TIME-WARP KNIVES

There’s a niche market in which custom knifemakers produce high-end, modern knives in an old-European style. They vary from spot-on period repros to modernized amalgamations of influences from distant times and disparate lands.

For instance, the European quillon art dagger is a style each applicant for master smith (MS) in the American Bladesmith Society must make and do so to the satisfaction of an ABS panel of judges as part of earning the MS stamp. According to the official ABS testing literature, the dagger must have at least 300 or more forge-welded layers and a quillon guard “similar to those found on European daggers in the middle to late Middle Ages.” As ABS master smith Shayne Carter noted, it’s no easy task.

“A dagger grind is pretty complex,” he assessed. “You have to have four matching sides, so that in itself is quite a challenge.”

Carter received his MS in February 2019. Among