Apprenticeship "it is a process". I keep being asked by people to teach them. I am quite willing to teach anyone and I have done so on numerous occassions although not truly to my standards (i.e. Tony Oostendorp, Erik Markman, Jurgen Visser, Claude Bouchonville although they deny it). An apprenticeship lasts five years and you will have to put in a serious amount of time to learn skills on your own. The way I teach is to first explain clearly the technical reasons for learning a certain technique and then I demonstrate it with clear explanations, then it is the apprenctice's turn to do it. I can expect and will allow the first attempts to be incomplete and to have problems, but I must see a determination and dedication to becoming good at the craft of bladesmithing. The skills take time to learn and they have to be repeated and repeated to become part of muscle memory and not of the brain and the ability to talk. Personally and frankly I have had it with people who talk much but have little skill. I can see it, if others can't. 

The hands are the hands of an apprentice who came to me for a three week instruction period to become my apprentice. The first picture is day one, the second is day two and the third is day three. That is a 21 day cycle. Unfortunately this would-be apprentice only lasted three days of the 21. The reason why his hands are blistered and getting worse each day is because he had to do sledge hammer work on an oak block topped with a rubber pad. Sledge hammer work is one of the fundamental (fundametal) skills a smith should have in his muscle memory despite the fact that we now have air hammers and power hammers in a modern forge. If you are going to learn to be a bladesmith taught by me, you will be told the old way and you will have the skills in your muscle memory (this takes a lot of time to practice the skills in all areas). You can see the hands gradually worsen, but he did not get an infection or tendonitis, such as I had to deal with during my apprenticeship. On some occasions during my youth when I was training, I could not hold a knife or fork to feed myself, so I went  hungry.

Practicing with the sledge hammer is a muscle memory and skill that is learnt through millions of practice strokes on the oak block. Starting with large, medum and small blows with the sledge hammer seperately and then a combination of large, medium and small blows under instruction from myself standing at the block making the hand signals for large, medium and small blows. The apprentice has to flow smoothly through these different size strokes keeping a steady rhythm to my satisfaction. As an apprentice you can expect in the first months to do five hundred strokes a day and later on into the apprenticeship, one to two and three thousand strokes a day along with eight hour sessions in the forge. Striking first of all iron to forge weld and then steel to forge weld. This can last for one week or two weeks. This work in the forge is brutal, absolutely brutal. Your mind, body and spirit fall apart with the stress, physical exertion and the demand that you do exactly what the smith behind the anvil says exactly when he says it. But this hardship lessens as your mind, body and spirit harden as you come accustomed to it through time. The would-be apprentice only lasted three days, on the fourth day he went home. He came up to me on the evening of the third day and said "I don't want to do sledge hammer practice any more." He honestly thought he could bypass the fundamentals of sledge hammer work. He said "We have air hammers and power hammers now..." Fuck off. End of trial apprenticeship! If an apprentice thinks that learning to become a smith and then blade smith is going to be painless, he is mistaken. It is not the case. Pain both mental, physical and discomfort test determination and dedication in the pursuit of skills. Too much these days people have forgotten this.

I attach a link to videos of old sledge hammer work such as done by my grandfather. After WWI my grandfather joined Syle & Webb in the London docklands which was a ship smithing company. My grandfather made ship chains in different sizes six days a week for five years as a sledge hammer man. He finally became a certified master smith. The video says it all: hand forging chains part 1 and part 2. Old skills never die, because they stood the test of time and are still relevant today to a young beginning smith. 

Sleeping leopard blade

Sometimes a client wants to witness and help making the damast that I will use for their knife order. The billet I made with Stani was used for the Commander #29 and the first Stoat especially designed for buschcrafting tasking. Watching this experience Megan wrote a short article.

I am now placing a proof mark on the blades on the side where I place the steel type designation (pictures 1,2 and 3).
I have been proof testing my blades and fittings for twenty years now (pictures 8 and 9)
The idea comes from the old British officer's sabres, which were proof marked inside a six point star (pictures 4, 5 and 6). The triangle pointing downwards is the female (or water)  and the triangle pointing upwards is the male (or fire) in alchemaic practice. Now of course the proof mark is available to everyone, not just officers.
I simplified the six point star into six dots around the outside connected by a circle. They mean moving in a clockwise direction: Life, Loyalty, Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding and Love (picture 7)
A lot of these words are missing from today's knife making community. I hope that this small detail will have effect on my clients and the knowledge that the blade they order from me has had the very best quality control.