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 DeMarco. On this
edition of the show, I'm speaking with Jacob Peterson of Exodus
Knife and Tool. Jacob is a relatively new knife
designer whose Adventure Craft and Jackalope Fixed Blade
knives have recently caused a splash with some of the most trusted
knife reviewers on YouTube. His knives are both beautiful and
no nonsense. Each one designed to conquer everything from
workaday EDC chores to bushcrafting tasks
to critical survival applications. On top of that, he's
enlisted one of the most respected knife companies in America to
produce his designs. We'll meet Jacob and discover the inspirations
and process that make Exodus Knife and. Tool what it is.
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junkie.com battlebox Jacob,
nice to meet you sir. Thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely, my pleasure.
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure and I I want to congratulate you
on your your recent success. I've been.
I've been seeing Exodus Knife and Tool the like I said,
the Adventure craft. I've seen that a lot on
the various channels I love to watch on YouTube. How did you
get into this? It's a pretty long story. I'll try
and probably keep it a little shorter. I believe it was
2017. I was working
with my friend Ross Gammons at Dry Creek Forge.
We went to Blade show for the first time. We released the Super
Kook, which is a large kukri
that we're kind of bringing back to market now. But I
had come from also co owning
a Nepalese kukri manufacturer.
So I really like Kukris I became known for large
knives, but I wanted to design a series of
Puukko inspired knives in a medium
small and extra small. Now my extra small
Cuukko is what eventually became the
Adventure craft. And
universally everybody who I showed my drawing that I was so
excited about said do not do this.
It was too small, too thin,
the dimensions were unusual.
I drew some inspiration from the cold steel
spike from back in the day when that was first released. I drew some
inspiration from a custom knife
that Ross had manufactured and
we didn't make it,
but down the road a little ways,
you know, I started Exodus Knife and Tool. I was originally manufactured
by Mineral Mountain Hatchet Works over in Arkansas
and we got the ball rolling again. So this would actually be kind of my
third attempt in the knife industry. I've been reviewing
knives for 10 years now. Can't stay away from them.
And every time I try to venture like this
and failed, I came crawling back and,
and this third try has been amazing. The adventure craft has
been a game changer for me and
not, not just as a brand, but actually in my
personal life and as a knife reviewer. Really,
how's it done that Harder for. Me to review knives now.
I was very, very driven
to constantly find this, this knife that gave
me a long term satisfaction, I think
in any other group of people, I think that would sound really
weird. Hopefully I'm thinking people here may understand what
I'm saying there. The Adventure Craft and the
Jackalope kind of did that for me. Where in the past I
would love knives of certain designs but wish something was a
little different. This, that or the other. The adventure crafts I carry every
day. If I'm not carrying an adventure craft, I'm carrying a Jackalope and if I
don't, I feel naked and,
and so there's less chasing
down new knife designs to review
because I'm not chasing anymore. So that's been weird.
It's been weird. Little bit of a shift from
I'm still no longer knife reviews but I've been shifting more towards
skill demons version. Okay,
before we get to that, I want to ask you as a reviewer
and I come against this in the videos I do and I
just personally, and I guess it's in my moniker, I
love all types of knives, all types of knives,
but there, there is a very slender fraction of the
knives that I collect. I love to, to collect them and have all
sorts of different stuff, but there's a very slender selection that I actually
carry and use for you. What, what kind
of Stuff did you like versus or do you like versus the
kind of stuff that you carry and use what we look at them for in
that perfect knife. So
I've, so I mentioned I used to kind of be known
for big knives. Now I'm known for the
smallest fixed blade knives. But generally I like
very practical designs. I think
I've, and like most nice people, I've always been a nice
guy. I found myself
attracted to some visually appealing tactical
knives before a combat
deployment in about 2009. I, I,
the, the only knife knives that I liked on deployment
were a zero tolerance 0350.
Okay. The original fat one, it was kind of like a, I think a strider.
Yeah. And a Kershaw Leek. The other stuff that I had
wasn't so good but you know, I guess
I found myself becoming involved in survival
and Bushcraft and moving
somewhat away from tactically
inspired knives or designs that I didn't find
practical for my uses. And more into Bushcraft and
survival blades I don't really have. I've got a couple knives that
are pretty but very much. I stay
fairly use oriented. Not because
I have anything against collecting more because I
can't afford to collect. I don't, I can't, I don't keep pretty things. You know,
it's not my, I just can't. So
yeah, yeah, I think, I think collectors have a certain
DNA that, you know, if I could collect watches, if I could collect
artwork, if I could collect cars and
guitars and yeah, I think that's a mindset.
But, but if you've got it nailed
down to, to a use case that you can, that you can
just really focus on that. That's, that's the grass, the greener
grass for me. You mentioned
Kukris and how you were co owner of a Nepalese
kukri manufacturer. Tell me about that. How did that happen?
That was weird. It was ex Gurkha Kukri House. It was early
in my YouTube
career. I don't know.
I bought a few Kukris
I was posting on YouTube. I believe
I was posting, I don't think Instagram, I don't think I had an Instagram back
then. Facebook, something like that. And
ended up, I, I, I sent an email to
Xkirka Kukri House with some ideas and I started
talking with the owner at the time.
We started talking back and forth. They actually came to America and
stayed with me. I took them out shooting, did
all kinds of stuff. They were over for Thanksgiving.
I had to hide the cow skulls in the House type of thing, you know.
Yeah. But we made a deal to where I handled
all of the customer service
for North America and Europe and
I handled a little bit of technical stuff and ran an
Amazon sales front and. And we split
stuff and I also got to make my own knife designs
at cost and sell those as well. And
so, man, that was 2014,
2015,
and it was wild. We had,
we had a no questions asked lifetime guarantee,
but I had some issues with quality control that were supposed
to be fixed and repeatedly they weren't fixed and we
had to separate because of that. Yeah, I
guess something like that can ruin your own reputation, you know,
even. Even if it's not your originally your venture.
Well, I want to talk about the birth of Exodus knife and tool and your
inspirations and everything behind that, but yeah, you mentioned military
deployment. First of all. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for serving this country.
I. I enjoy the fruits of that. So I want to thank you. What, what
branch of the military? Army. Army,
yeah. So as an airborne infantryman
had a little bit of a weird career path.
I ended up in a CAV
unit. So long story short,
infantry guys and Cav units usually do recon.
It doesn't really make sense, but the CAV is weird. So I was doing
Arista, which do reca outside of the cav.
Um, long range reconnaissance stuff. But then. So I
was often attached with special Forces. Um,
but I also. We were the only maneuver element for the fob. We drove
around PsyOps and Civil affairs quite a bit
and I ended up getting involved in military intelligence. And it was a
weird, weird little experience. And it
also kind of helped maybe build the foundation
for my future views on knife designs and
practicality. Because the main knife that I paid a lot
of money to bring was horrible. And so, you know,
I'm out here trying to do almost anything with it and just like, man, this
knife sucks. Are you willing
to divulge what the night was? Yeah.
Let me say in their defense, it
was a different world back then in the industry and it was a different company
back then as well. It was Tots
Dart. It was one of the first darts ever made in
S30 volts. As I understand it, it rocks the
S30 volts quite quickly because the heat seat would get all
jacked up. But you know what's interesting about that? This is
2009, 2010, before
Laren Thomas. All right. The. The world was
still very much based on like bro. Science, lifting,
martial arts, metallurgy, knives, steels.
I still come up across some of these
really old knife steel performance charts from,
from that era that are for some reason just still on the Internet. And
I'll look at what they post and I'll be like
where, where did they even come up with this? This is ridiculous. This is
based on nothing. Back at that time
tops knives you had to pay extra if you wanted to knife
sharp. So you know there, I
still hear this sometimes by the way. There was this belief that a sharp
knife was weaker basically like if it was
sharp. This idea of
believing that sharpness had to do with the acuity of
the edge. You know, a more, a thinner edge was
sharper. We know so much more about edges or especially in the
industry now. But it said right on the website
we make work knives, they're made to be tough.
You can pay extra for it to be sharp
but it won't be as hot. It
was awful. So truly sharpened pry bars at the
time. Yeah, yeah, sharpened pry bar that I
could never get sharp. I wasn't also wasn't skilled back and I
wouldn't say that I'm skilled now but a whole lot better than I was then
anyways. You know I, I have another tops
dart now for the sake of we there, there's some, you
know, some handle geometry
kind of issues and stuff like that still are behind
the edge thickness on it even in 5160s at like 70
thou around the belly. So still not a knife
that I enjoy but the new one
is much better than the one that I had there.
Anyways. It looked really cool though. It was kukrish
and the handle had a lot of hotspot issues. It
was horrible to use. It was. You had to use a lot
of pressure to use the knife because it was dull because
the edge was so thick and then you had the
squarish handle. So when you are using a lot of pressure, pressure on the knife,
the problems from hot spots are
much worse. And
so my idea of what a tactical knife
was had to become after some of these
experiences much more practical
than tactical. Interesting because you know they,
they built their, their business and their reputation on
being you know a soldier's knife, being a
high speed, low drag knife. And I love tops and you know
as, as a collector, I love tops and you know as a guy who
sometimes batons wood in the backyard, I love tops. But you
know I've, I've never been out on patrol or
done recon or whatever the kind of jobs were you were doing
that. But yeah, it is
interesting because you would imagine that really what you need is
a knife that cuts. So let's talk about
how your experiences both with that
kukri business and with your experiences on
deployment with, with other knives that didn't really do the
job for you. Let's talk about how that led to Exodus knife and
tool. Well, I went
for this adventure craft. I went for this
very minimized and
personalized Kuukko inspired
design.
There were another thing that inspired the design of this knife
at that time was your traditional
Bushcraft knife was always a Scandi, a zero
ground Scandi. And I didn't understand it at the time like
I do now, but there are all of these rules for these
Scandi ground Bushcraft knives. You can't baton it, you can't
cross grain baton, you can't do this, you can't do that. You're going to
destroy the edge. Well, it's because the knives are zero ground, of course.
But I remember thinking if, if we can't do
all of these things with this knife, why, why not
make it a third the size and weight
and still not be able to do all of those things? But it's easier to
carry. So, so what?
Ultimately, for the sake of practicality, what we came up, what, what I came
up with, this ended up being under 3 ounces with the
sheath. It's as easy to carry, especially with an Ulti
clip as a folding knife. But I baton these
knives constantly. I can't tell you.
I bet you I've made multiple thousands
of feather sticks.
I sell my knives,
I believe to every segment of the market.
But I think the core
for my brand is the Bushcraft industry. And, and
so what, what ends up working is the, the
survival knife that you have in a survival situation is, is the
knife that you have on you. So if you carry a
knife or a survival knife every single day
because you enjoy using it and carrying it so much, then that's probably the one
that you're going to have when you're in an emergency. That's part of the idea
with the adventure craft. Just
ease of use, modularity with
the sheath. I've got one that I keep attached to my
fillet knife or fishing
and it just, all, it just all works together or
there's, there's nothing, there's
nothing on the adventure craft that, that is
aesthetically designed that detracts from any kind of
practical use in any way. And we've got long handle, the
design of the handle locks into the hand despite being so thin.
I can use this for a very long time. Comfortably
with the way that I use knives and it's just easy to carry.
So it's what I use. You know, hold that up close to the
camera and tell us about the dimensions. You know,
we've got 7 inch overall length,
3 inch blade, but we're only half an inch tall.
Full flat grind, 8th of an inch thick,
but our behind the edge thickness is below
20,000. So being a
full flat grind coming up to a
eighth of an inch, we've got the beef
to, to do the things that I love doing when
I'm descaling fish. It's stiff enough so that that's not a
problem. I don't like descaling fish with a fillet knife because the blade
flexes so much when I'm popping the scales off. Don't have that
issue with the adventure craft, but, but our behind the edge
thickness usually varies between 16 to 18 thou.
The guys at White River Knife and Tool do the most
amazing production job. I mean, I'm,
I'm so blessed to work with them. I still don't think that I
deserve to work with them. It's, it's been
amazing. But we, we still have what
I would consider and I think what normal
person would consider for production. I have great
slicing capabilities, so I'll scrape
gaskets for my jeep, I'll prep food
all. I'll. I'll descale the fish,
cut the fish's head off, prep the whole fish for grilling
and then I'll go and make a fire and baton. My kindling
up is. And make my feather sticks and strike my ferro rod, make my fire.
So it's only recently
that I've started carrying this trout edition. I
try, I don't try to keep any special edition knives. I try and keep
one of all of my standard options so that I use my
standard colors so that when I show it off every day, it's
something that people can get. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
I tried doing custom colors and stuff all the time. Custom options, handle
materials and everything. And people
tend to get frustrated when I show them
my knife or post pictures on Instagram or do whatever it is that I do.
And they're like, where can I get that? And I'm like, well, you can get
something like it, but actually this color hasn't been available for two years and
I don't know if it ever will be again. Well, what the crap, right? Right.
Yeah. But this. So I've only started carrying that recently.
I've got a mammoth cave version over there that I keep standard.
But my standard is the high visibility that I
carry the most. Not for aesthetic reasons, but red is the
last color the human eye can see. As the rods and cones and rods
shift to a low light situation. The red and white is
high contrast. So this is my high visibility option.
This was inspired by Kentucky. I'm here in
Mammoth Cave and everything here is
fluorescent neon green and orange.
And so the traditional colors I didn't feel worked the best for me
actually in the woods. And this does. So
that's what I carry the most and use the most really.
Mammoth Cave. I remember my dad and I went there on a.
A bonding trip years ago. And I've. I've always been a
little cave phobic, but. But man,
that was. That was so beautiful. What a beautiful part of Kentucky
too. But those caves are just outrageous. Oh, what. What makes
the Mammoth Cave edition Now how. How
do you make that? Yeah. So I collaborated with
Troma to do my brick builder
edition scales, My trout addition
scales, and these Mammoth Cave edition scales.
And so due to the lighting, it might be hard to tell.
But it's a topographical pattern built into the
scale. And it's an actual map of Mammoth Cave national park
on the scale. How cool. And the completely or fast.
I would thing near say indestructible. I've never
had anybody break one or
wear one in any way. But also nicely grippy.
So. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like the
topographical pattern on that is in relief. Right? You can. Yes,
correct. That's actually a tactile. Yeah.
So yeah, it's.
It's been cool. It's been cool. So what are your regular.
You know, you have. You have these kind of limited editions like the one you're
holding in your hand. What are your standard offerings?
So this. The. The only standard that I have had
is hi Vis. I've had to change my other
standards up over the years as things changed. I used to
have what was was called a low vis. And
so we custom blended Cerakote to make a
parkerized color. And our
Cerakote guys are like, hey, I don't like doing this. And it. The
blend got messed up sometimes to where it just looked black.
And so we moved away from that. Going forward, what we're going to have
is two standard options. One will be high vis.
And you know, red and
white is not the best seller. And when you're around
normal people, Red and white's going to be a hard sell.
Right. People don't necessarily want think of adventure
and Think of this. But our standard will be
a nice stonewashed blade,
liberty wood scales and a walnut color.
Uh, so Liberty wood is a
premium Baltic birch plywood. It's what
skateboards are made out of by the same company usually.
So it's completely dimensionally stable,
incredibly tough, won't warp,
shrink, swell, crack.
I want to give the
vintage vibe that I'm looking for, the, the,
the, the, the look, the vibe. But I want to have modern
materials that are low to zero maintenance,
ideally zero maintenance, and that are just going to perform
with no care in horrible conditions. And that
walnut look will. And the wood, obviously the wood grain
and the walnut look will really
like you said, the red and the white might not be what most people
think of as adventure outdoors, but that wood will really
evoke that. Yeah, it does. You know, I recently I was very
blessed to talk to the folks at Turnbull
and the firearms side of this crazy world we live in.
Turnbull? Oh gosh. Turnbull
Refinishing is the
premier refinishing
company that exists. So if you have this old
Winchester or Colt firearm from the early 1900s that's just
beat up, you've got two options if you want to maintain
its value. Leave it beat up is best for value
or send it to Turnbull who will literally make it
like new using oftentimes traditional
methods and will actually maintain value or increase value.
They're the only people that I know that do that. Been following them for years.
They came to the first ever blade show. Texas.
No, the second I think. And I went over there and
talked to him and I was able to get a bunch of knives, gun blued
by them, which was just insanely cool.
So you know, yeah, I want to go,
I don't, I don't want to trace, chase any trends.
I don't want to add any feature
for visual appeal to get someone to
purchase a knife. Especially if those visual
appeal based features can take away from any practicality.
So, so instead
if I'm going to get visual appeal, it'll simply be by
materials and colors, you know. Yeah,
yeah. But all, all within a practical range.
What is the Jackalope? So the
Jackalope began
as my small Fuko.
And so what, what we're looking at between the adventure craft and the
Jackalope here is we're looking at a balance
of hard use,
practicality versus variability.
And I have become so used to using
the adventure craft that I really don't have any
comfort issues. I can feather
stick with this thing for a long time and my hand won't get
Tired muscle memory. All right. When a
person first gets this knife, do one or two feather
sticks with it, their hand starts getting a little bit sore, but it's
really easy to carry. The idea with the Jackalope we
want to achieve the same thing
but we want to tip the balance
towards comfort for use
and we lose a little bit of the balance. For the everyday
carry comfort we're a little larger, a little bit heavier
but we're still at around 3 ounces. You can
still everyday carry it. You can still in pocket carry it with an Ulti clip
or in pocket shoes and you're going to have a little
bit more, more long term comfort when doing
high pressure knife uses.
And it really. Even the Jackalope itself
still being relatively short at
3/4 of an inch tall, this
could be a primary belt knife in almost
any situation. But it's still a very small knife.
Yeah, that's, that's what I was thinking. The, the adventure
craft is kind of your edc. You always have it on you period.
And the Jackalope is your camping
knife or your backpacking knife or, or that kind of thing. Just
a slightly larger. Is that blade about three and three
quarters inches? This blade is about four inches. Four
inches. I mean that, that, that is very edc.
Well depending on what you carry. But I usually have a,
about a 4 inch fixed blade on me. So just the, the
blade height. I, we don't see a lot of short
blades and typically when we do they are more
EDC focused. They're maybe more fancy,
more like letter openers. But
I love SE and I love the ESEE3. But this
knife is a lot easier to carry than an esee3.
Like way easier to carry.
So. But you, you can use it the same way.
Yeah, that, that's probably half the width or half the
height of an Etsy 3. Yeah. It's a dimension that we don't
talk about very often. So it sounds kind of weird. Yeah.
But, but you can see it a lot in, in your blades and I think
and you mentioned the, the early spikes as a,
an inspiration. That's one of the, one of the first fixed blade
knives I ever carried were the Spikes. Because of that they,
they fit easily on you and you still get a great
length out of it. Yeah, that
off topic but since we're nice nerding cold steel broke
my heart. In 2009 the first knife I ever
purchased was a cold steel. So true flight thrower. In about
1995 or 6 bought it with my own
money. We went to Blade
Tech in Tacoma, Washington,
when they were a very new company making Kydex,
which nobody had heard of at the time. And I had a Kydex sheath made
for it. I think for my birthday my dad had that done. Um, but
in. When I first got to Afghanistan, I ordered the
spike and at that time it had. Cold steel had
just gone through closing its American
manufacturing. And I didn't realize that. And
also that era of cold steel spikes did not come
sharpened. They were just for penetration. And
so that was a. That was a heartbreaking experience.
I can't say I've had any experience
carrying the spike or using it because the only one I ever had
I got rid of real quick. It wasn't a knife, it was a
stabbing implement. Kind of weird because originally when I
first saw, as a kid first saw them, they came
sharpened, they were a knife. They didn't for just, I think a very
short time. And then they went back to having an edge. Probably because nobody wanted
to buy it. Just to. Yeah, I have, I have some of the
new generation spikes that came out like 2008 or something like that,
but I have one of those originals and it was the.
The Hawk Bill. Yep. And it is, it is sharp,
but it is 316 of an inch and it is zero ground
and it's very shallow. So it, it almost feels like it's not sharp.
Right. With some, with some juice behind it. And you know,
you could, you could make it work. But yeah, not, not so much cutting tool.
You're not, you're not cutting the salami with that. I think I traded mine to
a Czech soldier. I don't remember. Anyways,
but so, but aesthetically though,
man, and like you said with the, the, the
Talon, I remember, I think they had three different blade
shape options. I remember the Talon and I think the one that I
liked the most was basically a Puukkove straight spine.
But yeah, yeah, that was interesting. It's an interesting little
tidbit of the market too. So I want to
talk a little bit about how you got the word out as
a business Exodus knife and tool. How
first of all, how long have you been making the adventure
craft? That was your first knife, right? Yeah. So we've been. I've been
having that manufactured for me since I believe believe
2018. And. But originally, again,
it was manufactured by Mineral Mountain Hatchet Works.
Mineral Mountain Hatchet Works is a company that I still love
to this day, but they specialize in massive knives.
And Ted Frizzell believe still owns it,
although Kyle Kidder makes the knives now. But Ted called me one
day. I had a pre order. We were already late
on the pre order. So I think I. I think, I think I had about
$6,000 worth of pre orders and I think we
were about two months late. And he called me. I remember I got excited thinking
he was going to tell me that they had shipped. And he was like, hey,
we're not gonna make your knives. And
his brother died, who was a co owner. They had a bunch of machines go
down and he said they ruined as many knives as they made because they were
so short. They would roll a little bit and there wasn't enough meat
there in the knife to fix it when they made a mistake and they'd have
to throw it in the trash and it was not profitable for them.
Again, I will still buy from Minimal Mountain Hatchet Works. They're
great guys. But
that brought me to White river, who I had just given
nice manufacturer of the year after Blade Show.
And I thought that they were too good to even reach out to. But
after talking to
Jason Te, I reached out and they were
into it and it's just. It's been amazing ever since. So
how I got the word out. You know, I have a small niche on
YouTube. I was known for
hard knife reviews and survival videos and
Bushcrafting. I did the boot
camp for season two of Alone. So I knew a lot of the Alone from
the History Channel guys.
And I don't know, man, honestly, it's
been, it's been amazing. It's been. It's been a
huge blessing. It's. It's far exceeded my own
capabilities. The designs themselves, I think exceed
my capabilities. And it's.
It's been amazing. I thank the Lord for it. It's been
made the path for me for sure. Absolutely.
Mineral Mountain Hatchet Works. Just as a. An aside, I have
a small neck knife from them and
I bought it at a. Not a swap meet,
but at a. What do you call it? Gun show.
It wasn't a gun show. Yeah, for. For lack of a better term, it was
basically a gun show. Right. But I, I bought it. Didn't know what it was,
but it was small and I liked it. And for years I
couldn't figure out what the logo was. And then after I started this channel, I
asked someone and I found out who it was and I went to their website.
I don't own anything else by them, but I was awed by their.
Their cool. I mean, that's so my style. I love those big kind of Just
agro style knives. Beautiful work too. And,
and also kind of cool because they're not a name you hear every day. Right.
And they're great prices for what you get.
So I was, my first ever preppers convention was
in Mountain home, Arkansas in maybe
2014ish. And
I was scrolling Craigslist, who knows why, because
I'm dumb. And I just saw
an ad for knives from Mineral Mountain Hatchet Works and it said
we'll trade for guns. And that's how I found
out about them was being in Arkansas and being on Craigslist.
And so, you know, I don't, I don't
know if maybe you were ever on. There was this
group meeting of the prepared minds on Facebook. There's obviously a
ton of other groups on Facebook, but there's this like golden
era of social media where these Facebook groups
were amazing and you could find out so
much. So you know, I got a Facebook group and people are like, oh yeah,
I have a Mineral Mountain. I have, you know, people are,
was. It was weird how amazingly social
media worked as compared to now. And
yeah, very niche. Very niche. Very cool though. Just great prices
on. Ted Frizzell sent me a knife to review my Bullnoser.
I still love it. And he was like, I don't care what you do to
it. Like you can beat it with a steel hammer. I don't care.
Like it's going to be fine. And it's just been
amazing for, I don't know, seven years
now. Great knives. Well then
you find, you find yourself with White river knives
or you don't find yourself, you, you got yourself in there. And I got to
say, you're in great company. I mean there's some, they do a lot of
beautiful in house stuff and then
they have a lot of really accomplished designers that,
whose designs they make. So that's a feather in your
cap right there. It's amazing. Like I said, it's better than I deserve.
Certainly. I think they have much bigger fish to
fry and it's awesome that they give me the time of day.
You know, they, they made for cold steel. I
don't remember the name of the model. Oh,
the Republic. Yeah. Is that right?
Yeah, yeah. They've made for se. They've
made for, you know, countless other massive brands and
again, I think, I think they're just going to get busier and
busier. They are honestly
great people and crazy hard workers.
Um, I had an investor talk to me about
starting that manufacturing plant here in Kentucky
and I told him, you don't want to do it like.
And I would not want to be in the
Commangos to work as hard as they do.
I mean, the guys, I don't know how they do it, especially when it comes
to the shows. They'll go to the shows and
they'll be up later than I'm up. They'll be up earlier than I'm up. They'll
be working all day and they'll fly back. They'll be right back to
work and I come back from Blade show and I need like a day
or two. So
decompress. Yeah, like I, I need some time, man. They're,
they're, they're just, they're hard working people that are just as good as it
gets. So they, they manufacture
your knives that you sell, but they also
have, they sell your model out of their shop too,
right? Yeah. It's a very unique
business relationship that we struck. They have the rights
to distribution. So they have standard models that they sell on
knives, ship free DLT
everywhere, all across the world. We've got European distributors
and, and all kinds of stuff that
I, I get royalties on their sales and then
I get the freedom to do what I want.
And so that won't necessarily be the case
for every model. Well, we've got some irons in the
fire right now, and I'm not sure necessarily that
that will be the agreement that we have. The Legionnaire combat
knife that I'm working on right now, they might only
have a version of that knife as a thrower,
which would be really cool. They. John is involved with the
nice brain stuff over there,
or they might carry it. It's just, it's just gonna depend.
We'll go forward as we go forward and they'll be organic. But again,
yeah, it is, it is a bit of a unique business
relationship. So tell me about this Legionnaires combat
combat knife. Well, I feel like an idiot now for not having
the prototype on me. But
I was watching, I'm. I'm a history guy. I
was watching the. And I'm about to butcher this, which I believe
it's the Siege of Jardinsville.
It was a movie on Netflix and French Foreign Legion
guys the bad guy in this movie and he's got a knife
that looks like one of the 1900s bayonets, but it's
shorter. And I started doing some research and I,
I learned that the French Foreign Legion, or France itself,
purchased World War I bayonets, mostly, you know,
American and British, like Remington bayonets by the
train truck load and
Chopped half the blade off
and used that as their combat knife
beyond the year 2000. So we're talking about. These
knives have been in service from the early 1900s in World War
I and are still in service after the year
2000. Nobody knows about.
Ironically, very short blade
profile like the knives that I have now. And
so I want to do a production knife that pays homage to that. It
will not be a bayonet, but
shares 99% of the DNA
outside of the bayonet mechanism, but with
modernized ergonomics and geometry to make it very
practical to use as a combat knife. You
know, it's a project that I'm incredibly excited about. What's the
blade profile? Is it a drop point or a spear point or so the one
that. We'Re going to be working on is going to be a. A very
simple bowie. It's
got a swedge, but it will be a flat swedge. And
that is because the one that I personally own is
that way. And what I like about it is you have like, like you
had on the bayonets, you have the fully rounded spine
which is an incredible feature for strength.
But then the swedge, the swedge can be sharp
on the spine so that you can strike your ferro rod off of it.
However, originally I think they had
some private chop these blades apart
and regrind them. So you can find examples of this
combat knife that are drop point, that are bowie, that are
all manner of different things. As long as it'll fit in their sheath. They
didn't seem to care too much. So
yeah, I'm gonna have to, I'm. Gonna have to look that up. That sounds
really fascinating. The whole idea of. Because there are myths around
like for instance, the sax.
Oh, that's a broken sword. And that's why it looks like that. And I
never thought that that was. I mean I know people have, have used broken
swords as knives, but. But you hear these kind of
myths, but this is an actual, a real knife
that's been crafted from something so much
older and is still in use. That. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah,
it's a one. I also thought that was kind of
ironic that when we think of a combat knife
or really internationally, a lot of people when they
think of a combat knife, they think of the Ka Bar.
There's nothing wrong with that. But really
in more conflicts all around the world and a lot
of little conflicts that we probably never even hear about, the. This
French foreign legions combat knife was probably
more used more prevalently
and for much longer and so,
you know, again, I like the, the
size package of the knife with the very. It
is a early bayonet. So again,
very short blade makes it packable for the
length of it. The downside is
for Bushcraft, if you're doing cross grain batoning and trying to
make certain things, you don't have the blade height
needed to get the depth that you would want for
crafting certain notches and stuff like that.
But at that point you're getting pretty deep into Bushcraft anyways.
But yeah, the carryability and the practicality of
the design. Now if you buy one, you could. They're not that
expensive actually. Once you've read the history, you know the niche
and you look for it, you can find them because they made so many of
them and so cheaply. Nobody wants them that much,
I think because they're horribly impractical. That, that
bayonet edge. Oh yeah. I don't know
if that thing is a tenth behind
the edge. I mean thick and
so. And when it comes to
pure collector's value, people would generally
rather have the original bayonet, which is more rare because
France did this to so many bayonets. Yeah, yeah.
So I don't know, a hundred bucks, not that bad. It's
cool little. Cool little niche.
Well, tell me about your overall vision
for Exodus knife and tool in terms of. I was,
I just was looking at your website and you have pretty
interesting kind of stipulations what
you want these to be capable of. Describe that.
So, yeah, I want what, what, what makes a nice
practical. You know, because
it's one, one thing that is odd to me
is a, a Bushcrafter
someone or a survivalist. Typically a Bushcrafter or
survivalist is not a knife person. They
have a knife, they use the knife,
but there's no emotional investment. It's another tool.
And, and I simply like knives more than that.
But they will make do with whatever knife they have. And a lot of
times, you know, I went to, I've gone to Randall's Adventure training. A lot of
times it's an as seen 1095 or a TOPS or something like that.
And as much as I, I
love the knife nerd dive that we do with new steels
and hardnesses and all of that when, when you get
away from our love of knives. The truth is, is
you could normal knives, you could make do with a cheap knife or
even a box cutter for 99% of the stuff that we nerd out about.
All right, so what
I want to offer are knives
that Are like totally practical
that are not too heavily invested in
any trend or any, any current thing.
There was a series of years
where everything had an accent.
You go to all the folding knives were
80 thou behind the edge max toughness.
I don't ever want to fall into something like that. So I want
to release, I want to have a line of knives. I
want all of them to be manufactured to our
standards and
I want them all to be completely practical for or the rules that
they are intended for. And ultimately that
practicality breeds versatility. So
I will likely never have a fillet knife.
I love my White river fillet knife, but a fillet knife
is not a versatile tool in my opinion.
It is a purpose driven tool and I want
to have a line of knives where they
could all be a one tool option, meaning
you never plan to find yourself in an emergency with
one tool. But if you find yourself in an emergency and you
have one tool, if you're in an emergency and a few of your tools break,
is every single tool versatile and
practical enough to be used in ways in
which it was not specifically intended? That's how
I look at a one tool option. I want every single product that I release
to be versatile enough to fit within that realm.
So yeah, the term timeless keeps coming up
in my mind when you talk about this because
you know, you aim to buck against trends or not
even to buck against them, but just ignore them all together
for practicality. But your knives are also really nice to look
at too. And that's a, to me, that's a nice
side benefit because I'm shallow and I love the way knife
knives look, you know, beautiful. I'm guilty
myself. I want to mention one more thing. I
don't. First off, I don't want to do anybody a disservice by
being inspired by them and not mentioning it. I think that there's no shame
in admitting, admitting that you're inspired by someone else. So that's something
that's important to me. And I was so in the early years
of my knife junkie ness,
I was a member on Blade forums and
the way that I saw the world, the premium
custom Bushcraft knife was Fiddleback.
Oh yeah, they were out of my price range. I
actually got my first fiddle back recently and
I won it. I should have bought one a decade ago, but
I regardless. But I looked at the sales
they'd have on blade forms, couldn't afford them. But I was like,
that is my idea of this. So
one of my the things that I think makes My designs work the
best. Little swell
on the pommel here allows the back
of the knife to fit
into the hand, into the palm, lock into the palm,
despite the short blade height really well. And
I got that from Andy Roy at Fiddleback
Forge. You'll see my hand falls one right. Yeah, that little
contour there. There are some things that
I believe with these knives ended up
being well proportioned and visually
appealing. And I would say that
a lot of that came from influence from
designers who are better than myself, like
Andy Roy. And
in Form Follows Function,
it worked out well, thank the Lord. But you will never see a bottle
opener on one of my knives. And
although they may have their places for certain people, you'll never see a
saw. I want to keep
the design as clean as possible. And
I do a of lot, lot of batoning.
More than most bushcrafters probably. It's
literally if I see a problem in the woods, I
will often think about how I'm going to baton my way out of it. I
think for me it's become an energy
efficient way of accomplishing larger tasks. A lot of times
with a smaller knife, however, that's not
the purpose of my knives. Purpose is to cut.
I like thin edge geometry. One knife that I absolutely love is
my Mako from Gary Creeley. And we're. Oh yeah,
yeah, we're about 10,000 behind the edge.
It's thin, I love it.
But it is
fully invested in being a thin slicer. You
likely won't ever see that from me either. You know, I want about
15 to 17 thou behind the edge.
I want acceptable slicing performance for real world
tasks and uses. Not that his doesn't have that. So I'm saying.
But I also will generally have toughness as a
priority as well. I likely will never do a
zero grind unless it's with certain
whatever. I'm not gonna be doing a lot of zero grains, if any.
And so, you know, again, I'm, I'm
not a specialist. I'm looking for versatility.
Well, as we close, tell me about your the name
Exodus knife and tool. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, I'm a
Christian. That is the
first and last way that I would define
myself. Knives for the
final Exodus was my original
slogan. Something that I still go after.
My eschatology would be historic free mill,
technically dispensationalist, but not dispensationalist
by current standards. That is
to say that Christ is still coming, but the tribulation
comes first. Okay. Not that
that's going to matter to most people. But the idea in
this theology and eschatology is there's a time where Christians will
not be able to buy, sell, trade or own. And
you'll need versatility if you're going to live in
that world world. The tools that you're going to need are going to have to
be versatile and practical and easy to carry and easy
to use. And that's what I want my knives to be. Really. I
mean, I should have led with that actually at this point, that's kind of
a key principle. The X that I do for
Exodus knife and tool is a cross that is
diagonal as a cross that is being carried.
And so that is a core
principle here. The bomb is the ordnance logo. Long story
short, my original logo was a barrel proof stamp for an
M1 Garand. When a firearm or a
cannon was proof tested to make sure that it
passed inspection and was safe to use, it was
stamped with the ordnance logo that said that it's been
inspected, it's passed inspection, it's ready for use.
And that's what I want every product that carries my
logo to be. How cool. I love it. And I love
your explanation of, of your name. That's, that's pretty amazing.
It's pretty, well, it's pretty
deep. You know, it's a, it's, it's not just like you
sound. You found a name that sounds cool, but you really
found something that defines yourself and your brand.
And I appreciate that. I'm
kind of a nuanced person. I'm kind of a detail oriented person.
Again, we're nice people. So
a little, little bit on the spectrum or something there maybe, I don't know,
just care about details that our people don't. But it has to be, things have
to have meaning for me. So. All right, maybe we'll crack that open in
our, in our interview for Patreon Patreon
patrons. But until then, Jacob, thank you so much for joining
me on the Knife Junkie podcast. It's been a fascinating conversation
and you've given me a new appreciation for your
knives. I, I, I really admire them. So thanks for coming on the show,
sir. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Knife themed shirts,
hoodies, mugs, water bottles and more. Thenifejunkie.com
shop do you like the sound. Of the alphanumeric
combinations M390, 204p and 20cv
but bristle at 8cr, 13mov and
AUS8. You are a knife junkie. Probably
worse. There he goes. Ladies and gentlemen, Jacob Peterson of
Exodus Knife and tool. Like I said up front, I've
been seeing his work a lot in some of the hands, in the hands of
some of the most trusted people out there. And, well, I
can't wait to get one in my hands. Be sure to check him
out on YouTube and you can check him out at
exodusknife and tool.com also on Instagram.
And get your get your hands on one of these
beautiful knives. 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 review it. Review the podcast
for show notes for today's episode, additional resources and to listen to past
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