I am not going to make this a political diatribe, as much as I'd like to. I just recently posted about the decline of American civilization and culture. So, I hope that the people responsible for the attempted assassination of Trump are brought to justice without us devolving into a civil war. Nuff said? 

On a brighter note, I have listed on the front page a superb mini F-S by Travis Evans. This man in someone to keep an eye on for ever nicer offerings. (Then I ask myself can they get any better?) So most of you know how strongly I feel about promoting quality knife-makers on this site. It is my privilege and a treat to be able to help them when I can. In my time I have bought from some new makers that never got any better and, well I eventually sold their products, generally at a loss. So unless I feel very strongly about the quality of a maker's work they never get listed on here. Likewise, any knives I sell on here are ones I am not ashamed of or suspect of being fakes. 

For example, there is a man on ebay selling repro. thumb daggers. His workmanship is less than stellar. If he would spend a little more time he could produce some nice pieces and charge more for them. I know he has drawn inspiration from originals shown on this site, especially copying the Fatima thumb dagger. His copy is pretty crude and needs a lot of TLC with a file and sandpaper. But I suppose people may buy some of them. Then there are beautiful specimens of rare daggers coming out of Malta, and I question whether they are genuine or not. The prices are insanely high, but I ask myself how did all of these rare daggers end up in Malta? How is it they are only now coming on the market?

Obviously my main focus here is not on knife sales. I get a dozen emails a week wanting to improve my standing on Google so that I can sell more product. Its amazing how many website builders and fixer-uppers there are. Doesn't anybody have a real job anymore? Usually when I do sell something it is so I can afford to upgrade my collection, or it is so I can buy an unusual piece. I have bought some unusual knives that appealed to me that no one else would even bid on. LOL For example, this F-S with a grip made from a dense piece of root. It fits my hand perfectly.

Seriously, who else would buy such an oddity? Then there are really unusual ones that defy explanation and pique my curiosity. This Wilkinson example with a gazelle horn grip is one of those.

All of these knives will eventually be illustrated in my series of books. The root gripped knife in volume four and the gazelle gripped one in volume three. There are examples to interest all enthusiasts and collectors. There is a lot more to collecting F-S than just 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pattern knives.Trust me, it is a huge world out there and if you keep your eyes open sometimes you find interesting and unusual specimens to buy. The cartridges are Hornady Dangerous Game ones in 416 Rigby, for an African rifle I bought a few years back. A friend asked me; "Do you have an elephant problem?" I said not anymore. LOL Have a great weekend.

So I write about knives, do I know anything about using them? I'm sure many of the modern textbook experts never stepped onto a dojo floor or fencing strip. Here is a long answer to a short question. Maybe some of the forum armchair experts have spent as much time training as I have but I doubt it.

Influences on the Shiroi Kage (White Shadow) Style of knife fighting.
In response to a few inquiries I have put together this short bio. The influences on my knife work come from studying Western stylists like John Steyers, William Fairbairn and William Cassidy. I have read Biddle and Rex Applegate but they were less influential. My entries into an attack are almost always straight-in because it is the shortest distance, ie the quickest way in. Straight-in is also the best way to unbalance your opponent mentally and physically. I have used attacks along chords, using rapier style techniques like punta mandritta or punta reverso, still linear but at an angle. Admittedly moving to an outside line places you in a safer position, assuming that you make it past the point of the attacker's knife/sword, and you can maintain a solid base and balance. Going to the outside line requires quicker reflexes, more time, and under pressure may not work as well. If you move too early a good martialist can track your movement, shortcut your techniques, and hit/cut you.

I also use some circular techniques that probably come from my study of Michael Echanis' two books on knife fighting and knife defense. Circular moves, and some of the movement along chords, also come from Robert Cook Sensei and Shihan Bruce Juchnik of Kosho Kempo karate. Their Kuntau-Silat-based knife work involves a lot of weaving in and out of an attack. This is where most of my hand movements derive from, including soft blocks, slapping parries, and trapping. The Kuntau slapping parries that I use are a simple means of redirecting my attacker's knife-hand off-line, similar to a fencer’s beat attack. From Maestro Steve Wilson I learned something of fencing and rapier work, fencing again being linear and rapier being more circular. I have successfully used passatta soto and in-quartata moves in knife sparring. Although by no means do I consider myself even semi-skilled at fencing. Through reading many of the rapier and small sword manuals of the masters I feel I have gained a better understanding of angles, timing and distance! I even have adopted the four primary rapier stances of Prime, Seconde, Terce, and Quarta to my knife work. One of my favorite stances being the hanging guard from Irish fencing legend, and scoundrel, Donald McBane.

My daughter and I trained in a hard style karate called GoJu ryu (our base art) for years and we were introduced to bits of jujutsu, judo, Indonesian and Filipino knife styles. I have also studied Muso Shinden ryu Iaido, some of Saruta sensei's Shizen batto do, as well as studying Yagyu Shinkage Ryu (YSR) for over 12 years. So you can see that a lot of different influences seep in. Most of my conceptual martial arts philosophy; my understanding of timing, baiting, angles, etc are from Yagyu Shinkage Ryu. My penchant for acting second, in response to an attack instead of initiating one, definitely comes from YSR. Classic texts by Yagyu Muneyoshi, Miyamoto Musashi, and Takuan Soho also provided me with many spiritual and mental insights.

Big knife fighting techniques, i.e Bowie and Arkansas Toothpick, were influenced by James Keating, Dwight McLemore, and Pete Kautz. So many hours spent on learning and reading!

Hopefully this brief article provides an interesting overview of where my understanding of knife-work comes from. I have to warn you that nobody’s empty-hand techniques, including ours, are foolproof against an edged weapon attack! Knife defense, and/or counter-offense, are best learned from weapons-based schools, not empty-hand schools. Book-learning can only take you so far. Very few martial arts offer what I would consider reliable, life-saving techniques against a knife attack. That is why I have also taken courses in handgun and long arms. If anything, some of the "martial Arts" schools provided me with a good list of "what not to do" and a starting point from which I began my own journey.  

​david

 Remember how I just posted I wanted to finish this book and not add any more pages? Well I woke up this morning asking myself whether I had included a certain letter from Fairbairn to Kelly Yeaton. Well crap i had not. So where to put it and in the process of looking for it I discovered another piece of critical correspondence about the Shanghai knife guards.

You see the experts got it all wrong again, and in their self-centered world of importance they ridiculed the story of the men in Shanghai taking apart a very valuable Wilkinson Bulletproof vest to get the aluminum plates. Well that isn't what happened, and I have the document to prove it. This letter was written by the men, in the day, (1935) who were actually involved in making them, as opposed to those people twisting history to fit a pesronal agenda almost 90 years later.. 

This is the worst part about writing a book. I know that no matter how much I try there will still be pieces I have forgotten to include. Dots not quite connected. But I am doing my best to set the story straight and that's all one can do.

For a while I belonged to a writers group at the nearby library. Each week someone would submit a piece of what they were working on for a critique. One of the writers said he wasn't writing anymore, all he did was editing; over and over. That's how I feel right now! I started this volume 6 years ago. Back then it was going to be the only volume. Then I realized there was too much material, and way too many knives, to do that. It would have to be about 600 pages long! This volume is now 231 pages long and I hope it will not grow any further. I'm afraid I will have to charge about $70 for it in order to make any profit at all. 

Here is a screen shot of one of the pages with my list of photos that need better shots. It's not as long a list as it was last week but it still means digging out the knives again and getting "better" shots of them. Most of the photos I have would do, but i am not happy with photos that are just acceptable, and I think you expect more too. Just today a man in Calif got his copy of "Clandestine Knives." He sent me a short email to let me know he got it and to say; "It's a treasure." Those comments make the investment in time worth it. The dagger on the screen is a Paisley Suicide Dagger. How many of those have you come across? So bear with me. The book will be worth the wait, and the money, when I finish it. The worst quality photos are not bad, but they are knives not in my collection and I don't have any way to get better ones.

Have a Safe July 4th Holiday.

​I just got back from three weeks in Idaho where we are building a house. This is our plan to escape  NY. It’s costing us a fortune since Bidenflation (Lets go Biden) has raised the cost and increased the unavailability of workers and materials. For example, who would expect to pay $150+ per hour for manual laborers? Imagine the cost of renting a large excavator or bulldozer for days, or the cost of concrete, insulation and other building materials. It’s just my luck to build during the most unstable time in America, and raging inflation. When it is finished, I will have a nice new office to write my books from and a view over a land where people still value independence and freedom. I will be able to walk outside with my Colt Python on my hip and not be afraid some liberal or overzealous LEO is going to wrestle me to the ground and cuff me. I won’t have to pay outrageous village, town, county and state taxes on my house either.
But anyway, while I was in Idaho I had very little time to review my second book with my daughter. The primary reason for the visit was to officiate at the service where she and her husband renewed their wedding vows. It was a wonderful time and there were over 50 guests who came to share the event. All like-minded people. Basically, Gwynne is strapped for time with the new son and her more than full time job, plus helping with the work on our house and taking care of horses and chickens and other pets. Did I mention she is busy? The book will get done but just not quickly. I have taken it back over to work on the editing and leaving any graphics work to her. I have minimized how much of that needs to be done from what I learned on our first book. I don’t have any fancy software. Everything is done in Publisher and then filed as a pdf. I have learned it is helpful to have the document open in publisher and the pdf at the same time. It is easier to check for mistakes and flow in pdf format and when I find a mistake, I switch screens to publisher and fix it right then. I used to do it the painful way of manually writing down corrections and then going back through the document. That way was too clumsy and often I’d miss a correction. Just yesterday I discovered about six page on India-made knives that was in the wrong sequence. That’s something that I pretty much have to take care of, not Gwynne. It has been good to be away from it for a few months and look at it with fresh eyes. But now I just want to get it done!

I don't know how anyone deals with the megalithic Amazon site! I tried several fixes and still had no luck. So I have closed my account and will attempt to try it again as "Author on Amazon." We'll see how painful that is. In the meantime, I am selling and shipping "Clandestine Knives" books on a regular basis. This is my projected lineup of books. My daughter is going crazy trying to get caught up on volume 2. I am nearly done with compiling volume 3. So those of you patiently waiting it is just a matter of time. Thank you for your pre-orders, you are on my contact list. 

It is free to write a book. So what am I talking about?  If I were writing a book with only text, or with small B&W photos, it could be done rather cheaply. But clearly I am not. My books are full color, with large photos on every page. To print in color is expensive, but there are costs before I ever send a manuscript to the printer. Remember these are knives in my safe not photos stolen off the internet. My time cannot be entered into the calculation or I would probably go into shock and give up writing.

I didn't collect knives just so I could write books. I have collected them purely out of an uncontrollable passion for edged weapons. I admit that my collection gives me great pleasure, not just because of the volume of specimens, but for the vast array of models and types that I have amassed. But, there is also a cost associated with the ephemera used to enhance the images of the knives, to create more human interest. Maps, books, photos, flags, insignia, period posters or letters and patches etc. all go into adding to the visual value for you the buyer. Static and sterile B&W photos are okay for a sales catalog, but extremely boring to look at page after page. I want my books to be an artistic display for you the reader. For every photo I use in the books I have probably taken and discarded at least ten or more bad ones. Thank God for digital cameras! In the past I might shoot an entire roll of film and not get any good photos. Worst part is, one never knew until you had paid to get the photos developed. Digitally I can manipulate some of the lesser quality photos and make them usable. 

After all of these years of collecting Commando Knives, the sum total of money I have expended on F-S knives alone, is in the six figures. This excludes my fighting knives of other styles and Japanese swords. My wife has seldom complained, although she has good reason to. I never kept track of the costs of postage which must easily be in the many hundreds of dollars by now.  So why am I going on about this? 

A man in Great Britain ordered a copy of my book on Clandestine Knives. I apologized to him for the high overall cost. He said he thought it was a steal to find so much information for so little cost. He understood what effort went into producing a book like these and was appreciative that he could share in my collection because of the work I was doing to publish them. That, folks, made every bit of the expense and labor worthwhile. When I look at a 170 page book for $60 it seems like a lot of money. When I look at it as 35 cents per page it seems quite cheap. Think about it, how many Clandestine knives can you buy for 35 cents, or even 60 dollars? I see one on Ebay right now with an asking price of $5,000 and it may be a fake or a reproduction. If you have bought one of my books I want to thank you. If not, that's okay too, please enjoy the website and my other blog postings.  Photo is of a rare J&I Marshall knife from Glasgow, but probably made by Wilkinson, London. 

I was looking on ebay for F-S knives and found one quite by accident. Well more accurately by using random selection of words to reach a broader scope than just typing "Commando Dagger or fairbairn Sykes". Sometimes you have to get very creative with your search descriptions. I have found F-S under fairbarn, fairborn, fairbain and Sikes, etc It all depends on how creative you want to get. Sometimes I use the term stiletto, of various spellings. Not every dealer is an English major or an arms expert. But this knife was also illustrated with a dark and shadowy photo. You almost needed to be able to discern the profile to know what it was.

The knife came with the original owners boy scout papers, ration card, high school grades, silk scarf, and wool navy blanket. It also included a 1927 copy of the biography of the WW-I Ace Red Baron's story and a 1940 Blue Jackets manual. So if you keep your eyes open, and your search broad enough, there are still knives out there to be found. Good luck hunting!

Hello folks. So my initial excitement with Amazon has turned to crap. I have paid over $120 in fees, had my credit card locked twice because of their billing process and I haven't sold a single book. I am going to cancel my "Seller" account and try again under an "Author's " account. But I want to see if I lose control over the quality. If I do, it is not worth it. I have also checked into selling my books on Ebay and they would charge me 15% on each book sold plus a listing fee. That means that they would take $8.25 for each book sold. I am already making a minimal profit and this would kill it for me. I think "Author on Amazon" will also charge about the same amount. Wow is this the capitalist free-market dream? Not for me it isn't. When I can sell my books direct, you save and I save.  So I am back to the drawing board trying to figure out a way to get my books to you and not get scammed. Anyone got any ideas? I never intended to make a lot of money selling books but I don't want to lose money either. In the mean time I keep working on my volume two and three.