AN INCREDIBLE RIDE

Few people in any field achieve the status BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame® member Buster Warenski reached at the height of his custom knifemaking career. The reasons are simple. Yes, he was gifted beyond belief. However, in addition, he was inventive. Then, perhaps most of all, he was relentless.

For most of the custom knife world, when the name King Tut is uttered, people conjure up images of the breathtaking dagger that Warenski labored for seven years to produce. It is not the boy pharaoh of Egypt whose mummified body lay undisturbed in its tomb for 33 centuries before its discovery in 1922. It’s quite an achievement when, among his peers, a knifemaker supplants a legendary historical event with something of his own creation.

Warenski’s road to, for lack of a more superlative descriptive term, “knifemaking immortality,” began with his first knife made in 1966. He had seen a knife made by Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Gil birthday, Buster went to work for Harvey Draper, grinding blades for Draper Knives until the operation closed its doors at the end of the year. In 1975, Buster became a full-time custom knifemaker, and the future was to become, simply put, an incredible ride.