Beauty & Aesthetics

Beauty and Aesthetics:

When I talk about knives I tend to use the word aesthetics a lot, maybe too much. Usually I am talking about aesthetics in the positive sense because I refuse to buy a knife that is without. As comedian Fred Sanford once said, " Beauty may only be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone." Unlike human beings, which may be unbeautiful outside and beautiful inside, ugly knives tend to be ugly inside and out.
"All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and something transitory,—something absolute and something particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction skimmed from the common surface of different sorts of beauty. The particular element of each beauty comes from the emotions, and as we each have our own particular emotions, so we have our beauty." - Charles Baudelaire
Since discovering Bill Malloy’s "MastersmithS" website I visit it quite regularly. Of all the high end custom knives one in particular caught my attention. Singularly plain, a slender fighting knife by Michael Rader appealed to my ideal of beauty. This knife seemed to be teasing me, when month after month it remained unsold. Finally when I could not stand it anymore I bought it from Bill. When I asked him why he felt it didn’t sell he said that it lacked "all the bells and whistles" of a newer and fancier Rader knife. That got me to thinking and I went online and looked at some of Michael Rader’s new work. As expected, it is very good, but I did not see anything that I found more appealing than this elegant fighter.

If you are looking for something special in a custom knife, high art or pure fighter, contact Bill. Good knives, Good man!!

www.beautiifulblades.com
403 East 58th Street
NY, NY 10022
ph. 1 877 8knives

Cuts Both Ways

Cuts Both Ways:

I was reading an article on concealed carry of firearms by Massad Ayoob when an interesting thought occurred to me. I quote Ayoob, "When the defender does not know when the attack will come, the only reasonable expectation of safety lies in being always armed." Certainly this makes a lot of sense, at least to anyone not of the Liberal party mentality. This reinforces what we preach about carrying a knife that is easily accessed and that you are completely familiar with. But besides being "always armed," something else came to mind. Again quoting Ayoob, " Understand that criminals do not fear guns. They are, after all, an armed subculture themselves. What they fear is the resolutely armed man or woman who points that gun at them. Criminals are predators, and their stock in trade is their ability to read people and body language."
Every knife or martial arts instructor will tell you that if you get into a knife fight expect to get cut. Based on Ayoob’s article, and a conversation I had with Shiva Ki, I believe that these predators also fear the person "resolutely armed" with a knife. If you get drawn into a knife fight they can expect to get cut as well. This puts a whole new face on knife defense. Remember the old adage of the samurai that says, in a duel you have only a one in three chance of surviving. It does not say surviving unscathed either. Consider the title of our new book, When Two Tigers Fight, one will be killed and the other maimed. I submit that there are not a lot of muggers or rapists who are willing to face those odds or take that chance.
The key word is resolute. You must be unwavering in your willingness to defend yourself or as Ayoob says, "The person who is unwilling to do so will, in the moment of truth, communicate that vacillation to the hardened criminal." Such a revelation will be your undoing. One final thought on combat from General Patton, "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Make your attacker pay for his indiscretion.

Quality Knives

Knives From Aceh:

We have had a lot of false starts trying to establish a business with our friends in Indonesia. It is always difficult dealing with people half way around the world whom you have never met. Somehow I instinctively knew that I could trust Zola Octanoviar (his friends refer to him as simply Noviar) to do business with.
Because of his insistence on improving the quality of Indonesian products, Noviar had to eventually look outside of the original Noesantaraa organization (see our earlier blogs). His renewed search for a knifemaker willing and capable of rising to or meeting our expectations led him to the remote workshop of an Aceh knifemaker. Having been embroiled in a struggle for independence for many hundreds of years, the peoples of Indonesia and the Aceh region are no strangers to fighting and the use of weapons. A people who have fought hand to hand against the Dutch, British, and Japanese are more likely to produce high quality, functional arms than are people elsewhere who are busy catering to the tourist trade.
These photos show the first few knives from this new maker. Unknown to me, Noviar had set aside one of the cranked handle rencong as a personal gift. I bought the teardrop shape handled rencong on auction at Ebay. Many rencong are very small, more miniature sized than true fighting knife size. The smaller knife illustrated is an older original purchased a couple years ago. Both of the new knives have sufficient blade length to provide a lively self-defense. Keeping in mind that these knives come from a tropical region, where minimal layers of clothing are worn year round you will recognize the efficacy of these medium sized knives. The handles and sheaths are fashioned from Buffalo horn and the workmanship and polish is second to none.
Quality shows, and these new knives emanate first class quality. If we can keep this relationship going we will be able to provide you with the finest rencong available anywhere. Keep your fingers crossed.
A brief history of Aceh is available here online. http://www.etan.org/estafeta/01/winter/6aceh.htm
You cannot help but applaud the resiliency and determination of the peoples of the archipelago and their long enduring struggle for freedom. For a limited time we will be offering our stock of earlier karambit at a slight discount to make room for the items from this new maker. Check out our sale at http://www.whiteshadowsecurity.com/