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 custom knife maker Jeff
Schafer. I first got wind of Jeff to through Rolando
Escutada and the big beautiful Bowie chopper that
he featured on his channel right After Blade Show 2025.
Jeff's work features classic American knife profiles made
by hand with attention to detail, balance and performance.
Jeff is a martial artist and a man of adventure whose custom knives have
caught the eye and attention of some of the finest practitioners
and trusted voices. Of the bladed martial arts. We'll meet
Jeff, check out his work and hear about his career in knife making. But first,
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professionals. Theknife
junkie.com/battlebox . Jeff welcome to
the Knife Junkie podcast, sir. Oh, thank you. Thanks
for having me on. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's really good to meet you.
Rolando spoke very, very highly of you. The man and also
the, the big Bowie chopper that he,
he got from you. Let's just start there
and then we'll go back and, and find out who you are and you
got here. But that knife. Describe
that knife. I. It's just a really
big chopper knife. It's ADC RV2 steel,
got a convex edge, a sharpened clip
and. I can't. Remember what the handle was
right now, but it's got like
some nice wood handles on it. So the thing that really
struck me about that knife is, well, first of all,
I'm a sucker for a sharpened clip. Anyone who's watched this
show for any length of time knows that, but also
not used to seeing a sharpened clip on a chopper style knife like that. And
when I think of a chopper, it's, it's what you were, what you made
there. Something where the guard itself is the Wideness of the
blade. Right? Yeah. How do you come up with that
design? Well, it's, it's kind of
inspired by a Jerry Fisk knife that
he's made a long time ago and I
had an order for one so I made couple.
Yeah, Fisk. I know, I know that Rolando's a collector of him
and, and, and like that. But so, so a knife
like that, a chopper you don't think of as something
that's going to move around as well as it
does. Tell me about, tell me about the, the making of
that and the kind of considerations you had going into that. Obviously it's a fighting
knife. It's not necessarily like a, a go
out in the woods and baton firewood kind of knife.
Right. It can, it can be used as a fighting knife or you know,
a woods chopper. You know, if you get attacked
by an animal in the woods that could help really well. But the,
the sharpening clip is really good for the back, back cuts
and it's got a nice
distal paper so, so that it's not super tip heavy
even though is, it is heavier than a
specific made for fighting knife. It's a little bit
more weight forward than that. It will chop really well
on two bars and any kind of limbs and stuff like that.
So how'd you get into this? How did you get into knife making?
Well, a long time ago when I was in high school,
I bought a really cool double edged knife and
I took it to school back in the 80s and a friend
saw it, liked it more. He paid me double for what I paid for it.
So I thought well I'll just make another one because I have, I have books
on making knives and I tried but it was
terrible. It was just like from a little pile
and of course I had to do a double edged knife for the first knife
and it was, it was terrible. And had a piece of two before for
a handle and so I put that on the back shelf until
I got married and moved to a house where I
could have a shot. And so as soon as I got
my shop built I was ready to start making knives. So I, I
was. Where was the Arizona custom knives or somewhere
where. I was reading a little bit about you and you mentioned something
about your grandma. We hear a lot about
grandpa's and that's where who I got my first knife from. Tell me about your
grandmother. Well, my grandma, she had this little. Well I
say little is about this long butcher knife
that it was real cheap and wouldn't hold an edge. It
had Hollow scales on it, like plastic
scales. And she would
like take, take the knife and put it down beside her leg
and say, here, you can go play with it. I was like in the low
mid single digit age and I don't know if she was
trying to get, just get rid of me, let me go play or let me
go hurt myself. But my mom really didn't like it, but she didn't say
anything to her. And so that's where I really got
playing with. I would go ask her for that knife every time we go
to their house and I go outside and I would throw with it
whatever, stumps, birds, anything that came along.
And it was, it was just a lot of fun for me when I
was a kid. Yeah, I think, I think you and I
are similar generation. I was in, I graduated from high school at the very
end of the 80s and back then, you know, we were a tougher
breed. We, we were, we were talking for lions,
right? We would just, we would just go out in the middle of
the summertime and camp on the river for two or three weeks, you know, just
wow. A few of our, our kids, you know, in
like the 10, 11, 12 year old range,
we would just go out there and camp and fish. Where, whereabouts
were you? Northeast Arkansas. Arkansas. Okay. Yeah,
well, I was in Bourbon Cleveland, so we didn't get as much as, as
Arkansas. You were about to say something. I'm sorry. Uh, it's just we got, we
got five rivers here in the county, so. And,
and a guy knew, one of my friends knew a guy that had some
river property. So we were back there on private property and,
and his mom and dad would come out, check on us every once in a
while. So you mentioned you had a, a
Gerber, like double edge. And, and I know you didn't mention Gerber, but I remember
reading that and you sold, you sold it to your, your friend
at school and then decided, hey, I'll make one, right?
You said you had knife books laying around already.
So how did that come about? I mean, was it
from like your grandmother's kind of
encouraging it or how. Yeah, well, you know, she's, she
started to spark. And I would look at all the really
custom made knives from back in the era and
I love those really nice buoys with the
walrus handles and the nice guards and even
Damascus back then. Was this really getting popular
as far as I can remember. And
I thought, well, the only way I'm ever going to be able to afford one
of those is to make it myself. But Turns
out it would have been cheaper for me to buy some knives the then
build a shop. But anyway, this is a lot more fun. Well, yeah, thank
God you didn't because we wouldn't be talking right now.
So martial arts, what. What kind of role did martial
arts play or do martial arts play in your life?
The. I was very deeply into
it for a very long time and I'm kind of out of
it now because there's just. All I do is make knives now.
But I started out in tang soo do
right out of high school and later on
got into the bujinkan and some
screamer. And towards the
end of my career as a martial artist, I was
doing Brazilian jiu jitsu. Okay. All right. So
escrima, that's I. That's the
intersection of knives and martial arts to me though. I don't know what you said.
Is it something about Buddha? It's a. It's a
jab. Really old Japanese martial arts. Is
that also blade oriented? It's weapon oriented, yes.
It's like swords and we got
weird sticks and chains and stuff like that. Oh, back in the
80s that it was. What was the, the all the
incapacity ninja. They.
They marketed it as ninjutsu. I got you. Yeah,
not really. It was mostly samurai. Okay. So
escrima, that's what I'm most familiar with. I've. I've done
a bit of. Well, I did a bunch of Kali for a long time, but
same like you kind of been out of it for a little while.
As far as like regularly practicing though, I
practice around here. I just have no one to. Just a bob dummy to hit,
but. That'S what I do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know that.
That's is better than nothing. You gotta swing the stick some. Yeah, yeah,
exactly. Well, how much did Filipino martial
arts encourage you? Or
inspire, that's the word I'm looking for. Inspire you in your knife
making Quite a bit. I, I love the
Baron for one thing and just
all the martial arts weapons are really cool.
I like the butterfly knives and the Chinese
side of things. I never studied that with anybody, you
know, but those are basically giant
Bowie knives. But I,
I got a lot of inspiration from them. I still haven't made them barong
yet, but I want to.
Yeah, I'm thinking just knowing that the
chopper and seeing how beautiful it is and
it's a big. Your, your bowie chopper, the one we were talking about earlier,
that's a pretty big knife. Looks like maybe a 11 inch blade or something.
Well, it's 12 inches, 12 inch blade. You're.
You're approaching that, that short sword area
though. I know I say that and people like, oh, short sword. I know it's
got to be bigger than that. But still, you know, that Barong. I've seen Barongs
that are somewhat small, you know, and then, yeah, they get
larger. That is one of my favorite all time blades. Yeah,
it just looks like it got a lot of power out there in the meat
of that blade. Yeah, yeah. And the
handles too, I got. This is my favorite. I have a couple of Barongs that.
This one right here is one of my favorites. That is really cool.
So is this something that you're considering doing
sometime in the offing here? All right. Yes, it'll
probably be in the next year though. And you know, unless I
get an order or something. Right now I'm focusing
on the A.B.S.
journeyman Smith test. Oh. So I'm trying to, I'm
trying to do that. I said it out loud. There it is. For some reason,
every, every year something happens and I don't actually
get pickled. So I'm
planning on this year making a solid stab at it. Oh,
that's good. So that's, that's at Blade Show
Atlanta, right? That's where they. Right, okay. Yeah. So what kind of prep are
you doing to become a journeyman? Well,
first off, you gotta, you gotta pass the performance knife test,
which is a 10 inch blade with.
And it has to be able to chop a 1 inch rope,
1, 1 swipe, chop
through 2, 2 befores and
then bend. Well, then shave, gotta be shaving sharp
after that. And then it's got to bend 90 degrees without
breaking. That's crazy. It is.
So is this a knife that you've already made or is this.
I've made a few. I'm gonna make another one. Got one. One more to make.
And then I'm hoping to test like next, next month. Okay. For the
performance test, you got to do that first. And then whenever you
go to Atlanta, you got to take five presentation
knives that are just, you know, as perfect as you can make them.
Well, for the testing, for the performance test, you're not doing the test though, are
you? Oh, you do? Yeah, you do. You do the cutting
and everything. And what do they do? What do you do? Videotape yourself
and show it off or. Oh no, you go to a master bladesmith
shop. Oh, okay. Yeah. And do you have someone already picked
out or lined up? I. I do have a guy.
Can I say his name? Sure, yeah. Tad lynch, he lives
about a hour and a half, two hours from here and
I've contacted him but it's been a little while and so
I got to get back with him and try to get that test set
up. Okay, so, so all right. We can
assume from the fact that you're, you're going for your journeyman, you want to become
a journeyman, that you are forging
blades. Yes. So there is a
huge process of
learning there how tell take us through that. I mean the
first knife you made was a file and you were trying to approximate a
double edged Gerber boot knife or something like that. Yeah. And here you are
now ready to, you know, ready to go into your journeyman testing.
How did you take that journey?
Well, mostly know I learned from books but
I went to a lot of hammer ends
to watch Master Smith. Like here, here in
Arkansas. We have a really good school down
there. The, in Old Washington is where I went
most of the time and it has now moved over to Texarkana.
But twice a year they have a hammer in where they
do demonstrations and there's always a foraging, always,
always grinding and a heat
treating demonstration. And then there's other
stuff, you know, as the mastersmiths want to do, wanted to
show. So I've been doing that for about eight years.
So you've learned a lot. Picked up a lot. Only eight years.
I'm sorry, wait a sec. Really? Yes, I've been forging, you know, I've been
learning to forage and stuff for about eight years. Wow. Okay. For some
reason, just, I guess the reason is the work I've seen you make.
It seems like you've been doing it longer. Oh, I appreciate it. Yeah.
Yeah. So here's. Okay. I,
I, at some point I always say like when I retire I'm a handy
guy and I'm also kind of an artistic guy and there's a lot
of untapped potential in me and, and, and
a lot of that is because a lot of my artistic
pursuits tapered down when I had a family and, and you know I
do this show and I do a couple of other little things but at some
point, and I always say in my retirement because I do have a day job,
I, I want to throw myself into knife making
just because I've dabbled a little tiny bit, but never with
forging. What would you say to me if, if I were to tell you like,
yeah, that's got a really, that's got to wait because of all the equipment and
the, and the noise and is that true or am I just holding
myself up? No,
you know, it's a little bit of a, an expense to start out with
and it, if you wanted to ease into
it, you could just start doing stock removal knives.
You got to do that anyway. After you forge a knife, you got to do
some stock removal. And some knives are just better for stock removal
than forging. And so
get a grinder and a drill press and everything
else you can, you can go from there with
and then do a few knives, you know, whatever
has as. As
funds allow. Get a, A nice. You could build a
forge. I built my forge and I also built my grinder,
but you could get an anvil and start
to go into hammer ends and learn. Because it's much better
to learn from somebody that knows what they're doing.
It'll save you so many headaches to go and learn how to,
you know, forging a point on a blade that can be
persnickety at times. Yeah. And just learn the
whole process. So were you always a handy
person? Yes, I always, Always. My
dad, he was, he was real handy. Anything he, he had, he
built some little crafts and stuff, but he would always be working on the car
and doing maintenance on the car and, and working on
the lawnmower or whatever. He built the back half of our house
when I was a kid. So I was there in the middle of all that.
And I just, you know, I just think you can probably build
whatever you want to build, you know, if you, if you
really want to do it. And, and if you learn from books
really well, which I'm sure you do, because you're a bookish
person, you know, you said, and you can learn just about anything
from, from books. But nowadays there's so many videos online
that's. Or some of them aren't very good, but
there are, you know, you can, you can, you can learn a lot of stuff.
A lot of Master Smiths have content out now. That's
exceptional. Who, who, who do you like? I
like Kyle Royer on his. He, I,
I get his,
like, I get his courses online courses and
I. Let's
see who else.
I got some more that are. Jason Knight. Oh, yeah,
yeah, yeah. He's got some good classes out online
and they also. Almost all, all
mastersmiths will help you out. You know, for the most
part. I, I haven't met one that's not really nice and
loves talking about knives, you know. Yeah. In the abs,
you're. If you're close to one of those guys, you can go visit Them and
learn a ton in just a little while. So there, there's a
connection actually, may as well just draw it
right now. There's a connection between you and one of the
founders of the abs and I'm thinking, and
this might be the long way around, but Bill Bagwell, right, He was one
of the founders, right? And I know that James Keating
loved Bill Bagwell knives and he also loves your
knives. Right James, Tell us who James Keating is and
how did you get involved with him? Well, James Keating is a very
long time martial artist who
was back when I was a kid, he was on the COVID of Black
Belt magazine. He had so many
videos and stuff out. I had used to, whenever I'd be sitting at
my computer I would have, I had a list hanging down off my bookshelf
that, of his videos that I wanted, you know. And
so we got together through a buddy of mine, David
Benefield, he teaches at
FLETC down in North Carolina. And I
turned him on to James Keating and he went and trained with him
and then he said, hey Jeff, James needs
a, needs a knife maker. His knife
maker is leaving him and said, wanted to know if you start. And that was
right when I was first getting started. So there's a lot of work for me
to get a knife fixed up and sent to him and let
him check it out. And he liked it. So we've been, we've been making
his knives ever since. So. Okay, all right, so you say, all
right, there are a couple of things here, but first. Okay, the first, the thing
is his knife maker left. So he's got his. So
James Keating, master at arms. So
he's, he is the man when it comes to bowie knife fighting. I know that.
Yes. And I can presume that he's a lot, a lot of other stuff, right?
Well, yeah, pretty much all swords,
handkerchiefs, guns. He's really good with guns too.
And he's, he's, he's made, he's made it
several knives over the years that were custom made
and he's got like his, the little
stinger that you. I got one somewhere, but I don't know, I didn't think about
it that you put in, in your hand, you know, and it's like a. Kind
of like a plastic push dagger. Yeah. You know that he,
he invented that and got a bunch of those that. He sells
and, and he invented and designed. So first of all, I think it's just so
cool to have your own knife maker. Oh, I have, I have my, my
guy who Makes all my knife ideas, but he had that. Is
it the court? Not the cortado. What is it called?
That long double edged fighting knife? The.
The crusader crusada. Yeah, right.
I know, he designed it. Do you make that for him now? Yeah, I make
it for him. And all I have are some
trainers, something like this, about this size,
as you can see. And this hole is for quillians that come out. So when
you're looking at it, the quillions will stick out like this. And that's where the
cross, the croissantic name comes from.
Hold, hold that up if you would. Okay. It's, this
is my own one that I trained with, so it's a little. Bit beat
up, but. Okay. So it's got the, it's got the big guards
there and it's got a Spanish notch. Right.
And what's that for? It's for catching
blades. Kind of like that. We really
lock in there. And if you look at the design,
the tip of this quillion
feeds, feeds the blade into the, the
notch. So this slides down and then it catches in
there. It can also work in the back. It'd be used as,
you know, a disarm.
You know, it's hard, it's hard to use. And for me, I
mean, he knows. He knows how to do it really well. Yeah.
And I love the look of that knife. I think that's one of the
coolest knives I've ever seen. And the idea of those little quillians that
screw in through the center right
there. Yeah. This is the buoy model.
I haven't made any of the double edged ones, the spear point ones.
It's got a slight recurve right here
and it's made for fat cutting and,
and fighting. That's so cool. So, okay,
before we got started, you showed me a bowie of your
own making that I made for a friend. Can you show this off and
talk about it a little bit? Okay. This knife
right here. Yeah. That is so
cool. A buddy, he contacted me and he wanted,
he wanted a knife, you know, the Louis Lamour.
There's a, there's a, there's a character in there called the Tinker.
And he, he's a knife maker, a martial artist and knows
languages and stuff and he makes the best knives. So my
buddy said, hey, would you make me a knife that the Tinker might make?
And Louis Lamour and I go, okay. So I checked it out and
this. Is. 1084
steel with a mild steel forged guard,
a sunset bronze spacer, and a
Crown stag crown handle. Oh,
God, that's so. Okay, hold, hold it up so we can see it. Yeah,
there you go. So this, this an interesting.
So it's a long, sort of slender
Bowie profile. It doesn't have much of a curved
clip at all, but it's got. It looks like that clip is sharp. Is that
right? It is, it is sharp. Yep. I don't like, you know, dough
clips either. Yeah. But
I made the sheath. It's a, it's a sheath that goes, that fits
in between your belt and the belt comes along and
snags right there. So you can put it in your gun belt and it just
sits there. You can put it cross draw or
however, however way you want to do it. I, I love that
knife. I gotta say. Totally. I love that knife. That
giant S guard is pretty impressive too. How does
it. When you're, when you're using it, how does that fit in the
hand? You see, there's, there's plenty of clearance for your
fingers and it's, it's almost like
a D guard. So any, any blades
comes down this way. It's pretty good. You
got a pretty good hand protection there. And this is,
this top part is good enough that you, you could
possibly catch a blade with it or whatever. Oh,
yeah, I see what you mean. Like you got a blade sliding across the spine
and you twist it. Yeah. Lock it up
like one of these coming down here like this
and then. Yeah. So what, what is
the, what are the knives that people come to you for? I, I would imagine
you're not always making tinker bowies or the giant choppers. What,
what's your real Brett and Butter style of knife? Well,
probably a hunter. I got, I got. I, I was trying
to get one done for you. I made a bunch of these, but I,
I didn't get it finished. My, my
friend back when I was doing jiu jitsu, he has his own
school now. And so whenever he,
whenever he gives a new belt, a new person, what's that called,
Promotes a person, he gives them a knife. One of my knives. So
I, I make a custom knife for him and he, like right now I'm g.
Making a brown belt knife. We, we started out
originally with these little knives here
for the, the blue belts. You can
see maybe. How cool. Yeah, we can see that
beautiful little clip point looks like a mini fighting bowie. But you've got the blue
pins, right. And it's got a blue liners. Oh, that's so
cool. And I call it the baby buoy. You know, but
baby boy, that's the. One we first started with with him
making these little knives, and now I've sold a bunch to law
enforcement, you know, because they like the thin blue line. And
this one made for my, my mother in law.
I don't know if you can see it, but it's pink. Put your hand
behind it. We might see the color better. Yeah, there we go.
Oh, that cool. It's pink with the white liners.
Love how those are. Let me ask you a question about the jiu jitsu
knives. Okay. So this isn't like taking taekwondo
at the mall. You're not, you're not getting a new belt every week. And I
don't mean to be dissing taekwondo or anything like that, but, but, but
Brazilian Jiu jitsu is notorious for the length of time between
each belt, so it's not like he's giving these things away all the
time. No, not all the time, but he has given out quite a few of
them. And I think it took me,
I went one day a week and it took me
almost three years to get my blue belt. So, you know, that's your first
from the white belt. So as, as they
progress, did the, did the knives get larger?
Yes, we, we haven't made a black belt one yet. Okay. We,
we've talked about it and it might be, it might be a bowie knife, so
we don't know for sure on that yet. Wow, that's pretty
cool. So with the,
with, with your progression of your ability to
knife fight and use a bowie, what have you learned from working
with James Keating on, on his knives? What kind of
things have you learned about knives that you, you maybe didn't think about before
you were working with him? I don't really
know. He, he has had a lot of insight in the, the
knife industry and
some general business stuff. Like somebody would
buy something from him and they would tell
PayPal that they didn't get it, you know, and so they got
scammed. He. PayPal would give their money back and then they,
you know, if it was a knife or something, he, he would be out as
a knife too. So he still need to watch out. For that kind of
thing, man. I mean, you would think knowing who this
guy is, you wouldn't mess with him because they, these things called
airplanes, you could get on one and go find that guy. Exactly. And he's got
your address. But in terms
of knife design for what, what his purpose is, you know, I'm,
I'm presuming you're making him fighting knives.
Well what are the knives you're making him right now? Well,
all I have are
trainers. He has a sub hilt
that you can see. These aren't
forced or anything. These are a water jet cut and
but this is, you know, he's, he likes the trigger
on there. Whenever he, he has a specific
purpose for the trigger. If you go learn from him, he will teach
you how to use it in the, the knife fighting perspective.
And but this is a trainer. I got one. You
know, I have one that's bead blasted. It might not glare as much. Oh
wow, that is, that's crazy.
But it's a neat, it's a neat little knife. It's kind of,
the blade is sort of like a Randall number one. Yeah.
And then his handle is, it
comes down pretty good ways here where it's like a pistol, almost
like a pistol grip so that the alignment of your hand.
Oh, I'm bleeding. Alignment of your hand is,
is, you know, in line with the thrust and a sharpened
clip so that you can back cut with it too. That
looks smaller than what a lot of his
knives tend to be. At least that I know of.
Right. He's had this one out for a while, a pretty good while.
And but the,
there's several people who every day carry this
even though it, it is, it's big knife but it's not
nearly as big as the Cassada. Right.
So in terms of making a knife that's meant
for fighting balance,
this is something Rolando for instance was talking about.
He talks about that a lot and he's a, if, if people don't know him,
they, they need to check out our many conversations on this show. I love
he's a great guy but also he's very interesting to talk to
about the specifics of knife fighting and he frequently talks about the balance
of a knife. And with my limited knowledge I can, I can
feel how a well balanced knife or a knife that's
balanced for the purpose is superior to, to
another. When you're making a knife say for James Keating or just
in general a knife that you consider to be a self defense or a
fighting knife. What goes into it in terms of that
aspect of the design, the balance and the feel.
Okay. Like the, the, the big chopper that
Rolando has that has a forward balance
for, for chopping and but
the, the croissanta, I make these to balance right here in the
quillian. This is the aluminum version so
it doesn't, doesn't really balance. But
right here in the Quillion so that it's fairly
lightweight at the tip. So the tip is really fast and whenever you put
the quillions in, it doesn't change the balance. Oh, that's
smart. So that's why I like on this one. That's what I
worry about. This one is a little bit
light in the tip as well because there's quite a bit of meat in the
handle. So they're quick.
So do you test out your work? I do, yes.
I test out on everything because I have,
let's see, I like to chop
into either some micarta or I, I've got a piece
of a persimmon tree that persimmons really hard
and maple. Some of the maple
can be soft pine trees. You know the pine lumber pretty
soft. I, I test those specifically for. To make sure
that I heat treated it because I have forgotten to heat treat one.
I've. I've made a couple of knives and then whenever I, I just did a
little thing like that and bent the edge and I'm like
well start over. Oh, that's got to be
brutal. You. So you can't just pop the handles off and heat treat it?
No. Once you grind it thin enough to be a knife,
whenever you heat treat it, the, the, the edge will wave like this,
you know, at. And so you have to grind that all off
and by then it's a completely different knife.
Okay, so this reminds me of another
topic. My wife and I are huge fans of Forged in Fire.
And I understand you recently competed on that. Well,
it was, it was recently aired. I,
it was filmed four years ago. Oh geez. Okay. Yeah,
yeah, they, they had a bunch in the can that they, you know, like
25 to 30 shows that the, they had
filmed but hadn't aired and mine was one of them.
So on season, at least on our TV
season 12, episode one, they finally
released. Released that. What, what was the challenge
knife? The, the. It was a machete.
Machete. First. First round machete. That's the. At
my what. There may have been some more big room ones since the,
since you know, since
you know before mine but not that I had seen at the time. So
mine was the biggest knife that for the first round
that I had seen and I was like, oh my goodness. This
was the Pimp My Blade episode in My Blade. Yeah. Gosh. We just
watched that and I didn't even know who I was watching. How crazy is that?
Yep. Yep, that was me. It's awesome. So what was
that experience like? It was awesome. I loved It. I
would. I would go back again anytime. It was. It was really fun to see
how it was made and everything.
I had a whole lot of fun. Got to meet some cool
guys and just make knives. It was. It was very
fun. So working in the. On
the. I mean, I'm not sure if it's a sound stage. It
seems like it's a warehouse or something. Yeah, it's a warehouse.
What's that place like? Well, it's
really cool in the back area. You come through the
back, and you stage back there. And whenever
I was getting ready to go on, we have guys that stay with us the
whole time so that there's no possibility of cheating going on.
They take. They take the competition very
seriously. And so one of the guys goes, okay,
Jeff, whenever I say Action Jeff, you go out. And
I said, oh, from now on, I'm gonna have everybody just call me Action Jeff,
you know, and he goes, and.
But I got out there the very first thing I did, you know, and they
cut this out. But the first thing he did was, you know,
Grady was like, hello, Jeff. Welcome to the forge. And I was like,
hi, Cody. Sake. And I. Who's Cody?
And every time I looked at one of the cameras, I was thinking, there's a
million people looking at me. So what. What's the hardest part
about competing on that show? Probably
time. Worrying about the time, you know, Definitely the time. You
can't make a really nice knife in five hours, right? And so you got
to make a nice enough knife and try not to rush
yourself, which is what I did and caused my problems.
But, you know,
whenever I got done with the forging the blade, I had, like
20. 20 minutes left. I thought, wow, I could have. Could have
done some. Something else. I didn't realize that I was done that fast,
but I did get it. Get it finished. So what did you do
before the show? Before you. I know this was four years ago
at this point, but what did you do leading up to it to prep
yourself? I made a list of things that I wanted to
practice and to experience before I went to the show.
And they. They had a question there, and they
like, have you ever done this? Have you ever done coal? Have you ever made
a crossbow? Have you made stuff like that?
And I didn't practice making a Costco, but I did
go practice. I don't have a hammer, a power hammer
or a press. And so I went to a friend's shop and
used his to make some Damascus and that sort of thing. Just
make sure I knew What I was doing when I got out there and did
that, that's. So is that something that you plan on
investing in at some point, like a big. Oh, yeah, definitely. So
when I retire, the. When you retire. Okay, so the, the.
Is the press the same machine as the hammer?
No, they're two different machines. The press just
squishes for like 25 tons or more. You
can get smaller ones and it's really great for making
Damascus. Any kind of Damascus you can use that. The
hammer is just beef like that. And it's great for
forging out blades. You know, you can forge them out and you can also
do certain types of Damascus on those as well.
Okay, so those, those presses. And they have those cool dieses that,
that sort of press in. That's for getting your welds
together. Right, right. Getting them, getting them,
getting them there. You can, like, if you put like you, you had it like,
like this, you can squish from the corners of the blade
and make C's and W's
to make all kinds of different patterns with that.
But you. You're right. Whenever. Squish. But you can do. You can
do the, the squishing to the initial weld on the hammer too.
Okay. Okay. Is this something. Do you do Damascus
regularly or. Not regularly, no, I, I
just. Whenever I go to my friend's house, I'll make some. But
it is, it's on the list. Right now I'm getting prepared
for retirement. I got a year and a half to maybe two years,
and so I'm getting stuff for the house. Retirement
funds ready to go. But as soon as I retire,
I'm going to be hitting some classes
with the master smiths and
getting the tools that I need for the. The press and
maybe a hammer. What. What line of work are you retiring from?
You don't. I am a letter carrier. City carrier. Oh, okay.
Post office. Yeah. Oh, we are. We all. Thank you. Especially
knife junkies such as myself who. Who rely on good folks like you.
To bring our little addict the knives back and forth. Right? Yeah. Yeah,
exactly. You know what? I'm going to knock on wood, but it's.
I remember when I first. I mean, I've. I've been into knives since I was
a little kid, but when I really like, I. I feel like it was
2012 or 2013 when it really picked up for me and I
started online and trading and mailing and
people always used to complain about the post office, and I was like, geez,
knock on wood. I've never had me too. I've never had, I've never lost
a knife either coming or going, either way.
And I have had some like a T shirt
or something get lost in the mail, but nothing too, too bad.
Yeah. Yeah. Which for like about 18 years I was my own mail
carrier. So at least that last, that last mile, I knew I was
going to get it then. Yeah. Yeah, man, that's, that's a lucky, that's. A bit
of luck there. Yeah. For me, if it, if it makes it to
my post office, I'm going. To get it, you know. Yeah. So I
found something else about you and
I'm not stalking you, but I had to do some research. Right. It said
that you are a cold case murder investigation
blade expert. What is that all about? Well, they.
I got a friend who, who is a reporter and
he has, he's covered a lot of cases here,
Northeast Arkansas, so like the,
the West Memphis Three and
Rebecca Gould. Those are, they made national
headlines and he's written books about them and stuff. And he
combined with an investigator who came from
the military. I'm not a hundred percent sure of all her background, but
she has a, she's really good investigative, just, you
know, investigator. And they
had a, had a, a case where someone was
stabbed and they just needed to like,
wanted to learn as much as they could about the knife that
might possibly have done it. So they brought me in and I consulted
with like three or four cases for them. Now what's that
like? It's pretty interesting,
you know, do that to be able to view autopsy
photos, but otherwise you get to
like, just play the scenario over and over again, look at the wounds and see
what kind of knife could have caused that. You know,
this. It was pretty, pretty interesting.
Yeah. I could see that being interesting and you know, at the same time.
Well, kind of. I could see how it could be a difficult
thing to, to manage. I guess you have to have a strong stomach, but.
Yeah, yeah. And you know, you get to play over all the
scenarios of what happened whenever, whenever the person
was murdered. The last,
I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about all specifics, but
the first one that I did, it was
fairly, fairly easy to see that
it was a certain particular knife. And
the others are probably more like just kitchen knives.
Okay, so the first one, and I'm not going to press you for details you
can't give, but are you saying that the first one had a,
a profile? Like a wound profile, for lack of a better term,
that was easily identifiable as a certain Type of knife.
Right. And
you know, you could see like where he hit
bone and the knife didn't, didn't stab
down a very deep. You can see it was a double edge.
Oh, okay. And then the deeper it got, and some of the, the ones
where he got way, you know, just buried it to the hilt.
It was a fat on one side and the edge on the other side. So
it had a double edge at the front of the blade and a single
edge at the back. And it was fairly thick but pretty narrow.
And so that led me to believe that it
was most likely so something like a, a
World War II trench knife. Oh, like an M3?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was the only. I,
I scoured all my books and on the Internet and I
could not find a knife that had that blade profile that was
that narrow, like three quarters of the inch wide and was very
thick in the back and double edged. Right,
Man. So I, my question, I think you
pretty much answered it. In your experience, is it usually
people doing bad stuff with everyday knives, like
kitchen knives? Yeah, yeah. Most of the
is sometimes they're hunting knives. But, you know,
like, if someone really gets mad, a lot of serial
killers will go into a house
without any weapons for some reason. I don't know why, but
in my study of serial killers, they would go into the house and
find a weapon like they would do a lamp cord to choke somebody. There
was famous cases of that and that. And once he found out that that
worked, well, that's what he did from then on. And some of them go
in there and get a knife out of the kitchen. And so usually it's something
from inside the house that they use. Jeez,
man. That's. This is, you know, tapping
into some of my biggest
concerns because I have a lot of these kind of implements in
my house. I have a lot of other kind of implements to defend the family.
But, you know, I always think about that. It, it pops into
my head all the time. Like I got all these knives around, right? Yeah.
But then again, I also think if someone were in this
house, you know, hopefully they'd be met with
a wall of flying metal. Yeah,
exactly. And so, you know, I don't know, I don't even want to
think about that kind of stuff. But it's, but it is very interesting to me
to, to, to know that, you know, you're,
you're kind of working on all sides of, of
knives in the making. The making of some very
specialized knives. Right. For some people who specialize
in them, like James Keating. And
you've done Forged in Fire. That's pretty cool.
I also understand that you are a pilot.
I did take lessons. I'm not a pilot now, but I
took lessons. I went all the way.
Took the written, made a 97 on my written. And
that's the only thing I can brag about. But I didn't actually
go take my final flight lessons. I. That
was when I was in my 20s. I got about 75 hours in,
and I love flying, but it was just getting too expensive at the
time. I didn't have a good job, and so
I had to quit about the time I was getting ready to take the test.
Okay, so with. With all of these things, with, with your love of
history and of knives and all this, what are
the kind of knives that you see yourself making in the
future as. As you continue, you know, you retire, you throw
yourself even deeper into the. Into knife
making and forging. Where do you see this going for you
in the. In the terms of the types of
knives you'd like to make? Well, the types of knives I like to
make are bowie knives and, and daggers. And
I really would love to make just a
lot of really nice ones, you know, with
Damascus engraving,
checkering on, you know, stuff like that. I. I've taken.
I've taken engraving classes. Oh. And. And
so that's definitely in the future, and I
hope to make some really cool knives. And later on,
I'm making as good a night as I can make right now.
Daggers present a special
challenge, I would imagine. I cannot imagine. I mean, I can imagine making
a really sweet Bowie in. Because I can see how I would do it, even
though I don't know what I'm doing, but I have no idea how one would
make a dagger. What are the. What are the special challenges?
The, the biggest challenge with the dagger is symmetry.
They have to be the same, not only just in
one side to the other, but they got four sides,
so. And they all had to be perfectly same. And
then the guards have to be straight and symmetrical as well.
So that's the biggest challenge of making a dagger,
is symmetry. Have you, have you seen the
daggers that, that they make? Mastersmiths, when you go for your
mastersmith test those kind of daggers. Yeah, with the, with the
tweet. Yeah. Wire inlay. Yeah.
That's all. That's all a thing that you have to do to.
That's one of the things is that it's the quillion dagger
and it has to have a fluted handle with the twisted Wire
inlays in the handle and
I think at least a 300 layer blade
Damascus blade. That's crazy. Do you, do you
do, do you see any. I've, I've wondered
this sometimes, especially when watching forging fire.
We keep coming back to that, but in the, in the making of
Damascus steel and is there any
compromise to the, to the strength when you have two different
steels and you're welding them together? Let's just assume all the welds are
perfect, you know, and, and that's not the concern. Okay. Yeah. If they're all
perfect and done. Done well, there's not really any,
any less strength. Okay.
Yeah. You know, there's a
lot of, lot of little layers that, you know, there's a lot of opportunities to
go bad in Damascus making
Damascus, but there's not really. Once it's
all basically one piece of metal, it should
be pretty strong for a knife. Okay, so before I let
you go here, you showed me a hunter
before, before we started rolling here. I'd
like you to show us that. And then, and then I also want to see
the, the big Bowie again, the whole camera. This looks
beautiful, right? This is a
little hudder with African black wood handle.
The 5160 blade and 416
stainless guard. It's just pretty shiny.
Yeah. So I got, right here on
the, on the end, there's a neat little bird's beak
type feature there. It's not too
thick. So how does the blade stay in the hand?
Oh, keep holding that up for a sec. Is there a mechanical
connection there or is that epoxy? How does that fit in? Right now it's just
epoxy. There's going to be a sterling silver pin.
Oh, nice. Yeah, I have it. I still,
I don't have my name on it either. And it's not sharp, so it's, it's
on its way. It's. Yeah. That's beautiful.
Thank you. I also brought one of these little
paring knives I make. I made a bunch of these for people.
Little paring knife with some. That antique
micarta. Yes. Paper micarta.
That's beautiful. This looks, yeah, it's a paring knife, but it also looks like it
could be an, an everyday. Sort of looks like it has
all sorts of uses. Yeah, I've made some sheaths for some.
Yeah, I got a little knife that I made for my buddy. He was,
he, he was going jogging and needed a little thing to
carry while he was jogging. So I just made this out of Scrap
for him gets a little sheath. Oh, that's nice.
That's nice and thin too. You know that very. It doesn't, it doesn't get
in the way when you're, when you're running. So I, this is
a huge part of the market. I think this is where a lot of people
who are, you know, traditionally into
folders and, and just everyday carry folders
and such, big trend over the past five years that keeps
growing are these everyday carry fixed blades. I'm huge into them.
But is this something that you're considering moving
into? Right, yeah. I, I, I've been carrying
a, what I call a front pocket knife, but
I did not, did not bring it out here,
but just a little front pocket knife that
has kind of a, an oval handle with a deep
finger spot where you can just
fits perfectly in the hand, but it's only like 6 inches
long and then it just. Fits right in the, in the
pocket. I, I love that. I'm, I'm a huge
fan of everyday carry fixed blade knives. I love neck knives,
though. I don't tend to carry them as much as I used to. Right. Yeah.
But I, that, that comes and goes. I still collect them.
So maybe I just have to get my blue belt. Okay. Get
my, There you go. My green belt or whatever comes after blue.
All right, so before I let you go, please, let's see that big Bowie again.
You're Tinker. Your Tinker Bowie. Your Louis l'. Amour.
That's beautiful. So you do your own
leather too, huh? Yes. Yeah, that.
Okay. So this is something I want in my collection. Is a, is a,
is a, a Bowie with a, a crown stag
handle like that. That is just beautiful. This,
these fit in the hand so well. If you get the right one.
Yeah, this is all forged. It's got the kind of the brute Deforge
look to it. You know, the Ricasso's
forged finish and the spine is forged finish. And there's a little
bit right here along the edges you
can maybe see. Yeah, yeah, we can see that.
And the guard is all forged finish.
No grinding on that. So let people know how
they can keep up with you.
See what you're making. Reach out to you commission work,
let everyone know. Okay. I'm Schaefer Jeff on
Instagram. I also have Shaffer knives
also on Facebook. Shaffer knives on Facebook. And you
know, I got my own personal page as well. And
my website is www.schaeffer
knives.com. not much on there except T shirts right now.
And let's See that, that's most, most
of it. I have. I also have a YouTube channel, but it's,
it's got a few videos of croissant and stuff on
there. I'll have to check that out. That's one thing I did not find. In,
in, in, in the, in my research. So I'll definitely have to
check that out. It was really nice talking with you, Jeff. I,
I cannot wait to get one of your knives in hand.
And I, I know like the, the one that Rolando had
is, is very appealing to me, but the Louis Lamour
even more so. So I love what you do
and it's been real nice talking with you. Thank you. It's been very nice talking
to you. Been listening to you for a long time. Oh, cool. But I
hadn't been a patreon just a few months and I was like amazed at how
much content you put out. Wow, man, you, you really
get with it. I love it all. I love, especially your Maker Mondays. I love
those guys like Don Hansen here lately. And
let's see, who else did you. Have that I like? Anyway, it doesn't
matter. Yeah, Tony Bose. We've had a bunch of guys. This is, this
is the, the handiwork of Jim, our producer here. Oh
yeah, yeah. He does an awesome job. He does. Yeah. Right.
Well, thank you so much, Jeff. The pleasure has been mine, sir. Thank
you. I appreciate you. Want to sell your custom knives online
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your online knife store today at the knife junkie.com launch
and turn your passion into a business. There he goes. Ladies
and gentlemen, Jeff Schafer of Schafer Knives. Go check him out
and all the places he was discussing. Definitely Instagram. You'll see a
lot of cool pictures and check out Rolando's video. He takes a
deep dive, about a half hour deep dive into that big beautiful
Bowie chopper. Also all right for Jim working his magic behind the
switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco 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
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