Tactical Inv. Thanks! (show review added)

[UW Mitch]

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the show tonight. Congrats to those who are going home with the latest crop of Onions.

~Mitch

[phalanx50]

Mitch if you don't post pics of the people and the knive i think I am gonna kick you in the shin at Blade.


Besides you take such nice pictures!


jake

[Jim Smyth]

It was deffinately a great time last night. My first Invitational but deffinately not my last. The Wormsers put out a very nice spread thats for sure! The BadLamma is staying with me at my house and hes still sleeping. Guess he doesnt get out that much! Time to go wake his a$$ up. Time to get back to the show.

[Bob Porter]

Mitch - Nice to see you, even for a few minutes. I spent Saturday with my wife at the local stores so she'll let me come to a couple more Knife shows.

Thanks Bernie, for sharing the jerky and letting me bug you for a few minutes.

Jim, great to meet you and glad that we got a chance to talk at the show.

Hope you all got home in a safe and timely manner.

[Jim Smyth]

Bob, was good meeting you too as well as seeing some old friends again even if it was only for a little while. Every year it seems the shows go by quicker and quicker. Mitch and Bernie did a great job as usual and Ken's knives were also awesome and in short supply! Hope Ken's back is doing better too.

[UW Mitch]

While not purely KO, I thought this might be an appropriate place to put my perspective on the show:

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Chicago 2007 Review
September 9, 2007

My Chicago show really started months ago, when I booked my flight from Seatac to o’Hare, not realizing that the Chicago Custom Knife Show was a Friday and Saturday show, with the Tactical Invitational on Friday evening. I had mistakenly thought the format was similar to Dan Delevan’s Plaza Cutlery Show with the Invitational on Friday evening and the knife show on Saturday.

Once corrected on the show dates and time and with my flight scheduled to arrive at 230pm I figured I’d be in time to catch the end of regular show in plenty of time for the Invitational. Well, delayed one hour at the gate, plus another hour in the plane one the ground at SeaTac we finally get in air, okay, not too bad, just gonna be a little late. We made up at least 30 minutes in the air, getting to Chicago. Great, it’s not gonna be too bad. Then the captain comes over the radio; we are ordered to circle over Wisconsin because too many flights are coming in at the same time. Great, am I even going to make it to the Invitational? I hope traffic isn’t as much of a killer from O’Hare to Arlington Heights as it can be in Seattle on a Friday afternoon. Finally touching down, calling the cab company I have a reservation with, slugging through a little bit of traffic, I get into the hotel around 6:30pm, just in time to start help setting up for the Invitational.

As I walk into the lobby I see Lee Williams with Jim Aalfs and Tarek the BadLlama. I briefly get a preview of Lee’s knives before I go up to my room with Bernie to give a quick once over of Ken’s knives before heading down to set up. Ken had sent nine knives for sale at the Invitational, the six for lotto draw included a large Rage with black G10; a Packrat; an Inferno with giraffe bone; an Inferno with mother of pearl; a Spite in Damascus and G10;and a black G10 Sibling. The two knives for auction were the fancy Rage in the open bid and a Black Timascus Spite for the sealed bid.

Once we set-up Ken’s table I very quickly went over to Tim Galyean’s table to check out the Moab’s and JYD that he had brought. I like that while Tim has learned from Ken and works with Ken’s lines on a daily basis at Kershaw, his own knives have taken a distinct departure creating a style all his own. The Moab, has a unique “industrial” look to it. Of course his execution is amongst the best I have ever seen. I then moved toward Lee’s table that had some very nice folders, with handles in Zirconium. Tom Mayo had a big Moran style folding bowie with 357 Magnum casing inlayed in the handles and a collaboration knife with Lee. Todd Begg had a number of fixed blades, having sold a couple folders earlier in the day during the regular show. Also represented at the Invitational were Strider Knives, PhilB, Allen Elishewitz, Wally Hayes, Ernie Emerson,Bob Terzuola and DDR (who I almost did not recognize having lost so much weight since his gastric bypass).

When 7pm came along, the collectors started rolling in, and the lotto box started filling up. Rather than having one lotto box per knife, we decided to have a single collective box for all six knives; that way each person had the chance to win one knife, and no one could potentially clean up with too many (spread the love around). It was nice to see some familiar faces as well as put faces with names from people I know from online but hadn’t met before. 8pm when the auctions and lotto entries stopped came around too quickly, and Ed facilitated the walk around the room for the draws. In very efficient fashion the lotto’s went one table at a time, drawing the winners for each knife, with the settling up of knives and payment after all the draws had completed.

At Ken’s table we drew six names, and the six got to choose their knife in order of their draws. It worked out incredibly well; as each of the six people who got drawn seemed to get the knife they wanted. I was incredibly happy that the frenzy of secondary market buyers and sellers remained civilized. Of the eight knives total, only four got moved to other collectors and at least one of those deals was a pure buddy deal (passing the knife along for what he paid). The people who ended up with these knives seemed to walk away genuinely excited that they had come away with at least a little part of Ken’s fantastic work. The only disappointment that I felt over the evening was that Ken was not able to be at the show, and see the excitement on people’s faces and reactions to the knives that he had worked himself sick over.

I believe the next show will be Solvang – Bernie said she got our hotel rooms reserved, so it should be a great showing of knives, including those two engraved pieces that Jeff showed a preview of.

[UW Mitch]

Thoughts on the knives:

Not having attended this years Solvang show, I had not seen the new designs in person except the Spite (a collector was generous enough to send me one to photograph). These knives represent what I feel Ken’s knives are all about – elegance, refined designs, user knives, priced so that the “average” collector who gets drawn to buy one can actually afford it.

Fancy Small Rage:
Definitely my favorite piece of the whole show. Damascus, Gold Lip Pearl, anodized titanium frame, and the coolest backspacer I have seen in a while. What first strikes me is the way the gold lip pearl and dark bronze anodize go together perfectly. The Damascus blade matches the overall look and is not “too much” as you sometimes see from other makers who attempt to splatter a random mix of high end materials. The winning feature that sets this apart from other knives I’ve seen is the detail work on the backspacer. Gold lip inlaid dot along the inside and outside of the backspacer that transition to inaid ball bearings near the tail end. This attention to detail really does it for me.

Fancy Spite:
“Racing Stripe” Black Timascus, barky textured Mammoth, and Super Gold 2. An elegant combination of the latest high tech materials contrasted against a handle material that is millennia old.

Damascus Spite:
The contrast of polished G10 against a Damascus blade is what I really like. With really fancy handle materials and embellishments, the piece becomes more of an art object than something you’d thrown in your pocket everyday. This Spite says I’m dressed up but not too fancy to use.

Pearl Inferno:
This one got flipped twice, for reasonable money, and made its way into one of our new members hands (you can see Chelly’s nice pictures in the gallery). Just like the Damascus Spite it’s designed to be a great user, that’s dressed up and ready to party with the fancies.

Giraffe Inferno:
The coloring on the giraffe bone inlay was amazing. As Jeff said to me, it’s like faux-mammoth. The color really “pops” against the hand rubbed blade and polished titanium frame.

Large Rage:
From the pictures I thought it was a double bolstered knife, with a G10 scale in the middle. In fact it is a single large frame with a G10 inlay. The top end of the frame near the spine is very thin, from the side giving the appearance of a double bolstered knife, but a view from the top reveals it’s indeed a single piece of material.

Packrat:
Ken and Jeff said this is their new favorite design and I felt the reason why – the ergonomics in the hand are just amazing. While the back end has a nice tear drop flow to it, it is not what I think of when I think of Ken’s classical lines. There were two of these made and Ken kept one for himself.

G10 Sibling:
The finger grooves and sweeping blade blade say “USE ME!!!” I hope this one gets a good amount of pocket time.

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I hope that the folks who went home with these at the end of the weekend will post their own reviews on the knives either here or in separate threads.

~Mitch

[Uchi Deshi]

Mitch - Do you have photos of the knives? I wanna see some pics!!!

[simonp]

we definitely need photos, they all sound awesome, no surprise there though really. Can't wait for the next Solvang show

[UW Mitch]

Pictures everyone wants pictures! Shame on Jeff for not adding these in himself.

Packrats on the left - the G10 one Ken is keeping for himself.

Spites in the middle - The G10 Damascus Spite has a twin. Both owners on are this forum.

Rages to the right - Large G10 Rage, Small Pink G10 Rage