Ep. 575: How to Sharpen a Knife Like a Real Man

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first Light dot com, f I R S T L

It's all.

I'll tell you what. Come back here, Max, so I can explain something to you. I had a plan for a year now to cook. So I recently discovered boodant was changed my life. I don't know how it didn't spread into the north everything else did. Oh uh, I don't know it had been hidden from me. I heard about it. I hadn't had it. It's changed my life. And a guy heard me talking about it, who owns a boo dant place. Billy's Boudan sounds great. Well, he sent me a box of his bootan the kindness of

It's as low as it can go.

You know, there's a boot aan cooking trick the Cajun's told me about. You wrap it in wet paper towel and nuke it.

Oh yeah, he can do hot dogs like that and.

Then finish it in the pan hot doctor m h. We're gonna have it with hot sauce. I got an idea where I was gonna put a vat of hot sauce. If I live down there, I'd put a vat of hot sauce on top of my car with a tube that came down the road. There's a little squeeze valve that hangs right at my steering wheel, because I like to give a little doll up a hot sauce on each bite of boot an.

You could put that sauce where people normally put their big snorkel, you know, exhaust.

Yeah, exactly, And the cage is called boot an.

If you hit a deer you'd be pre hot sauce. It'd be already.

Exactly deer, he's already marinated. Also joined, Uh Seth is here, Doctor Randall Krin, who wouldn't pick up the phone?

Uh?

Phil? Who made it? Phil? Who made it? That? We're not cooking the boot an in the studio?

Salty Phil.

Every good podcast begins with an airing of grievances.

Between the furs on the wall and the carpet. It would have been we would have been smelling boodhan for it, who knows how long. Yeah, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I was frying fish in the house one time, and I remember a couple of days later, my wife's like, even the bathtowel smell like that fish.

Yeah.

So yeah, the boot an smell would be slow to go away now that I'm down on it.

But in this ten by twelve foot room that we're sitting in, Yeah, yeah, but.

Billy's boot an, we're gonna cook. Thank you, Billy, Chester and Brody pork Liver and Rice.

You stopped at Phil. We also have Chester.

Oh sorry, I have an organizational problem. Krim wants to remind everybody once again that if you like to watch the network shows on YouTube. It's all moved to Meet Eater podcast network. It's his own channel on YouTube. I'm not clear on why, but that's something that happened. I'm not here to litigate it. It's all moved the mediat podcast network. So all podcast materials on independent YouTube channel, right.

I mean that's because we have the Meat Eater TV channel. It's going on, it's coming out all the time, and this is the one going shop for all of our podcasts, podcast videos, et cetera.

I'm trying to think of in the history of other channels that have split. I can't think of it.

There's HBO and there's Max.

There you go. It's like that. It's like when that happened. We have an intern, Nate, who came up and introduced himself to me by way of saying this.

Oh he really he did this. You don't know about this, No I don't, but I'm just looking at your note.

I many times I fell in love with the idea of a compliment sandwich, and we've joked about it times, where it's a way to offer criticism to someone where you compliment them, then you criticize them, then you comment them.

And he did that with you.

No, oh okay.

Often though you compliment sandwiches only have one.

Slice of bread.

You compliment them and then you create a sound.

So the example I would use is like, Krinn, you look great today. Uh sure, wish you to answer your phone on a podcast day. I like your shirt. That's a comment. Stand So you leave your feeling good.

I understand what it is yours. Often, lax, that's the second compon.

You come in soft, right, you hit them with, You hit him with what you're there for, build them up and break them, and then you leave them with a good feeling about you. But he pointed out the intern came out to me and said, it's not a compliment sandwich. He goes, what does a ham sandwich.

Hams in the middle.

Yeah, He's like, it's an insult sandwich. Like you got bread ham bread? Do you call it a bread sandwich? Nope, it's a ham sandwich.

Mm hmm, yeah it does.

It's it's the name is what's in the middle of that summit? It's an insult sandwich.

Wow, I never thought of it that way.

And then you liked him a lot after that.

I did, Yeah, I did. So I'm not gonna talk about that anymore. But real quick this, you know, can you play the read the drop Phil? Oh?

Yeah, sure, let's see we got it right here.

It's time for Steve Reid's books, so you ain't.

Got to.

This one is so rich. I'm just doing it in installments, and I know that I go on, but here that has got to heat with the couple from here. This is fun. This is the best book.

Have we gotten feedback from this segment yet, Karin? Has it been happening long enough?

No?

No, we just dropped it without this.

The introk Alaska tracks life stories from hunters, fishermen, and trappers of Alaska by Randy Zarnkey. It's oral histories. I told you the other day we did this one. I talked, I did one out of here. I hunted eagles for bounty years ago. If you tell people that now, they think you're a really bad person. We got two bucks apiece for eagles. The biggest day I had was doing a herring run. The eagles were eating the herring, and

Dang, did you already read that one?

No, I'm just reminding people. Oh yeah, listen to this. This is a different guy. Listen carefully. We finished up the air base on a net island in record time. One day. This is during World War two. One day a patrol came back and one of the planes was doing victory roles over the field. When he landed, he said he got a submarine. He told his commanding officer where it was. They sent a patrol boat out and came back with about three hundred pounds of whale blubber.

Two bands done?

They kind of that stove doesn't go too good.

Job one second, Well, can you cut him up and pass him around? Listen to this one. I'm not gonna do anything. A couple of licks.

I'm on board, Josh, I'm still I'm still hung up on the image of that torpedo going into Are you ready for this?

Dad dug a great big pit with a manure scoop and a team of horses. It was twenty feet wide, forty feet long, and ten feet deep. On winter weekends, he'd pile it full of snow and all us kids put snow shoes on and we'd tamp it down. We kept that up until it was mounded six or seven feet high above the pit. Then he'd cover it with about a foot of moss. That was our refrigeration. Dad dug a stairway down into the ice and carved holes in the sidewalls. That's where he'd stick his quarters of beef.

We got a lot of podcasts.

Yeah, I'm going to do one more.

We should do an entire podcast that is just ready for this one.

Just before World War II broke out, a trapper had a pilot fly him over near Farewell to trap The pilot was supposed to come back and get him in January, but never showed up. The war broke out and the FEDS had grounded all the airplanes. The trapper didn't have a radio, so he didn't know what was going on. It was March before the authorities would let the pilot fly again. When the pilot flew back over there to pick him up. The trapper was standing under a spruce

He must have cigarettes?

Pretty well?

Yeah, no, I'm telling you. It's a great book, man, It's my favorite book. Josh, Can you share with us what you have, what you brought there?

Real quick?

Josh can doing everything too? Is Josh gonna show everybody, absolutely once and for all, how to shark for a knife, which he did for me in Uh in it it had more of an impact on my life than Budan. Give your credentials, Josh.

Uh yeah, Well, as you're distracted by the boot, yeah, it looks pretty good. I was just getting ready to eat. As soon as they put food in front of me. You asked me a question.

Oh, I can talk about something else.

Uh yeah, I mean I I guess how you got into it. My background? Yeah, my little league baseball coach and I grew up in Lincoln, Montana, home of the Unibomber, you.

Know his retirement.

Uh yeah, my little league baseball coach started teaching me to make knives.

Uh.

He would bring his He was a guide and a big hunter, and he'd bring his honey knives to practice and show the parents, and being a kid, I was super interested in it. So he my parents bought me one of his knives for Christmas that year, and he invited me up to make a knife and I made one or two, probably two or three in the shop. And then I think his way of getting rid of me was to tell me, if you want to be a knife maker, you have to have your own knife shop.

Of what metal at first, like leaf springs.

And job yeah, yeah, leaf springs, or like flat bar stock like ten ninety five, just carbon steel. And in the beginning it was grinding blades. It wasn't forging. I mean, I was probably not strong enough to forge a blade at that point. But that's a good way to start, because you when you forge a blade, you basically when you're not good at it, you create a bunch of

So you have to.

Forge a ten inch blade no longer than ten inch, and it has to chop a one inch rope in half and one chop, which that just shows sharpness. Uh, And then it has to chop two two by fours and a half and when you're without resharpening. And when you're done with that with the was the rope and the two two by fours, it still has to shave. And then you have to be whacking away at it like it's a hatchet. Yep, many chops as you want. And then when you're all done chopping those boards, it

Dang, So you just show up with some dude's place and you got to whip all this out.

Yeah.

So I actually did it out in Oregon in front of an old legend knife maker, Wayne Goddard. I did it in his shop in front of probably thirty people when I was actually fourteen when I did that, and then I turned had a birthday, and I did the second phase in June that year when I was fifteen.

But you couldn't take one of your knives now and bend it into ninety could you.

Yeah, there's a video on our YouTube of us doing it with a bear tooth knife that we make with fre mkse bend it in a vice and grab it and pry it over and it bends to ninety in the video, and it comes back to about I don't know, twenty degrees.

Okay, Now, I would never do that.

You wouldn't want to do that.

I wouldn't picture that. I would just not picture that. You that it would ever put up with that?

Yeah, I mean, like this little blade here, one of our small knives. I mean you need some you need some length, right, you know, so that that bear tooth knife of ours is about I think eight and a half inches and it's thin. So a thicker blade, shorter blade, it's going to be harder to do. But the point is, and the point of that test is to show that

And so so like a big old line of dudes waiting to do this.

Yeah, I mean when I passed my mastersmith test back in two thousand, I was probably right around number eighty eighty one in the world. Now there's probably one hundred and ten. Oh, I think like six or seven guys went for the master this year in one passed. It's a it's a.

Difficult did you fail multiple times before you.

Pass No, I passed, Yeah, I passed the first time. And I actually this super kind of cool. Really, But I so when I did the master Smith test when I was nineteen, that's a little different because you have to do the same performance blade test with the rope and two by fours and whatnot, but with a Damascus

Wish, I wish i'd have brought I should have brought a dag or my dad brought back from World War two in North Africa to show you.

Oh yeah, that'd be cool.

Are you real familiar with ivory? Yeah, I mean big o ivory handle yep, he brought it back from Uh this uh it's a big long dagger like this with a ivory handle.

Yeah.

This or this knife right here is fossilized walrus ivory.

You know you.

And there's a lot of guys that have used like elephant ivory and stuff. But uh, now the rules have changed a lot. Even if it's an ancient piece of ivory, if you're not really allowed to change the shape of it, like cut it up and use it because they can't prove if it's new or old or whatever. So there's a lot of rules and restrictions compared. And I started making knives in the nineties and it was a little bit of the wild West with that stuff.

This thing, this thing too. I should I should brought it to show you. That knife in North Africa. I'm not saying it is the leather, the sheath, the leather on this thing. It looks like like human skin. Man, It's like like a trans It's like a translucent leather. It's so weird. You got to bring it and show it to you. Dude, I could just kill Brody with this thing, no problem.

Yes you could, right so, right after you gave me a compliment sandwich.

Yeah, it was. It was cool because I only really got as good as I got that fast because there were you know, there were masters willing to teach me.

You know.

It was a very sharing group of people, and they embraced a kid, I'm sure an annoying kid at times, but uh, you know, there was no YouTube.

Then.

You had to go to knife shows. You had to go to people's shops, you know. I flew to Columbia, South Carolina and spent a week with a knife maker that I had never met when I was fifteen, you know, but I was pretty I was pretty persistent about becoming good and trying to keep They they had.

To think you were something man to be like that obsessed about at that age.

I'm sure they were annoyed by me because I was obviously asking questions. But but I mean it's cool because I mean I just had two of those knife makers that from here in Montana, Wade Colter and Shane Taylor, on my podcast this last week, and they think it's really cool what what I've built right with where we are today, and they were a huge part of that.

Yeah, you pass it down right into the dirt. I had a brief love affair with those replacement blade knives. Yeah.

No one's ever going to be like, you know, this is my dad's haveilon. Maybe, but no.

You also can't put a havelo on and advice and bend at ninety.

No.

Well, in the idea of the idea of even just throwing those blades out in the bushes when you're out in the forest, that's.

What I meant by put them down here, Yeah, because like, what do I do with this thing now? Man? I always like try to bury it, you know, Yeah, that's part of me getting turned off on them.

But yeah, when I when I launched this finally in twenty twenty, it was it kind of had enough of it. And people kept telling me that it wasn't possible to make a production knife in America. Build, build a brand, build a company. Like they kept saying, you have to stay competitive on price, you know that fifty to one hundred dollars price range, and you have to have it done overseas.

And based on companies that don't need to be mentioned, but like big companies that yeah make forty nine dollars.

Right, yeah, and it and it I felt like, you know, we as hunters, we we buy you know, your base layers and your mid layers and your rain gear and boots, and you're put together a long range rifle with all these optics and your binos and you know, your spotting scope and all this money we spend. And then people go as an afterthought by like the cheapest knife possible.

Yeah, you know, try to get it right.

Yeah.

I love that knife right there, this one great one there the stone goat.

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna hit on a couple of things. Everyone to come back, Josh, we're gonna talk about some products coming out. We're gonna talk about You're gonna show you how to sharpen your knife. Yeah, like I like that stuff. Man.

Uh yeah.

It was a Steve's house for dinner and he like walks off into the garage and he sitting sitting at his counter and he walks back in and he just plops down a knife and a sharpening stone.

He was like, show me, I yeah, I like to see how you like to do it. And he had one that was real bad shape, and I told him, Seth did that no. Well, I was like, it's not my fault.

You might have actually said something to that effect.

Accident seth ruined it.

I sharpened a knife for someone in Texas and got a lot of compliments out.

Well, you got to see this strategy, dude, He's gonna do a strategy that people need. Like, I'm not gonna I am gonna tease the strategy. He no, I'm not. He'll explain it.

It's different.

It's a different strategy, but it's like I've been using it. I love it. I want to watch you do it one more time. But it's it's a phenomenal strategy. Uh, we're gonna We're gonna cover some more stuff, some newsbits, though we kind of already touched on this. This is a this is a weird one, not weird.

This is really good.

The bootan is good. How did like Northern How did Yankees not know about bootan when you're ice fishing?

Oh, chick, come here, I don't know.

I don't care.

It almost reminds me of like scrapple mm hmmmm.

I love scrap you know.

My wife eats it. Oh, it's fabulous. She's just like, oh, she's like whatever, it tastes good.

I like this better than the last.

Are you saying that it hasn't changed her life?

No, some Bootans are a little more livery than that.

You could say to people. It's kind of like liver and rice, and people are gonna not want to go near you. Know what I'm saying. You wouldn't. Yeah, changed my life. I don't know why Yankees haven't gotten into Boodhan. They are because when I start my new company, I don't want to tell people the names. I want anyone to steal it. Or does that help me hold on to it?

I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you said it already.

Sky Mood out there.

It is, yeah that like now I've that'll.

Be a food truck, or maybe should be a food truck. We open up in front of the store and we'd have long lines.

Here's a news item. We've touched on a bunch. It's gonna keep changing back and forth. I predict I've said it before, I've said it many times. I got the shirt. I don't. I don't want them to build the Ambler Road in the Brooks Range, which is like a two hundred mile road in the Brooks Range to access a mining district that crosses I don't know, some thousand plus rivers and streams. I think it's a bad idea. I never One thing I never worried about is running out

That Supreme recent Supreme Court decision impact this at all.

Either or could it what decision.

Where they kind of take away the power of agencies to make you didn't see that the chevron.

The repeal of the show.

I have, but I haven't come to understand it yet.

I don't think this one was done not quite right.

They're they're pre cooked.

It's it's all pre cook pretty Yeah, you're good, You're just cold, just cold hog liver. Yeah, uh no, you know, I'm not aware of this. I've been trying to understand it. But I do think that this is gonna be one of those ping pong issues. There are certain issues just never go away, Like an administration will do a thing, like some of the monument status stuff because one administration does it. An administration.

New pebble mine.

Yeah. And what will probably happen is like Trump will come back on office, his Interior Department will probably move toward doing this, but it'll play out so slowly that like some other guy will get elected down the road and his it'll just be stuck in this like never ending limbo.

Meanwhile, but the road's not going to get built while that process.

While that process is going on. But I think that you'll be hearing it seemed like up in the air. But now that it's so clear how election is going to go, you'll like you'll hear more about this this ambler roade issue. We recently had on uh Colossal Biosciences, and we talked about resurrecting mammoths and all the policy and technology to resurrect mammoths. H half a Finger wrote in.

Are there any mammoths around to hear that hurt your feelings. I mean they make great knife handles. I supported.

Think about what you gotta grow them and then no, because you can use them fresh. You don't have to wait for them to be especially if the plethora of them. Those guys haven't even thought of the ivory. You should you should make an investment into that place. With their knife hands.

Made worse investments.

He goes on proven losers. I like rooting for the underdog, but those things they're under permafrost. See what he did there? Mm hmm, that's good, very good writer.

Are they really losers? If potentially an asteroid hit the planet and they just got wiped out in a second.

That's not what happened to them?

Well people, Yeah, I mean they.

Were on Wrangle Island until four thousand years ago. Yeah, they've vanished in Europe, you know, forty thousand years ago, and then and then in some places they vanished thirteen thousand years ago, and Wrangle Island four thousand years ago. I'm gonna read read his great sentence. I like rooting for the underdog, but those things are under permafrost, and they lost losers. All the energy and money put into bringing back losers and then trying to create an ecosystem

Yeah, that was my first thought. It was like, that's not very many human or mammoth lifetime.

And then you know, and then you got a factor. I don't know. I don't even know. I'm not getting into what they're looking at. I don't know what they're looking at. But you also got again to did the did the first person that arrived in Wrangle Island? Did

Yeah? Yeah, good point.

I will say, Ever, since that guy was here for the podcast, whenever I have a after my first beer, I'll just turn to the nearest person and I'll say, did you know that when the last mammoths blinked out, the Egyptians were building the pyramids. Because that frame of reference blew my mind stuck with me.

And John mcfee's Pulitzer Prize winning book of geology based in Range. No, it's called Annals of the Former World. Uh, he says if he was going to i'veset this for if he was going to sum this book up in one sentence, it would be that the top of Mount Everest is marine limestone. He also imagines that if you took all of the Earth's history and you imagine it as a timeline spanning between Fingertip and Fingertip. Okay, so

Well, yeah, it's a lot of history.

Mcfee's good. That is good. I think the first sentence in that is that the magnetic poles wander like the North Pole wanders, and the where were we? Oh, Wrangle Island. I threw out there that they should get these mammoths going on Wrangle Island.

Mm hmm.

When they get the new mammoths going. The earliest human occurrence on Wrangle Island has been dated to thirty six hundred years ago. The last mammoths four thousand years ago. Whatever happened to those mammoths, they feel was sudden, not uh, because they're looking at like you can determine, you know, when you when you look us up, there's like some like mitochondrial DNA thing. Where can you can you can determine how many breeding age females are in a population.

On an island.

That's plausible, right, Yeah, that's gonna go across the entirety of the continent. That might not be what got him.

Where's the how how far from the coastline is that boneyard guy that Rogan's had on. It's all those mammos.

So he's weigh in the interior and fairbanks. So like the slight slight, you know, very center, slightly south of center, but yeah, south.

Takes away my theory because that it looks like those are all just like piled in one spot, like you would imagine even like in a tsunami or something where a wave wash everything into.

Why they're all tangled up. It's like the labretar pits in l A. There's just so many of them, a great catching spot. Uh. The Musky Guy. What do we call that Musky episode?

Uh? It's not out yet as of the recording of this.

So can I comment on that?

Yeah, of course you can. We just don't know what it's gonna be called.

Yeah, we recorded a well, we covered the Musky War, which none of us new occurred. The Musky Wars were a Musky expert. And you'll hear him and and and he Uh. I challenged him on something he ain't like getting challenged on it. I'm not going to read what he wrote. I'm not going to read the thing he sent me. But he uses all caps and the important words. It's like a very like a very Trumpian use of

That's just the potential for how big. Right, It's not like if he lives in an area with shitty food, he might never sure.

He could have a great he could have great prenatal care, but land in an area of poor food. But what it is they went to areas where they they went to these areas that have like bad genetics. People say, like those bucks have bad genetics, they don't get big. You can take males and females from those areas and move them to different areas and keep them isolated so they're not getting new genetics. They're just in a new environment.

You want to read it or you want me to.

Hey, guys, I love your show and listen to it every time I get the chance. I'm not sure if you're keeping up with what is going on in Colorado over the last several weeks, was referring to as Colorado has announced an end to over the counter non resident archery ELK tags. Long time coming on that. But back to his letter, but I'd like to hear your input. It has to do with the number of tags allotted to non residents versus residents on the Colorado Elk Hunter's

People are acting like the sky is falling on this one, not me, Like this has been in works for years and years. I don't necessarily see it as this huge anti non resident thing. I just see it as a way for them to manage their elkurds better.

Like people are.

Gonna have to instead of buying a tag that's good for most of the state, You're gonna have to pick a unit and draw tag. And I don't think there's gonna be this massive decrease in the number of tags available. It's just like you're gonna have to pick a spot. And sure it might be harder to get a tag that way, but I see it as a better way to manage Colorado's ELK number one. And it's not like Colorado is now some outlier in Western states. No, Like you can't go buy over the count non resident over

You know, like, yeah, there you have, Like every state has a Like take New Mexico. Okay, New Mexico has a set number of ELK tags they're gonna give out. Demand does not change that there's a set there's gonna be a set number of hunters doing it, right, Yep, Colorado now has a set number. You can't at the last minute. Like it's like everybody would always put in for draws in the West and if they don't draw, they'd be like, well, if I don't draw, just buy my over the counter thing in Colorado.

Right, which out point, can't You still can buy over the counter bull tags in Colorado for second and third rifle season, like the opportunity, Like Colorado is a very easy state to get an elk, non resident elk.

That has the biggest elk by by like yeah, by a one hundred grande more than like no one's even close elk Colorado has.

In New Mexico, you can buy the over the counter ELK tags on private land, sure, sure, And I don't know if you can do that in Colorado or not. But they have to do all that private lands just to control those herds. But and there's a.

Lot of units in Colorado where residents have to draw an archery tag already, like quality units, you know, where there's maybe the numbers don't support over the counter hunt, but there's big bulls. So I think there's a lot more being made of this than people need to.

Be worrying when they're making it a draw, right, it's not like they're just saying no non residence.

It's a draw with quotas. You got to pick a unit. Yeah, meaning it's like everybody else, Yeah.

You have Yeah in Montana, you have to now draw mule deer tags or out tags as a non resident. And holy cow, like where we were hunting last year, there's a huge problem, Like it's no like with non residents, and that's something to be like talked about, Like.

There's a but that's a cap, that's a capped number, right, yeah, it's already capped.

But however, like this is just kind of like a whole different subject. Like I mean, where Seth and I went hunting last year, there were so many non resident hunters. It was kind of unbelievable. And a lot of these people are not educated on like what you can do or what you cannot do on lands.

And you were saying that the agency was sending people because they're trying to lower deer numbers in a certain area.

Yeah, and but it was it was terrible.

Like there's another side of that too, with the non residents. You know, especially in Montana out some of those eastern towns and whatnot. It's a huge part of the economy too that you can't It's like it's a challenge for residents, but it's also I think a lot of those people come in tend to spend at times more money.

But it's like half and half two, Like ranchers are now in those areas, like we are fed up with what's going on.

People are, yeah, but like to blanket, like to just say like it's all the non residents doing that.

I don't like.

I think there's plenty of places where residents are part of the problem.

I think I think the big I mean it sort of conflates two issues. One is like distribution of hunters across a big state. I mean Idaho has gone through that sort of drifting towards a non resident draw. But they went from over the counter. You could buy a deer tag at that time, you could buy one like in June. Once you could you know, this is probably

Into one U.

Yeah, and then that heightens the demand and then all of a sudden, they're selling out of non resident deer tags December first, and there's a huge waiting line, and so that's going to go to a draw.

Set as well.

Elimiting those numbers is like potentially solve some of the problems.

Yeah, And that's the thing about non residents. They're all going to go to the best areas because they're already traveling where resident tags. A lot of those people they're just hunting after work, maybe on a Saturday, right around where they live in a poor area, you know, poor numbers, like even over where we're at, you know some of the numbers and some of the challenges with that. But no non resident hunters are like, Okay, where's the best spot in Montana?

Go hunt?

So they are congregating in the absolute best Honting areas.

Well.

I think that they'll eventually I want to return to Colorado, but they're gonna eventually address that by needing by. You're gonna need to pick your areas because right now, if you have it's true that if you have huge general areas like you have these large general areas and then you have a big number and it's set by the state, Like there's a cap, right, there's a cap on how

Area which it are I mean.

Which would should conform to how most states run the program.

And like residents have to draw Colorado rifle tags for first and fourth rifle, and they have to draw muzzle loader to like.

Colorado, there is no over to count like think about mulder no dear tag. There is no over the counter Muldier tag in Colorado.

It's all draw for residents too.

But no one's saying the sky is falling on that.

And I got news for the residents in Colorado, like they're happy about this non resident draw thing. Pretty soon residents are gonna have to draw archery tags too. It's just the way it's gonna go.

In terms of his his comment about people on a Facebook page being riled up, let me let me tell you a little something about human psychology. Human side. Most people are out for their own best interests, especially on like something at hunting right, you're off for your I'm not saying that in terms of how you relate to your family, but like you're out for your own best in you know, you're kind of like looking out for your own thing. I don't care what state you go

Who.

But who is that problematic for? It winds up being hugely problematic for the Fishing Game Agency just doing management because there's all kinds of issues around funding. It's problematic for the economy. But like, of course, on a Facebook page Colorado Elk Hunter's Facebook page, you're gonna have people who are like, I don't think they should be able to come here. If you came to me and said to me, if you came to me and said, hey, Montana just banned non resident hunters and anglers, I would

Yeah.

My buddy from Pennsylvania like texted me after he got into this and he's like, I can't believe Colorado would do this.

To non resident hunters.

And I was like, dude, Pennsylvania doesn't have over the counter statewide dotags, but white tails. It's like you got to pick your spik.

Yeah.

It's like, and there's what a million white tails or some something in Pennsylvania. It's like, it's it's like not.

Yeah, go to Southeast Alaska and go find people that aren't guides and don't work in the tackle businesses and stuff, and go to Southeast Alaska and say, do you think we should get rid of non resident fishermen, right, probably like that sounds like a great idea. It's just like human nature, dude, Yep, you know so I'd be bummed if they did in Alaska. I'd be like if they did in Montana and Colorado move into this thing. It feels to me not like they're doing something insane. It

Some of those elk get eaten.

Yeah, this is not like like this is just me stating like the objective reality, the objective reality, whether you love wolves, hate them, whatever. I heard that, like people keep going into our store on Main Street to complain about uh wolves. I don't know if this is true or not to complain about our stance on wolves, which is very new on there.

Should be like a complaint dropbox or something.

There should be like a sign that says like here's here's like the stands on wolves. It's like really complicated. Stand here and read it a minute. We'll go. Okay, wolves, objective reality, wolves.

Eat elk and wolves don't make elk.

Yes, the objective reality is that each of those things eats seven pounds of meat a day. Okay, it will come to be that Colorado, in areas where wolf pegs get established, will have dramatically fewer elk. Go look at the Idaho Panhandle. Go look at the greater Yellowstone heard in the years, in the decades coming out of ninety five and ninety six, you see greater than fifty percent reductions in elk. Kurtz, It's just like, this is not that's not a pro wolf statement, it's not an anti

Right.

Hunters will say that sounds like shitty news. But it's just the reality. So that Colorado, and I'm not saying I'm not trying to draw a parallel here, but that Colorado is taking some measure right now in anticipation, like they would be smart to take some measure right now in anticipation of having a lot fewer elk as wolves in some places. I mean, you have the perfect case point. You have three states that like, one of which touches

You know, hugging a wolf.

And then later people are like, well it turns out that might not have been actually what happened, but either way, so yeah, Colorado, sure you gotta put in now. You can't just wait and buy your license in a gas station. It's like, okay, you can't anywhere, right, And him saying, I think that's a hundred here. The other thing, this guy says, it's kind of weird. He says, I don't want it to be that a hunter can't get an ELK tag every year in his own state. Welcome to Arizona, Utah, Nevada,

Wow, that sounds awesome.

Every dude, every year you would go into the field with a button tag and two dough tags. Thirteen thousand? What that number got? What was that number a couple years ago?

Six thousand? But do you get what one? One dough tag?

But when they were given out those thirteen thousand tags, those thirteen thousand tags were getting.

Used because access was easier too.

Now then they went to six thousand tags, they're getting used. I don't know where it's gonna sit now, but I don't know if it's ever gonna climb that high again. But it's like the agent see it. Like in the end with with most of these systems, the agency is saying how many people are going to be in the field, how they distribute themselves is a different question.

Yeah, I mean one thing to my point, like I non residents like, that's great seeing them hunt in a different state. But when I say, the problem was in how people are actually respecting the land, like it was terrible, terrible.

You said, you kept finding people hunting places.

We were driving, driving everywhere, off roads, trespassing, people were cutting people off on their way too deer. And this wasn't just like one time, it was this was like everywhere you went. And I guess what I'm trying to say is people need to respect the resource that we have, especially as a non resident, because it was it was just a shit chill.

Well, that's that's a general roll hunter resident resident problem that we have to as hunters self police and fix because like my uncle manages a gigantic ranch here in Montana, the one he managed for about twenty years over by showdo you know, hunters ruined him on it and and uh ruined him on wanting to allow them on their you know, he would give permission and say hey park here,

Yeah, I couldn't. I kind of couldn't believe that that many people were being so disrespectful, you know, but I also Washington Place.

I mean resident hunters, resident hunters, yea, do the same stuffy Yeah.

What was that, Phil?

Sorry?

Yeah, like what say that's a that's a general Yeah, in any state.

We heard from multiple landowners being like, we freaking hate this time of year because of hunters just acting like assholes.

Yeah, which is not good.

Even like out in eastern Montana, some of the roads you choose to drive, even if you can a little two tracks, like if it's wetter than hell today and you know it's going to be dry by tomorrow, you know, driving that road today just tearing the ship out of those roads, and then those ranchers have to drive them. They have to until they can get fixed. Yeah, until they can fix them.

Man, it's too bad. I don't want to go on and on about this. Well, I'll say that, No, it's a good point. And places where I have where people let me uh me or my kids or me and my kids on private land, Dude, I get like, I get paranoid about folowing the rules and do and really try really hard to express my gratitude after the fact.

And where you know we take, we take, like I'll take a handful of knives out give them to landowners, like I mean, we're you know, most of us can't afford to go buy our own ranch. So when you get like the block management program, when you get permission to hunt a gigantic piece of property, it's a pretty cool opportunity that those people give us. So we have to treat that with like it's gold.

Yeah, bring a gift basket and get real clear on where you're supposed to go and not go. And if he says, park at that next fence, park way the side of the next vent.

Yeah.

Oh, So we got three new so start starting in August, we have three new white tail systems launch and so you have to stay tuned for this and go to first light dot com and check them out.

Hey, it's failed.

Jumping in with a quick update.

This new white Tail system actually launches off on July thirtieth.

July thirtieth, back to the.

Show system set up by sort of system set up by early seas, kind of like early season, mid season late system, so season systems on like Biden Air Night early season.

But your wife just keeps pushing it in this podcast every day.

She's like, Oh, I.

Like you doing that. That's unbuttoned. That's more buttons on your shirt. We'll bun button a lot more buttons on your shirt because some of that will make you seem really young. Early season, mid season, late season being phase core thermic similar designs to first like traditional white Tail get up, but new tech and integration across all the systems. So make sure you checked it out. Get your your kit down. Is super sweet stuff from like you know,

Uh no, current offered some to me, So thank you, Karin.

But I'm doing good. Thank you.

I want to do one last news item and then also then we're done on show. Oh so people already been hearing the Kids Show.

Yep, we got a few more episodes. Last one is August fifth.

So please do us the favor of you. If your kids are enjoying the Kids Show, you gotta let us know. What's the email.

Address the Meat Eater podcast.

Okay, just go to that. Yeah, we've been we lost a kids podcast. You've been. It's been dropping on the feed. We need to hear do your kids dig it? What do they wish it was different? And keep us updated on the kids podcast. We want to keep doing it, but we just want to kind of check and see if people, if people's kids are digging them, and so let us know how your family is listening. What you're finding out on the kids podcast has been but blast

We just recently talk about those programs getting harder because of CWD?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like certain there's someone who's mentioning that certain butcher shops in the area weren't participating in them. So maybe if there's more funding it, there's more of an incentive for yeah, well for the program to work more efficient.

That's the thing about, Like, that's why it's a little bit tricky on the donation programs because what was it, What state was it? Wisconsin?

I can't remember.

One of the states said you can't distribute the stuff till it comes back negative. So when you kill a deer, till it comes back negative on CWD. Even though we'll continue to point out until the day I die, no person has ever gotten CWD from a deer right from consuming it. No cow was ever gotten from a deer. Non, Okay, there's no known risk. There's a hype, there's a hypothetical risk to the consumption of CWD infected deer meat. You shoot a deer and bring it down to a butcher,

It could be less everything.

So you know, you're Joe Blow deer processor, and you get this big influx of de deer donations come in and somehow you're under the obligation of sort of like cold storaging, right, cold storaging all these deer to wait on all these test results, and meanwhile you're just getting flooded into deer. So guys had to be like, I

I think we had scratch off your album.

Billy's bud Tea. I like Tea Pops and Billy's Budan man, where's Billy's at? I don't know. Can someone look it up? Where his billy's at? He sent some that's good.

That is good.

I love it ice fishing. I'm surprised that those Southerners even like it. They don't ice fish. You cannot think of a better ice fishing food than a hot boot and with some hot sauce.

The couple of locations.

It's kind of not something that crave when you're getting on the boat in the morning in Louisiana and it's ninety degrees and you.

Got to go free diving and you're gonna be seasick. That's what I'm saying. It's good for ice fishing. Is the ice hold still?

Yeah, chase that down.

Chase that down with a bush light.

No one gets ice sick.

No, you don't get seasick on ice. So it's a great place for boot an. But you don't want to be puking up boot am on the high seas. Oh all right, Josh, you ready to dig in. That's not the stone you described to me that you had, And then you sent me a really nice stone.

Yeah, I sent you one. Uh, this one's a little finer. I sent you one that's a little more coarse, that has a courser side, so you can actually sharpen stuff that's in worse shape. Got it, Like if somebody handed me a knife that was in really bad shape, really thick. That same stone I sent you I have at home that I would use to like remove a serious amount of material.

But can you find tune on it too?

Yeah?

Yeah, okay, Yeah.

That's a six hundred grit. Uh, it's a it's a I think it was a three twenty or two twenty on one side and six hundred on the other. This one finishes at one thousand on the top, uh, instead of six hundred. Just a little difference.

And you use so when you're like, when you go to sharpen your own knives, you use an oilstone.

Yes, either that oil stone or this one. I mean either way, because you like that one.

He's got in front of him a work sharp with the it's a work sharp bench stone. So this is a water stone. It's a six inch stone, right, yeah.

Yeah, exactly, And this is there's water and there's oil stones, and that just provides some lubrication for the stone. It actually if you run these dry, you'll break off the little you know the little grit points on the stone that water actually provides support for the grit next to it, and it provides Yeah. Yeah, the owners of a or the guys that work at d MT were explaining kind

It all up. Yeah, I've noticed that. It's amazing. Yeah, you can actually dunk it there and you'll see bubbles come up yep, and then the bubbles will stop coming and you know it said, Yeah, like.

At home, I've got a bucket next to my grinder. I'll just throw this folk stone in the grinder and just soak it instead of doing the water bottle thing.

But yeah, so.

You know there's these stone. This is when people ask me about stones for their home. To me, you have two setups. You have your bench stone in your garage. I think that stone I sent you as a Norton Stone North's oil stone.

Yeah, because I didn't have it. I have that exact wet stone yep, but I didn't have an oilstone. Yeah, and no, man, I have my old man's oilstone, but I keep it more like a.

Piece of uh what do you call memorabilia.

And the dude, it's got like it looks like a valley. Yeah, it's like dished out. Like you wouldn't believe.

People didn't sit around and look at Instagram back then. They sat around and sharpen their knives, you know, by the fire. Yeah, and that's why none of my knives

You know.

Even a little blade like this three and a half inch blade, you can do a whole elk or tell me what you're holding up there. This is our stone goat knife we have. We have our speed Goat, which is a pair of cord knife ye named after antelope here and Montana, light and fast. I then made a heavier, fixed blade, thicker skinny knife called our stone Wall after stone Wall Mountain and Lincoln. And then people like that profile so much that I made a kind of a

You mentioned doing a whole elk, Like, what's like, what's a realistic expectation like in the field for someone to get like an animal, Like how much you can get through with one night one sharp knife, like cutting through heavy hide like an elk, bumping up against bone, Like.

Yeah, you should be able to do a whole out now, you know. I guess it depends on how critical you are on a knife. I like a really sharp knife, So I might in the middle, just taking a break, stretch your back, I might hit it on the stone, like a quick pass back and forth, just to touch it and then go back to work.

But that's what I like to do, is I like to do the periodic touch up rather than wait until you like tip off the cliff.

Yeah, because you get to a point where you're like struggling to cut through.

High and that's when you're gonna jab yourself, you know. And it's the other part of that is is you know, I I have people that come up to me at events and they're there they you know, I did three oak with that knife and two deer and before I had to sharpen. It's like out of sharpen. That's some bitch long time ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like that's cool, that's great. But uh, you know, every knife you buy is gonna get dull and and so it's just a

I can't pretend to understand. I'm trying to stop doing that in my life. Yeah.

Yeah, So the heat treating process, So you'll heat this blade right here up to fifteen hundred degrees. It's called the critical temperature. This blade will become non magnetic at fifteen hundred degrees. So when I was a kid, I didn't have a fancy heat treat oven. I had my dad's.

Fifteen hundred degrees. A magnet won't grab it?

YEA, what chemic.

It?

Yeah, it's it's it's wild. But they called it were like the steel goes into solution and it changes, like the structure of the steel kind of changes. And so even when it cools down a magnet stone, Nope, it'll go back as soon as it drops below it's fourteen seventy five.

Fifteen hundred degrees. Could you still cut something with it?

Well, I don't know. It'd be kind of hot to hold.

You follow me, right, I mean what would it What would it be like?

It would be soft, it would be it just feels soft. Yeah, you could.

You could press it on it. You could press it on a like you could take a nail and mark it.

Yeah, like if you well, I mean not really, I mean it at that point, you're reaching forging temperatures. I mean you would dent that steel because like if you took this blade that's hard right now, and you heat it up to fifteen hundred degrees and let it cool, you've ruined the temperature temper like it's soft at that point you could probably bend it with your hands.

So we were having big I remember one time I had a digital you know those like laser thermometers. Yeah, we had a big fire going yep, and just aiming at laser around me.

Two that's what.

Yeah, that surprised me if but I wouldn't picture that if you threw a knife in there that you would.

You could harden it, Okay, yep. So the way that works is you heat this. So, like I said, when I was a kid, I didn't have fancy stuff, right,

Huh So I didn't know that either. Now there's water hardening Randall. Did you know what he's saying about the magnet? Be honest, no, first time?

And uh, you know there's water hardening steels like the Japanese, uh, Samurai swords and stuff back in the day W one, W two, stuff like that. You actually quention water, So steels have their different oils. That that it's the speed at the rate at which that God comes down. So people use the wrong terminology all the time to say, well, how do you temper your blades? And it's like, well, the tempering is a part of the heat treatment process. So by by heating that blade up and then quenching it,

Can't do the ninety degree bend.

Nope, it snapped right off.

So at that point, how would it sharpen.

It would sharpen up, super super sharp, fine edge, but it would't hold it. But but yeah, if you if you, you know, bumped it against this micro frone stand, it would chip it, you know if it was thin.

Gotcha?

And so now becomes what we got into this on is that that scale right that blade is like sixty seven sixty eight rock Well, that's the that's the hardness of the blade.

So what the hell does that scale mean?

The way we test that is we have a Rockwell tester. He set that blade here, and it's got a little diamond point that comes down. It touches the steel and then you get it zeroed out, and then you pull this handle and it applies pressure down on the blade and then lets up. And however deep that that point penetrated the steel or or not deep determines how hard your blade is.

That's the score.

Yeah, yep, and it and it cackle. I didn't know how it was measured.

I knew the rock Well score to you. I know the man.

Yeah.

So like if that point burries way down into that blade, it's soft, right, and it'll kick back one of those yeah a tester.

Yeah, is it the thing you You don't make it, obviously you buy it.

Yeah, you buy it. It's a Yeah. It's a big heavy thing that sits there with a dial on it and candle. So and we we randomly test these blades every so often, just making sure that like, hey, nothing's going on with our heat treat so weird gremlin. So let's say that blade has hardened as like sixty eight rock Well, hold.

The audio very hard. You pull it audio oil and it's hard.

It's brittle. So now you put that blade in an oven. So when I was a kid, I would always put them in my mom's kitchen oven and they said it still had oil on them and it would stink up my mom's dad's holes on fire. Yeah, it's a ship shot studio film.

Yeah.

Uh.

But you heat that blade up to say four hundred degrees for an hour, and you take it back out and you test that rock Well might be down to six D four. You heat that blade up for another hour at four hundred degrees.

Let it cool.

Now you're down around sixty two. And now, depending on the type of knife, where do you want to stop?

Right? But as.

Your hardness level comes down, now your toughness is coming up. So let's take it all the way the other way. Let's take that hardness all the way down to like fifty five. Now it's not very hard, but it'll you can flex it, you can bend it right, and you take it all the way to just dead soft. You can bend that thing right around, wrap it around steel, you know something three times because it's totally soft.

Got it.

So again, you're trying to choose that that balance, achieve that balance depending on the type of blade you want to make. And that's the thing with like a lot of these factory knives, they're going for mass scale, hit the middle of the road where it's like you want as a custom knife maker, you're trying to curtail that heat treating towards what the customer is going to do with that knife. That's what we're doing with like our in case E stuff.

Can you real quick explain just in Layman's term, when someone says it's a carbon steel knife. Yep.

Yeah, so it's a it's a there's stainless steel and there's carbon steel.

So so then that's the two options.

Yeah, yeah, and stain But then there's hundreds of options within those options, right, and you know this.

Gets that's a high level division it carbon path stainless path.

Yeah, and it's really it's it's a variance of how what kind of a what's the chemical makeup of that steel? How much chromium is in it, how much vanadium is it, how much manganese is in it, how much carbon is in it. And and there's a certain scale at which, you like, there's stainless steels, which stainless doesn't mean stain free, it means stains less. So at a certain point, you know, you you step down that stainless scale to where all of a sudden you start getting more rust than you want.

Cool.

That's cool, and we were literally probably the first company to use it.

Now.

That steel is a super steel because it's most stainless steels over the years have had some really good edge holding ability but had really low toughness. You couldn't make knives thin or they would snap break. Yeah, That's why he developed Magna cut, was to not only have the cutting ability which frankly will outcut this blade in duration, but still holds a high level of toughness. Still not the toughness of this blade, but tough enough for anything I wanted to do.

That. That's one of the things that that you're not. What makes your knives special is that, like you said, they're like more of a user's knife because they they're thin.

Yep, you think some years.

Ago and a lot of guys got into making their own knives. It felt to me like a lot more people got into that for a while. Yeah, especially with forest and fire, but like big old thick bastards yep, you know.

Yeah, thick and heavy. That's the thing. It doesn't necessarily mean quality. I mean, if you want a splitting mall to chop fur, chunks of fur, firewood and half, yeah you want thick and heavy. But when you're cutting through elk, hide, moose hide, meat, you know whatever, you want that material to pass by this edge with as little resistance as possible. The more meat you have behind the edge. And this is what people don't talk enough about is edge geometry.

So let's say someone breaks it, yea, and they send it to you, we can you'd be like, I know because I made it, ye that if you broke it herb, isn't it like you weren't cutting up? You weren't yeah, cutting loins up?

We still send him a new knife.

Yeah, yeah, it's Do you send a little note, yeah, sometimes.

Like come on a screwdriver his letter when his letters like, I was just skinning my deer and the blades is broken.

Half I am here. You can settle a dispute for me.

I had one of your blade knives in Alaska, and I played a bunch of sam with it. No problems my my buddy Ben Oh. I let him use it for two seconds, the blades in half. Yeah, and he said he was doing nothing with it, just flame fish playing along.

Yeah.

I would find that very shocking because we've got several thousand of those out there, and I've seen one maybe or two. Maybe.

Well, I'll show you a third one.

Yeah, Well we'll send him a new one.

Well it's my knife.

Yeah, well it's still in Alaska.

I'll bring it back.

Yeah, but no, it's I just did.

I just did. I just did a sting rain along those gar with your knife. I love that. That's a rough that's a rough lay job. Yeah for the fish spectrum.

Well, I and you know what, every now and then, ship's gonna happen. People are gonna break something. I I would rather stand behind our stuff kind of no questions asked, because when you do replace that knife, people are like they know what they were doing or not doing, but they really that you that you stand behind it, and who knows, ship could happen. I mean, you know something could happen, but you want to know.

You want to know that you're no fool though. Yeah, so you can say, like, while I know you're lying, you could have replaced you put a little business.

Card in there with a picture of you winking at him. Yeah, well our little secret. What's even better is when I get, you know, a DM on Instagram occasionally and somebody would be like, dude, I was I was doing what I shouldn't have been doing, like one hundred percent, I screwed it up. I know you're out of stock. Can I buy another one? Like they're all heartbroke, but they're just like telling you, like I I completely did something I shouldn't have been and we I still just send him

Yeah, if they sent you a note and it started out with you know that little ball joint on the back, Yeah, oh dear, well you know where that's going.

Or like, you know, so I was trying to pry up my elk ivories, you know, and the tip on your speed goat, you know, the last eighth of an inch is gone, and it's like, yeah, yeah, it's not a screwdriver, but now you have a flat Actually actually, uh, the funny you know, the Ruana knives out of Bonner. Oh, they're they're famous in this area because old Rudy Ruana was a legend in this area.

Uh.

He was an old man when I got into making knives, but he was His knives are worth a lot of money if you can find him. Well, my banker when I was about fifteen, was telling me when he was in high school, he tried Priyan elk Ivory's out of an elk and he broke the tip off and he took it back to Rudy's shop.

Oh, I think you did mention this guy to Yeah, he walked.

In years old, that's what.

Yeah.

Anyways, continue but he he he walked in. He's like, hey, tip broke off your knife, you know. And Rudy's like, well, what were you doing with it? And you know, Mark tells him and uh, Rudy goes, well, I didn't make you a goddamn screwdriver, you know. So he fixed the tip on it, and he said that, he said, Rudy just chewed his ass up one side and down the other. And he's like, I never ever the rest of my

But you can't make it into a phillips.

Yeah that's hard.

Yeah, okay, walk through uh, walk through your moves there.

All right, this will be riveting for people that aren't watching, but they'll have to go.

They can go watch, but I'll provide commentary because I'm gonna tee it up.

Yeah, I'm just so this has been sitting in the water. I just flipped this over to get a little water on top of the stone. So I'm on the six hundred grit or this is a thousand grit side. So this knife, uh, you guys kind of test to it being being dull.

I'm shait.

We watched him run. He ran it vertically down the stone before the show. It's good and dull.

It's dull. It's dull. Tip's dull. It's dull. It's dull knife.

Dull knife.

So I provide a quick little bit of color. Yeah, no, you go ahead, go ahead. So now I am gonna most people go meaning left side right, like.

Cut, cutting, cutting into the stone.

Most people you're slicing and you do like laugh right left, right, laugh, right. So actually, let's talk about let's talk about that.

Let's talk about what the edge of your knife actually is. It's really a micro saw. There there are teeth on your edge. When you look under a microscope, there are little saw teeth all along your edge. So when your edge is really nice and sharp, especially and again I'm gonna I'm talking about a hunting knife here, a chef's knife or like a razor blade is gonna be a little bit different. There's little microcerations. So when you're cutting a uh, let's say, into a moose, really thick bristly

Yeah, that's good.

And so as a knife doles those teeth. If you imagine a nice new hacksaw from the store or a wood saw, you get it from the store, and those teeth are just super super sharp. Well, as that saw starts to get dull, those teeth are just becoming rounded. Right, you can still saw through your piece of wood or that piece of steel, but it's gonna take longer, it's gonna take more effort. Well, it's the same way the knife blade. Your little microceration teeth are starting to wear down.

Fast man often feels better and at first couple seconds, do you know what I mean? Yeah, oh, you just love it.

But you gotta last longer than just a few seconds. This is uh so anyway, I'm gonna create that burst. So what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna start And a lot of people worry about the angle so

Right.

So this is then I've got fifteen degree angle. With these works sharps. You can actually check your angle right on the end of.

The Yeah, he's got a work sharp sharpener that has the angle guide and you can put different angle guides on those.

Yep.

So I actually am just going to start on one side and I'm going to just kind of create a burr. So I'm actually starting at the tip. Yeah, and what I see a lot of people do. Where's the camera in this one? The people will round off when they when they go this way.

Yep.

You'll hear if you listen, you'll hear this like this little at the end, like a flick. Yeah, that little flick. Well, this tip is like ten fifteen thousands. Stick this back here is maybe thicker, and you're removing more steel off that tip, and people round their tip off. You'll see, Yeah, you can you do it?

And then you feel it, and you like, you start at the back, you're like loving it, loving it, loving it. You get up there and you're like.

Damn it.

Yeah yeah, and it's like and and and they'll like bull knows their little tip. So if you start here, you can start right up on the tip if you need to, or you can actually start right behind that tip and remove material maybe down a sixteenth from the tip or less, uh, and just to keep that tip

Dude, that little movie got there, man. I mean, I know you've been doing it your whole life, but that little move right there is the move.

So what I'm doing is I'm putting a lot of pressure right here, and he's giving Brody the bird pushing hard.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just using like one finger here to just put more pressure on that blade. And I am just going in one direction, starting at the tip and pushing back to the ricasso or the plunge grind of this blade and then I'm going to feel on the opposite side, So the side facing me, I'm going to feel with these fingers, and I'm gonna feel for a burr. I'm looking for a berth because as I go across this edge, it's gonna curl a burr up on the other side.

You might have worked at one side, so.

I might even work this tip, like I might just work this spot for a second, or I could work back here, like right in this spot, or then I can go back and even this thing out. And I'm just going fast and putting a lot of pressure.

And you're not keeping track of how many strokes on the other side.

No, it's not, it's not algebra what.

My whole life?

But what about the like how how are you using the angle guide or how.

So you can check you memori head? Yeah, like I can feel it, but you can if you want to go slow, you can be like on this angle and then you can just take whoops and transfer that right to your stove, you know, and you.

Can always asking. I asked him a bunch about that, but it's just like he just got in his head and he does it the same way every damn time. But the angle guide slows you down. But it's good for starter, it is.

It's good to kind of like come across and then check like, ye, I'm pretty good right the other okay, And so now okay.

He still has his only world. He's still his only work the starboard side of that. No, he's only worked the port side of that knife port side left.

Yeah, four letters.

Do you get think of people telling you're doing it all wrong?

Yeah? If I just came by and saw you doing it more, he's supposed to do one side then the other.

I'm gonna pass this around. I just kind of went went fast on this. But you're gonna feel there's no burr on the USA made side, and there's a burr on the mk C logo side. Uh, And we're just feeling straight across that and you'll feel it.

And this is great. I love it already.

No, listen, man, you gotta bring back.

Yeah, I can't wait to try that.

Oh yeah for sure.

And so if if that blade was a lot thicker and saying a lot worse condition, I would have a stone with more grit, like the like the stone that I gave you is like two twenty grid or something on that other side. If you don't have a belt grinder or something aggressive to go to, you can just move material there and re establish your flat and your angle that you need and then flip to the other side.

What's your opinion on the electric.

They're fine, like like workshop has. I think that ken Onion edition like belt zander kind of addition that's essentially the poor version of like the grinder I'm using, like a heavy duty grinder. The problem I have with them on like a new knife of our knives is our knives are so thin, like this blade, you're gonna you're gonna take off ten sharpenings or more worth of steel that I'm gonna take off in one Yeah.

Ground the tip off kind of like rounded the tip on one of those.

Did you I was gonna say, you can make a mistake all of my knives.

Hmm, I said, we're describing all of my knives.

There's there, they've come flat.

Do you feel it?

Hey? What's your general take on diamond owners versus stone?

I don't really have any I mean to me, they're all I can make whatever work.

So you don't hate diamond.

I don't hate diamond. I I I tend to like the feel of the stone better. But maybe that's because that's what I've used since I was twelve.

Got it so feeling it?

Yeah, but if diamond diamond also is it's kind of nice where you don't have oil and water and all the mess.

But you don't use water on diamond.

No, most of those are dry, but you do take water and like scrub them up and clean them up.

Yeah, you know.

And like with this you can see on here there's like grit, so these these stones will load up. It's it's it's carving away steel and you're leaving that steel on your stone. So in the middle, I'll pour a little water on here and just kind of clean it off because now I've got I mean, it's like putting a new piece of fresh sandpaper on the sand.

And that you want to come over here, cop a feel phil that.

Materials just filling in the gaps. All that like steel is just in there filling the gas it is.

Yeah, it loads up. It's like if people sand on a on a project at home with sandpaper and your sandpaper starts getting full of stuff. Yeah, if your sandpaper is not necessarily totally dull yet, it's just loaded up. So if you clean it, you'll bring some life back. So now I've done that side, I'm gonna go to the opposite side and just do the same thing. A weird city and I always do the standing.

Now Here's what Here's even though I've been mimicking the style you taught me, here's where I got a little bit. Here's where I needed a refresher. Is how do you know when you haven't just rolled it over the other way?

Well, that's I mean, you haven't. You're not going to roll it over. I mean, because like right here, I can feel a really heavy burr out here, but I don't have anything back here. Okay, so you're not You're not just gonna roll it over.

I mean, I mean, if you, let's say you did that for a day, aren't you gonna have.

It be well, you would end up you would if you did it for a full day, you would just end up with like a wedge.

Isn't that the purpose of like a leather It's a line that.

Yeah, we'll get to because like right now, I have a really good bur out here. There's no sense in me taking more life out of my knife here. So I'm just gonna work this inch and a half right.

Here, and you don't run the risk of going one or two drokes too many and just rolling at the other direction.

No, no, because the next step that we do is gonna account for that.

The why why you ignoring the why ignoring the tip now?

Because I already have a burr and you're monitoring where you're at. Yeah, So, like I already established a really nice burr in my first like ten passes here, but back here I didn't have it. So there's no sense in just just taking steel away here for the sake of taking it away. I have what I'm looking for. I'm going to hear and now I've got it after

No, he's doing the left a full pass.

And now I'm left and right. Every time, I'm still pushing hard, Okay, pushing hard, and then what I'll start to do is I'm going to start to lighten my pressure. I'm still pushing, but it's it's getting lighter and with each pass, I'll do a pass on each side and then I'm now I'm lightning even more and you can hear it in the stone right.

Yeah, you were putting some ass into it early.

I was, and now its basically as hard as you can push early.

Yeah.

Is this something that you developed over time or is this like a known tech? I learned this from Tim Hancock, a legendary knife maker that passed away from from MS but Parkinson's I'm sorry, but he taught this twenty years ago to knife Show and it was like it resonated with a bunch of us. So I'm I'm like the weight of the blade right now, M so like basically no,

Let me see that thing. Let's hold it up for everybody.

Yeah, we have these that Francesca Teton Leather down in Idaho makes these for us. They're on our website. But I have an ancient one hanging on my nail in my shop that I think was my grandfather's.

But no reason your belt, a leather belt wouldn't work.

No, I take my leather belt. I think I did it in your house. Yep, I use my leather belt. So I have this burr here and I'm going to actually demonstrate you can be the evidence of this. If I go this way, I leave like no tracks. Yep, see that I come this way. Oh yeah, look at the scratches yep. Can you guys see the scratch line

Yeah, I've never thought of that. That you're kind of cleaning those you're cleaning those teeth.

You can see those, they're still there, right yep. I'm pushing kind of heart on this side, and then I'll just go to this side. And now I've got I can feel it dragging us a little. I have it on both sides and I'll just kind of balance it. I don't want to take too much of this off, because that burr is what I want for uh, for hunting.

You guys want to come up a couple of inches the mike arm is in the way there.

Yeah, I mean we've we've just come back and forth across this strap and I'm done with it now, so I'm gonna feel it. Yeah, I mean that's smoking sharp. So an evidence of that. If you guys want.

Impressing.

Damn, I'm surprised you haven't. Hair.

I know, he'd like have denude to all the real estate man, so.

He'd had to be like, he probably doesn't use me do my bell, doesn't he doesn't do this for every podcast.

Uh yeah, kind of considered hair Farmers.

Yeah, but.

You can and you can test like back here that is amazing here versus like like right at the belly versus like out at the tip and it's still you can see the hairs popping.

And again listen that Okay, that was dull. It was dull. I checked it, everybody checked it. It was dull. And this is a this is a work sharp bench stone.

It's called at It's just a wet stone, a.

Wet stone, but it's it's it's nohow man, It's not like it doesn't it's no how. You can try to buy your way into it with contraptions and stuff, but you cannot beat that.

Yeah, and if you had done that beat without us bugging you, it would have taken you a couple of minutes.

Yeah, I could just real quick.

Yea.

So think about it, you said, I think it was your grandfather or something with his stone.

That's all dished out, my dad's stone. Ill.

Yeah, no YouTube, no Instagram, know whatever. And you sit around at night every night you come home, sit down your chair, Well, let me.

Share something with you. But it has knife weren't half as sharp as that. Now, I what I was serviceable, but they weren't like that.

What I want you guys to feel. When I feel an edge, I don't feel straight across. I mean that that doesn't tell me anything. I'm actually when I'm feeling this edge, I'm across, but I'm also almost I'm sliding my finger just a tiny bit, and you will feel that little birr wanting to bite. So that's the burr. As a hunter, you want something when you pass it across that hide or hair or meat, it is biting in, it is digging in.

That's not a thing people would naturally think of. If you picture a really sharp knife, you'd imagine it being just like under microscope that it's smooth.

Sliced, but it's like a microscopic serirated steak.

Correct, it's a saw and that's what's gonna give you the longevity and the feel of like got I use I've been using this thing and it hasn't been going dull or I'm still using it after so long. It's because those teeth are wearing down. But you still have some life. And you know, like there's cutting competitions and stuff out there, and you see guys like put a silk piece of silk up and they'll chop a piece of silk in half. Well, that's that's not a honety knife edge.

I'm you're talking about like a piece just.

Like a silk scarf. Right, it's hanging there, just dangling in the air. There's no tension cut through. Yeah, when you like chop through it, I mean it has to be an absolute razor to get through that. But you put that on moose hair, it's gonna suck. Uh. You take a razor blade, take a razor blade from home, depot new out of the package, and run it just straight across moose hair. It's not gonna cut it now, it'll cut the crap out of your skin, his skin soft,

Oh yeah, I.

Know, I'm gonna go home. I know sharp some knife.

Gonna go home and ruin all of our kitchen knives.

No, you're not Randall. Come on, you're gonna you're gonna Well.

I need a I need practice. I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna get all the knives from the camper and I'm gonna sharpen the camper knives. No, it's not complicated, and it's a it's what I want, people, I want. The whole idea of passing your stuff down is like, how cool would it be if do you have kids? How old are they young?

Yeah?

Two years old? You use the you know, a couple of knives for the next twenty years, and you personally sharpen them, and you wear that thing down to where it's a half inch shorter than it is now, and it's maybe you send it back to us now and then we reset it. But you pass that thing down, it tells a story like when you pass down a gun. I have a black powder gun sitting on my shelf that my grandma gave me that we don't know where it came from, but it was clearly used in like

Yeah?

You know, And that's the thing like when people bring me stuff and they're like, you can tell where their grandpa fixed the handle on it, and you know, sharpened it forever and wore it out.

I recently cleaned out my garage and sold a bunch of stuff at a garage sale. The things I did not sell were my knives.

Yeah, keep thom knives and guns.

Yeah, well that's great, man.

Would you do? What would you do differently? Sharpening like good kitchen knives, same.

Process, basically the same thing. But what I would do at the end is I would flip over on the stone and I would probably take a few passes on that six thousand grit side side and it would just make it finer. Sometimes cutting some of the veggies and stuff like that. That nice fine edge tomato skin and stuff. But this edge would work just fine in your kitchen, but you'd probably like for like a push cut. You know, this is like a pole and a slice cut where

So Josh and I worked on We worked on it. We've worked on a couple, but two are available. We worked on one. We worked on a Knifehi was the first time I've ever gone through this process on a Honting knife. Yeah, we worked on a honey knife, which we came up with the term of the stub horn, which is an old term for buffalo. But walk through like how you approached the collaboration process because I don't know the first thing about metallurgy.

Yeah, but we talked a.

Lot about what I'm after. Blade thickness, well, not so much thickness, blade shape, handle shape, blade length.

Yeah, but use case. I mean that that kind of lends to thickness, right, Like you know a blade that you can use, you know, a hard working knife, right like if you're going to break down a buffalo. You know, you're probably going to use a blade that's a little larger in size, a little thicker in dimension if you're

Yeah, no, you sent we sent back a bunch of what do you call it when you make the blanks?

Yeah, we did like three D prints.

So because I was hung up on one of the things I'm hung up on about it is is I like them to have I like a pretty fine point yep for making opening cuts YEP, Like I don't like a really exaggerated version, be like the beaver skinning knives, which have that that it's almost like a half like a like a quarter.

Circle, almost bullnosed like. Well, the other thing you were you were talking about was like the ergonomics of the handle, Like your handle's much different looking than most of our knives. Uh, the other unintended.

I'm not holding it like you picture like a boat, like you picture a boy knife. Pick it up. You're gonna try to kill somebody with it, right, I'm not most of the time. I'm not holding my skinning knife. I'm not like gripping it like how you imagine if you were going to stab somebody with a knife.

You're more pinch gripping it.

Yeah, but in all different it's upside down, it's right side up and sideways. I'm holding it this way, I'm holding it that way, do you know what I mean?

It's more like a.

You're not I'm never grabbing it and doing a whole job like that. I'm using it in a bunch of different positions, right, you know, it's like it's rolling around in your hand or this or this or that whatever. The cool thing is going to be shape where it's not. The shape isn't that you're totally committed on a certain grip.

Up is up and down is down, and you can't exactly it's.

Something that you're rolling around that you're rolling around in your hand that's comfortable in a bunch of positions and has some ass to it. Yep, fine, a fine working point.

The shape of the shape of that handle. You The unintended thing that kind of happened that I noticed as it came together was, uh, very few handles, you know, I guess most of the most of the knife that I see out there, certain sized hands fit a knife really well. But then like guys with big hands, it doesn't. Or maybe a guy with a smaller hand is like, well,

The other thing we did was we fluted. I use the term flute because it looks like a close point fluted the part of the handle that comes up to the blade, what do.

You Yeah, it's more of like a what do you call it, like a like a thumb ramp scallop. Yeah, which again that's in that pinch grip. I don't know why we don't have one sitting here, but a good that would have been a really good marketing idea.

I was waiting for the big yeah you.

Real quick.

Uh. That's why I have a business part of it as a marketing and I'm not in charge of it.

Uh.

But yeah, like if your thumb is right here, if you're in a pinch gript situation, and we'll show it when he brings it in. But like a lot of times, you want more control over that blade. You have your finger on the top, you know, and you're getting in doing fine work again, that caping work and some of that, but you're pinching that side of that handle with your thumb. The other cool thing is is like I asked you and you were a little back and forth one way

Yeah, you guys, all your sheaths come with with a I guess like a belt, like a belt clip.

Yeah, it's a Kaidek sheath that that blade really snaps into position. Those are those are molded to that knife. Yeah, uh, we do that right in our shop. We take a lot of care and really getting those right. And they have an adjustable screw on them retention wise, so you if that over time it starts to loosen a little, you can tighten that screw down and get it tighter again.

Yeah. The way there's sheaths work, I don't recommend you do this the way there's actually I got it right here. You could take the way the knives here I'll show it. Well, I want to tell it too, But the way the knives go into the sheath, I don't recommend you do this. You can throw this off a cliff, yeah, and go down there and find it. It's gonna be in the sheath. Yeah, it's not gonna it doesn't pop out. So here to listen to the satisfying noise. Yeah, you can tighten it, loosen it.

That's the noise I like. I mean that snaps so here.

Here we are again, hell and yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that now that that's nice.

Yeah, you know it's in that thing.

And the reason that we you know, it bothered me over the years. I'd go in a store and you know, you look at a knife, you might think it's kind of nice, and then you're and then you're like, well, let me see the sheath, and they hand you this afterthought piece of shit. The people designing the knife did not think about the guy carrying it. Is he going to be in brush and Canada or Alaska or Montana. You know, I want you to carry your knife available for use. I don't want it stuffed in the bottom

I need to have a visual reminder to pick it up. Yeah. I like the orange, like to pick it up. And I like the big the it's got like a fat ball on it.

Yeah, and the and and it's got a guard on it. That's the other thing as far as like keeping you from slipping your hand up on that edge.

Another thing I was commenting on when we were designing it is you know that deep notch sometimes that's got a name. You told me the name I forgot.

Yeah, that that plunge grind.

Yeah, I don't like that to be too exaggerated because it hangs up on stuff.

Yeah, and you're actually talking about like the sharpening choil right there, and what that gives you is a little spot uh to start like, actually this knife does not have it, And as you sharpen a blade down you start, the edge starts to get below this little point here, and it can be hard to get the corner of your stone in there and start. That gives you a lot of years of sharpening that blade before that notch

Take care of them expand contracts.

Yeah, and this G ten is I mean, it's going to last to the end of the earth.

It's hard on equipment though.

What's that G ten? Oh yeah, yeah, it's tough. It's tough.

It's hard to shape it.

Yeah, just like bansaw blades things like that.

Is that fiberglass?

Yeah, dude, I love this thing though.

Man, good, that's awesome.

Yea, this is the stub horn.

Well then we got this.

This is my hunter for the rest of my life. And then we we worked out of smaller you know, people call them birden trout knives, but like a like a caping knife, like a detail work.

Knife, yeah, or like even trapping like small.

Animal Hence the name of the flat tail.

Yeah, that's a cool name. You came up with that one. I was like, that's a cool ass name after a beaver.

Uh.

And so this flat tail again that like you say, that detail work being able to really choke up even with that as we talked about, it's got the same feature as the stub horn, with this kind of thumb ramp here where it really thins down so you're your thumb can be really right against the side of that blade. Pinch in here and you can really get in tight and do like that really fine detail work, and you'll find I guarantee a lot of people that break down

Yeah. The stove horns got some ass to it in the flat does like your delicate knife?

Yep, yep.

I mean this pair together, this pair together, if you had this for doing your detail caping or what kind of detail work, and then that knife for just hard use, I mean ripping through the sternum of a deer or whatever. I mean, that knife's going to do it.

That's one thing about your knives that that people talk about but actually works, is you Yeah, amount of deer it's like, holy shit, man, Yeah, it's it's it's wild. Yeah, well it's almost alarming.

Yeah, there's no need to carry out.

Do you know what I mean?

That you can actually because you know you actually do that just like very effortlessly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just rip right up through a white tail right up to the well to the throat and then it doesn't ruin it. No, you know, I cut a hole my daughter's elk last year. I cut the whole elk in half with my speed goat, which is basically the same size blade as this, you know, through the spine there again, I'm not chopping through vertebrae. You're finding those soft areas. You're finding that connective tissue in the joints, just like at the you know, the legs and whatnot.

Yeah. So those the the flat tails are going to be available on mkc's website.

Yep.

I think depending on when this drops, it may be even the weak of this podcast.

Rin. Yeah, so you can go to Montana Knife Company website find all their stuff, check out the flat tail knife were talking about. And you guys usually have you'll have a lot of different hand four different handle.

Collers, well actually have.

Seven, seven handle calls.

Yep, So this one and then our six and yeah, you know they're gonna end up for sale as well as on the meat Eater site.

We'll have some of these on the medater site. Eventually you're gonna have some of these horns on ours.

The thing with us, you know, it's been a it's been cool, but it's been sometimes I think frustrating for customers. I saw a comment on YouTube the other day is like, oh, great, you did a knife with Ranella. No, we're never going to be able to get one because our stuff has been selling so fast up to now. You know, it's

Yeah. It's always struck me as funny that you guys have the aspiration of someday having it be that your knives are always in stock.

Yeah, yeah, well we we we kind of learned that it's a challenge when when you're dropping them once a week and then it's it's a Monday, and it's you know, your kid's birthday a few days later, and you're like, oh, I need a knife, and they go to our website and there's nothing there to buy. So getting in stuff.

We'll take some of your most favorite designs and make them available all the time.

Yeah, and we've been working on that. We we have knives in stock today of a couple of a couple models, but they kind of come and go. But honestly, it's been cool just because the support of the outdoor industry, the hunting industry, you know, like we grew up through the Total Archery challenge, the support of the American worker because they literally followed me from the day January first to twenty twenty one. I shot a video and put up on my Instagram like I just quit my job.

American elbow grease man, yep.

But so the support of you guys is awesome. And we have some more stuff coming out later. I think that we'll chat about later, but for sure we got to get you over and let you heat up a blade and put a magnet to it.

I still think it's a lie. That's true, it's a lie.

Yeah.

Well thanks for the knife sharpening lesson man.

Yeah, absolutely appreciate it.

Yeah.

Yeah, you guys that are just listening, go on YouTube and watch and it'll change your sharpening game if you Here's the thing, you know, the feeling you buy a knife.

In that first cut, it's all downhill and like you might think, you.

Know in your head you're like gonna get it back, but you're kind of like, but I just know that was the sharpest cut that one's ever gonna make.

Yeah, it's like buying a boat.

Yeah, day once and nicest it'll ever be yeah downhill from there.

Yeah exactly. You're like, there was the sharpest cut that knife will ever make, and imagine getting where you thought. Nope, that knife's got sharper cuts in its future.

I'm still just staring at that shiny bald patch on your arm. I mean you you.

Can go get a tattoo for that hair.

Is that why your beards all nice trimmed?

Yeah?

Yeah, carr a little cosmetic mirror with him so you can do it.

Is funny.

It's always my left arm because I don't dare try with my left hand.

All right, man? Once again, Uh Josh Smith from Montana Knife Company, Thanks for coming on. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

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