Joel Chamblin came to knifemaking the way the best ones do — sideways. A customer handed him a piece of steel, a stag horn, and a book. That first fixed blade hunter, built in 1989, he still has. By 1991 a layoff had made the decision for him, and he never looked back. His passion migrated from fixed blades to linerlocks to folders, and eventually settled where it still lives: the Sheffield-style multi-blade slip joint. Concord, Georgia's contribution to a form the English perfected a century prior. The work is mechanical poetry — springs tensioned to walk and talk, blades ground to mirror the next, actions smoother than anything off a production line has a right to aspire to. Now retired from production, a Chamblin is what it's always been: the work of someone who chose this, completely.
"He has produced some of the smoothest, best built slip joint folding knives available today."
Julie Warenski's career began the way all great partnerships do — she broke all her chisel tips trying to engrave a blade instead of the handle, and went to Buster Warenski for help. Within a year of his teaching her the craft, she was engraving every knife he made. Within two, he was telling anyone who'd listen she was already world-class. After Buster's passing in 2005, she went on to win the Buster Warenski Award for best Art Knife at the New York show in 2006. She is now married to knifemaker Curt Erickson, and the two continue making some of the finest art knives produced anywhere. Her signature is everywhere on this knife: the high-relief American scroll, the gold inlay ground into the background, and — most distinctively — the row of minute gold beads that borders every bolster panel. They are perfectly spaced, perfectly rounded, impossible to rush. Collectors have taken to calling them Julie Dots. You are looking at the original.
"Engravers who have been doing it full-time for years are just awed by her work."
— Buster Warenski
