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[0:02] 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.

[0:16] Welcome to the show. I'm Bob DeMarco. On this edition of the Knife Junkie, we're celebrating 500 episodes of the podcast. That's 500 episodes of the Sunday interview show, where I have hour-long conversations with Knife World Luminaries, and the Midweek Supplemental, where I have hour-long conversations with myself and all of you about new knives, trends, and the state of the knife industry. Over the past five years, I've had the good fortune of interviewing many of my knife heroes of the Knife on the Knife Junkie podcast. Makers like Ernest Emerson, Alan Elisiewicz, Bill Harsey Jr., Doug Ritter, Ken Onion, Peter Carey, Daniel Winkler, and a lot more. I've also had the chance to make new knife-making heroes through conversations with future legends, knife makers, designers, and entrepreneurs on their ascent. I don't dwell too much on numbers here at the Knife Junkie, but we had to mark this special occasion of our 500th show with a special lineup. On this episode, we're bringing you three Patreon-exclusive interview extras, something we only ever offer to Knife Junkie Patreon members. But for our 500th episode, we figured we'd share the wealth with these great off-the-cuff conversations. First, with Bob Terzuola, then Michael Janich, and then Lynn Thompson. Three pivotal men in the knife world and some of our most popular guests.

[1:41] Before we do any of that, though, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, share the show with a friend, download it to your podcast apps, and if you're interested, you can help support the show at thenifejunkie.com slash Patreon. That'll bring you right to our Patreon account. count. All right, let's get that out of the way. That is out of the way. Now, a legend. This was a man I was so honored to have on the show, and the first time I had him on, I couldn't believe it. Second time I had him on, I was able to talk to him a little more, well, a little less breathlessly, let's say. First up, the godfather of the modern tactical knife. That's Bob Terzuola.

[2:22] Okay, well, I just want to say thank you to all of our patrons, one and all, for helping support this show. What you do really helps keep the lights on, as they say here, and we greatly appreciate it. So, in appreciation, I'd like to give you a couple extra 10 minutes or so with Bob Terzuola. If you didn't see the main interview yet, which you probably haven't, well, actually, you probably have. So, here's some extra. Bob, you dropped something very casually in our conversation. We moved on when you were showing me that Marine's knife that saved his life with that shrapnel, a piece of shrapnel, hit the knife, hit the sheath. You said kind of in passing, I helped develop Kydex sheaths. You were one of the first guys to use that kind of thermo-molded plastic sheath. How did that come up and how did you work on that?

[3:20] Um, Tom Marringer and I both showed up at the Kansas City Guild Show.

[3:33] I want to say it was 82 with Kydex sheaths. I had seen Kydex. I thought it would be interesting material. Up to that point, I had been making all of my sheaths out of leather. I really enjoy leatherworking. It's very relaxing, but it is time-consuming and tedious. And just about every other knife, especially combat knives, had leather sheaths, except for the metal sheaths, like for a lot of military knives, bayonets and so forth, which of course I couldn't do. I just didn't have the stamping equipment. equipment so um i found out about kydex i realized that it was uh relatively easy to work with it heated up to i think about 280 to 320 degrees somewhere around there and it can be very faithfully molded into shape against um whatever you want to reproduce and i realized that it's uh It really is in quite common use in a lot of things. You'll find it in buses and transportation.

[4:57] The fold-down trays in airplanes were made out of Kydex. Really? Or out of the wall panels. Yeah. It comes with different textures and different colors and so forth. It's a thermoplastic. It heats up. You form it. Cool it, maintains the shape. And I started making different kinds of sheaths. I actually made a very complex sheath. It had the belt hoop in it and a lock, all in one piece of kydex. It took me weeks to figure this thing out. I don't even know why I did it. But it was an early use of kydex, and I showed up at the Kansas City show. Tom Marringer, I think he may have predated me. On making kydex sheets. So I was either the first or the second, one of the two. And he had a knife he called the Vorpal.

[6:00] From the Vorpal Blade when Snickersnack Alice in Wonderland or something like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds familiar. The Jabberwocky. So we called this the Vorpal Blade. And he had it like a shoulder rig, and it was carried vertically, and it was open in the front so that you could—he held the knife very securely. It was a long blade. Wait a second. It was a relatively long blade, and then you could snap that forward, just snap it forward like that. Kind of a shoulder rig. Yeah. The mine was a hip ring, carried on with smaller knives. Um... And we were the first ones, basically, to use Kydex for anything that had to do with tactical gear. Now everybody's making holsters out of it. Everybody's making knife sheaths.

[7:07] Companies have sprung up. Blade Tech, for example, is making holsters. A lot of companies are making holsters out of it. But we were, Maringer and I, were basically the first two ever to do it. I think it was 82, I'm pretty sure. For me as a daily carrier of fixed blade knives, I couldn't have done it without Kydex because I can't just have it hanging on my belt with my lifestyle and where I live.

[7:36] So, Suze, your wife said something funny before we started rolling here, and I'm respectfully going to take exception to it. It she said uh she she was talking about how um she said people don't carry your knives anymore they're all in safes she was talking about you as a weapon maker meaning like your work is so valuable that people don't have to worry about you being a quote-unquote weapon maker because they're like works of art and they're treated that way but i know some people i have a you know an online knife buddy who carries he's got two of your atcfs and he carries them and shows them off and and i love that and if i had one i too would carry it uh but i totally get, Yeah, it was who was saying there. But what kind of feedback have you gotten from people over the years, the many years you've been making knives and putting them in the hands of now collectors, but kind of originally more operators and more people who might use them for their occupation? Yeah.

[8:44] The old titanium folders, the early ones, the Tersuala titanium folder series, the number one, the two, and three, and so forth, up to number seven, I think it was, got a lot of use in the early days. They were relatively, you know, in those days, they were a couple of hundred bucks, which was a lot of money in those days, but certainly not what they are today. And people could actually carry them around and use them. I got a lot of feedback from people who used them in their work, And not only military people, there were a lot of military people, like you said, operators, FBI, police, and so forth. But a lot of people in the trades, the building trades especially, who really liked the knives a lot because they were so sturdy, easy to carry, and really easy to clean. That's the nice thing about a liner lock. in those days I was using Nylatron washers, I'll tell you an interesting story about that in just a minute using Nylatron washers instead of bearings which I'm using now, and the Nylatron doesn't wear out never wears out.

[10:08] And people would say well what's the best way to clean my knife I'd say take it out in the backyard and hit it with the hose.

[10:16] Do the whole thing with the hose. Get it in there, wash the whole thing. The blade is stainless steel with titanium, but it's going to rust. The washers are impervious. They're basically nylon with molybdenum impregnated in there. All the screws are stainless steel. It's not going to rust if you use fresh water on it. If you use seawater, if you're a fisherman, you want to wash it off with fresh water. That's any kind of knife Even stainless steel is going to discolor at least. People would say, how do I clean? I said, take it in the backyard and hit it with the hose.

[10:56] So they were very easy to use for people who actually did use them and carry them. And I recently got a knife sent to me from Germany by a fellow who bought, it was an ATCF, and he had bought it in 1987. Wow. And he carries it Every day Wow.

[11:21] And he uses it, you know, and it was in really good shape. The blade, the spring rather, had moved over on the blade, and he wanted it to move, to engage a little bit earlier, which was not difficult for me to do. However, I took the knife apart and I examined it, and those washers didn't even have a scratch on them. They weren't worn at all. Nothing. And people have also said, well, what's the best oil to use on a knife? And I said, none. Don't use any oil on the knife. I never used oil on a knife. Don't put oil in the washers. It doesn't need them. It only gums things up, and it'll attract dirt and grit and all sorts of other things. This guy never oiled them, and those washers were – I put the same washers back in. Wow. In 1967, I didn't have to change the washroom. You know, the oil thing, I think people are dying to have their knife be as fidgety as possible, as loose in the pivot as possible. Why did you go to bearings? Aren't bearings slightly less robust? Not really. They're not.

[12:46] They're so well shrouded. They're so well protected within the knife in pockets that, no, I wouldn't say that they're less robust. But I went into bearings mainly because I started making flippers. And flippers work better with bearings.

[13:09] And one thing you can do with bearings that you can't do with washers is tighten the pivot down all the way. And pretty much as much as you want to tighten that pivot so that it won't back off and get loose, the bearings will still work very nicely. You can't do that with washers. the way I used to do it when I was using washers the way I used to finish off the knife when I'd be doing the final stages is you tighten the pivot.

[13:44] To the point where you can't move the blade. And then you back off just a quarter of a turn. And that would give you enough play, but still enough pressure to hold the blade in position. And since I had to back off the pivot, it wasn't really tight, you would have to use some sort of a seizing agent. And I used a Loctite blue, blue Loctite. That would go in there, and that would, after a while, would set up and hold the pivot screw in position. But you don't have to do that with bearings because you can tighten it down, and the bearings will still work very nicely, and you don't have to oil them because they're stainless steel. That's something I came to find out with my own knives just through trial and error. How is it that this works? But it does because the ball bearings have vanishingly small surface area on the titanium or in the race that they're in. So it's going to spin no matter how hard you tighten that down. The thing to be cautious with bearings is with Damascus steel.

[15:04] I'll see if I can explain this. The ball bearings are extremely hard stainless steel.

[15:14] When they run along Damascus, remember, think of Damascus as multiple layers of different kinds of steel. And when they're heat treated, they're not all the same hardness because they're different kinds of steel.

[15:31] As the bearings run across them, they'll, especially if you tighten them very much, they can bear down into the softer bits of the damascus and not so much in the harder bits of damascus so you can run into oh man kind of a shaky um it almost feels gritty it feels like it's gritty is that is that explanation totally i totally get it and and it's very visual too because we can see the darker steel and the lighter steel in our mind's eye and one of those Those two is softer than the other. And so those it's going to wear differently. Yeah. It's going to be jittery as it comes out, you know? Now, if you're working with a Magna cut or CPM 154 steel, which is homogenous, that's not a problem. The bearing may be actually harder than your blade, but what, what will happen and what happens in the, the titanium handle is that the bearings, as you tighten them, and you run around, the Barons will actually create a race. Their own track. But it'll be a smooth track. It'll be a track, but it'll be a smooth track. It won't bounce.

[16:48] All right, so I'm going to let you go in a minute, but before I do... Okay, I've got time. I'm doing fine. Okay, well, then I want to ask you about peers, about your... I have in my mind idea of who I think your knife-making peers are.

[17:08] But I want to find out who you think they are, who the people you are that you admire, Meyer, who are kind of maybe at the same time doing similar things, maybe with similar goals. We talked about Chris Reeve earlier. That's kind of what I'm getting at. Who are some of the people you ran with in your day that you run with, you know, as an elder statesman of the knife world? Elder, yeah. Chris Reeve, definitely. And then he went into manufacturing rather than the handmade stuff. You talk about admiration, admiring. I'll take a little bit of an almost embarrassing but funny story. I was at a shot show, and I had designed a couple of knives for CRKT, Columbia River. And I was at their booth and there were a number of knife makers sitting around talking. I think there was Lucas Burnley and Pat Crawford.

[18:20] Several. I can't remember all of them. Oh, Ikea from Brazil. Not Ikeoma. Ikeoma. That's what it is. Ikea is Swedish furniture. Icoma, that's right. Yeah. He was there. And we were talking and Icoma asked me about, you know.

[18:48] Who do I think is up? I probably said it a little bit too last time. Well, the one knife that I really admire a whole lot is Gus Cicchini from Brazil.

[19:04] GTC Knife. Gus Cicchini. And, of course, all the rest of the knife makers sitting around me all kind of looked at me as if to say, So what am I, chopped liver? You know they didn't you know they kind of expected me to say oh you know lucas and uh yeah i said no the one i admire the most really his designs and his workmanship is gus i really like him a lot uh in terms of contemporaries peers um alan alicia wits but we make similar types of knives i've always liked his most of his designs and we've actually made some collaborations together. We did some really interesting collabs together. Ernie Emerson, I like most of his designs and so forth.

[19:56] Those two principally are the ones that I, you know, I like a lot. And like I said, Gus, I still admire his, his designs and his shapes and his, you know, what he puts into a knife. And he's very, very creative, very creative. Yeah, talk about people use that expression out of the box or outside the box. His designs, but they're convincing. You look at it like, God, I've never seen a knife like that, but wow, I'd love to see more. Yeah, his stuff is amazing. Actually, those Alishawitz, Alan Alishawitz, I'm not surprised to hear you say that. And I was thinking Ernie Emerson.

[20:40] That's pretty cool. I have a I have a Ernie yeah I gotta say Ernie is a little bit more I mean he does make knives by hand but he's he's he's kind of like the factory guy he's right right you know got a production going I guess I guess what I meant more uh less about how you make them I know I would put you and Alan uh way closer because I follow him on Instagram and I see his process he's got a hell of a you know he's always trying something new and but he has a complex process and.

[21:11] I have a quick story that a buddy of mine who's a SIG armorer, SIG Sauer armorer, and he went up to SIG Sauer camp up in New Hampshire, and Alan Alishowitz was there at the same time. They got paired up. All the shooters were put in groups of two during this week, and they did stuff together. And my buddy is about my age, you know, early 50s, and he served as a sniper in the Marine Corps. And, you know, he's kind of a badass. But he said that Alan Alishowitz walking onto the shooting course with just a blazer and a T-shirt and jeans while everyone else was fully tacticaled out, you know, with all their drop holsters and their tactical gear. He said Alan Alishowitz walked through this course and schooled everybody and was just such a cool, classy guy. But the way he showed up to this shooting course, he looked like he was just Miami Vice, totally casual. So I thought that was a really cool story, you know? Yeah, it really is. Alan really likes to shoot, just spends a lot of time shooting. I think he spends probably as much time shooting as he does sweeping. creeping.

[22:26] When I visited his shop, you could eat a greasy bologna sandwich off the floor. Oh, my God. I mean, his shop is impeccable. Okay. I thought you were saying because he uses so many different machines and so many different materials, stuff has to be falling all over the place all the time. No, he does a lot of work. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that he doesn't use his shop. He uses his shop. He grinds. He does all that stuff. But he is a clean freak, and he He really keeps his shop orderly and neat and beautifully, beautifully designed.

[22:58] Well they say how you do one thing is how you do everything and you know yeah his his designs definitely uh show that um as do yours like uh one thing that is really cool about and i know i keep talking about the atcf i know you have other knives but but to me that's that's the terzuola that that that's my grail um and for a lot of people yeah i bet i bet and and there's something thing about how clean the profile is um it just you know it's like you look at it it's perfect the blade to handle ratio everything about it is just right and it's very my pleasure it's very very clean like you were showing me the the clean titanium version but then you also do these versions of it like if i if i could have my dream atcf it would be one with the stag i've seen you You do it with stag handles, and I'm a sucker for that, like natural materials on modern knives with mixing, co-mingling with modern materials. And I think you do it best on the ATCF. It's like understated and perfect.

[24:11] Thank you. Well, you know, we do more and more home shows. We're doing shows directly from my shop here instead of going to a show, you know, someplace far away in hotels and so forth and airplanes. We do them here in the show at the shop. And I'll have like five to seven knives, sometimes eight knives that I make. And a friend of ours, Adam, he does the camera work. He has his iPhone. phone, and we describe the knives, and then we have a bag behind each one, just like a lottery at a show, and we have friends who are writing down on Instagram, you know, people who want a, you know, knife number one, knife number three, or all of the, whatever it is, on little tags, and we put them into the bags, and then we draw, and then they send money into PayPal or Zelle.

[25:07] Our next show, since you're mentioning stag and natural materials, The next home show that we're going to do, and I'm not sure exactly when, but something I really want to do, is going to be Back to Nature. All of the handle materials on the knives will be natural materials. It will be wood, maybe mammoth ivory, maybe some stag, different kinds of horn. I have quite a variety of horn. Wildebeest, Cape Buffalo, Hardebeest, Springbottom, and so forth. That'll be cool. I don't know how many knives maybe 5, 6, 7 I don't know but they'll all be with natural handled materials.

[25:52] Well, I will be there in spirit and until I can actually, until I will be able to participate, I'll just drool from afar and satisfy myself, that sounds weird, with the fox. I can't wait for the fox knife. When is that dropping? And tell people how we can keep up with you. Good question. We're not exactly sure. We just got the prototypes. I showed you the prototype. We just got those the other day. He sent them, Gabriel sent them from the SHOT Show. They had brought them to the SHOT Show. And he sent them from there. So I have an email in to him asking, you know, when can we expect them? And I haven't gotten an answer yet, so I'm not sure. We can, you know, we'll post on TerzaWolda.net and probably Instagram also, Facebook. Facebook, we'll do promotions when we find out when we're going to get them and what the prices will be. We don't know what the prices will be yet because we don't know what they're going to charge us. But they are going to be all titanium handles and MagnaCut blades. Cannot wait. All right. As we wrap here, just let us know, again, the best way to keep up with you. You said the website, but also you have a bunch of social media.

[27:17] We're at TerzaWalla.net is the website and we're on Instagram TerzaWallaTactical and.

[27:28] TerzaWallaDesign we just, TerzaWallaDesign thank you and Facebook which is now what do they call it now? Meta, it's still Facebook Meta is the company that owns the rest of the world world.

[27:48] What is the group? Oh, the Facebook group, right? Yeah. Oh, the Facebook group. Okay. That is it. Okay. All right, so Facebook group, Instagram, go to the web, wherever it is. One of those places we'll be able to find out when this is dropping, but also to check out Shop Talk and A Sharp Life, you go to the website. And I know that some of our patrons are interested in knife making, so they should definitely check that out. Okay, yes. Susie will send you all the information by email. Okay. All right. She knows it a lot better than I do. Like I said, she's the producer. She knows what she's doing, especially when it comes to technology, and I don't. You know, I'm a pencil and paper guy. I love it. That's why I love her so much. She's my technological guru. She's the yin to your yang. Yeah. All righty, Bob. Thank you so much for this extra time you gave us. We really appreciate it. My pleasure, Bob. All right, sir. You have a good one. Okay. Bye-bye. This special 500th episode of the Knife Junkie podcast features three knife legends in never before heard or seen interviews, which were part of our Patreon member-only exclusive content.

[29:05] Join our Patreon and become a supporter of the show to get bonus content from each podcast guest going forward. Get the details at thenifejunkie.com slash Patreon. Next up, a language expert, a spy, a hunter of POWs, and a combatives expert, among many other things. Of course, a knife designer, chief among all of those in my eye. Designer of the Yojimbo and the man in charge of special projects at Spyderco, I now bring you Michael Janich. Hello, everyone, and welcome. Thank you so much for your support. This is an interview extra with Mike Janich. uh for those of you who uh help support the show so thank you so much and uh we didn't get into this in our main interview this time we talked a little bit about it a couple of years back but you have a pretty uh incredible and storied past especially for someone who's a a fan of tactical knives and likes to know that his quote-unquote tactical knives are designed by someone who knows And just in kind of going over my notes about you, reading that you trained with, and I mean, so much more than that, but with Colonel Rex Applegate, who's a legend. Tell us about that experience and how you came about that.

[30:26] Um, so my first, the first time I heard of Colonel Applegate was back when I first got into the martial arts. So I started training in a system called American self-protection, uh, back in 19, about 1975, 76.

[30:42] And I was, um, literally right before going into high school. So I was a freshman in high school, started training and we started learning defenses against knives. Um, that scared the hell out of me. and the stuff we were learning, I didn't really have a whole lot of faith in. Went to my instructor and I told him, you know, hey, I don't really trust these techniques. He said, if you want to learn how to defend against a weapon, learn how to use it. So there was one other guy in the class, a guy named Mark Reffner, and he was like, hey, I'm interested in knives as well. And I've got this really cool book, Killer Get Killed. And you should read this because it's got some great information in it. So that started my journey as far as reading some of the old school knife fighting stuff and everything. But it also taught me who Colonel Rex Applegate was. So close combat instructor for the OSS during World War II. And I read this book, got to the section on point shooting. And when I got to that, it was like, wow, this is really cool. I need to give this a try. So I got myself a BB gun that looked like a 1911 .45, set up a little range in my garage, taught myself how to point shoot using this book and again it was the start of my knife instruction uh but also the first time i heard of colonel applegate fast forward about a long time um but um wanted to get out of government service had written a couple of books for paladin press reached out to paladin and i said you know hey i'm kind of whimsically uh casting a wide net here i'm looking for a job.

[32:11] They wanted to do videos with Colonel Applegate. The last project that I had done with them was a video called Mastering the Ballad Song. So it was my take on opening ballad songs. This was back in the early 90s. And they're like, you know, we're interested in your background. We're going to fly you out for an interview. So I went out, did an interview with Peter Lund, and he said, okay, here's the deal. Colonel Applegate is one of, you know, he's a natural treasure.

[32:34] And we want to do videos with him. The videographer we have really is not up to the task. Ask if the colonel likes you, you've got a job. If he doesn't like you, you don't. I'm like, okay. So I'm still working for the government, living in Hawaii. They flew me out for the 1994 Soldier of Fortune Convention. And they're like, hang out with the colonel, help him at his booth, whatever he needs this weekend. And he's going to basically interview you to see if he could work with you. And sat down with the colonel, incredibly honored to meet him. And he's like, so I understand you taught yourself to point shoot with my book.

[33:06] I'm like, yes, sir, I did. And he's like, okay, tell me about yourself. And we sat down, we spent the weekend together during that show. We hit the end of the weekend and my boss said, so can you work with him? Colonel Applegate was, yes. So I quit my job with the government, moved to Colorado. And the first video that I produced as Paladin Video Production Manager was a historical introduction to a film that the colonel had produced during World War II on point shooting. And the first thing he did was took me to the range and made me put my money where my mouth was as far as shooting and prove to him that I knew how to point shoot based on what I'd learned from him. And that was the start. I was the only person really at Paladin who was into the subject matter.

[33:49] What is point shooting? I'm sorry, I got to interrupt you there. What exactly is point shooting? so point shooting basically what you're doing when you think of your inherent ability to point accurately at things um when it comes to training people to do things under high stress under the stress of combat especially close range when things are happening quickly the idea of being able to use the sights of a pistol especially back in world war ii when the sights were small there were no night sights there was no tritium there was no high vis sights or anything like that. So basically what you're doing is capitalizing upon the body's ability to point accurately at close range under high stress. So what it allowed you to do is to become combat proficient with a handgun in a very short period of time and to overcome all the negative effects of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. So everything that happens when we're in the fight or flight response, all that stuff does not lend itself well to precise marksmanship. So what you do is you basically work with what you've got and essentially take your natural abilities and enhance those through a simple shooting method.

[34:59] So did it work? Did you do yourself proud for him? It absolutely worked. So that was actually the – so we went out to the colonel. If you're not familiar with his background, Colonel Applegate's great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather, I forget which one, was one of the trailblazers on the Oregon Trail. Wow. So if you go to Central Oregon, you're going to see a lot of stuff named Applegate because they owned a huge swath of land in Central Oregon. And so we went out to the family homestead, which is where he had, it's actually a state historical site, their original homestead cabin. And that's where he had his range. And we took a bunch of guns out there and he ran me through my paces. And he's like, okay, do this, do this. Okay, let's fine tune this. And that was the beginning of my education with Colonel Applegate as a mentor. tour. And, um, I remember one of my proudest moments. It was, we finished that up and we went back to the colonel's house and he actually had an annex, a separate building where he had his gun collection. Um, so give you an idea of how big his gun collection was. You needed a separate building for it. And behind his desk, he had these shelves and there were just all kinds of guns.

[36:13] So I said, you know, sir, where would you like to sit when we do this introduction. He's like, well, I want to sit in that desk right over there. I said, okay, can I move some of the stuff around behind the desk? He's like, well, what do you mean? And I said, well, you've got an MP5 SD up there. That's not World War II. If I take the BAR and move that where the MP5 is at, we could put that over there. And then we could also take the MP40. Let's take the Thompson M1941 and put that over here. And I'm just kind of rattling off what I want to do. And the colonel's like, well, damn boy, you know your guns. And I'm like, well, Well, sir, if I'm going to work with you, I need to. And he's like, excuse me a minute. So he walks over, picks up the phone, calls my boss at Paladin. He's like, it's about damn time you hired somebody who knows which end of a gun that bullet comes out of. Hire more people like this. Slams the phone down. And it was like, okay, I knew I was in at that point. But that was the start of, you know, literally I worked with the colonel for about a little over four years before he passed away. way. But during that time, because I had such an active interest in the subject matter, he really just kind of took me under his wing and mentored me during that time. He shared a lot of information with me. He was always available to me whenever I had a question about anything. If I wanted to ask him about historical stuff that he did during World War II, he was always just super receptive and very sharing of that information.

[37:34] And what you gave him is confirmation that his writing skills and his book was worth the time and the effort, you know, the fact that you could just learn from reading it. That's pretty, that's pretty amazing. So you created Marshall Blade Concepts, and I just want to talk a little bit about the philosophy. You mentioned it in our other interview, but tell us a little bit about it. And I'm kind of interested also in the empty hand or non-knife. Frequently, I'll see pictures of you with a hammer or something else. And I'm interested in how other weapons scale to MBC.

[38:15] So the whole concept of MBC, when I was researching knife material, researching knife systems, it always came up that the Filipino martial arts were like the pinnacle. And this was late 1970s, early 1980s. So it was really kind of the start of the Filipino martial arts just becoming kind of available to the public. So you had traditional martial arts, you know, Japanese stuff, judo, karate, taekwondo, all that stuff was out there. But the Filipino arts were still not widely known and they weren't widely taught. And I was in the military station in Hawaii, went to the Filipino Chamber of Commerce and wanted to find Filipino martial arts instructors. And long story short, basically, they were not teaching outside their culture at that time.

[39:08] So here's this great repository of information. I'd read Dan Arosanto's book on the Filipino martial arts. And for me, it was brilliant. So my job, I was an intelligence analyst trained by NSA to be an analyst. And I'm looking at this stuff. It's like this is such a brilliant concept that you use the same angles, but you simply adapt your techniques to the attributes of the weapon. So whatever the characteristics of the weapon are, like the traditional Filipino saying, wood seeks bone, steel seeks flesh. Am I breaking bones? Am I cutting flesh? How do I adapt my targets to the attributes of my weapon? And it just made such great sense. I really wanted to learn it, but nobody would teach it to me. So I started as Dan Arnosanto's stuff started to become available. He did his first video series. I just started analyzing and looking at the movements and saying, okay, well, I can move the same way with a knife that he's moving with a stick. Now I just need to adapt to proper targeting. And one of the other things that was really a paradigm shift for me, me. I'd written a book way back when, Night Fighting, a practical course based on what I thought I knew. And then I was asked by a guy who had been attacked by his boss, and, Boss attacked him with a knife. He defended himself, was able to disarm the boss. He grabbed the knife, and the boss was still trying to choke him to death. So he started stabbing the boss. They fought for about four minutes through every room in this guy's apartment.

[40:36] He basically hired me. He's like, I want you to do an expert analysis of my claim to self-defense. And I'm reading through the autopsy report, and this guy was stabbed over 50 times with a six-inch blade, and he didn't stop. So, a lot of the stuff that I thought I knew based on traditional knife technique, the stopping power aspect of it from a self-defense standpoint, it didn't ring true. So, I started going back to the medical side and started consulting with trauma surgeons, started working with the medical community instead of working with the martial arts community. And basically what it became was taking the Filipino martial arts, taking the concept of defanging the snake, but instead of the Filipino version where it's like, okay, he throws an angle one, I'm going to cut his flexor tendons, disarm him, and then I'm going to kill the unarmed guy, which from a battlefield concept makes perfect sense. From a self-defense standpoint goes from lawful self-defense to assault with a deadly weapon the murder so you can't you're going to fight with the way you train if you train that way to maintain the filipino cultural elements what you're doing is you're also painting yourself into a corner when it comes to your claim to the lawful self-defense because you're training to do things that are inappropriate again from a battlefield standpoint hundreds of years ago filipino fighting a conquistador makes perfect sense filipino fighting a japanese soldier during World War II, makes perfect sense. Modern self-defense, not so much.

[42:04] So literally what NBC became, in some ways it was liberating for me because I was able to take the Filipino martial arts, analyze it, and take from it what I felt was useful and then change whatever I needed to change because I had no cultural allegiances because nobody ever formally taught me something and said, this is what we do, at least initially. And then from a performance standpoint, what I wanted was something that was stopping power base because that was the key for self-defense. You have to stop the lethal threat. So looking at the targeting aspects, looking at the understanding the realities of human anatomy and how it's most vulnerable to being wounded by a knife to create reliable predictable stopping power.

[42:48] Man, I love that philosophy. I like the idea of the stopping power. That's, you know, that's why the 45 was developed, you know, because people could keep running through a hail of nine millimeter, apparently. Filipinos, I guess, in bowling rushes. 38 i'm sorry uh but uh yeah i like that idea of stopping power and it's funny uh what you said uh about you train how you fight and you know i've in in my days of uh filipino training uh in piquiti tertia or you know santo lacoste you're always doing follow-up moves follow-up moves you're always ending up you know with a knife in the throat or doing something uh lethal and as you said it makes sense on a battlefield it makes sense in a wartime combative scenario, but most of us aren't going to be facing that and most of us are not training in martial arts, for that uh for that purpose we're just trying to go through our life and protect ourselves and we're not looking to assassinate anyone who who crosses us so that's that's a that's what i like about the MBC concept. It kind of seems like it gives you an off-ramp.

[44:05] Well, what it does is we're taking the same mindset. Because as soon as you pick up a knife, you are in fear for your life or in fear of grievous bodily injury. So you're justified in using lethal force. And I'm not saying that what we do is non-lethal because people will be like, oh, this is a non-lethal approach. It's absolutely not. As soon as you use the knife in any context, it is an application of lethal force. need to be justified in doing so. But what we want is instantaneous incapacitation. So a lot of people will look at it and say, okay, what I need to do is bleed somebody out. The loss of blood is what creates stopping power. Well, the problem is people don't bleed quickly enough to make that a reliable tactic to be able to stop folks. So we look at as being able to stop people mechanically by cutting muscles and tendons, and then neurologically by cutting the nerves that that allow the brain to control the muscles. And by targeting the appropriate targets, we talked a little bit before about the idea of a two-and-a-half-inch blade. That's also one of those things where when you look at traditional tactics, some people will be like, well, you know, I disagree with that. What you need to do is stick them in the aorta.

[45:13] Okay, how do you do that with a two-and-a-half-inch blade if you're in Chicago? How do you do that with a two-and-a-half-inch blade if you're in Boston? If you've got somebody who's a decent-sized guy, there's no way you're getting a two-and-a-half-inch blade to his aorta. It's just not going to work. Even some of the other major blood vessels, you'd be hard-pressed to be able to hit those. And again, it takes time for that blood loss to occur. Whereas if you're targeting anatomical targets that are close to the surface of the skin within the range of a two-and-a-half-inch blade and produce immediate incapacitation.

[45:45] That's what you want. You get that first, and then the application, in many cases, those targets are actually co-located with major blood vessels, so you also get the ancillary effect of blood loss, but that's not the primary goal. And so to make that two-and-a-half-inch knife work, training, targeting, all very important. As we wrap here, Mike, what advice would you give someone considering carrying a knife for self-defense or someone who does carry a knife for self-defense who might not have the training? What kind of advice do you give people who carry knives?

[46:28] Whenever you do anything for self-defense, you should be looking at it with a really good bullshit detector. actor. So what I tell people to do is look for things that are logical and will create, reliable, predictable results. And when it comes to knife stuff, for example, you know, you've mentioned my training and some of the Inosanto stuff. One of the things you'll see often is bargaining position. So you'll see stuff where it's like, okay, I take this technique to the point to where I'm holding this knife against this guy's neck and here we're in bargaining, Okay, I can't rely on him to find religion at that moment and decide that he's going to repent, drop his weapon and everything comes to a full stop and we have this happy ending.

[47:13] That's unrealistic. And it's an unrealistic way to train. So whatever you do, however you choose to embrace knife, if you look at NBC and say, you know what, I don't believe in all that stuff. Okay, fine. It's a free country. Okay, you're free to choose whatever you want. But what you ought to have is something that is reliable and predictable. If somebody says that you cut him here, it produces this result. Okay, grab a copy of Grey's Anatomy and look through there, understand the anatomical side of it and say, wait a minute, is this really true? You'll have people referencing stuff like the jugular artery, or excuse me, jugular vein. You'll say, oh, I'm going to go for the jugular. Well, the jugular is a vein. The carotid is an artery. So you go back to basic eighth grade biology and it's like, okay, arteries carry oxygenated blood under high blood pressure away from the heart. So they're going to bleed more profusely. basic first aid training. Arterial bleeding is dangerous. Venous bleeding is not a happy thing, but it's much less dangerous. So whenever you hear stuff like that, where it's like, okay, the jugular is a target. Sorry, you're excused because you don't know what you're talking about. So whatever you choose to embrace for, whether it's knife or any other self-defense discipline.

[48:21] You need to hold up to a high standard of logic. And it should be something where it's like, okay, if I do this, is this a realistic – is there a high degree of probability that this will work the way they say it will? What exactly is happening here? And above all, one of the things that I believe in when it comes to training, you should know why you're doing everything you do. And what I mean by that is if you're doing some kind of a martial arts movement where it's like, okay, you do this and just do it this way. What am I doing? I'll tell you later. I'm sorry. I need to know exactly what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and what it's supposed to achieve. Otherwise, I'm not going to burn the calories to do it. And that's one of the things about the martial arts that traditionally we've become so accustomed to the caste system of martial arts where I can't ask these questions. Well in self-defense you're trying to preserve your own life and the life lives of your loved ones there's there's no higher states than that so the idea of doing something that doesn't make sense that you can't rely on that you can't understand you can't predict the outcome it's a waste of time move on and find something better.

[49:29] Perfectly said mike janich thank you so much for these extra minutes for the patrons here on the knife junkie podcast it's been a real pleasure i uh i look forward to talking to you some more in the future about this uh it's a i guess an ongoing conversation at this point where i'll just keep asking you these kind of questions because uh you know what you're talking about and we all we all i mean we all like to collect these knives that are.

[49:56] Somewhat uh tactical somewhat self-defense oriented but to have a very well vetted person and, I don't know, explaining some things, I'm going on at length. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. And like I say, I'll come back anytime. Keep the welcome mat out for me, all right? I will indeed. Take care, sir. Thanks. This is a special 500th episode of the Knife Junkie podcast. Here's the Knife Junkie with the next guest. And finally, the man that started the fire and kept it stoked all of these years. Yes, I'm talking about the Jupiter of my knife pantheon. I am talking about the great and powerful Lynn Thompson of Cold Steel. Okay, I want to thank all of the patrons of the Knife Junkie Podcast. We really appreciate you helping us keep the lights on. And to say thanks, I'm bringing you a few extra minutes with the great and powerful Lynn C. Thompson of Cold Steel fame. Lynn, thanks for doing these extra couple of minutes with us. It's appreciated. I'll come on and talk any time. I have a lot to say. Awesome. Well, then you have a platform.

[51:08] But right before we started rolling, I was going to say, I know you're pressed for time, so we're going to... No, I don't have as much. I moved my lesson back to 3 o'clock today. Well, what is that lesson? I wanted to ask you, what is the lesson? Well, today I'm fighting with Japanese swords. So I'll start first with two hands, and I fight left foot forward or left hand forward. because in Japan, almost everyone fights right-handed. So I've trained myself to pose them, to have a little bit of advantage against maybe someone that's better than I am, that I'll present the sword a little bit differently than what they're used to. So I'll fight with single sword for about a half an hour, and then I'll go to wakazashi and katana for about 20 minutes. So I like Musashi's two-sword method a lot. so I'll fight a lot with either two katanas or a katana wakasashi and then I'll go to today I'll use butterfly swords I usually use butterfly swords for at least 25 20 minutes so I usually put in 20 minutes of butterfly swords then I'll put in about 20 minutes to 30 minutes with a cutlass and Bowie and.

[52:22] And then I'll go to a small sword and a five and a half inch Valcaro. So I use the five and a half inch Valcaro like this. And almost anytime I have a sword in one hand, I have this or a Bowie or a Tanto or something like that in the other. Because I know I always have this on. So I know this is always going to be available. And I don't know that I'll have any other knife available, but I always can rely on this. So a vast amount of my training is done with, I have like six of these in aluminum. And they're the most battered knives you ever saw in your life.

[53:00] Sometime I'll show you a close-up of some of the training knives. You can see the tens of thousands of impacts that have been on them. So that Musashi style of double sword fighting, that was very unorthodox at the time. He was doing that. that um and then you and then you talk about butterfly swords which aren't those from china are those chinese yes so and then so how i i'm sorry uh so how much and then you were talking about the western combination of the bowie and the cutlass how much uh through those three different very different cultural uh weapon uh groups how much of their is there the filipino double hand everything's double-handed in Filipino or can be, how much of that leaks into the Japanese, the Western, and the Chinese?

[53:49] Well, the Japanese swordsmanship has different footwork and a different idea than the Filipino. So sometimes Luke chides me about, say, using Filipino footwork instead of Japanese footwork. And the Japanese tend to cut much harder, and they reach with their cut. So every time I cut, I'm reaching with your cut. Okay, and so the nice thing is there's nothing faster than a knife. So if you do a lot of knife fighting, the sword is always slower. So there is some correlation a little bit, especially between the butterfly swords and double bowies, double hatchets, and there's some common denominators that you're just going to have when you're fighting with any weapon line. As long as we have two hands and two arms and two feet, we're going to fight certain ways. There's only certain things that we can do. It's the same thing in swordsmanship. So there was a lot to learn, though, that butterfly swords are different. And I don't fight them like Wing Chun style. I have a lot of exposure to Wing Chun through Ron.

[54:59] Dan Inosanto is one of his top students. He trained with Dan. He's married to Dan's daughter. So he has a lot of Dan's knowledge and lineage. And of course, Dan was Bruce Lee's number one training partner. So through him, I traced my lineage and training right to Bruce Lee.

[55:16] Um, so I have some interest. I always liked the fact that butterfly swords were portable. So you can pick a pair of butterfly swords and put them in your suitcase and fly with them. No problem. I remember that from the old proof video of what you could fit in a suitcase. Case yeah so wakazashi sometimes you can fit a wakazashi in there but you can always put in a pair of butterfly swords so quite often if i can't take a gun where i'm going or a sword cane i'll take butterfly swords because um you can defend the doorway of your hotel in that narrow space no one's coming through that door if you've got a pair of butterfly swords yeah it's like a blender It is like a blender. And I like them because, like you said, you use them interchangeably. I got really into using both hands a long time ago with the Sikh training partners I had. They would tell me that in their martial art, it's really important to be able to use both sides of your body. So I can fence with my left hand for it. I can fence with a saber or a small sword or you name it. I'm not quite as good, but I've tried to trade my left side as much as I can.

[56:33] That Sikh sword fighting is beautiful. I remember when I lived in New York City, I trained in a place that was in Danny Nosanto's, you know, my teacher learned from him. And I remember being outside of our studio one day and there was a Sikh parade going down Broadway. And I was lucky enough to see like a group of men in their galabias and their headdress with these long scimitars. They were probably, you know, dull, but the way they were flipping them around their backs and catching them and doing these wide whipping motions with them, it was beautiful to watch. But I remember trying to assimilate some of that stuff, like this sort of that sort of move into my sparring. And it was surprising to people at first. And then I jacked up my shoulder because I didn't know what I was doing. But yeah, interesting to be able to look at the world's different fighting arts. And like you said, we're all in human bodies here. So you can really take them and in the spirit of JKD, put them together in your own, you know, this is perfect for Lynn Thompson's body. This is perfect for Bob DeMarco's body. Pick and choose. I'm not built tall and thin like you. I can't be you. Everybody has to, like you say, Jakey, we have to absorb what's useful and cast off what's not useful to us according to our body types.

[57:55] I hired Nadar Singh from England to come out and train with me for a week, for eight hours a day, for six days. We got to train with him, and it was quite enlightening. I found their strengths and their weaknesses, So everybody has a strength and a weakness. All these curve patterns are good for keeping people off. But if you ever watch girls jump rope, they'll go like this, and then they'll jump right into that intricate rope pattern and pick it up themselves. It's the same thing when people constantly make patterns. As you get better and better and better, you'll see the gap, and you'll be able to strike right through that pattern. I'm doing that a lot in knife fighting right now. I've got to the point where I can see your motion pattern, and I'd be able to time as you're opening and closing that area I can flow into that momentary gap because I'm really working hard on thrusting that the stab is far more dangerous than the cut but the stab is hard to deliver without being countercut as you yeah that's that's the hardest part even with a sword or with a knife or whatever is how do you get in make your fatal blow and emerge unscathed because you don't want to trade. I don't want to stab you through the chest and then have you cut my arm so badly it's going to sling the rest of my life. Right, right. I won, but it's almost a pirate victory.

[59:21] That's always our goal constantly when we're training is how do you make that clean so-called kill and get out unscathed. That's tough. So you've had all the world's best teachers in different sword and knife fighting arts teaching you. You must take some joy in sharing this with people who don't know it. Do you teach this stuff?

[59:46] Well, in probably the 2003-2006 era, I put on a few knife fighting seminars. And my good friend and student Richard Lee is encouraging me to start a Lynn Thompson knife fighting program. I have thought about it. See, I do it because I love it. I learned knife fighting for me, not for anybody else. It's like all my martial training is really for me um and i've never been as interested in sharing it but yeah probably i would i'm thinking about doing that for sure because i i could probably talk about knife fighting for three months non-stop and not repeat myself i've got so many notebooks filled up yeah but and and so many influences from so many different worm i meet people whose knowledge sometimes and I look at me and myself and say, oh, shit, Lenny, you're just a little worm. She'd better go back to the drawing board. That's always, it's always humbling too. You've got to constantly remember you have stuff to learn all the time. Right. Okay, so I want to find out about your competitors in the knife industry.

[1:01:03] Who did you think did it right? I mean, I'm sure that there are lots of stories of, but But who do you look at up here in the knife world, a peer, not up here, but a peer in the knife world that you admire or whose company you thought did it right or something like that? Well, see, I was there at the beginning, so I know everybody's skeletons. But, you know, I know all the skeletons of every knife company out there.

[1:01:35] And I've traveled so much. I know all their manufacturers. manufacturers i know so much about them and i've studied them i've made my business to know you you know you have to know your enemy better than yourself and um so there's two knife companies that i admire their knives that i think are pretty good and that's binge made i think they make a really good knife and spider girl i think for the money they make a really good knife and i carried a spider co folder a police folder for probably um until i came out with my own shinobus i think I think about 1988 was the last time I... I think it was number 41 or 42 that Sal gave me. Sal and I are... I consider him a friend. We've had a few disagreements. He hasn't always admired. I don't think my... Like we talked about my forward or aggressive marketing. But I think that they make a really good knife. And I think Benchmade makes a darn good knife too.

[1:02:36] That's uh i'm sure that most people are not surprised that's cool to hear um i i always liked i you know whatever it's it's it's a matter of personal taste i always thought that that bench maids were good but boring and spider codes were weird but good you know uh and then and then i understand a lot of the spider code designs yeah it's just that um for me i tried to make a stronger better knife and um when i couldn't i kept striving if i couldn't be as i kept striving to be better now i'm not saying always was but i'm striving to be better and with the triad lock we've got a huge jump on everybody and um everybody has tried to catch up and that's been great for the knife industry as a whole knives are safer now by far than when i started and I can look back to my ad campaign in Guns and Ammo where I started doing comparisons of my knives holding different weights and stuff like that and that's when Benchmade really came out with their axis lock was after that ads to answer me and so that spurred competition and the competition is good for the consumer and I pushed it I pushed the sharpness I pushed the lock strength I pushed the strength of the blades Now we've got this Joey X guy that's taking my test into, like, you know, extreme crazy levels.

[1:04:05] I mean, you do what he does, you'll break anything.

[1:04:07] I can break anything. I don't care whose knife it is. I can break it.

[1:04:12] It's just, yeah. What does it take to break it? One knife in particular I want to ask you about.

[1:04:20] You mentioned it. You carry them all the time. I'm a huge, huge fan and early adopter of the Vaquero blade. late. I have a bunch of them. And this one's my favorite, the signature version. By the way, I love your signature. I always talk about it. You're like such a badass and your signature is so nice. It's so clean. My wife has perfect, she can write perfectly. Her cursive writing is just awesome. And I did my best on that. But I've always been a very clumsy writer. And I tried hard to do that that's my best official signature that's exactly how i sign documents with i try my hardest to to make it like that so that's a really good lynn thompson signature on the boxes you know i'm signing 3 000 boxes yeah no sometimes they get a little sloppy i apologize for that it's just hard to keep your attention oh man it takes me to do a good signature about 12 to 15 seconds.

[1:05:17] I got you. It's not everyone's forte, but what about this knife in particular makes it your, it seems like your favorite. You always, you have a couple of, when I posed for a photo with you, you pulled an extra one out for me to hold. What is it about this knife that you love so much? Okay, well, if you have time, I'll explain it to you in great detail. First of all, the point's quite acute, but it's not so thin that it feels like paper. So to me, I'm comfortable with that thickness based on my experience with stabbing stuff. That point won't turn on a rib.

[1:05:52] And the only thing that might turn it is if you hit the ball joint of the shoulder or the ball joint of the hip. So trailing that, it's going to go through most bones. It'll go through a shoulder blade. It'll go through the rib cage. It won't blunt on the sternum. So it's acute. And it's centered like a dagger. and then it has this s curve so if i can use my arm here i always illustrate this when i catch you i'll try to catch you in that inside curve here and there i can hold you if i catch you with that i can hold you there for a microsecond i can hold your arm for a microsecond i'm not talking about oh you can't hold this i'm talking about a microsecond knife fighting is in microseconds and so i can hold and pass or counter cut you with the other knife so that gives me some holding and blocking ability to make your arm stationary for a very very very small amount of time i have to emphasize that so it's microseconds okay then when i pull through to finish my cut that hump gets dragged through so if you hit straight on a knife like this right you may or may not get a cut you might you might get some impact cut from it but it's the pull that pulls the edge that's what what really cuts you so when you exit when you cut some of this when you exit you're pulling that hump through so you get this curve and you're always going to get this curve right here.

[1:07:20] That curve is going to come through the cut. So that's going to give you about three inches of edge coming through, and then the point comes off like that. So you can get a really, really ferocious cut with that, especially with this serrated edge. This tends to gather whatever it grabs. Get that phone, please, Junior.

[1:07:42] This tends to grab whatever it contacts. So that's a huge good point of it. Now, it's flat ground from top to bottom, so it has a real thin cross-section, which I really enjoy. And that allows me to get the edge thin, and I can get a terrific flippant edge on this thing. Let's come in here. Let's show the camera so you get to see all the hairs here. It came off. Anyways, yeah, it's got to be. I always call that knife fighter's mange when you see something with big patches off their arm. I call that knife fighter's mange. We're always testing our edges on our, the hair on our arm. So it's really important that your knife be sharper. So the next thing is this section right here is broad. Okay. And that section is broad. So there's a lot of difference between this pen and the lock. I should say this pivot pen right here. From here, pivot pen. Right there. and up here.

[1:08:51] Where you have your stop pin. So the bigger that distance is, the stronger you can make the tang of the knife. See, the triode lock usually is defeated by not pulling apart, but by the tang breaking. The actual steel breaks across from the pressure. So it goes from that hole to the next hole and breaks. So the bigger distance you can have, the stronger the lock. So it has a lot of distance there. So this lock is enormously strong. I think the most poundage it held was close to 800 pounds.

[1:09:20] That's four inches from the pivot point so right here we'd be measuring putting the weight about four inches because the average palm i always go four inches the average palm is about four inches across so i go worse than the worst amount of leverage would be four inches from the pivot the closer of course the less leverage against it further away the more the more pressure is so this first stop here is really important because now i've got this inside trial here here. No matter what I hit, I know I'm not going forward. I've got a super grip on that, and that's going to stop my hand from going forward on that blade. So that's important. Then the next one is these two back here. I tend to hold this knife when I'm fighting here. Go back here. So I have all that reach. I've got the five and a half inch blade, and I've got about another two and a quarter inches. So I've got about eight inches sticking getting out of my fist and this part is locked into the bottom of my hand like that curls in there like that. So even when I make hard contact, this part of the knife right here slams into my palm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely important. So sometimes you'll stick hard this way or this way. And if you're leaving me, you can stab so hard, you'll knock the knife right out of your hand. I do it. Maybe. Maybe.

[1:10:41] Once every three or four months, I'll lose a knife like that. We say you drop your knife, you lose your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:10:49] I don't take that lightly. I mean, I get all over my case. You know, if you're a knife fighter, you should be critiquing yourself a lot, and constantly working on it. So this section of the knife is really important, especially that part here. So it allows me to get a grip here, a grip here, a grip here, and even throughout here. I can even grab it on these last two trowel and lats here and especially for dispatching animals with horns I've done that a lot in Africa to a lesser extent in Australia but a lot in Africa where you don't want to shoot it again because you want to eat it, and I didn't have a spear handy and I don't want to chop into it with a shovel or a kukri and wreck a bunch of meat and wreck the hive so I'll try to maneuver to where I can stick it through the heart very humanely behind the shoulder as far distance as I can get from it. I went right, I dispatched an Impala in Zambia and I was back here because he was still pretty active. The last thing you want to do is get a razor pointy antler or horn in the crotch or the mouth or the eye or whatever because they will whip that at you or kick you. So you're always trying to get the maximum reach and jump back out as fast as you can. But that's what I enjoy about this knife. It has a lot of reach options.

[1:12:16] It's enormously strong. It has a great handle.

[1:12:21] And it's a ferocious cutter. I mean, the only thing about it is the point. If I didn't carry this, I'd carry a five-and-a-half-inch full serrated canto. That would be the next one. In fact, if I'm going someplace where I know I can't get resupplied or I can only carry a limited number of knives, I'll carry a tanto instead of this. Okay. It's stronger. I know it's more robust. Because you've got that stiff, different spine down the back of the blade. So there is one thing you forgot about this, and that is that it's, man, it's so nice to look at. It's a beautiful knife. Thank you. I remember you saying that you were looking a lot at the Yadagon when you designed this. The Yadagon. I read Sir Richard Burton's book. A long time ago, in the 80s probably, and it talked about the Yadagat being the perfect cut and thrust blade, and it fit the natural motion of the hand and wrist and all that stuff. And I thought about that, and then I started studying Yadagans and lots of Persian blades, and that was the influence, my Persian influence came from Sir Richard Burton's book on knives and swords. So a lot of the stuff that influences me is what I read. I don't know why it doesn't influence other people, But other people in the knife industry, in my opinion, aren't studying history very much. I mean, I always, the first thing I go to another knife company is ask them if I can see their library. Look, what library?

[1:13:45] There's no one doing any research. They don't have any libraries. Yeah. Huh. Well, that's, I'm going to wrap by saying that that is one of the things, I mentioned it in the other interview, you that's one of the things that i have always loved about cold steel and which has kept me a devoted collector and user of cold steel knives this whole time is um you know great american company looking all over the world and throughout history for design inspiration and uh still looking and without the day on youtube i saw a whole bunch of stuff that i want to incorporate in new designs i'm constantly seeing inspiration i love it and without you like i said before Without you, there are so many cool examples of knives throughout history that I just wouldn't be able to have, especially not one that can go the distance. So I want to thank you. Like my brother said, thank you for bringing the crisp. But, I mean, like you've given us years of enjoyment and brotherly bonding, too, which is pretty cool. But anyway, I just want to say thank you, Lynn. You're welcome. It's been great. My work's been appreciated and had influence. Oh, yeah. I hope to keep working on that and.

[1:14:56] All right. And we'll be back in touch to find out when you can come back on and we can talk more. All right. Super. Focused conversation. Thank you so much, sir. You have a great one. And good luck with that sword fight. Go easy on him. All right. Thanks. All right. Take care. This special 500th episode of the Knife Junkie podcast features three knife legends in never before heard or seen interviews, which were part of our Patreon member only exclusive content. Join our Patreon and become a supporter of the show to get bonus content from each podcast guest going forward. Get the details at thenifejunkie.com slash Patreon. Well, that's going to do it for this 500th episode of the Knife Junkie Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it, and Jim and I hope you stick around for another 500 episodes, at least.

[1:15:46] For Jim, working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying, saying, until next time, don't take dull for an answer. Thanks for listening to the Knife Junkie Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at ReviewThePodcast.com. For show notes for today's episode, additional resources, and to listen to past episodes, visit our website, TheKnifeJunkie.com. You can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at TheKnifeJunkie.com. Check out some great knife photos on TheKnifeJunkie.com. slash Instagram and join our Facebook group at the knife junkie.com slash Facebook. And if you have a question or comment, email them to Bob at the knife junkie.com or call our 24 seven listener line at 724-466-4487. And you may hear your comment or question answered on an upcoming episode of the knife junkie podcast.

[1:16:36] Music.