Knife Makers interview series

[owen bush]

I Have blatently ripped the idea of this thread off of Cristopher Price on Don Foggs bladesmiths Forum ,His interview series has been great and I think it would work Here so we can get to know some of the Makers on our forum a little Better .
The idea is that I Interview another Knife Maker and after that they interview someone else and it Rolls on like that interviewee becomes interviewer .
Anybody is Game, Pros,Amaters ,Smiths, Grinders,cutlers and Handlers.I would Recomend that you contact the Person you intend to interview first By PM just to check that they are Up for it and then anything goes .
The format is a Generalised one interviewer one interviewee but if anybody else Has any questions fire away (try not to clog it up with too much idle chat though).
This is intended as a Place whare Makers can express there personal Views on How they do there work and see the craft of Knife Making and All views are to be respected .Please dont post any arguementative or rude coments and we should find out a lot more about some of the talented Makers that we have knocking around this Forum.
This worked Really well on Dons site and there are so many different angles of aproach people are taking here I think There should be some interesting insights out there .
If the thread starts to stall I'll give it a little Push along
So to start things .................................................. ................................
First On the List Will Be Mick Maxen .

[owen bush]

I am going to start this series with Mick Maxen Who as Most of you Know Makes the Most Amazing Mozaic Damascus and as Well as Blades Makes Cool sculptural Pieces .Micks Work Has been inspirational to me and I am Lucky enough to Call Him a friend (We Have fun messing around with Metal and get together to try those Patterns we wouldnt get around to doing otherwise!)...I'll Begin

Mick,
You Have been Making Damascus and Blades for A while now (and we Have Been Lucky enough to see some of your lovley work Here)what was it That first got you started on the Path of Making Damascus and what were your first steps along that Path.

[Mick Maxen]

Cheers Owen, as you point out the thread on Don's site is a good insight into what makes people "tick" and has been very interesting.

The first time I can remember seeing damascus, not that I knew what it was then, was from guns that my father had collected. Among them were two small pocket pistols with twist off barrels and a very smart pair of Needham Side Loading shotguns. The barrels on these weapons were quite something else, they had patterns on them. With my dad being a fanatical gun collector and County Coach for .22 pistol, in my early years there were guns everywhere, so I got that out of my system quite early on. He also had a few knives which I showed interest in and he gave them to me as a start of a collection. One of them was a Kris from Sumatra and this had a patterned steel blade.
Then about 16 years ago I got the bug for making this patterned steel and set about teaching myself all about it. The only information I could get was from a few articles in gun books that my father had, I seem to remember horse shoe nails being mentioned as a material you could use. I didn't have any of those and the only other steel I knew of was O1. So I set about welding O1 to mild, which was a complete disaster as I didn't know anything about heat control. I could get the steel so hot that it would crumble and fly about the workshop or if I did succesfully weld it up, when I etched it the bar was full of small cracks. After alot of messing about I got hold of a book by Tim McCreight called Custom Knifemaking. The book details the making of 10 knives, from a small kichen knife to a camp knife. Non of this interested me until I turned the page for Project No 10 and there in black and white was how to make a Damascus Steel Dagger. I still have the book, its open in front of me now, it must be the first time I've looked at it in almost 15+ years. Page 186 Project No 10, a eureka moment for me all those years ago. As this was long before the internet arrived, I always looked at the bibliogaraphy to see what other books were mentioned and there was a list of magazines. book. One that is mentioned is The Blade Magazine which I subscribed to and from that magazine I learnt about Jim Hrisoulas and his book The Complete Bladesmith, which has even more info about damascus and more importantley what steels to use. With all this new information, I've been practising/ learning ever since.

Mick.

[owen bush]

It was a dfferent world pre internet wasn't it .
Mick,
Apart from gleaning from Books are you self tought ? Is there anybody in particular who inspired you or helped you along with your work ?

[Mick Maxen]

Self taught is probably the best description and I think that is as a result of my up bringing. A brief history. I would always spend my summer holidays working with my dad who was a boiler engineer,fabricator, underwater surveyor, plumber, electrician and what ever else was needed. So from a young age I watched my dad solve all manner of problems and learnt that there is more ways than one, of doing something, or earning a living. Most of my time was spent messing around in the workshop and probably by the time I was 12/13 I could gas weld and stick weld with a reasonable degree of success, take things apart and put them back together and they still worked. Apart from the time I got a new watch for my birthday, I was fascinated by how it all worked and just had to have a look inside. I prised the back off, only to see fleeting glimpses of cogs and springs fly about all over my bedroom. I tried to gather them all up and put them back, but it was never the same again. Did I get a telling off or what.
My background has always been working with steel or iron, mainly fabrication or boiler work. We used to restore the boilers from traction engines and that was my first experience with a forge, heating up the rivets before laying them over with pneumatic hammers.
Blacksmithing wise, I have had no training of any kind. The first time I saw a blacksmith working was at the Royal Show. The way these shows work if you enter their static blacksmithing competitions, is that you take your enteries to the show on the day before it opens to the public and on the last day, you go back and see how you have done. It was on this last day that I saw Richard Bent, a blacksmith from Hampshire, working over an anvil. My 4 core damascus dagger caused quite a stir, especially after I told them I wasn't a blacksmith.
Most of my inspiration came from pictures of other peoples work in things like the Blade Mag and a few books. Through a conversation with one of my dads pals I heard about this fella that makes incredible knives and was the Queens Armourer. I eventually got his telephone number and after a while plucked up the courage to phone him. I didn't know if I was going to talk to some lardy da type, who spoke with a plum in his mouth and full of his own importance, as being the Queens Armourer is some title. The man on the other end of the phone was Jim Jackson and you couldn't wish to meet a nicer fella. After a few more phone calls, Jim came over to see me at my workshop and brought some of his knives with him. To this day they are some of the finest knives I have seen, this must have been 12+ years ago and we have been friends ever since. Inspiration wise I would have to say Jim as there were no faults in his workmanship and thats something I try to achieve with anything I make.
Alot of people can make blades, but turning them into knives is another ball game. The devil is in the detail, the fit & finish.

Mick.

[owen bush]

Faultless work is a real achievement (I dont even try and go there )
Mick,
Of all the work you have Done what is your favorite piece (piccies would be good if it's not to much bother) and are there any blades that were mile stones between trying and getting there.

[Mick Maxen]

As you say faultless work is a real achievment. I don't think any maker of anything really achieves something that is faultless in their eyes. To an outsider it may look faultless, but to the maker there will be something that niggles them, wether you can see it or not, they know its there.
A milestone in my early days of pattern welding blades is probably the blade below, as it turned out as I expected with even twists and a wiggle down the middle. The crap that I made before this only helped to get this right. Probably made without a power hammer all those years ago.



The piece that came from this success was my Viking Style Dagger, below. I can remember sitting looking at it and inspecting it, not believing I had made it. I still get a buzz looking at it now. The blade is 4 bars of about 60 layers, 2
twisted clockwise and 2 anti-clockwise All the fittings are damascus as well. This was the first piece I put into some blacksmithing competitions. This was in 97 I think. That summer there was some bad press about knives and I thought it would be interesting to see what reaction it got. When I turned up with it I didn't know if it would be accepted for the show, but as it turned out it was well recieved and I spent most of my time explaining how I made it.




There has been so much of the "arty damascus" that I have made, but I never thought to take any photos. Some of the best pieces have been the trinket boxes that I have shown on here, these started of being made out random layered steel, but recently they have been a bit more creative with twisted steel and mosaic. A milestone moment, if you can have such a thing, was inlaying pieces of mosaic into plates of steel so that they are flush with the surface, for container lids and bowls. It gives a stunning effect, we know how its done, but to alot of people it catches their attention as they can't work out how you get areas of pattern in something that is otherwise plain. When I first made some of these pieces with inlays I was pleased and thought I had come up with a new idea, but I had a niggling thought at the back of my mind that I had seen something similar before. It was a while after that I was looking through a book about Viking blades and there was my idea, an Ulfberht blade from the 10th century. Nothing is new.
A couple of the arty pieces I have made, I couldn't part with as a lot of me went into them. Not good business pratice I know, but what the hell.
One piece in particular sat in a gallery for a couple of years and didn't sell. Every time I would go there it was still in the cabinet, so I withdrew it from sale and brought it home, photo below.





The clock is about 13" tall by 4" across the base. Made from a 200 layer billet with a typical ladder pattern on the top piece and a fancy circular ladder pattern for the face.

Mick.

[owen bush]

Is that Lath-ladder Mascus .Ive not seen that before Cool!

[Mick Maxen]

Owen, I think you have missed the e of lathe, but your right. I have just thought of another milestone, welding up that short barrel after abandoning the idea and going back to it, years later.

Mick.

[owen bush]

Mick,
for a while now you have been teaching one to one classes in Patternwelding and you have been posting step by step guides showing the processes involved in making your Mosaic damascus .
What are your thoughts on sharing the knowledge that has taken you so long to learn ?
I have seen a couple threads on Don Fogs site and Here where People are remaking the Patterns you have shown .
that must be a rewarding feeling .

[Mick Maxen]

When I first started pattern welding, there was no knowledge base you could tap into. Today you only have to do a search on this site and every bit of info is there or a link to find it on another site.
I suppose as information was hard to come by I was a bit guarded about what I knew and would only give away small snippets of info. After many years of making you get to a point where, if you showed someone how to make the stuff, they are just begining the journey and you are miles down the road, so it dosn't matter so much.
The first person I taught was a metalurgist from The British Museum, a lady by the name of Janet Lang. This came about from a letter I wrote to the BM enquiering about Anglo Saxon swords. I got a reply along with a note saying one of the curators colleagues would like to meet me. So I invited Janet to my forge and we spent a day pattern welding, not bad for a lady in her late 50's. Shortly after I was invited to a behind the scenes tour of the BM as a thank you. I got quite a buzz from spending the day teaching and passing on information. It was interesting as well from Janets point of view as she could see from the way we were working the metal, how the patterns and shapes that she had studied for the last 30+ years were coming together.
I had thought about teaching for quite a while and one saturday I invited Colin over as a thank you for letting me have a load of fire bricks and refractory. We had a good day making steel and he learnt a lot from it, so the idea about teaching came up again. I knew someone else who taught damascus, but this was a weekend course with 6-8 people.
When I started out, to have been able to spend the day with someone who knew how to pattern weld would have been an oppurtunity not to be missed, so the idea of teaching on a 1 to 1 basis came about. I posted a thread here on BB asking if anyone would be interested and was surprised by the response.
Posting the step by step guides and all the other info I have put on BB is just a way of passing on knowledge that I think should be out there for all to benefit from. Doc Price said to me, in one of his more philosophical moments, that "We are not here forever and there comes a time when we should pass information on". That sort of rung a bell with me.

Owen, you mentioned a rewarding feeling and that is very true. It is good when you get comments back from people that you have helped or influenced, or they have taken your idea and run with it, to do better.

Mick.

[owen bush]

Back too business (after the Bristol Knife show).
Mick ,
having just come back from a knife show got me wondering as to whether you ever made knives to sell ?Ive seen your art Pieces at the Fire and Iron gallery for sale .what about the knives?

[Mick Maxen]

When I started making damascus I only made knives and I didn't know of any knife shows or similar places to sell at. The only knives I have sold have been paper knives through a gallery. I have thought about having a table at a knife show before, but I don't think I have the patience to sit behind a table for 7-8 hours. Plus I would have to make some knives for the show. I like making knives when I want to, not when I have to, and if it took off and I started getting orders, then it just becomes another job.
I should capitalise on free advertising (see top of page/banner) as that knife has got to be the most seen knife in the history of knife making in this country, most people won't have noticed it but how many times have the pages on BB been viewed.
If someone commisioned me for something a bit special I might consider it, I hope that dosn't sound big headed, its not meant to. But it would have to be something I would want to do as well, a nice 4 core or 8 core Viking style blade and get paid the right amount of money for it.

Mick.


Mick

[owen bush]

I know what you mean Mick, I think that few people understand the kind of work that goes into complicated damascus work (far far fewer are willing to pay for it ) doing commissioned work does take the fun out of it (sometimes) if you are aiming to do the best possable work then it becomes just about unafordable hey ho .
As a final question Mick before the interviewing is handed over to you,
what are your plans for the future ,any projects ,patterns or things that take your fancy.I find blade making with all its possabilities an endless challenge with so many paths to choose ,what are you up to next?

Ps
As I know Mick quite well I am sure that there are questions about his work that I have missed and other people would like to ask (we chat a lot and have covered most bases re metal bashing). So when he has answered this I think it would be good if any body else with some questions can pipe up .
I think that would work well as a format one on one interview then a chance for other questions .

[Mick Maxen]

As you say,I think there are very few people in the UK that appreciate what goes into some damascus work. There are more people now that know something about it and I think that is in a small way, down to you and I with our teaching and posting on here. A few people are getting quite a passion for damascus and that is good to see. Its something that you and I have spoken about where the more work you do with damascus you get an understanding of whats happening inside the steel that you are working/manipulating and you can use that to your advantage. Backward engineering a piece mosaic is an example of this.
The future will be interesting with visiting Mike in the US and doing some demo's at the Guild Conference with Howard Clark. It will be a first for me in front of a big crowd. I have been asked before to do something with BABA but have always turned down the opportunity. I am not quite sure what I have gotten myself into but it will be interesting and may lead onto other things, who knows.
Future plans for steel are messing with more patterns. I want to expand on the chevron pattern steel that you and I did, getting the lines so they point to the blade tip, arrow shaped. It wouldn't be difficult, but its getting the time to play and do it well, which usually means a few pratice pieces. Something else is mosaic windows in plain carbon blades would be interesting. An idea running through my mind at the moment is a 2 knife set both in the same sheath, something like a bowie and a smaller companion knife held in its own sheath attached to the main one.
A piece of work that inspired me many years ago was by Daryl Meier where he had made a dagger blade with 5 twisted bars. The centre bar had his surname running around the chevrons and is perfectly readable. A truly stunning piece of work.Thats something else I'd like to try.
Art wise I'd like to make some flowers out of damascus, rather than forging in the viens, let the pattern do this for you. With a tasty piece of mosaic as the bud in the centre. It would need to be very crisp and modern to work, but I think they would look stunning. You could never sell them of course as they would be too expensive, but its not always about money.
This small list is enough to keep me going for a few years. Oh, I've just thought of something else, 2 things in fact, tamahagane and messing about with hamons.
The future looks interesting.


If anybody else has some questions feel free to ask,
Mick.