Be you a lefty or a righty - I'll create a custom knife just for you.

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It's important that the knife fits the client. It's important that it's something that is not only beautiful but functional as well.

Sure- it must be sharp and cut things but it also has to become an extension of the person who carries it.

A custom knife is like a tailored suit - it just looks and feels better.

I recently made this design for a left handed-client and his friend. This is the 5th left-hand-folder (liner-locker) I've created.

Notice how there's a sheen and texture and translucent quality to the grip? That's rams horn and makes for a unique tactile and visual custom knife. The owners couldn't be happier with the outcome.

Keep in mind - the holidays are coming up and a custom knife is a gift the man or woman in your life will treasure always - because it was made just for them.

Bois d'arc - makes for beautiful knives.

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One of the key design elements in any knife is the handle.

Not only must it be strong ( and functional) but beautiful as well. A client of mine brought me a stack of Boise de Arc (bow wood) which I value for it's unique yellow - golden prong color contrasting brown rings. The heavy, close-grained yellow-orange wood is very dense and is also prized for tool handles, treenails, fence posts, and other tools requiring a strong dimensionally stable wood that withstands rot.

Straight-grained osage timber (most is knotty and twisted) was prized by Southern Native American tribes for it's excellent use in bows. The trees acquired the name bois d'arc, or "bow-wood", from early French settlers who observed the wood being used for war clubs and bow-making by Native Americans.

Meriwether Lewis was told that the people of the Osage Nation "esteem the wood of this tree for the making of their bows, that they travel many hundred miles in quest of it." Many modern bowyers assert the wood of the Osage orange is superior even to English Yew. In Arkansas, in the early 19th century, a good Boise de Arc bow was worth a horse and a blanket.

I'm currently using it for the wood of choice in a series of handles for some custom "Hog Hunters" I'm working on - but first the wood has to dry out completely. Looking at the rings - it should make for some beautiful knives.