure on a napkin because my wife needed it to send off to the stamp maker and I didn't know what I was going to use. I was like, well, I'm going to use lt, right? And she's like, wow, we got to have a little thing because R.W. had a tomahawk and his. And R.W.

L.T. Wright [00:36:18]:
wilson. So I was like, well, I gotta have something, right, because, you know, so like, how about the pout house from the farm? So I scribbled this thing out and says, does that look good? Then I cleaned it up a little bit, and that's what we sent off for the original logo. So the story of the pout house. My father and I bought a farm off of our relative, a cousin of his, number of years ago, back in the 80s. And my grandmother had grown up in that area and around it. Well, there was this old shack that was way up in the back woods. And I never knew what it was. I go sit there and I'd hunt from the front porch sometimes because, I mean, it was, you know, no one lived there.

L.T. Wright [00:36:58]:
It was dilapidated. And one time we were sitting on our front porch at the cabin, and I said, grandma, what is that shack up in in the back, that old house thing? And she goes, oh, that was my Uncle Bill's pout house. And my dad and I looked at each other and like, what the heck is a powder? She goes, well, when he would get mad at my Aunt Mary, he would just go up there and pout. So they just called it his pow pow. And I thought, well, that's cool. You know, why not, right? So that kind of when we, you know, again, when I did the. The knife company was coming together, like, man, what. That's the backstory for the knife company because that's kind of where the logos came from, that pout house.

L.T. Wright [00:37:43]:
The idea of making knives really came from my property because I wanted to outdoors have a farm kind of thing. Wanting to make sure, you know, you had knives and everything. It just kind of all fell together. And then the story about the blind horse that was there, he used a blind horse to drag the wood and do this. And. And I have a. Actually have a picture of that blind horse. But that's when the name Blind Horse Knives finally, you know, originally started when I had a business partner in the early days as well.

L.T. Wright [00:38:13]:
So it kind of all came from that Powell story. And it's a great story now, as far as I know it's true. I cannot. I don't know that for a fact. It was told to me by my grandmother. It's a great story. And I still, you know, I. I believe it because I've Been there.

L.T. Wright [00:38:29]:
I've seen the powthouse there. There's nothing there now but the, the old sandstones that it's set on. It is, you know, completely gone now.

Bob DeMarco [00:38:39]:
I, I just love that. Hey, I love the name we all need. This is my pout room, you might say.

L.T. Wright [00:38:45]:
There you go.

Bob DeMarco [00:38:45]:
We all need a house of sorts. But I love that it was called that because, you know, as men, oftentimes when we need to get away, we go to our little private spot and kind of separate ourselves. I love the name of that. But you also have a group of people who kind of workshop your designs, right? You call them the powder house group, something like that.

L.T. Wright [00:39:07]:
Well, we have a private forum and it is our pout house forum. When we first started making knives, you know, when we first put the company together proper back in the old blind horse days, we wanted a private forum where our fan base and our guys could get together, you know, so we, we called it the Underground. Well, when we went back to the original name lt right. Knives and stuff, we just took the pout house and called it the Powthouse or the forum. So we have our powthouse form, which we have probably five to 600 members. It, it depends on how that goes. And it's a paid form, but those guys go on there. We buy, sell and trade.

L.T. Wright [00:39:49]:
I bought I don't know how many flashlights and bags that, you know, backpacks I don't need and you name it, that kind of thing. So we have our, our own little buy, sell and trade and the same lt Right. Knives traded, bought, sold on there. We do special runs for the, the powthouse. We have key stamp knives. So you have your, our logo on the one side and on the other side it'll have a key that's the key to the pow house. So it's an old skeleton key that we stamp into it. So we had that.

L.T. Wright [00:40:19]:
We have some programs we call four on the floor. So we'll put up some ideas and let the guys vote on the next knife that we'll build for them as a customer. That's cool. And we get so many people do that every Monday and Wednesday. Scott, who runs the forum, he goes in there and puts up a knife of the day. We call it the Hot off the Grinder. It's a knife we just finished, puts a story behind it, and then people will put I in and they'll, I'm in on that. At the end of the day, we'll draw a name and that guy gets to buy that Knife that's just.

L.T. Wright [00:40:50]:
We had 12 days of Christmas is another fun thing that we do twice a year we do virtual shows during. When we're at Blade show in Atlanta, we do a show at the stop and people can come by, but it's also virtual on, on the Powthouse forum live and they can buy and sell and at Christmas Scott and I will get on there and we have a live on Facebook and on our forum that goes literally around the world. We got people in Greece, we got people in Japan, Germany and they're all tuning in to this. It's a really good brotherhood of good guys that, you know, we just hang out and talk knives, guns, trucks. You know, a lot of guys are into four wheel drive trucks, Jeeps, Toyotas, camping over landing, all that stuff. It just as I said, I bought flashlight, I don't know, drawers full of flashlights. I don't need. Just because I was like, I don't have that one.

L.T. Wright [00:41:47]:
Let me try that one for a while.

Bob DeMarco [00:41:49]:
Yeah, well we all get that here. We all understand the spirit behind that. How much do you, how much has input from the people who love your knives already affected how you design or how you move forward with, with your knives, with new knives, that kind of thing?

L.T. Wright [00:42:09]:
Okay, well, early on, one of the things that was brought up to us was people were using their blade to scrape ferro rods. So some, and this was in the, you know, the early days, someone had mentioned, I don't remember if it was in an email to me and I apologize, I don't even remember who it was. Boy, if you just squared off that spine, we wouldn't have to use, you know, so we were the first or one of the first companies to ever square spines. And that is another thing we're known for is our 90 degree spots. They will shower, you know, flames off of a barrel rod or sparks, I'm sorry, off of ferro rod. And our knives to this day, we still do that to them. Another innovation that came out of a lot of interacting with those guys was the slide locks that is on this sheath. You may see this on a bunch of sheaves, but we're the ones that designed that.

L.T. Wright [00:43:10]:
And that was designed maybe 15, 17 years ago. The slide lock there, I see a lot of companies using it. There are some people that still pay us royalties for the right to use the slide lock, some don't. But that's, you know, so that is another thing that came out of interacting with the public. Some of the designs, I think the Nesmic design, not that we wouldn't have made one. But I think we were asked, you know, by a bunch of people, hey, can you make something similar to that? And as you can see, this is our, this is our design. It's not the true Nesmic, but in concept, you know, the blade, the big bowl up at the top, that kind of thing. So yes, a lot of the input that we get and even today off of the forum, you know, I listen to those people.

L.T. Wright [00:44:04]:
We all listen to the customers that are buying your product because they're the guys buying it. If they, well just for example, steals, you know what's the hot ticket right this second? Cpm Magna. Yeah. Yeah, everybody wants that steel. Well, you can either make some in that steel or you can be hard headed and not make some in that, that steel. So we do make some in that steel. Now we still have a two is our bread and butter steel. And the reason is because it works.

L.T. Wright [00:44:38]:
It just works. It works all the time. So that, but yeah, those there, there's a lot of input that goes into it and sheath design, you know, pocket carry, scout carry. Over the years, you know, different things have come up. We've talked about even down to handle materials sometimes believe it or not, just because I'm in the knife industry, I may not know what the newest knife handle out there is. And someone found one somewhere and said, hey, have you ever heard of this tarot? Like nope. What is it? And I, they sent some and I started using like hey, I like that. You know.

L.T. Wright [00:45:13]:
So yeah, we can, we can be influenced that way.

Bob DeMarco [00:45:18]:
Yeah, so you're, you keep saying we tell us about your shop and, and how your shop functions and operates. You're no longer under your porch.

L.T. Wright [00:45:29]:
No, but we were for a long, we were for a while. When we first went full time and actually started becoming, I guess what we would consider a company. We had people working out of our house. My wife and I took all of our furniture and shoved it into our family or into our sun room. And our living room was shipping and receiving. Our dining room had five computers in it and someone sitting at each one. And we were in. My complete downstairs was transformed into a knife shop.

L.T. Wright [00:46:01]:
The whole entire downstairs. We used to use the washer and dryer. We put towels down so when we glued up a knife we could put it over there to dry. There was, it wasn't a again for someone out there going, I don't have a building, I don't have this. I don't have this to get started. You know what, just do it. Just figure it out. Do it.

L.T. Wright [00:46:21]:
If it's in your backyard, do it in your backyard. Put up a tent. You know you can. If you want to do something bad enough, if you want to get somewhere bad enough, you will figure out those obstacles and you will climb. I'm telling you. We didn't have a shop for the first four years we worked from this house there. Matter of fact, they used to be, you know, the Google Earth pictures. They had taken it one time when everyone was here and you could see the cars line down my driveway and up the street.

L.T. Wright [00:46:50]:
Because at one time we had about 10 people working in this house.

Bob DeMarco [00:46:53]:
Wow.

L.T. Wright [00:46:54]:
And then we finally got a building.

Bob DeMarco [00:46:58]:
So you, you, you post a lot of videos on Instagram and maybe on YouTube, but on Instagram definitely. And your shop looks so cool. It looks like such a great place to be. Yeah. How many makers do you have helping you?

L.T. Wright [00:47:13]:
There's 10 people completely in the company. That counts. My wife and Amy who run the office. We have a part time guy named George who, he works through the shop and, and he, he's like our prep nurse. We'll say he's making sure there's things sitting here when we get there, you know, even, even down to the bathroom. Towels. Sure there's towels in the bathroom. Because when we got grease all over hands, you know.

L.T. Wright [00:47:39]:
Yeah. So he's our prep guy and then we have the rest of us that are making knives now. We all wear two hats. Scott makes knives, sharpens knives and runs the POW house. Mikey is the IT guy. Literally he is got his hands inside of a computer and then he runs downstairs and then he's gluing knives up. So I mean, you know, it. That is how we do things.

L.T. Wright [00:48:03]:
I run the business from the shop and you know, do all of my emails and buy things up there. And then I'm still on a grinder. At least seven hours a day. I'm grinding knives with the guys. You know, Nick's running the shop, but running the hot shop and doing finishing. Tyler's doing finishing and rook grind and Sammy's running the laser and he's doing our drawings and just things, you know, over and over. We all have these multiple jobs that, that we get done. Logan, he's, he's our cleaner guy, but he's also our.

L.T. Wright [00:48:37]:
Takes care of our materials and stuff. And. Yeah, there's some of the pictures. Yeah. And we do a quote of coffee from the shop every morning too.

Bob DeMarco [00:48:45]:
You do a what?

L.T. Wright [00:48:46]:
A quote of coffee from the shop every day on Instagram. If you go on Instagram, you'll see quota coffee.

Bob DeMarco [00:48:52]:
Yep, yep. Yeah, that place, it looks like a pretty nice sized facility you got there.

L.T. Wright [00:48:59]:
It is now they shop that we were two levels. The upstairs where we used to be is now office space and studio space and where we have storage. And then the bigger place used to be a landscaping building when they had it. And then when they went out of business, we took it over and build it out piece by piece, day to day. It was kind of like we. It took a year to do it. So I started paying rent on the place and we would build knives, go downstairs and do this. Build knives, go downstairs and do this, you know, this thing and get it all set up.

L.T. Wright [00:49:37]:
So we had the advantage when we set it up, we have the workflow set up exactly the way I want to set it up. And we're very pleased with how that is all working right now. So, yeah, this is just. Since it'll be a year in December that we're in this building. Oh, wow. The one before that, we've been there 13 years, 14 years. So when we moved from here, from the house, we went over there. Matter of fact, the house was so full one time, my upstairs bedroom next to this one was our studio because we had a radio show at the time.

L.T. Wright [00:50:10]:
So we had taken up over the upstairs. And that's when my wife was like, that's it, we're done.

Bob DeMarco [00:50:16]:
I was gonna say you. You've got an awesome sounding wife. She's.

L.T. Wright [00:50:19]:
Oh, yeah, she's. She's the true boss. She. She keeps us all in line. I mean, she's the accountant. If you call the shop, she answers the phone, she answers the customer emails, customer services, absolutely 100% could not do it without her doing. And even in the. When it was just me and her, in the old days, she did all the shipping, you know, taking care of that stuff and she took the pictures.

L.T. Wright [00:50:45]:
We would take them and then have to go get them developed and then put them on the website.

Bob DeMarco [00:50:52]:
Speaking of pictures in your website, first of all, beautiful pictures. I was perusing all your knives, kitchen knives, hunting knives, Bushcraft knives. I noticed that you had a couple that you made for Les Stroud. Survivor Man. What was that all about?

L.T. Wright [00:51:11]:
He was looking for a someone to. To bring some of the knives. He has a show right now called Wild Harvest, so it's on pbs. Him and a professional chef, Paul Rogowski. This happened right during the pandemic. I mean, we were shut down. I was at home again. And this is when it was going on.

L.T. Wright [00:51:29]:
I was drawing pictures on the, on the pieces of paper and sending them and text messages to Paul back. And he's from Kent, so we were doing that back and forth and that's how it came. So we. He wanted to do a line of kitchen knives for the show while the harvest kitchen knives. And Les wanted a machete. He liked our overland machete, but he wanted some different things. So we worked the tweaks into that. So we have the survivor man's machete.

L.T. Wright [00:51:53]:
And then he wanted a field knife. So we had the Les Stroud field knife and a forging tool. If you look on there, you'll see the forging tool. So yeah, yeah, we have a few tools for lesson and fall right now.

Bob DeMarco [00:52:06]:
So what were the. That foraging tool my total novice look at it looks like a big bayonet ground dagger in a way. And then when I, when I read that it's a forage, a foraging tool, I realized it was specialized. What, what were the challenges going into that?

L.T. Wright [00:52:28]:
Well, if, if you're familiar with a hori hori, which is his Japanese. Yeah, yeah, tool of sorts, of kind of a shovel knife kind of thing for doing, you know, planning stuff. That was what we were after. We one wanted to design an American version of that for less because he. That was the whole premise of their show is they go out and forge for wild stuff and then they bring it back and create. And Paul, the five star chef, creates the gourmet meal with it using. Using his knives to cut up all the stuff as well. Well, so that knife is designed not only to be a shovel, but it has a blade.

L.T. Wright [00:53:08]:
He turn around, hammer with it, whatever he needs to do. And it's a pretty cool tool. I like it a lot.

Bob DeMarco [00:53:17]:
You mentioned the hori hori. That, that was the first thing I thought of after I thought, oh, that looks like a smacket or some sort of a large weapon. I was like, oh, when I saw a foraging tool, I was wondering, is it flat on one side or concave on the.

L.T. Wright [00:53:31]:
No, we actually made it very similar to a knife. So you have the knife and then you have a false clip on the top and then an anvil near the back section. Oh, so it is cool. And, and the hori hori kind of came out because my wife wanted one, so we made one for her. This was before. And then when we were talking on the phone with Les and you know, seeing what he was doing, like, hey, would you want a forging tool? You're like, yeah. So we designed it not from the. The Hori Hori, but more in the.

L.T. Wright [00:54:02]:
The way we are thinking, you know, survivor man wood, survival, foraging. Could he use it as a knife if he need, you know, those kind of things. So we made it into a complete package which is pretty neat.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:15]:
Sort of a single bladed multi tool.

L.T. Wright [00:54:17]:
Yeah, there you go. I like it.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:20]:
Yeah. And so before I want one last question I want to ask you, but before we get to that. Oh, there it is on screen.

L.T. Wright [00:54:27]:
Yeah, that.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:28]:
Oh, that is a beauty.

L.T. Wright [00:54:30]:
That is cool.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:32]:
Kitchen knives. You've mentioned that you and your wife spend a lot of time in the kitchen and I know that kitchen knives are a specialty unto themselves. Getting, getting it just right for the kind of slicing you do in the kitchen.

L.T. Wright [00:54:47]:
Was.

Bob DeMarco [00:54:48]:
Was there a big learning curve in going from these robust outdoors and, you know, bushcrafting knives to. To something like a chef's knife?

L.T. Wright [00:54:58]:
Yeah, I'll let you know when I get there because yes. No, it is a learning curve because everybody wants something a little bit different and that's just human nature. You know, every professional chef or even the amateur chefs, they have their idea of what they want and I get that. So it was a lot of trial and error when we first stepped into that arena into the kitchen knife. We came from the bushcraft side. So originally we were into overlanding. We, we all had jeeps and trucks that were built. We did our camping.

L.T. Wright [00:55:31]:
So naturally you want to have a cool set of camp knives with you. Camp kitchen. So we created our camp kitchen series is where that started. And they were a little bit more robust than your fine high end kitchen knives. But through the years now we have developed them into more of a pure kitchen knife. You know, we're grinding them thinner, but at first, I mean the guy could do bushcraft and then cut up his, you know, lunch meat or whatever he was cooking at Day steak. One of the kitchen. This is my most used kitchen knife.

L.T. Wright [00:56:10]:
Oh yeah, it turned in. It started out as a cheese knife and it is 18 inch thick and it's 3. It's a AEBL, but it's very, very thin and it has the holes in it so that the cheese doesn't stick to the side of the knife. Well, it helps with that. It doesn't do it completely. But this is. This turned into. I use this knife literally for everything.

L.T. Wright [00:56:39]:
And my, you know, my wife knows that is my go to knife. If I'm cutting the matas, it doesn't matter if I'm cutting meat to dry and the, the dehydrator doesn't matter. I'm using that knife. It just turned into my all in one piece. And then our large pouter is her favorite knife, which is this one and that's Widow squaw. And this is her color. All of her knives have toxic green or lime green handles. I love her or blacked out kitchen.

L.T. Wright [00:57:09]:
They look really, really cool. But again, very simple design, very handy. And. And what a great slicer this is. This is just a beautiful knife to use. She. This is her favorite user in the kitchen for sure.

Bob DeMarco [00:57:24]:
Yeah, that, that green color is such a. Oh, yeah. So beautiful. And I also love the holes in the blade. I've always thought it would be because there's nothing to me. Well, there are plenty of things more frustrating than this, but I cut a lot of cucumbers and that stick the way they stick and then when they come off, they roll and all that. Oh, it drives me nuts.

L.T. Wright [00:57:45]:
So you. So you know. Exactly. This does not solve it completely, but it does help, you know, have having those holes in it. And we also have holes in the. The Paul Rogowski collection on his large slicing knife. And very much same reason, you know, to have that work, to have it release a little bit again.

Bob DeMarco [00:58:08]:
Yeah. So lt, as we wrap here, I have a sort of a philosophical question, I guess, but what would you say your guiding principles are in business, in knife making that make L.T. wright knives.

L.T. Wright [00:58:23]:
What it is from my side of thing is, is everyone has to like what they're doing and it doesn't matter what you're doing in life and it doesn't matter how much money you're making when you do it. If you're. If you really, really love what you're doing, then pursue that. Okay. And I just happened to get lucky in my life and get something that there's not a day I don't wake up and put a smile on my face because I get to go times with 10 of my best friends. I mean, come on, I'm a lucky guy, right?

Bob DeMarco [00:58:58]:
Yeah, sounds like it.

L.T. Wright [00:58:59]:
So from that side, on a personal level, I would encourage anyone to just, man, you know, it's the follow your dream kind of thing. Because if you just, if you put enough effort into it and you just stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. It's going to work out. It. It just will. You're going to figure it out. If you really, really want to do it, you will it out from a business side. One of the biggest things that I want to make sure of and, and when I went into business.

L.T. Wright [00:59:28]:
I looked at things a lot of different ways. I'm like, okay, every time I take my car in to get something fixed, it's out of warranty and it cost me 500 bucks, whatever. And that was just like, man, why, why does that keep happening on stuff? It's like, it shouldn't be that way. So I wanted to have the customer service side of the business very much in tune with it. Doesn't matter why you don't like. If you don't like the night, if it doesn't work for you, or if there's something wrong with it, just send it back. That's it. You don't have to argue.

L.T. Wright [01:00:04]:
I mean, we've had people call ready to argue with Elaine on the phone, and she's like, send it back, man. We'll take care of it. You know, we're sorry for it. And she usually, 9 out of 10 times, everyone's okay with that. But you have to have that. Don't be afraid to put your name on something. And when you do put your name on something, stand behind it and just be true about, you know, it's one of those. We have repair, replace, refund.

L.T. Wright [01:00:33]:
That's it. There's. It's never going to be like, oh, too bad. You had it 31 days and the warranty stopped at 30. No manifest something there. And that's how I wanted to be treated. So I wanted that for our business. The other thing is we answer the phone.

L.T. Wright [01:00:49]:
You don't have to go and get. Dial 4 to get customer service. You dial the phone and my wife will pick it up. If it does not pick up, I promise you it's because she's on the phone, but she'll call you back. I personally try to answer every single email every day. If I miss an email, I get it the next day. I just. Because that's again, that's how I want to be treated when I'm emailing something.

L.T. Wright [01:01:16]:
People are contacting you because something to them is important. Whatever that thing is, it's important to them. It's not to me. It's irrelevant because they're reaching out to me. So I need to treat that just as important as they believe it is to them. So I want to stay on top of it. So you just want to get out there and do the best work you can. You're going to make mistakes.

L.T. Wright [01:01:39]:
You know, we. We make boo boos now and then, and you just own up to them, fix them, and you just move right on and do better next time. And then we generally have a company meeting and I go, okay, guys, how did this slip through the cracks? And we put in a stop gap to make sure that that doesn't happen again. The policy in the shop right now is even my work gets looked at by one or two sets of eyes before it moves on. It has to be that way. It has to be that way. I'm not perfect and I miss stuff and I look at every single grind that goes by. It comes by my bench, you know, it just does.

L.T. Wright [01:02:17]:
That's just the way we have the company set up. So there's always multiple eyes on it. And the girls before they drop it into the box, if they see something up the street, got a little tick mark on it or something like that, back to the shop they had, you know, that's just the way we do things.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:32]:
Outstanding. A lot of golden rule I'm hearing in there and that's something I think. Those are inspiring words to anyone listening to this. Definitely. Knife makers and, and business people. LT thank you so much for coming on the Knife Junk.

L.T. Wright [01:02:47]:
You bet.

Bob DeMarco [01:02:48]:
I've really enjoyed talking with you.

L.T. Wright [01:02:50]:
Yeah, and you too, man. It's been a nice conversation. Thank you for biting us on. I really appreciate that. Anytime we get to talk about about the knives and, you know, just where they came from or even the story of the powthouse and stuff, I enjoy telling it. So thank you very much for the opportunity.

Bob DeMarco [01:03:07]:
Oh, the pleasure is mine. Thank you, sir.

Announcer [01:03:10]:
Knife themed shirts, hoodies, mugs, water bottles and more. The knife junkie.com slash shop

Bob DeMarco [01:03:17]:
There he goes, ladies and gentlemen, Lt Wright of Lt Wright Knives. I heard a lot of follow your passion and customer service. What, what else do you want to hear from one of our favorite knife makers out there? Be sure to check him out on Instagram. Some great videos coming from the shop there. And check out the beautiful website and.

Bob DeMarco [01:03:36]:
All the gorgeous knives.

Bob DeMarco [01:03:37]:
All right, for Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DiMarco saying until next time, don't take dull for an answer.

Announcer [01:03:44]:
Thanks for listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review it. Review the podcast for show notes for today's episode, additional resources and to listen to past episodes, Visit our website thenif junkie.com. you can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at the knife junkie.com slash YouTube.