It’s just incredible to see when people have passion for what they do. It can be seen miles away. In last couple of weeks I’ve communicated with 2 such people – I asked advice from them about areas of their expertise. One of them was guy with nickname Old Bear, a blacksmith who makes just amazing fixed blade knives. The other was master engraver Sam Alfano.

Old Bear I found in one local LARP internet forum, which I somehow happened to read, where he very kindly answered all kinds of questions about how to make knifes, swords and other stuff. So one day I wrote him long email with all kinds of question and he answered that to write answers to all those questions would take just too long time. So he invited me to visit him at his work (he is a Major in some kind of military trainings school, how cool is that?). I of course accepted the invitation. When I went there he introduced himself as “Hi, I’m Old Bear, fat and ugly!”, which shows just how cool his sense of humor is. I guess we chatted about 3-4 hours there and I came back loaded with extremely useful information. It was just amazing how helpful he is and how he just wants to help beginners expecting nothing back. If one would do something just for money there is no way he’d want to help others just for free. Here are few of his knives, just to show his original style.

This one is called “Knife of Wolf”

Here’s another one.

And here is one with damascus blade.

Second guy I talked about was Sam Alfano, he created engraving forum called iGraver.com. In that forum I asked some newbie questions about engraving and he was kind enough to send me some free engravers, DVD video how to sharpen engravers and 5×5cm practice plate, which he had engraved with some samples how real engraving should look like. And truth to be told, it looks really-really amazing.

Now this scroll is about 2×2cm (about 1×1in for metrically challenged). The exiting thing is that I have a chance to take Basic engraving class from Sam in July, which is held in Belgium. I bet it will be fun and very informative.