Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast. Your weekly dose of knife
news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your
host, Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco.
Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DiMarco. On this
edition of the show, I'm speaking with L.T. Wright of L.T.
Wright Knives. Lt Wright Knives are known to be some of the most
sought after outdoors and bushcraft knives on the market.
And having had a chance to check out his large northern hunter,
loaned to me by a generous viewer, it's obvious why
his work is beautiful to both the eye and the hand. And
his knives excel at every manner of outdoor, domestic and
hunting tasks. He started out making hunting knives
but broadened his vision and scope. And with the help of a loyal customer
base, he's honed in on his own knife making niche.
We'll meet L.T. and talk about his path getting here, but first be sure to
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L.T. nice to have you on the show, sir. Hey, well thanks
for having me. I appreciate that. It's my pleasure. I've
been, I've been, I've been observing your knives for
a long time and as I mentioned up front, had the chance to check
out the large northern hunter and man, it really
impressed me. But then just doing some research
into you a lot impressed me. You've been a knife
guy or interested in knives since the very start.
Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I've always been,
like you said, interested in knives. I was very lucky
growing up. My dad was a hunter so I got to experience
knives through him. He liked knives. So naturally,
you know, you kind of gravitate to what your dad likes. I mean that always
happens, right? So when we, when I was
very little I he take me hunting and I
remember one of my very first Christmas gifts was a knife of some
kind. You know, I don't, I don't recall exactly what that was.
But getting to go in the woods with my dad, the funnest part of the
day was two things. He let me play with my knife when
we got to wherever we were going to hunt. And then I got to eat
lunch in the woods. I don't know why. That was just like, you know, you
sit there and it's like, dad, can we eat lunch yet? Son, we just got
here. You know, it was that kind of thing. So then he'd let me play
with my knife. I could whittle a stick or some things. And that was just
a really fun thing. So that's kind of where my knife
journey started. Definitely with my dad, there's. There's no doubt about it.
And I, you know, growing up, I remember laying at the bottom of his
refiner looking through Field and Stream, Outdoor Life,
not at the articles, at the ads, because I
wanted, if you remember the, the US Navy
knife or the USMC knife, it was like 10 bucks. The old K
bars back then in the 70s. And I would just stare at that quarter
page ad going that night. You know, I can
just remember doing that. It was, it was such a good time. What
do you think it is about knives themselves that had the
young LT Wright, the boy LT Wright, so
fascinated. Tarzan. Straight up
Tarzan. Okay. I mean, as a kid, you know, my grandfather was
a big Tarzan fan. So I'd get to go over there on Saturday
afternoons and you'd have the matinee and he'd always be watching Tarzan.
Tarzan had a loincloth and a knife and the guy survived
his whole life with that. So it kind of set you on a journey right
there. So definitely that was kind of what it was.
And my parents, I played in the woods with my friends a lot and we
were allowed to carry a knife out into the woods. So I had an old,
you know, hurt. Actually. I got my, my father
left, let me have is Hertz knife that
used to be a catalog and they had a knife in there and it was
again, five or ten bucks. And literally it's a version
of a, an old hickory butcher knife. So it was
kind of, you know, again, this is in the early 70s,
so I'm super happy. It's about a 4 inch blade,
very Kephart design. And I still have that knife
to this day. It's downstairs. So I, I definitely,
I was really into that. But it was, it was definitely Tarzan getting the
play in the woods with my friends. We'd run around with our knives and again,
just weren't really bushcrafting. We Were probably
just sharpening sticks and throwing them. Yeah,
no doubt. Yeah. Your mention of Tarzan. I've
talked a lot on this show about how for me it was Daniel Boone, Grizzly
Adams, Land of the Lost. A lot of those shows in the, in the 70s,
guys always had knives on their, on their belts and it meant
self reliance. You know something about that? Yeah,
absolutely. There is no doubt that a knife
definitely opened a lot of doors for me as a young person
later on studying martial arts and stuff. Knives,
the defense of and the use of that intrigued me
quite a bit too. So going from hunting into the, I guess you would call
it the tactical side of things a little bit. And
then from there it went into the bushcraft. You know,
bushcraft was a, and still is a very
large part of what we do. So tell me about the martial arts aspect.
That is not something that I was thinking of.
Well, just that was the other thing, you know, when you were a kid.
About that time was the series Kung fu was on TV with David
Carradino, you know, the 70s. So I got very interested in the martial
arts and was lucky enough that I spent my whole life pretty
much doing one form or another. So as you're doing that
again, weapons defense, learning how to defend yourselves against knives,
sticks, guns and stuff is an important part of that
journey. And in that was learning how to use the
knife in an offensive manner if you ever had to. So that
was kind of where that went. But today it's more for
me cooking bushcraft, still hunting,
but I have to say the most use of my knives today are in
the kitchen with my wife. She'll push a whole pile of vegetables over on
my side and say, let's put these in jars. And, and I
gotta be honest, man, I love. We put on some music and I will stand
there all day with a cutting board and cut
vegetables and fruit. I, I, I just love doing that.
That sounds blissful. That's like a good Sunday at our house.
Except we eat it, we eat it immediately instead of jar.
Well, yeah, we, we spend a lot of time. We, we have food
prep Saturdays and it's one of those things, you know, we try not to, we
try to use everything. She's making soups out of the skins of
this, that and the other vegetable and, you know, or broth and we're filling
jars and dehydrating, you name it, we're putting stuff up.
So how did it come to be that you thought, well, maybe I
can make these things? Well, it all started
again. You had the Love of knives pretty much all the
time. You know, as a young kid, we all carried a pen
knife, you know, a two bladed something or other.
Probably a case of some sort when I was very, very young
or the Barlows. Barlow was. I remember having a
whole bunch of them as a kid. You know, that was, that was something.
And then as you got into it a little
more, I, I kind of happened along this idea.
I wanted to make a knife for my dad. It was literally that.
And I was thumbing through some
magazine. It might have been Blade. Uh, you know, that
was the other thing. I would go grocery shopping with my
wife and back then we had really good magazine racks on the curve.
Yeah, I mean, right. So I, I say we would go
shopping. She would go shopping and come and get me when she was done
and say, you know, grab the one you're buying and let's go. So.
And then they would have knives illustrated, they would have tactical knives, they
would have Blade. Probably a couple ones that I've even forgotten by then.
So I would just sit there and thumb through them. And I believe I
saw an ad in there for a company that's no longer in
business now. It was called Koval's Knife Supplies and they happened to be out
of Ohio. And I thought, wow, it'd be kind of cool to make my dad
a knife for Christmas. So I ordered one of their kidnaps. You
know, not in. But this has nothing to do with me becoming a knife.
This was literally, I was making a Christmas gift for my
father. Being professionally, I was a
carpenter and we were interior trim carpenters. So
we had a good idea about fit and finishing woods and doing different
stuff. Yeah. So I thought, I'm gonna get this and I'm gonna use some wood
from one of the job sites or something and make him a nice knife.
Why I ended up doing that and it turned out really, really nice.
And I was very happy with it. I thought the fit and finish was real
good, so gave it to him for Christmas.
Never really thought anything more of it. I'm not even sure if I had planned
on making myself or not. Then I just started
messing around with some old pocket knives, you know, just getting
the rust off on practice and sharpening, you know, you know, just.
It was loose. Just learning, teaching myself how to tighten it up. Just, just really
plain, seriously, like go to work, come home at night, you know,
eat supper and go downstairs for a little bit and just mess around
again, not thinking about making knots.
So my dad takes his knife to work and he was A project
manager on a construction site at that time. And he
showed it to a couple of guys, and guys went, man, I want one.
Would he make me one? And he goes, I don't know. I can ask
him. So it turned out that
he had a few of the guys there wanting to make.
Have me make them a knife. I'm like, dad, I don't make knives. And he
said, well, just do what you did for me. I was like, okay. You know,
so I. I got a couple more and put them together and
didn't really know how to charge for them, so I just come up with a
number, and the guys scooped them right up. And I'm like, wow, that was pretty
cool. I didn't have to work hard for that, you know. And then that
I dawned on me as, like, you know, out of all the hobbies I had,
you and I were talking about guitars and stuff. They never really pay you
back. You spend a lot of money
on hot rods. Okay, I have. I spent. I went down that
rabbit hole, and I still have one out in the garage. Guitars, you
know, there's just stuff that you just. You spend money
on. Well, here I am. I. This little kind of hobby. Now, when I say
hobby, I've only made a couple, right? But it is like
something I made, and the guys wanted to give me money for it. I was
like, well, that's kind of cool. So I was
kind of interested. And then I started talking to my wife about it, like, hey,
this nice thing, you know, she looks at me, she goes, all
these hobbies you've had all your life, you know, the martial arts.
You spend tons of money doing that. Guns,
collecting knives at the time, you know, again,
cars, guitars, all that. She said, you're not. No
house money goes to this hobby. Oh, okay. I was like,
all right. So literally, she said she set the goal for
me. Or. Or the boundaries. Like, if you're going to be messing around with
this knife thing, it better pay for itself. Yeah.
I was like, okay. Well, but surprisingly, to me, it
was kind of easy to get it to pay for herself. So
I'd get a couple kit knives. And then
another thing that I did early on to teach myself how to do
things was, you know, that late at night, if you stay up, you can
buy these 50 knives for $50. Yeah,
well, some of the guys would buy that, and they would go to a gun
show and then sell them off for a few bucks a piece. Well, I would
go to a gun show and I'd buy two or three of Those things, bring
them home, bust the handles off of them, take my
hand grinder and regrind a profile, change the shape, and then put new
handles on them just to practice fit and finish. Because I had
nothing invested. And surprisingly, people wanted those.
Oh, wow. You know, after I did that, so I was like, okay, 20 bucks.
You know, I'm just. Just trying to make my money to where I'm breaking even.
I don't. So it was a real
interesting start into this
hobby. And after I. I made a few of the kit
knives, I got enough money to. To
I. I might be able to buy a grinder stuff. And
about that time is when I had the opportunity
to meet R.W. wilson. Okay,
so the story behind that. My. One of my buddies
was going to a gun show local to our house here.
And he goes, you want to go? I was like, I don't. I've been
to a bunch of gun shows. Like, like, all right. So I went up with
them, and I'm just walking around, got my hands in my pocket, you know, not
really wanting to buy anything, and I came across this table I'd never seen
before, and it had a whole bunch of knives and tomahawks on.
And I was just intrigued. I was like, wow, this is really
cool. And I'm just kind of looking around, the guy's sitting there. And I. And
I kind of was, boy, I sure would like to know how to make
those, you know, just half kidding. And he
just went, well, I can teach you. And I went, what?
He goes, I can teach you where you live. I said, I live right over
here. And he goes, well, I live right over here. We're 10 minutes apart. He
said, I can teach you. I said, well, that sounds good. And he says, why
don't you come over tonight? I was like, seriously? He's like,
yeah. So I. I again,
real. At that time, I didn't know really who he was. I just knew that
whatever, he knew how to make knives. He was very, very good.
So I got the opportunity, told my wife, like, hey, I gotta go. I
gotta go check this out and go see what's going on at least. I said,
at least then I know what kind of equipment or you know, what I need
for a grinder or thing. Yeah. So I went over there,
and when I walked into his house, on the
wall, there was a bunch of tomahawks
fanned in an array. And I was like, wow, that is
really cool. I said, what is that? And he
nonchalantly just looked over his shoulder. He goes,
Those are the tomahawks I made for the movie Jeremiah Johnson in
seven. Oh, no way. No, dude, I did exactly
what you just did. I went, nah, are you kidding? And he turned around and
walked into the shop. And I'm standing there dumbfounded, like my
favorite movie of all time. And you made the call. Are you kidding me?
Seriously, like, who is this guy? I was
like. I started hanging out. I would go over.
At that time, my job quit at about 2:30. I was home by
3:30. I was at RW's by 4:30. It was like,
I come home, kiss the wife, what chores need done, eat
dinner. And then I went over his house almost every night.
Now, he did not let me do,
like, make the night. Okay. But what he
did do was let me watch
and just simply,
like, cut stuff out. So I would be on the bandsaw
and I would get to cut the knives out. All right?
And that was a. That was a lot of fun. He. He would
take a bunch of steel and weld it together so it's like five
blades thick. And then he would take and grease
pencil the top of it. And I would stand there on a bandsaw. And if
you ever ran a metal bandsaw, number one, it runs slow with one piece
of steel. Well, imagine if you're pushing five pieces of
stacked steel through there. But that's how he did it. He just weld each edge,
and then you would just cut out all five blanks at once, and then you
were done. Okay. So that was. That was a.
A really cool thing. Well, what would happen is. And I would just get the
band because it moved so slow. I could stick my hand way
over here and run it on the bandsaw. And then I could look over his
grinder and watch him grind. So I was kind of doing two
things. I was cutting out these blanks for him and I was grinding.
So that was a very good
training tool for me, that. And his name
was R.W. wilson, if anyone ever gets a chance. Sadly, he's passed on,
but he made some fantastic knives and tomahawks. He
was very well known for his tomahawk. Matter of fact, I
think. Well, it was in the 70s. He made, I believe,
500 tomahawks, the Texas Rangers, for one of their
anniversaries. And I. And when he went to present
that to them to make the tomahawks, he had a tomahawk with him.
Well, I own that tomahawk. Oh. So I had. I have
serial number 000. So I'm
pretty proud of that, that is pretty amazing. You apprenticed with him
basically, even though maybe you didn't call it that, but.
So what was the first knife you made and you know, from
scratch? And what was that process
like, including design? How did you make your first knife?
I started out making what I would consider patch
knives. If you're into muzzleloaders. Yeah, the patch knife
is just a cutting knife. And I saw this design again by
going to the gun shows. You know, I go to the gun shows and there
were people selling, you know, replica antiques or,
or just some patch knives they had, they had made or some things.
And I really was intrigued by that. The acid etched look of them.
Maybe they had bone handle on them, maybe they had a little bit of antler
handle on them. And I started making patch knives.
Well, at first I really didn't know any steel
suppliers or anything, so I would just use old saw blades because again, I
was a carpenter. So I had all these old used saw blades that were no
good. And I went out and I bought
a. Well, first I would just bring them home and
take my angle grinder and cut them out. Just literally cut them out as
close as I could get them, put them in a vise and then just grind
them down the shape. And my first teaching myself how
to. How to grind. This was a little bit pre RW. Again,
carpenter background. I have a 2 by 21
belt sander. Turn it upside down in the
vise, tape the trigger on, and I'd stand there and
grind this way on a little 2 by 21. So I'd go to
Sears, we had a Sears here at the time. And I'd buy all the. The
roughest grid I could find, whatever it was, bring it home and
just wear them out. And that's how I taught myself how to grind.
And it looks as bad as what you think it might because they were
wrong, they were rough. But it was a
great place to start and practice. It was the practice, the
repetition. It's like anything you gotta stand. People ask me
like, how do you get good at grinding knives? I said grinding knives. I mean,
there's no other thing. I can tell you all the way. I can show
you every intricate, this, that or the other. You have to stand in front of
that grinder, you have to make those mistakes and you have to learn how to
fix them. It's like, how do you get it? How do you get good at
punching reps? Exactly. Reps.
So let me ask you this. A big hurdle for a lot of people who
want to get into knives and, or want to get into making knives
is, oh, I can't afford all the equipment. What did you learn
from taking the. The 2 by 22 or 2 by 21,
whatever you said that was, and jury rigging it so that you could grind.
What did you learn from that? Very rudimentary
sort of way of doing it. Yeah. And this goes for. If
anyone is listening and they're like, man, it costs a lot of money
to get into the hobby or into the business.
It depends on how you look at things. And that goes for anything in life.
You can make it hard by the way you think about things, or you can
make it a little bit easy by becoming creative
with stuff. And one of the things that started for me was exactly that. I
used that 3 by 20. It's like a 3 inch by 21
belt sander. Turn it upside down, duct tape thing on, and I'd plug it
in and out. That's how I kept it run. All right. I did not have
a drill press. I had a hand drill. And I found at a yard
sale something that you could take it and put hose clamps on the
side of it. And it had it and it turned it into a drill press
for a year. That's how I drill holes in handle.
So I could do it with that. I would buy my
bone at Kroger's and the dog out.
I would get the dog bones, bring them home,
grind them in half, get my wife's crock pot,
heat up some dye, leather dye that I had
in a mason jar and drop them in that mason jar and let them
sit in there for a week or two. My pins again,
I'm carpenter background. I used four penny nails.
So if you find one of my original patch knives from, you know,
2000, 2001, they're that rough looking
old hickory pieces from the stairs that we would build or something.
The bone, old elk antler, you name it.
That's what went on as the handle. I actually had an old cracked bowling
ball that I found one time. And I cut the bowling ball off and used
the bowling ball pieces for handle material on knives and early days.
You know, if you're creative now, you can go out and you can
spend 3, $200 on a knife grinder. You can
and that you'll have a fantastic tool. But if you start
from the beginning and you, you teach yourself these rudimentary
ways to do it, even if the only thing you have is a mango
grinder, put it in your vise and start working your bevel
you know, you gotta, you gotta have a steady hand. You just got to learn
how to do that. And you have to have a steady hand to use a
great grinder also. You absolutely do. You're absolutely
great. Grinder doesn't mean, you know, that. There's a word that I've been
thinking about a lot recently that get. You get, that gets used a lot
these days, which is deserve. Oh, I deserve this, or I deserve that.
And to me, deserve means you've earned it. And
in a way, it's the same with something like a tool.
You know, you can. You may have earned the money to, to buy the
best grinder out there, but in a way, getting there
through a harder path means you deserve that
grinder in. In a more real way to me, than just coughing up
the cash flow. Absolutely. There are ways to get
around doing. Again, I didn't have
disc grinders or belt grinders to start with. And when I finally did
get a drill press, I bought a bunch of little drums and I would put
them in the drill press and I would use those little drums to grind the
hand or, you know, to shape the handle to get it cleaner yet.
So there's, there's always a way to get something
better. You know, a lot of hand work, put it in your vise and you're
sitting there, you rip sandpaper, and you just sit there and pull it back and
forth across the handle. There's a lot that you can do from there.
You don't need a grinder to sharpen. You just when you're done, you sharpen with
stones. You know, it's. It can be done.
I. I mean, I'm here to tell you, I. My first shop,
I went full time making knives under
my front porch of my house. This is. I didn't have a building.
I didn't have any address other than literally my front
porch. And my front porch is the size of a bathroom.
I can touch the two walls on one side like this, and it's
eight feet across this way. And that is all that it was. And
I had all my tools in there, and I quit my job and went full
time from that place right under that stairs.
So what was it like quitting your job and. And
diving into knife making full time? Oh, it was
nuts. Absolutely not. But I, I'd done it a
few times in my life, so it wasn't, you know, I get a
bug and I just say, this is where we're gonna go for a while. But
again, as the hobby side got
more and I guess better here. What happened was, as I told you, my
wife said, hey, if you're gonna buy knife stuff or do this knife thing, you
have to make the money somewhere other than our house
budget. So I started making some knives
and the patch and eyes out of the old saw blade. And I would go
to the gun show on Saturday. Where I live in Ohio, I can be at
a, to a gun show any Saturday or Sunday, probably
within an hour's drive. So that was easy, right?
Some were big, some were small. I would just take whatever I had made,
go to the gun show and sell most of them, if
not all of them. I was doing quite well again, had to price
down low because my goal was to buy another piece of steel or to buy
another piece of handle or to buy that first grinder that I was talking about.
So that's kind of where, you know, when you step into the business
and all of a sudden these, this hobby is starting to turn
into this, this business. And again at this time,
I'm still not thinking this is what I'm going to do the rest of my
life. I'm a carpenter. I'm building high end staircases.
I'm, I'm doing fine. I like what I'm doing. I love doing spiral
stairs. You know, it was a cool thing. But
at some point kept going. And we go to. My wife,
Elaine is like, Elaine. I come home from work and I
work until 11 o' clock every night and every Saturday and Sunday I'm
at a show and I have a list of, of orders
a mile long. And I'm not even the nightmare.
That's just it. It literally happened
without forcing it to happen. And then all of
a sudden we got to the point where I,
I went to her one day and I went, I think we can do this
for a living. And she looked at me and she went,
okay. And I would look,
we didn't even talk about it. Now understand that I'm a
regular Joe. I got a nice job, you know, I got a house
payment. I got a kid in school getting ready to go to college.
I got two vehicle payments. I'm just, I'm just a
regular guy, you know, and I
paycheck stopped on Friday and I better have money coming in
on Monday. Yeah, so, so that is exactly. And when, that
is, when you're up against something like that, you learn
very quickly. Now, I was always a hustler or a hustler
or I would hump very good. I'm, you know, I have a good work
at yeah. So I just knew you hit the
ground running and you just don't look back. And when you hit that obstacle, man,
you just hurdle it. You figure out how to go around it, go over, go
under it, whatever you have to do, and keep getting after it. And
some days, you know, you make some money. Some days you didn't.
And some days were quite lean. There
was times I went to a show and didn't have enough money to get home
had I not sold a night. But you know what?
That. That it. It makes
you into something that I'm very proud that
I turned out to be. You know, you
appreciate every moment of it when.
When it's like that. It was nothing. No gimmes. You know,
you went out there and you worked at it and did your best and kept
earning it. Yeah. Okay, well, I want
to check out some of your knives. We've been talking for a half hour. We
haven't even looked at your knives. But I want to say, okay, there's got to
be something in the water. I grew up in Northeast Ohio, and
I've had a lot of knife makers on this show from Ohio. I think it's
a great knife state. Oh, as do I. As
do I. And I want you to
show us some knives. And then I want to ask you about your logo. I
think that is such a cool story. But first, let's. Let's check out some
of the knives you've got. I mentioned the large northern hunter. I
don't know if you have one of those. I don't. I have a small.
And. And all. In all fairness, I. I brought
home some stuff that this is about all we have in stock right now.
Okay. And some of these are my own, so I was just like, yeah, I'll
show them this one. But I do have a small northern here. So this is
our small Northern hunter. And the large is.
Is very similar. It's just a bigger version of this.
Yeah. This knife is an AE BL steel,
which is a stainless. One of my favorite steels to use.
It's a great size. This
started out as a hunting knife, but it is quite useful in
the kitchen. We have a lot of people that use this as a kitchen
knife because of the shape and ease of use. And you.
You mentioned you had had a large and orient or you.
No, no. One of my loaned me one, so.
Session for a couple of weeks and. Right, right, right. Yeah, it
is a. Both sizes are a. A very good
pattern for us. We get them made, and they are
literally sold out. Thank God, we have a good fan base and a good
dealer base. So. So we. We have a few right now,
and I brought one home. But that is one of. One of our most
popular models for sure. Our Genesis, which is our
most popular model. I don't even have an example to show you.
So what kind of knife is that? It is a Kepharten design. That's
the Bushcraft, the Scandi Grind. That is what I call our
flagship knife. That is our most
popular. We make more. More of that knife that in our gns,
which again, I don't have an example to show. You have a few other things
here. I think on your web landing page you have a schematic.
That knife right on your web page. I think it is.
Yeah, I think it is the Genesis, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think so. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I believe it is. Yeah.
Now this is what we call our Frontier Valley.
Cool. Now this Frontier valley, we were talking about the patch
knives earlier. Yeah, the Frontier Valley came kind
of out of that look and idea. So it
just did a little bit of a modern version. So you can picture this as
a patch cutting knife. Good size. Again,
this is used for field dressing game,
you know, camp chores, kitchen. This is my wife
and I paring knife in the kitchen. We have a few of these. So
this knife is. Is a great using knife.
This one, we actually. We make our own Kydex. So this one has
the Kydex on it and the slide lock. So we have the slide
lock set up on that. But yeah, the
Frontier Valley is a great knife. This is a good
user, this. Oh, there you
go. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah.
Yeah, we found that picture was one of the drawings. I was like, hey, we
got to put that up. It's kind of cool. I like that. Yeah,
right on. This is our camp
mop. And this is another one of those we just.
And the reason I have this is this is a dealer's knife that's getting
shipped out tomorrow. I just happened to see it and brought it home. This is
a CPM3B knife. So these, if you
start looking at our dealers, the. They will be having these
this month, as they're going out this month, sort of. And again, last
month. Design. Yes, yes, very much. And, and
again, because. Because of, we kind of gravitated toward the
Bushcraft side. The, the Nessmuks and the
Kephart styles. They're very much, you know,
something that we. We sell quite a bit of. So I'm. I'm A non
hunter. I've done a little bit of camping, but not in a long time. Would
you say that Bushcraft knives can easily double
as hunting knives? Now when you get into something like that
it may be more in tune with what goes grind. They are. I
do not have a Scandi grind here with me today but a
Scandinavian grind is a chisel grind. Okay. So it literally
is like a wood chisel. So a lot of the Bushcraft guys love that
for stripping wood and doing it quickly.
So spiel dressing with the Scandinavian
grind absolutely can be done and it can be done
extremely well. But you may if you had the
option a saber grind as. As this is a
saber grind or a full flat grind. As you
can see here, the grind goes all the way to the top. Those would
be more tuned for field dressing game just because of
the geometry of the blade. Okay, okay.
And again not. And to, to. To say that in
reverse you can do Bushcraft with the flat and the
saber but the scan is going to do the
wood much, much better and much quicker. It's.
It's like the, the rifle,
pistol and shotgun. Okay. Fantastic
tools when you use them where you're supposed to use them. If
I take you elk hunting and hand you a 12 gauge shotgun and there's a
600 yard shot, we're not going to have a good time.
But you can't blame the gun for them
for the use. So the same thing you're going to go out and you're going
to do a lot of Bushcraft and take a Scandi because
and size it properly. You know those are things that
sometimes people overlook. They just think the knives are
indestructible and magical. Now you. You know the right knife for the
right job and that is the best way people if
turns a switch on. When you say a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, they're
great. When you use them where they're supposed. To be used
right in the alley with a, with a. With a deer rifle is
probably not the way to go either. Exactly. There you go.
I. I want to talk a little bit about
fascinating story behind your logo and I, and I think that
that, that kind of, I don't
know lends itself to the spirit behind lt. Wright
knives in general. Tell us a little bit about that.
Sure. The. The POW house is what we call
that is the logo. The little tiny house. That
logo I hand drew quickly, I am
pretty sure on a napkin because my wife needed it
to send off to the stamp maker and I didn't know what I
was going to use. I was like, well, I'm going to use lt, right? And
she's like, wow, we got to have a little thing because R.W. had a tomahawk
and his. And R.W. wilson. So I was like, well, I gotta have
something, right, because, you know, so like, how about the pout
house from the farm? So I scribbled this thing out and says, does that look
good? Then I cleaned it up a little bit, and that's what we sent off
for the original logo. So the story of the pout house.
My father and I bought a farm off of our
relative, a cousin of his, number of years ago, back in the 80s.
And my grandmother had grown up in that area and around it. Well,
there was this old shack that was way up in the back woods.
And I never knew what it was. I go sit there and I'd hunt from
the front porch sometimes because, I mean, it was, you know, no one lived there.
It was dilapidated. And one
time we were sitting on our front porch at the cabin, and I said, grandma,
what is that shack up in in the back, that old house thing? And
she goes, oh, that was my Uncle Bill's pout house. And
my dad and I looked at each other and like, what the heck is a
powder? She goes, well, when he would get mad at my Aunt
Mary, he would just go up there and pout. So they just called it his
pow pow. And I thought, well, that's cool. You know,
why not, right? So that kind of
when we, you know, again, when I did the. The knife company was coming together,
like, man, what. That's the backstory for the knife company because
that's kind of where the logos came from, that pout
house. The idea of making knives really came from my
property because I wanted to outdoors have a farm
kind of thing. Wanting to make sure, you know, you had knives and everything.
It just kind of all fell together. And then the story about the blind
horse that was there, he used a blind horse to drag the wood
and do this. And. And I have a. Actually have a picture of that blind
horse. But that's when the name Blind Horse Knives finally,
you know, originally started when I had a business partner in the early days
as well. So it kind of all came from that Powell story. And
it's a great story now, as far as I know
it's true. I cannot. I don't know that for a fact. It was told to
me by my grandmother. It's a great story. And I still,
you know, I. I believe it because I've Been there. I've seen the powthouse
there. There's nothing there now but the, the old
sandstones that it's set on. It is, you know, completely
gone now. I, I just love that. Hey, I love
the name we all need. This is my pout room, you might say. There
you go. We all need a house of sorts. But I love that it was
called that because, you know, as men, oftentimes when we need to
get away, we go to our little private spot and kind of
separate ourselves. I love the name of that. But
you also have a group of people who kind of
workshop your designs, right? You call them the powder house group, something like
that. Well, we have a private forum and it is our pout house
forum. When we first started making knives,
you know, when we first put the company together proper back in the old
blind horse days, we wanted a private forum where our
fan base and our guys could get together, you know,
so we, we called it the Underground. Well, when we went back to the original
name lt right. Knives and stuff, we just took the pout house and
called it the Powthouse or the forum. So we have our
powthouse form, which we have probably five
to 600 members. It, it depends on how that goes.
And it's a paid form, but those guys go on there. We buy,
sell and trade. I bought I don't know how many flashlights
and bags that, you know, backpacks I don't need
and you name it, that kind of thing. So we have our, our own little
buy, sell and trade and the same lt Right. Knives traded, bought,
sold on there. We do special runs for the, the
powthouse. We have key stamp knives. So you have your,
our logo on the one side and on the other side it'll have a key
that's the key to the pow house. So it's an old skeleton key that we
stamp into it. So we had that. We have
some programs we call four on the floor. So we'll put up some ideas and
let the guys vote on the next knife that we'll build for them as a
customer. That's cool. And we get so many people do that
every Monday and Wednesday. Scott, who runs the forum, he goes
in there and puts up a knife of the day. We call it the Hot
off the Grinder. It's a knife we just finished, puts a story
behind it, and then people will put I in and they'll, I'm in on
that. At the end of the day, we'll draw a name and that guy gets
to buy that Knife that's just. We had 12
days of Christmas is another fun thing that we do twice a
year we do virtual shows during. When we're at Blade show in
Atlanta, we do a show at the stop and people can
come by, but it's also virtual on, on the Powthouse forum
live and they can buy and sell and at Christmas
Scott and I will get on there and we have a live on Facebook and
on our forum that goes literally around the world. We got people in
Greece, we got people in Japan, Germany and they're all
tuning in to this. It's a really good brotherhood
of good guys that, you know, we just hang out
and talk knives, guns, trucks.
You know, a lot of guys are into four wheel drive trucks,
Jeeps, Toyotas, camping over landing,
all that stuff. It just as I said, I bought flashlight,
I don't know, drawers full of flashlights. I don't need. Just because I was like,
I don't have that one. Let me try that one for a while. Yeah, well
we all get that here. We all understand the spirit behind that.
How much do you, how much has input
from the people who love your knives already affected how you
design or how you move forward with,
with your knives, with new knives, that kind of thing? Okay, well,
early on, one of the things that was brought up to us was
people were using their blade to scrape
ferro rods. So some, and this was
in the, you know, the early days, someone had mentioned, I don't remember if
it was in an email to me and I apologize, I don't even remember who
it was. Boy, if you just squared off that spine, we wouldn't
have to use, you know, so we were the
first or one of the first companies to ever square
spines. And that is another thing we're known for is our 90
degree spots. They will shower, you
know, flames off of a barrel rod or sparks, I'm sorry, off of
ferro rod. And our knives to this day, we still do that to them.
Another innovation that came out of a lot of
interacting with those guys was the slide locks
that is on this sheath. You may see this on a bunch of
sheaves, but we're the ones that designed that.
And that was designed maybe 15, 17 years
ago. The slide lock there, I see a lot of companies using
it. There are some people that still pay us
royalties for the right to use the slide lock, some don't. But that's,
you know, so that is another thing that came out of interacting
with the public. Some of the designs, I think
the Nesmic design, not that we wouldn't have made
one. But I think we were asked, you know, by a bunch of people,
hey, can you make something similar to that? And as you can see, this is
our, this is our design. It's not the true
Nesmic, but in concept, you know, the
blade, the big bowl up at the top, that kind of thing.
So yes, a lot of the input that we get and even today off of
the forum, you know, I listen to those people.
We all listen to the customers that are buying your product
because they're the guys buying it. If they, well just for
example, steals, you know what's the hot
ticket right this second? Cpm Magna. Yeah.
Yeah, everybody wants that steel. Well,
you can either make some in that steel or you can be hard
headed and not make some in that, that steel. So we do make some in
that steel. Now we still have a two is
our bread and butter steel. And the reason is because
it works. It just works. It works all the time.
So that, but yeah, those there,
there's a lot of input that goes into it and sheath design, you know, pocket
carry, scout carry. Over the years, you know, different things have come up.
We've talked about even down to handle materials sometimes
believe it or not, just because I'm in the knife industry, I may not know
what the newest knife handle out there is. And someone
found one somewhere and said, hey, have you ever heard of this tarot? Like
nope. What is it? And I, they sent some and I started using
like hey, I like that. You know. So yeah,
we can, we can be influenced that way. Yeah,
so you're, you keep saying we tell us about your
shop and, and how your shop functions and operates. You're
no longer under your porch. No, but we were for a
long, we were for a while. When we first went full time and actually
started becoming, I guess what we would consider a company.
We had people working out of our house. My wife and I took
all of our furniture and shoved it into our family or into our
sun room. And our living room was shipping and receiving. Our
dining room had five computers in it and someone sitting at each one.
And we were in. My complete downstairs was
transformed into a knife shop. The
whole entire downstairs. We used to use the washer and dryer. We put
towels down so when we glued up a knife we could put it over there
to dry. There was, it wasn't a again
for someone out there going, I don't have a building, I don't have this. I
don't have this to get started. You know what, just do
it. Just figure it out. Do it. If it's in your backyard, do it in
your backyard. Put up a tent. You know you can. If you want to
do something bad enough, if you want to get somewhere bad enough, you
will figure out those obstacles and you will climb. I'm telling you.
We didn't have a shop for the first four
years we worked from this house there. Matter of fact, they used to be,
you know, the Google Earth pictures. They had taken it one time when
everyone was here and you could see the cars line down my driveway and
up the street. Because at one time we had about 10 people
working in this house. Wow. And then we finally got a building.
So you, you, you post a lot of videos on Instagram
and maybe on YouTube, but on Instagram definitely. And your
shop looks so cool. It looks like such a great place to be.
Yeah. How many makers do you have helping you? There's
10 people completely in the company. That counts. My wife and
Amy who run the office. We have a part time guy named
George who, he works through the shop and, and he,
he's like our prep nurse.
We'll say he's making sure there's things sitting here when we get there,
you know, even, even down to the bathroom. Towels. Sure there's towels
in the bathroom. Because when we got grease all over hands, you know. Yeah. So
he's our prep guy and then we have the rest of us that are making
knives now. We all wear two hats. Scott makes
knives, sharpens knives and runs the POW house. Mikey
is the IT guy. Literally he is got his hands
inside of a computer and then he runs downstairs and then he's gluing
knives up. So I mean, you know, it. That is how we do things.
I run the business from the shop and you know, do all of
my emails and buy things up there. And then I'm still on
a grinder. At least seven hours a day. I'm
grinding knives with the guys. You know, Nick's running the shop, but
running the hot shop and doing finishing. Tyler's doing finishing and
rook grind and Sammy's running the laser and he's doing our
drawings and just things, you know, over and over.
We all have these multiple jobs that, that
we get done. Logan, he's, he's our cleaner guy, but he's also our.
Takes care of our materials and stuff. And. Yeah, there's
some of the pictures. Yeah. And we do a quote of coffee from the shop
every morning too. You do a what? A quote of coffee
from the shop every day on Instagram. If you go on Instagram, you'll see
quota coffee. Yep, yep. Yeah, that place,
it looks like a pretty nice sized facility you got there. It
is now they shop that we were two levels. The
upstairs where we used to be is now office space
and studio space and where we have
storage. And then the bigger place used to be a landscaping
building when they had it. And then when they went out of business,
we took it over and build it out piece by piece, day
to day. It was kind of like we. It took a year to
do it. So I started paying rent on the place and we would build
knives, go downstairs and do this. Build knives, go
downstairs and do this, you know, this thing and get it all set up.
So we had the advantage when we set it up, we have the workflow
set up exactly the way I want to set it up. And we're very
pleased with how that is all working right now. So, yeah, this is
just. Since it'll be a year in December that we're in this
building. Oh, wow. The one before that, we've been there
13 years, 14 years. So when we moved from here, from the house,
we went over there. Matter of fact, the house was so full one time, my
upstairs bedroom next to this one was our studio because we had a
radio show at the time. So we had taken up
over the upstairs. And that's when my wife was like, that's it, we're done. I
was gonna say you. You've got an awesome sounding wife. She's. Oh, yeah,
she's. She's the true boss. She. She keeps us all in line.
I mean, she's the accountant. If you call the shop, she
answers the phone, she answers the customer emails, customer
services, absolutely 100% could not do
it without her doing. And even in the. When it was just me and her,
in the old days, she did all the shipping, you know, taking care of that
stuff and she took the pictures. We would
take them and then have to go get them developed and then
put them on the website. Speaking of pictures in your website,
first of all, beautiful pictures. I was perusing all
your knives, kitchen knives, hunting knives,
Bushcraft knives. I noticed that you had a couple that you made
for Les Stroud. Survivor Man. What
was that all about? He was looking for a
someone to. To bring some of the knives. He has a
show right now called Wild Harvest, so it's on
pbs. Him and a professional chef, Paul Rogowski. This
happened right during the pandemic. I mean, we were shut down. I was at home
again. And this is when it was going on. I was drawing pictures
on the, on the pieces of paper and sending them and text messages to Paul
back. And he's from Kent, so we were doing that back and
forth and that's how it came. So we. He wanted to do a line of
kitchen knives for the show while the harvest kitchen knives. And Les
wanted a machete. He liked our overland machete, but he wanted some different
things. So we worked the tweaks into that. So we have the survivor
man's machete. And then he wanted a field knife. So we had
the Les Stroud field knife and a forging tool. If you
look on there, you'll see the forging tool. So yeah, yeah, we have a few
tools for lesson and fall right now. So
what were the. That foraging tool my
total novice look at it looks like a
big bayonet ground dagger in a way.
And then when I, when I read that it's a forage, a foraging tool,
I realized it was specialized. What, what were the challenges going
into that? Well, if, if you're
familiar with a hori hori, which is his Japanese. Yeah, yeah,
tool of sorts, of kind of a shovel knife kind of thing for doing,
you know, planning stuff. That was what we were after. We one
wanted to design an American version of that
for less because he. That was the whole premise of their show
is they go out and forge for wild stuff and then
they bring it back and create. And Paul, the five star chef,
creates the gourmet meal with it using. Using
his knives to cut up all the stuff as well. Well, so that knife is
designed not only to be a shovel, but it has a blade.
He turn around, hammer with it, whatever he needs to do.
And it's a pretty cool tool. I like it a lot. You
mentioned the hori hori. That, that was the first thing I thought of after I
thought, oh, that looks like a smacket or some sort of a large weapon.
I was like, oh, when I saw a foraging tool, I was wondering, is it
flat on one side or concave on the. No, we actually
made it very similar to a knife. So you have the
knife and then you have a false clip on the top and then an anvil
near the back section. Oh, so it is cool. And,
and the hori hori kind of came out because my wife wanted one, so
we made one for her. This was before. And then when we were talking on
the phone with Les and you know, seeing what he was doing, like, hey, would
you want a forging tool? You're like, yeah. So we
designed it not from the. The Hori Hori,
but more in the. The way we are thinking,
you know, survivor man wood, survival,
foraging. Could he use it as a knife if he need, you know, those kind
of things. So we made it into a complete package which is pretty neat.
Sort of a single bladed multi tool. Yeah, there you go. I
like it. Yeah. And so before
I want one last question I want to ask you, but before we get to
that. Oh, there it is on screen. Yeah, that. Oh, that is a beauty.
That is cool. Kitchen knives. You've mentioned
that you and your wife spend a lot of time in the kitchen and
I know that kitchen knives are a specialty unto
themselves. Getting, getting it just right for
the kind of slicing you do in the kitchen. Was. Was there a big
learning curve in going from these robust
outdoors and, you know, bushcrafting knives
to. To something like a chef's knife? Yeah, I'll let you
know when I get there because yes. No, it is
a learning curve because everybody
wants something a little bit different and that's just human nature. You
know, every professional chef or even the amateur chefs, they have their
idea of what they want and I get that. So it was a lot of
trial and error when we first stepped into
that arena into the kitchen knife. We came from the bushcraft
side. So originally we were into overlanding. We, we all had
jeeps and trucks that were built. We did our camping. So naturally you
want to have a cool set of camp knives with you. Camp kitchen.
So we created our camp kitchen series
is where that started. And they were a little bit
more robust than your fine high end
kitchen knives. But through the years now
we have developed them into more of a
pure kitchen knife. You know, we're grinding them thinner,
but at first, I mean the guy could do bushcraft and then cut up his,
you know, lunch meat or whatever he was cooking at Day
steak. One of the kitchen. This is my most used
kitchen knife. Oh yeah, it turned in. It started out
as a cheese knife and it is
18 inch thick and it's 3. It's a
AEBL, but it's very, very thin and it has the
holes in it so that the cheese doesn't stick to the
side of the knife. Well, it helps with that. It doesn't do it completely.
But this is. This turned into. I use this knife
literally for everything. And my, you know, my wife
knows that is my go to knife. If I'm cutting the matas, it
doesn't matter if I'm cutting meat to dry and the, the dehydrator
doesn't matter. I'm using that knife. It just turned into my
all in one piece. And then our large pouter
is her favorite knife, which is this one and that's Widow
squaw. And this is her color. All of her knives have
toxic green or lime green handles. I love her
or blacked out kitchen. They look really, really cool. But
again, very simple design, very handy. And.
And what a great slicer this is. This is just a
beautiful knife to use. She. This is her favorite user in
the kitchen for sure. Yeah, that, that green color
is such a. Oh, yeah. So beautiful. And I also love the
holes in the blade. I've always thought it would be because
there's nothing to me. Well, there are plenty of things more
frustrating than this, but I cut a lot of cucumbers
and that stick the way they stick and then when they come off, they
roll and all that. Oh, it drives me nuts. So you. So you know. Exactly.
This does not solve it completely, but it does
help, you know, have having those holes in it. And we also have
holes in the. The Paul Rogowski collection on his
large slicing knife. And very much same reason,
you know, to have that work, to have
it release a little bit again. Yeah. So
lt, as we wrap here, I have a sort of a
philosophical question, I guess, but what would you say your
guiding principles are in business, in knife making
that make L.T. wright knives. What it is
from my side of thing is, is everyone has to
like what they're doing and it doesn't matter what you're doing in life
and it doesn't matter how much money you're making when you do it.
If you're. If you really, really love what you're
doing, then pursue that. Okay. And I just happened to get
lucky in my life and get something that
there's not a day I don't wake up and put a smile on my face
because I get to go times with 10 of my best friends.
I mean, come on, I'm a lucky guy, right? Yeah, sounds like it.
So from that side, on a personal level, I would encourage
anyone to just, man, you know, it's the follow your dream kind
of thing. Because if you just, if you put enough effort into
it and you just stick with it, stick with it, stick
with it. It's going to work out. It. It just will. You're going to figure
it out. If you really, really want to do it, you will it out
from a business side. One of the biggest things that I want to make sure
of and, and when I went into business. I looked at
things a lot of different ways. I'm like, okay, every time I take
my car in to get something fixed, it's out of
warranty and it cost me 500 bucks, whatever. And that was
just like, man, why, why does that keep happening on
stuff? It's like, it shouldn't be that way. So I
wanted to have the customer service side of the business
very much in tune with it. Doesn't matter why you don't like.
If you don't like the night, if it doesn't work for you, or if there's
something wrong with it, just send it back. That's it. You
don't have to argue. I mean, we've had people call ready to argue with Elaine
on the phone, and she's like, send it back, man. We'll take care of
it. You know, we're sorry for it. And she usually,
9 out of 10 times, everyone's okay with that. But you have to have that.
Don't be afraid to put your name on something. And when you do put your
name on something, stand behind it and just be true about, you know,
it's one of those. We have repair,
replace, refund. That's it. There's. It's never
going to be like, oh, too bad. You had it 31 days and the
warranty stopped at 30. No manifest something
there. And that's how I wanted to be treated. So I wanted
that for our business. The other thing is we answer the phone. You don't have
to go and get. Dial 4 to get customer service.
You dial the phone and my wife will pick it up. If it does not
pick up, I promise you it's because she's on the phone,
but she'll call you back. I personally try
to answer every single email every day. If I
miss an email, I get it the next day. I just.
Because that's again, that's how I want to be treated when I'm emailing something.
People are contacting you because something to them is important.
Whatever that thing is, it's important to them. It's not to
me. It's irrelevant because they're reaching out to me. So
I need to treat that just as important as they believe it is
to them. So I want to stay on top of it. So you just want
to get out there and do the best work you can. You're going to make
mistakes. You know, we. We make boo boos now and then,
and you just own up to them, fix them, and you just move right on
and do better next time. And then we generally have a company meeting
and I go, okay, guys, how did this slip through the cracks? And we put
in a stop gap to make sure that that doesn't happen
again. The policy in the shop right now is even
my work gets looked at by one or two sets of eyes before it
moves on. It has to be that way. It has to be that way.
I'm not perfect and I miss stuff and I look at every single
grind that goes by. It comes by my
bench, you know, it just does. That's just the way we have the company set
up. So there's always multiple eyes on it. And the girls
before they drop it into the box, if they see something up the street, got
a little tick mark on it or something like that, back to the shop
they had, you know, that's just the way we do things. Outstanding.
A lot of golden rule I'm hearing in there and that's something
I think. Those are inspiring words to anyone listening
to this. Definitely. Knife makers and, and business people.
LT thank you so much for coming on the Knife Junk. You bet. I've really
enjoyed talking with you. Yeah, and you too, man. It's been a
nice conversation. Thank you for biting us on. I really
appreciate that. Anytime we get to talk about about the knives
and, you know, just where they came from or even the story of the powthouse
and stuff, I enjoy telling it. So thank you very much for the
opportunity. Oh, the pleasure is mine. Thank you, sir.
Knife themed shirts, hoodies, mugs, water bottles and more.
The knife junkie.com slash shop There he goes, ladies and
gentlemen, Lt Wright of Lt Wright Knives. I heard a lot
of follow your passion and customer service. What, what else do you
want to hear from one of our favorite knife makers out there? Be sure
to check him out on Instagram. Some great videos coming from the shop
there. And check out the beautiful website and. All the gorgeous knives.
All right, for Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DiMarco saying
until next time, don't take dull for an answer. Thanks for
listening to the Knife Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please
rate and review it. Review the podcast for show notes
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Visit our website thenif junkie.com. you can also watch
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