2008 Atlanta Blade Show

Sherry, Michael, and I visited the 2006 blade show in Atlanta Georgia. We started out Friday morning for the long drive. It was a 7 1/2 hour trip from St Petersburg Florida to Atlanta, and we were glad to get there. After filling up on Bison at Ted's Montana Grill, we were ready for a well deserved rest.

This was our first visit to the Blade Show, and we had no idea of what was in store for us. I’ve been to sword shows and you can see the whole dealer room in an hour, but this 600 table show was a bit more daunting. We wandered around the endless rows of fascinating custom knifes and knife making supplies for seven long hours. At times we thought we would never get through the array of bright shinny sharp objects. The highlights of the day were two demonstrations and three sword booths.

We managed to wander out of the endless tables to see the How to Forge Knives demo by Jay Hendrickson and the Tim Carr forge. In this fascinating demo a master smith forged a small knife from a billet of steel. After seeing the demo, Sherry and I talked about taking a trip out to Arkansas to take their two week class in bladesmithing. Sherry was excited that it did not involve using a twenty pound hammer. I was happy that I could probably make enough room in my shop for the forge and the noise would not drive the neighbors crazy.

We also made it out into the hot sun to see the Japanese Sword Demonstration by James Williams. Williams Sensei and his students put on a great informative demo that included lots of tameshigiri and insightful comments on Japanese Swordsmanship. I really enjoyed it, even though I managed to get sunburned standing in the crowd. I was amazed they were still standing after that very long demo out in the heat. Kudos to him and his crew.

The first sword distributor we found was Weyersberg, Kisschbaum and Cie in Solingen, Germany, the oldest existing sword factory of the world. I had never seen a blued (Murasame) or gold plated (eye of the tiger) katana blade before. Despite these out of the ordinary models, their katana were well designed and built. We may carry them at the shop. Maybe not the special blued or gold katana, but you never know.

We found to Cold Steel booth along with many of the people featured in their “Sword Proof” video. We have recently added their swords to the store and were eager to see everything in person to decide what we wanted to carry. A new video is in the works and they said it would be more “over the top” than the one they have now. I think there will be a few more Cold Steel swords showing up in the shop.

The highlight of the show was the chance to meet and talk with Paul Chen from Hanwei Forge. He was there at the CAS Hanwei booth and proved to be a very personable and easy to talk to. I will admit that if was not Mr. Chen that first caught my eye, but the new Hanwei Nodachi. Even though there is no room to swing this monstrous sword in the dojo, I immediately decided that I must have one. It is truly supersized, but retains enough balance to be usable. All of us got our picture taken with both Paul Chen and his new monster sword. We also had the pleasure the see the new prototype practical, raptor, and tachi (Suikoden Theme). We also got a chance to see the tamahagane Paper Crane Daisho. It lived up to my expectations. The Suikoden - Water Margin “All Men are Brothers” theme Tachi and Paper Crane Katana / Wakizashi are going into my personal collection with the nodachi. We all listened as Mr. Chen told us the story behind the Suikoden Tachi. It was the highlight of the show for me.

We left the show Saturday night with sore feet and hearty appetites. We ended the day with a big meal at the Cheese Cake Factory and a swim in the pool. Of course we got up really late and Sunday and wandered back to the Blade Show for more. Sherry fell in love with metal carving / engraving tool, and I think there will be another trip planned with lessons on metal carving. Our last highlight of the show was finding a last minute 50% off sale from a Japanese knife maker. We all picked up a few personal souvenirs and left on the long drive back down to St Petersburg. We all arrived back home tired and glad to be back in our own beds. We also have a few more bright shiny sharp things.

Mike Femal