After yet another great show this past weekend (SECKS), I've gotta admit - we Carolinians have got it good. We bought/sold/traded knives to/from each other, we had a great dinner Friday night with some great knifemakers, gave Chris Raymond a hard time
, we met even more NC/SC/TN folks at the show. To top it all off, we even had our own booth at the show. The ususal suspects came by to watch our table and gave me and David plenty of breaks to go walk the show. Dexter put us up for the weekend. Doggone we had a blast. I'm already looking forward to next year.
NC is also the home of the most active knifemakers guild in the country. In addition to putting on the SECKS show, they have quarterly meetings that feature demonstrations by some of the best makers around. The last meeting (which is free BTW) had demos by the Jones Bros (flat grinding and handle fitting), Wayne Whitley (hollow grinding), George Herron (guard fitting and grinding a bowie on a "tabletop" grinder), Scott Goguen (forging and clay tempering), and more. They offer some great knifemaking classes at Montgomery Community College in Troy, NC. This year's classes included instructors Ed Halligan, Ron Newton, Jim Batson, Darrel Ralph, Bill Moran, and George Herron. The quarterly meetings alone are worth the $50 annual fee. Check out their website at
http://www.ncknifeguild.org/ .
If anyone is interested in being put on the NC Knife Knuts mailing list, just drop me a line at
senator@carolina.rr.com with your e-mail addy, name, and forum name. I periodically send out announcements of upcoming NCKK gatherings. We have our two big events - the Blade Show and the SECKS - and our monthly/bi-monthly gatherings at the gun/knife shows in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro. Every once in a while David and I will take off for a show in Columbia. (and every once in a while Chris Raymond will show up on time...
)
All-in-all, the NC gang has it real good. I'm very thankful for that.
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Kelly
My Custom Knife Collection
AKTI Member #A000289
Deo Vindice