The Joe Rogan Experience - #1168 - Mareko Maumasi

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Mareko Maumasi is a bladesmith and custom knife maker. https://www.maumasifirearts.com/

two four three two one boom the lost art of knife making it's still alive how are you man i'm doing good man thanks for coming down here i appreciate it fucking huge i really appreciate you having me down hey listen man you've made two awesome well four awesome knives for me but this one um is one i use all the time that uh i've posted on instagram that people freak out as we were talking about before the podcast it actually has meteor in it yeah meteorite what's meteor is a big one meteorite's a little one is that the idea do you know i guess yeah you're the knife maker so i didn't actually make so i made the knife i forged the knife but the steel is is a very special kind of steel that very few people can actually manufacture on a small scale in the world.

And that was made by my shopmate, Peter Swartzberg. And so the meteorite is kind of a small element in the whole matrix because most meteorite is all nickel or all iron or something like that. And this one particularly is a lot of nickel and some cobalt. And if you're going to make an actual usable steel out of it, you can't really use a whole lot of it in the overall mixture. So is there any meteorites that are made out of all iron? Yeah, definitely. You just have to find them?

You just got to find the ones. Yeah, and there are impact sites all over the world. Like they're hitting the world all the time. Can you just take them? Like when they land, is it yours if you find it? Yep. You don't have to report it to NASA or anything, right? No.

Hey, bro, found some space junk. Most of them are so small that by the time they would hit the actual Earth's surface, they've completely disintegrated or burned up. So it's the really massive ones. And this was part of an impact, I think, in South America. Oh, wow. I can't remember where exactly. It's just crazy to think that there's a piece of space in there.

Fuck yeah, dude. This dope pattern. I'm really into crafts from Chip, man. I always have been. I love handmade pool cues and this desk, which is a handmade desk. I feel like it's one of the things that I really appreciate in this modern digital world. And I also feel like, unfortunately, it may be one of the things that's slipping away.

It definitely is slipping away. I think with technology, technology has been great for us in a lot of different ways. Like we couldn't be fucking talking into a piece of metal and it's recorded on a computer. It's going through a wire, flying through the air. Like it does a lot of great things, but in doing all those great things it actually has taken us away from really creating and working with our

hands and so like you know even this whole like uh farm to table movement or people even growing their own vegetables you got your own chickens they're they're laying eggs for you like knowing where this stuff is coming from having like first like firsthand contact with that, just having that relationship in general with it brings so much more value to the overall experience of eating those eggs or using that knife or sitting at this fucking table right here. And it seems like a fairly recent movement in that direction, right? a fairly recent movement in that direction right like it feels like things got so digital that people like whoa whoa whoa with the facebook and the fucking instagram i want you know i want a wood table i want to saw this bitch myself yeah put your hands on it yeah i don't want it to be plastic yeah i want real stuff and there's something about handmade things whether it's a handmade pair of boots or handmade bag like it's like there's something about handmade things whether it's a handmade pair of boots

or handmade bag like it's like there's something about things that are made by hand that people get like a deep appreciation of from for sure well and i think i think it also kind of goes back like i was saying like as technology is advanced we've kind of grown away from these kind of what's considered like blue collar work and craftsmanship kind of work. But I think people really are driven by a sense of achievement. And when you're doing data entry that literally millions of people, fucking monkeys, can be trained to do. Not to diminish anything that anybody's doing, but literally to be able to go into a craft and have a hands-on experience is very, very, very, very different. And that sense of achievement, even when somebody comes out of something,

and maybe I taught a class on how to make a knife and it looks like a fucking turd, they're going to think it looks like the most beautiful fucking knife they've ever seen in their life because their hands and their creativity, their energy, their sweat, and probably some of their blood is put into creating that thing. And that brings that much more value to it. Yeah, I think that's an issue with people today that have jobs that they don't feel are very fulfilling. Is that there's no real thing that they're creating at the end. Whereas if you make a table and at the end when you're putting the final sanding on and the final layer of stain and you're looking at it like, I fucking made this. This is a real thing that I can touch that I made.

Just like human beings in our current form, there's a deep connection to making things, physical things. Absolutely. physical things and an appreciation for things that people have made, whether it's a rifle that somebody made or a knife or a hammer that someone's made. There's something about that that we just have a real appreciation for. If you can buy a knife from the store that's made in a shop, I mean, it'll work. Some knife that's made in some mass manufacturing process, it'll work and's fine I mean you'll appreciate it but you won't appreciate it like I appreciate this thing like every time I take this out I'm like super careful with it and you know and then the handle the handles made out of this is a moose

antler and elk antler right right at the top and the moose at the bottom so and I saw your conversation or listen to your conversation with Guy Ritchie and you brought up that there was I think actually Jamie pulled it up and it was like bog oak. And Guy Ritchie was like, bog oak? What bog? Are there American bogs? I don't know if there are any American bogs. It was from a bog in Russia and it was carbon dated to 5,400 years old.

So essentially it's been sunken in a bog. That's the other knife that you made for me. Yeah. That has a handle. Bog oak. How's one to knife that you made for me that has a handle. Bog oak. How's one to get a hold of bog oak? So people are raising logs. There actually was a show, I think it was on Discovery Channel or History,

where people were, their job was raising logs out of the swamps down in Louisiana and in the south and making use of that wood for table projects and craft projects like this. So that's happening all over the world. And some of that stuff are these ancient logs that, you know, it's the right conditions where the tree falls over, it just sits there and steeps. You know, that's a big thing for pool cue shafts, lakewood shafts. They like to take these logs out of the bottom of Lake Michigan or something. Then they dry it all out and then they make

shafts out of it. There's something about it being in the bottom of the water for so long, it does something to the way they feel. What do you got there, Jamie? That's ancient bogwood artisan dice. Some Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, that's some nerd shit right

there son super polished up though it looks cool are those dungeons and dragon nerds dice sort of yeah nerd dice multi-sided yeah like 16 sides on that now what would that was only for a game right you wouldn't play dice dice yeah yeah they use it for all kinds of different they're actually like value holders for the most part value holders what do you mean so like 16 so they count down with the dice and so they have an actual placeholder sitting there that says 16 15 20 whatever oh you understand dungeons and dragons you might be a dork sometimes i'm a dork uh brother my brother-in-law uh is uh magic the gathering oh that's super dork that's for people that get kicked out of the Dungeons and Dragons.

It's just a different iteration of chess, really. I mean, it's all strategies. Oh, it's definitely not that. What is this? Oh, that's a beautiful handle. Yeah. Oh, Bering Made. That kid's in Montana.

Really good guy. He's a nice kid. Met him a couple years ago in Eugene, actually. They do a knife show there every year in April. That image you just showed, Jamie, that's bog oak. That's some other big chunks of it that they pulled out. Wow. Interesting.

So there must be a community of you people, these knife-making people. Yeah. There are quite a few people who have started getting into the knife-making. The knife-making. The world. The world of knife making uh really they're the the resurgence of kind of handcrafted hand forged knives kind of started back in the 70s um and it was it stemmed off from um i think it's a custom knife making association or uh yeah, Custom Knife Makers Association. And then it stemmed off to the ABS, which is the American Bladesmith Society.

And that was all about the forged blade and kind of the mission to retain that knowledge and that history and the skills that go into actually taking a piece of metal and forging a blade out of it. Like your blades, they were forged to shape. and forging a blade out of it. Your blades, they were forged to shape. One approach is to just take a bar of steel, trace out a line, cut that out. It's a totally valid way of doing it. The forging aspect, especially if somebody doesn't actually know what they're doing, they're just heating up a piece of steel.

They don't know how fucking hot it is getting. They don't know when to stop hitting it. They may be hitting it too cold. They may be overheating it and hitting it while it's way too hot. They could really actually do detrimental damage to the material and turn out a piece of shit. So the forged aspect really just brings kind of an aesthetic and kind of a depth of story to help bring kind of more to that product. Well, it's another level, right?

Yeah, it's just another layer of it. It's not just hand crafting something from just a piece of metal that you bought and you put all the pieces together and polished it down and sanded it. When did you get into this? So I – it's kind of a funny story. So I got into this back in 2008 is when I met Bob Kramer. At the time I was working in a restaurant, actually in my hometown of Olympia. And I was working in a restaurant. I was moonlighting as an assistant salsa dancing instructor and doing like community performances and shit like that. And I was 24, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing with myself,

and I didn't really have much of a direction in my life. I was terrible at school. You know, I had maybe 40 credits towards an AA, but I don't even have like an actual certification or a degree of any kind. So anyways, I was sharing this with my dance partner, and she had just started working for this guy who was a knife maker. And she's like, oh, you should meet him. He's really interesting.

You kind of feel like you're lost. He's been all over the world. He was even a clown at one point. This is Bob Kramer? Yeah. He used to be a clown? He was a clown, I think, for a year for Ringling Barnum Bailey. And from what I understand, it was a great experience and he loved it.

But anyways, she's like, you know, I think you guys would hit it off. I think, you know, maybe he could help bestow some wisdom as to where you're at and where he was at and maybe what kind of choices or options you have ahead of you. And so I met up with him at the brew pub that I was actually working at and got some beers, got some fish and chips, sitting bullshitting, and it ended up turning into a job opportunity. Neither of us really went into it knowing that that's the direction it was going to go. But he was anticipating. He had an article coming out in The New Yorker like in a month.

That was going to really like blow his shit up. And he had had a couple big articles like in Savor magazine. And he was featured in Cook's Illustrated at one point. And each time like there's a huge influx. And so I think in part of anticipation for that, he was like, look, you seem like a nice guy. You don't really seem to have a direction. Maybe we could work something out. I can't make any promises to you that I have full-time work for you.

So he just took you on as an apprentice. Essentially. I saw a video with him with Anthony Bourdain. That's how I found out about him. He was making a knife with meteors. With a piece of meteorite in it as well same kind of thing and uh i remember thinking like wow crazy is this this guy's hammering this thing together and put into that that was like one of the ways that i got interested in custom knife making sure and

man i'd always had knives you know like pocket knives you know right and i always like kind of thought they were cool and enjoyed them yeah but until i watched that video i i didn't realize that there was a lot of people out there there it is yeah him and anthony i didn't realize there was a lot of people that are out there doing this from scratch and then you know then i was like oh i gotta get a knife and then then i saw your page on instagram and i remember thinking wow this guy does some wild shit. And I don't remember how you and I got to chatting. I don't remember. I just remember seeing your stuff on Instagram.

You reached out to me on email, and I was like, Joe Rogan. Was it an email or was it an Instagram message? Oh, actually. Not sure. I think it was an email. Email? Either way. Probably from your website.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you had seen my email in one of the previous conversations. Oh, actually. Not sure. I think it was an email. Email? Either way. Probably from your website. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you had seen my email in one of the previous conversations. Oh, okay. But I was like, this can't be like the Joe Rogan. And then as the conversation continued on, and I was like, because also your picture for the email is like this goofy picture of you doing like kissy face or something like that. It's fucking hilarious.

That sounds like me and i was like holy shit i think this actually might be joe rogan this is crazy um and but it's doing this craft and doing this work and and finding and connecting with people who have an appreciation for the actual like the actual work that goes into it and appreciating that value has been, you know, like even five years ago when I first started under my own brand, there's no way I would have thought I'd be sitting here hanging out with you guys. It's kind of been a crazy ride for me. It's a crazy ride for me too, man.

All of it is. Life's crazy. I believe that. But like I said, I've always had a deep appreciation for artisans, for art. I think your knife making is art. I mean, I really do. Look at this. Jamie's pulled up an image from your website that shows this incredible blade design.

Now, this is what I've always wanted to know. Is that Damascus steel? Is that what that is? That is Damascus. And just a quick note, this is actually a post that I did to celebrate another maker. His name's Julian. You can actually kind of see it there on the right margin. But he's a South American kid.

He's like 20. The blades that you made that you have here today that you're bringing with you for an auction, the patterns on those things are fucking insane. How do you do that like how do you make these because it's not just steel for people that are just listening to this like that one is a great example right i would really love um for people who are just listening to just please go uh spell out go spread out go back to the uh page jamie so i could see the headline it's stuck what do you mean you can't shrink it i got zoomed in and it won't zoom out Go back to the page, Jamie, so I can see the headline.

It's stuck? What do you mean? You can't shrink it? It got zoomed in and it won't zoom out. What happened? I don't know. I did it with the touchpad. What did you?

Oh, the touchpad. These goddamn. We got an old ass laptop there. M-A-U-M-A-S Fire Arts. M-A-S-I. S-I. M-A-U-M-A-S Fire Arts. M-A-S-I. S-I. M-A-U-M-A-S-I Fire Arts. Malmasi Fire Arts.

Don't get stuck again. M-A-U. Oh, it's stuck. M-A-U-M-A-S-I Fire Arts. If you go there, that's his page. You'll be able to check it out and order books are closed. You're fucked. Yeah. Back fucked. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm a, I'm at three years right now and I just kind of like, I had to shut it down cause it's kind of at a, at a overwhelming point. Yeah. Like it's a good problem, but it's overwhelming because it's a fucking show. Yeah.

Yeah. And balancing doing the work with now the, you know, like the marketing and branding, maintaining relevance through social media and taking the time to create content on top of all of that. I mean, especially when you're first starting to do it, the content part side of it, it's fucking time consuming. That's a crazy long waiting list, man. Three years.

Yeah. It's actually, at least in the knife making world, it's not uncommon for people to actually wait longer than that it's the same thing with the pool cue world right it's the exact same thing a lot of these uh famous pool cue manufacturers like southwest or sugar tree and then they have 10-year waiting lists and it's just because they do it right it takes a long time. Everything's done by hand. They're highly sought after. And because of that, you could buy a pool cue from a company

that makes them through a computerized process, and they're fine. They play really good. Just like a knife that you'd buy from a store that's made by a machine and it's all done mass manufacturing. It'll cut your meat. It works great. Yeah, it gets the job done. But it doesn't feel the same.

It's not the same thing. It doesn't feel. It's crazy. Like you can feel the difference. Yeah. Between a handmade thing and a machine made thing. Yeah. It's bizarre.

It trips me out every time. Well, there's a little something that people leave in things that they make. mean there really is i mean i think it exists in everything that people make whether it's clothing or jewelry or furniture or anything i mean i think there's a little something that people leave when they in in a thing that they make what there's something you talk about sometimes about how animals inherit like uh passed down through genes like watch out for this plant or watch out for these predators and shit like that like passing something on like that kind of in a way like where i'm toiling over something like that for you know 40 dedicated solid fucking hours right making sure it's as perfect as i possibly can make that thing at this point in my life

the skills i got and got I think there's something to that I mean even if it's just a thought even if you just know when you touch it like if I touch this knife I know that you made this you know when I'm when I'm cutting something with this and I'm cooking I know that you made this so maybe it's just even if it's only in my head it's still it just feels different. You know, and I don't know. I mean, there's Rupert Sheldrake, who's a, I don't know what exactly kind of scientist he is, but he has this bizarre theory.

And he's a really interesting guy to talk to. So I would never discount it. He thinks that everything has memory. He thinks you just can't access that memory. But he thinks there's things that have memories. And he thinks that our idea that memory is something that only animals and humans possess is, is just, it's probably not true.

And that that's probably one of the reasons why people don't want to buy a house where someone was murdered. Right. You know what I mean? Like the idea is that a haunted house, even if it's not really a ghost, like maybe that home has memories. Yeah. Like my dad went to Gettysburg and he's not woo-woo at all.

He's like as fucking straight-laced across the board, no bullshit as it gets. And he said, man, you could feel sadness there. He goes, you just think of how many thousands of people died at Gettysburg. And he said, when you're there, it just feels sad. Like you feel death there. I don't know if that's real or if it's maybe the knowledge that you have that there was a war there. I mean, I don't know. I used to do this thing where I would walk through cemeteries just interested, like looking at people's names and like when did they live and what do people have to say about them or what's left behind.

And just walking through cemeteries, like sometimes I would even do it on Halloween to try to trip my ass out. And it definitely feels weird in there when you're there. It does. I used to run through cemeteries. I used to run through them because I would want to be reminded that life is short. Get something done. Make something happen. Yeah. Not all these people that aren't here anymore.

But the thing about cemeteries is they're already dead when they get in there. Right. I think the memory thing is if you're on a boat and someone gets murdered on that boat and you're in the boat and you're like fucking freaking out there's something about like things like if you had a thing if you had a wallet that Mike Tyson owned you know what I mean you'd hold it you're like damn you know there's something to it morphic resonance okay that's Rupert Sheldrake's theory. According to a theory developed by Rupert Sheldrake,

British biologist, a paranormal influence by which a pattern of events or behavior can facilitate subsequent occurrences of similar patterns. Oh, that's right. That is not about memory. That is his other theory. It's referred to in a lot of other ways about memory is That is his other theory. It's referred to in a lot of other ways about memory is inherent in nature. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think what I was talking about is part of his theory of morphic resonance. But morphic resonance, I think he's, yeah, it's here. It says that, hold on, scroll back. Scroll down. It says a process whereby self-organizing systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems. So what he was talking about with morphic resonance was how mice, if they learn,

like say if you have a pattern and there's like cheese at the end of this pattern and then they go through a maze, if one mouse figures out that pattern, other mouse can figure it out quicker. And there's something somehow or another they learn from each other right and when uh chimpanzees were observed using tools other chimpanzees on the other side of the world started mimicking that behavior without any

interaction with those chimpanzees at all yeah yeah yeah very strange that's like fucking butterfly well it's more intense fucking butterfly effect shit right there. Well, it's more intense than butterfly effect because it implies that there's some sort of collective information pool that they're sharing through the ether. That there's something that they're sharing through some unknown method. That's crazy. Yeah. Some unknown method. That's crazy.

Yeah. Well, it's actually been shown that there is some sort of a, there's something to this. And there's a lot of criticism of it. So if you're one of those people right now that's like a strict materialist and you're screaming out, I get it. I get it. Someone who's a real rationalist who just wants only science, provable. Someone who's a real rationalist who just wants only science, provable. The thing is it is kind of provable because there has been some tests and there's fierce opposition to this, which anything that has like some woo-woo attached to it is going to have some fierce opposition.

But Rupert was a really fascinating guy. And he's also a rare scientist. He was Christian. Is that what it was?'s really into he has a certain level of christianity that he accepts and adopts because he feels like it's beneficial to him very interesting guy yeah that's yeah i did a podcast a few years back yeah he's a trip him and um uh there was a mathematician and terence mckenna who was the other gentleman they were it was the trial logs they had these fantastic recordings it was sheldrake mckenna and one other guy was also brilliant and they would go back and forth they had these um ralph abraham abram abrams or abraham abraham

abraham and they um they did these series of talks and uh this is one of the things that came up like mckenna was the most woo woo ralph abraham was the least woo woo and sheldrick was kind of in the middle right yeah interesting stuff if you're ever yeah for sure hanging around yeah the trial logs. There it is. The recordings are still available somewhere. I think our friend Psychedelic Salon, I think Lorenzo has them. Are they available online?

Bam. Oh, there you go. Bam. Sounds fun. Yeah, they're fucking cool, man. You can't actually play it. I don't know why. You can't play it?

I don't know. Maybe it was there and I got taken down. Yeah, that is the case. Looks like it got removed. Yeah, someone's probably selling it. Yeah. It's really cool, though. You get to see these guys in the 1990s pre-internet.

Was it pre-internet? Might not have been. It might be like 98. I think McKenna died around 2000-ish. He died post... I want to say he died like 2003 or something. When did he die? Why am I asking this?

This is all about memory and things. We went on a fucking deep road off into the woods here. But anybody who's listening... 2000. 2000. 2000, yeah. So he made it to Y2K and then he kicked the bucket. Anybody who's just interested in really cool conversations, it's something to listen to.

Yeah, that sounds very interesting. Yeah, just three super smart dudes kind of debating ideas and bouncing them around off each other. You know what I've actually gotten into recently is listening to old recordings of like Alan Watts. Oh, yeah. Oh, he was great.

Reading Joseph Campbell and just like, I don't know, just absorbing it and trying to figure out what that means to me today in this like very different world. Yeah. Watts is a fascinating guy. Plus that accent made him sound so much cooler yeah drone out yeah his actually the first time i ever got into a good uh like a like a meditative space was a meditation led by alan watts from like i don't know when the fuck it was like 60s, 70s.

And just the way he explained it for me, it was the first time it ever made sense how meditation should work. He's like, don't try to not think of anything, but just accept them, that they're there. But also ignore them at the same time. It was weird. And then I just totally felt like I was above myself watching me just sitting there listening to this recording. It was a trip. Well, he was such a heady guy, the sound of his voice and just hearing his thoughts.

When you hear a really deep thinker like him, one of the things that it does is it kind of gets you into that pattern of thought, and you realize, like, oh, I can probably kind of sort of think that way too. I just allow myself to be guided by his words and sort of try to pay attention to how he's doing this. Yeah. He was an interesting guy because not just was he a deep thinker, but the influences of those people, it's very different. Like there's very few recordings even back then for them to listen to. This stuff was based on reading and their education and their actual life experiences.

So they were very unique and original. They were really the cornerstones for a lot of these deep philosophical ideas. And so then when you hear an Alan Watts recording today, maybe someone like me or some other people that listen to that, they might share those ideas or reflect on those ideas. But clearly, these are not my ideas. These are ideas that have come from these intense cornerstone people, whether it's McKenna or Alan Watts or someone like that. Do you get a chance when you're working, do you listen to shit or do you just? Yeah, I got all the time to sit and listen.

Do you have headphones? Yeah. Because it seems like it would be loud as fuck. Yeah, so I just got a hold of these Bluetooth earbuds, and they have this memory foam earbud tips, so it helps reduce the amount of noise that's actually coming in so it helps protect in that way just kind of in general like a normal like uh inner ear plug would work but also because it's reducing the amount of noise that's getting in you can also

listen at a lower volume so you're not like blowing out your ears to be able to hear whatever you're listening to like you wouldn't through normal earbuds. Right, because it's so loud in your shop. Yeah, so much noise. Whenever I'm working, especially if somebody happens to pop by the shop and they want to see, they're just curious. And so we have stuff going on or we can heat some steel up real quick and do a quick demonstration. Usually I don't take the time to throw all that stuff in.

Fuck, it is so loud. I actually feel like my hearing has become more sensitive since I started making knives than it was before. It's probably your ears getting beat up. Do you always have earplugs in? I always have hearing protection in, so my hearing is always protected. So I feel like it's become more sensitive. I have a better sense of hearing.

I don't know if that's possible to get your hearing back or whatever. Maybe you're protecting it. It's doing better because of that. Yeah. I hear a lot of things. All the things it feels like whenever I take my hearing protection out. I'll be at home or something and I'll be like, what the fuck is that noise? And my wife looks at me like I'm fucking crazy.

I wonder if that's the case. I wonder if maybe if people don't use wonder if, like, maybe if, like, you know, people don't use their hands, and then the hands get soft. I don't know. You can't gain it back. Okay. But you might be protecting it longer. And since you have a sensitivity issue,

maybe since it's quieter all day. So if you blow it out from, like, concerts and shit like that, that's it? That's all it was. All you can do is get a hearing aid. Oh, yeah. it out from like concerts and shit like that, that's it? I saw that with a lot. All you can do is get a hearing aid. Oh, yeah. What about stem cells or some shit?

Have they figured out a way to do that yet? Because it's literally what you're hearing with is like a hair follicle. It's vibrating. Yeah, and you blow that shit out.

They haven't synthetically made those yet or regrown them yet. I feel so bad for those old rock stars that didn't know any better and now they're just fucking...

Huey Lewis. It just happened to him. He can't play anymore. All of a sudden. That's the Lord's work. Just kidding. Just kidding, Huey. It's hip to be square. Yeah, man. It's fucked up. The dude from ACDC. Who else? Angus Young. Yeah, Angus is

gone deaf. Oh, Jesus. Really? Fucking everybody's going deaf yeah they also probably didn't protect themselves like you should have nobody knew any better back then have you ever seen that documentary it's an older one older one it was like from the early 2000s but this woman she uh progressively got deafer and deafer as she grew older until like i think she in high school or something like she was like practically completely deaf but she's a percussionist and she's like a world-renowned percussionist there's this uh awesome documentary it's called uh touch the sound and she hears through her body which is a it trips me out but the tones that she's able to achieve the control

she has over everything whatever kind of instrument instrument she's playing, it's an awesome documentary. Wow. But she has almost literally no hearing. She hears everything through her body. Dude. So it's kind of interesting to think, like, if Angus could figure that shit out, then, I mean, he's holding the fucking thing in his hand the whole time. It's not just Angus, the lead singer. Right hand the whole time. He's standing in front of... It's not just Angus, the lead singer.

Right, right, right. Who's the... What's the lead singer's name? The fuck's his name? Second lead singer. Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson. I don't know.

God, I'm gonna forget that. He's gone deaf, too. Angus and Brian. And Angus is, like, always headbanging. What kind of CTE does that guy have oh jesus i mean fucking christ you shouldn't be doing that god you were talking to dd about that the other day yeah i was i was thinking like all through high school like i played football from seventh grade all through high school and like all the stuff they're learning now i'm just like jesus

what the fuck was happening to me dude Dude, CTE is no joke. And we always led with our head. Mm-hmm. Of course. Yeah. My neck was always all kinds of fucked up. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I definitely had some serious concussions.

I'm sure. And, yeah. Sometimes it scares me and worries me a little bit, like, what does that mean for me now? How old are you now? 34. Yeah, man yeah man just turned 34 um it's scary you know you're lucky you stopped when you did i know uh i know a lot of people with brain damage me too i i'm sure i have some i guaranteed i must i mean i don't think anybody

rides for free i think you get hit in the head enough, you got some brain damage. I got hit in the head on a regular basis for most of my younger years, from like 15 to like 22. I got hit in the head all the time. It's just nobody knew any better. And back then, you thought that once you were slurring your words and stuff, if you just stopped, like, oh, he's a little punchy, he should stop. That's how people thought. But they didn't realize that it's regressive. And then you don't even really show brain damage like 10 years after the initial injuries.

That's when you really start showing damage. So some CTE just compounds it until it just becomes unmanageable for these poor people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's, I actually, I can't, especially after watching Concussion and seeing and reading like articles about the real life people that this shit's happened to, I like, I have a hard time watching football. Like I used to watch football all the time.

I've never been like crazy into sports, knowing all the stats and every stuff. I enjoyed watching like a good contest i never really rooted for anybody but now when i see like even kids signing the draft or signing up from high school to go to a certain college i'm like man that's somebody's fucking baby yeah fucking tearing themselves up like is that worth it yeah is that worth it i i I would support kids fighting way before I would support kids doing football. Both of them I'd be nervous about. And, you know, I mean, there's other stuff like X Games type shit, people that are into extreme sports and, you know, people that are into snowboarding.

Snowboarders wipe out all the time and crack their head open. Can you get a scholarship in martial arts of any kind? I don't think so. To college? Just wrestling. That's a big driver right there though. Right. Wrestling is certainly a martial art. It's probably one of the most important martial arts. Other than that, that's probably it, right? Yeah, that's it.

Judo, maybe? Is there a school that has judo? They used to have boxing in schools. Back in the 50s and 60s and shit there was boxing was a legitimate sport in college but not anymore yeah yeah yeah it just i can't really watch it anymore i mean you have to be careful like with your hand-eye coordination and your fingers and shit now oh you know i mean you you gotta think like when you're working with hammers and hot metal, you must always have to be super – Because everybody that works in a machine shop is missing a fingertip or something's fucked up.

There's crazy stories, too. Like the buffer, the fluffy little things, one of the most dangerous things because it catches an edge. Just like if you're snowboarding, you catch a bad edge. And it bites the blade bites into that and it acts as a hand and just rips it and flings it wherever oh it's thrown knives right back into guys and fucking killed them oh fuck yeah my wife probably hating me saying that right yeah but it's the reality i've done i've actually done a lot of work to get away from using buffers because of that and i'm still like doing great work i just i have a lot of friends who just they'll never touch a fucking buffer and because it's just terrifying it's scary what does

a buffer look like for people don't know put up like what what would you call it maybe like a buffing shit i don't know usually it's like a bench top thing like a bench grinder usually it has the hard round stone wheel on one side that's it right there those motherfuckers it's not one fucking it's just gonna go

make me nervous that looks like something so if you fucked up and you got that blade too close it would kick it and then so that one is is what's called a sizal wheel so it's it's made from a that type of rope but the ones that are the most dangerous are the softer cotton wheels because they want to grab that much easier they have more give um but yeah it's and what's interesting is i've actually been cut less But, yeah, and what's interesting is I've actually been cut less working in a metal shop than I ever did working in – and burned less than I ever did working in kitchens.

I worked in restaurants back at house, like, for seven years collectively. And most of that has to do with other people not calling, like, hot coming across. Right. And they're fucking – I turn around. They don't call it. I turn around. They't call it i turn around they're there with this fucking saute pan right in the side of my arm i'm ready to fucking drop it right but it's being in a metal shop like you said you do have to pay so much attention you have to be focused at what you're doing because literally everything in that fucking shop wants

to hurt you or kill you the second you're not paying attention. Because the second you're not paying attention, it's going to grab you. There are horror stories of people working next to machines and they have long hair that's caught in a motor and it just fucking... Rips it. Scalps and just straight...

Terrible stuff. You had a fighter in the power tool last week. Oh yeah, he got a power tool stuck in his balls who is that don't remember yeah poor bastard yeah i got a uh brian wilson yeah i got a drill that uh he lost his hearing due to not putting in earplugs at a car race not music specifically he there was a quote brian wilson from the beach boys uh brian wilson from the beach boy or i'm sorry he this article has him at the top brian johnson oh brian johnson yeah from cars yeah well how the fuck does he know motherfuckers in acdc i mean wouldn't you think that'd be loud

too bro angus young says that he lost a little bit but his quote says that he never really had a problem with it because that's why he was running around on stage so much too. He's never in one place so long. What? It's just the fucking loudness of the room. That's hilarious. First concert I ever saw on ACDC.

ACDC? I wonder if people are more susceptible, just like some people are more susceptible to CTE. Yeah, I remember Rhonda Patrick was talking about certain genes that you have. What is it? Apropos? I forget what it was called.

But whatever genes that make you more susceptible and more likely to get CTE from concussions. Probably. Yeah. Probably would have to be something. Probably. Yeah, for sure. Makes sense. Now, when you're in that shop and you're doing all this grinding, is there any concern about chemicals?

Like is there chemical ingestion or smells in the air or anything like that because you're dipping things and you've got all this stuff that you're using? Yeah, especially if you're working with synthetic. I mean any material that you're grinding, you're making it – it's airborne. Like any of it can go into your lungs. I'm almost always wearing a respirator. Oh, wow. Especially when I'm grinding. And it's like double can, always like covering up my face.

Does it work? Does the respirator filter out all of it? It makes a huge difference. In fact, excuse me, where I have my facial hair right now, even this little bit, what you got even, that little bit is enough to- Create a little gap and then you can get through that so you have to shave your face smooth. Yeah. Usually I keep it pretty well trimmed down.

Now, how the fuck do you create those patterns? Like Damascus steel? What is that? This doesn't have too much of a pattern? That one's not Damascus steel, unfortunately. It's beautiful though. Yeah. Now, what does create those?

Like that. There you go. How do you do that we're looking at a crazy image that looks like it almost looks like someone drew on it this is uh this is a pattern i just came up with recently it's called i call it the braid mosaic for lack of better term um but it just looks like a braid and it's something i've been wanting to create and i finally figured it out so essentially what to create pattern welded damascus uh first off damascus is kind of a blanket has become a blanket term traditionally and originally

it actually referred to the steel that like the type of steel that your knife this knife the meteorite knife is made from and it eventually became a blanket term for all kinds of kind of patterned steel in general whether it's it curls naturally or if it's kind of forced and created the way that braid pattern was made so that's pattern welded steel and so you have to start with at least two different types of high carbon steel ideally steels that heat treat in a similar range, when you heat them up and squish on them, they move at a similar rate. And so most commonly, people are working with 1080 and 15 and 20. Those are just codes for two different types of high carbon steel. But essentially, you bring them up to high temperature, you squish them either under a big hammer or under a press you

can even actually do it by hand but you have to do kind of a smaller billet to create the patterns and get it to stick because the trick is really getting um getting them close even evenly squishing it out and it's like um if you've ever like rolled out dough or anybody who's ever made like pastry dough like you would use in a croissant, you tear open a croissant, you see all those layers in there. And that's from a piece of dough being rolled out, full of dough rolled out.

And so it's kind of the same fucking thing, but with metal, but you have to have the kind of, uh, the right kind of temperature environment, kind of, uh, you,

you want as little oxygen in there as possible because the oxygen creates carbon, or not carbon, but iron oxide that is detrimental to creating solid weld bonds. And there are different ways to achieve that. But the 1080 is the black steel, the black color, and the 15 and 20 is the silver color. What's the difference in the way those steels perform? Is one of them harder or more durable or holds an edge more? They pretty much perform almost exactly the same. In fact, chemically speaking, they're almost exactly the same, except for the 15 and 20 has a high level of nickel in it, 0.2% by weight.

And so that steel is traditionally used in saw blades, especially large, big mill bandsaws. You know, like in Oregon, one of the oldest and continuously running wood saw mill is still there and doing its thing with these giant bandsaw blades that are like 30 feet in that or uh in circumference and they're like foot wide and they're just monsters and um foot wide you mean like thick no no like they're only like maybe a 16th of an inch thick because you want a narrow saw curve so you're not wasting material. But they're wide to help

prevent deflection. So it's a band saw. I'm thinking of a circular saw for some reason. Sorry, yeah, band saw. So the circular saw, those saw curves are usually probably around an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch thick. But it's the same kind of idea

is that they're trimming down these giant logs so they need a big fucking saw. Those things bind and break, man. That must be a fucking nightmare. Yeah. That's got to be so terrible. You don't want to be standing right there when that happens. Have you seen an original samurai sword?

I've seen a few, actually. This one's from the 1500s. Check this shit out. Yeah, let's see it. Oh, shit. This is the one that Mr. neil degrasse tyson was closing with the other day yeah that's a real one that's an actual real samurai sword right right from the 1500s yeah see the ray skin is nice do you know when it was made exactly i don't think

they know they just know it's from some time period in the 1500s. Sure, sure, sure. But there's a certificate of authentication that came with it that explains. I'm just looking to see what the hamon activity looks like. So the hamon is, you can kind of see this line that runs parallel to the cutting edge. And that usually indicates where the soft material stops and the hard material starts. And so the idea with these kind of, the challenge with any knife is making a knife that takes and holds a sharp edge for a good period of time. What's the key to that?

But it's also tough, which means you can drop it and it's not going to break. So if you wanted a hunting knife or something like that. So a hunting knife, a bush knife, a bowie knife, those are harder working knives. So you want to actually bring that hardness down. You don't have to bring it down a ton um but just a few points will make a huge fucking difference like this knife here yeah exactly what's the difference in the way that knife is made and this knife is so they were tempered they were heat treated the same so they were brought up to uh like 1500 degrees for people don't not listen or listening not watching this

one of these knives is a hunting knife that uh how that feel, by the way? It's great, man. I love it. Yeah. Nice. But it's made very similarly. If you look into the video of it, the handle is the same, and it looks very similar. It has a different knife guard, though. It's pretty cool.

What's that? Like that. There you go. Yeah, the guard keeps your hand from sliding up. Yeah, and I like the way you made the handle, too. It's an interesting handle. Curved and everything. Yeah.

Where'd you get that pattern for, like, the handle? Yeah, so. I'm sorry, answer the first question. I'm sorry. I don't remember the first five questions. Like, what is the difference in the way they're treated? Okay, yeah, yeah. So they were hardened.

So heat treating, the whole process is essentially heating up the steel, make it hard, and then you put it back into heat but a much lower temperature to kind of toughen it up. And so you're pulling some of that hardness back. So they were hardened the same way, but they were tempered at different temperatures because one is a hard use knife while the chef's knife is not a hard use knife. What is the difference between temper and what does that mean? So the tempering, so essentially, so I harden it.

So I bring it up to 1500 degrees, which is like a dull glowing orange color. And then I dip it in a special oil that i have that's designed for quenching materials not just in knife making but all kinds of different uh industrial applications quenching materials oil sorry quenching oil what does that mean so that's cooling the this hot steel down in a very short period of time and he's quenching it oil so is it a cold oil no so actually the depending on how the steel needs to be heat treated uh you actually want to heat up the oil so that it's uh it's thinner and it also there's this thing that's called a vapor jacket so if you've ever like been next to a wood-burning stove and you drop a little water on it and you see that bead water dance around on

there the same thing happens on the surface of the blade except for the blade is the source of the heat right you put it in that oil all that oil is dancing around on it so when the oil is thinner uh it it's not as large of a jacket because when that jacket is large so jack in encasing that steel while it's trying to cool down um it actually kind of acts as an insulator and ruin or could potentially ruin so not only do you put it in the oil but you want to agitate it to kind of break up that jacket um so it doesn't get a chance to just sit there and all the way around the blade and if it was cold it would it would it would be thicker and so um it would make a larger jacket actually and also the it probably wouldn't be as uh

efficient i guess in cooling the steel down because ideally like for most steels you want to cool them down pretty much as quickly as you possibly can so you have a knife sorry sorry so we keep going i was just going to say you you essentially have uh depending on what kind of steel you're working with you have anywhere from half a second to uh like five seconds to get it from 1500 degrees or sometimes higher to below 800 degrees and so this knife would be more durable is that what it is than this knife durable yeah tougher so in in knife making commonly refer to it as being tougher so it can withstand coming into impact with bone you could chop with that thing uh a lot more efficiently with a tougher knife because this hasn't been tempered at as at as high of a temperature um it's it's much harder than this one even though it's a few points those few points make a big difference and so if you

were to take this out into the woods try to do the same job as this one just the cutting it wouldn't necessarily snap um but parts of the cutting edge would uh blow out probably blow it in chips um i actually recently just from time to time it's good practice as a knife maker to make sure that you're still doing your thing everything your heat treating stuff all right i take a knife and i just beat the shit out of it first i chopped through some wood and then i actually took it to an antler and beat the shit out of it too and um it's it is amazing that if you're doing things right, you know, ten thousandths of an inch is enough to really –

to withstand impact of chopping through wood pretty well. Of course, unless you're coming into contact with like – A nail. Yeah, a nail or super dense knots. That's crazy because it's so thin. Right. That's one of the more interesting things about this. And that's actually on the thicker side.

This is on the thicker side? At least – especially along the cutting edge. That's probably of the more interesting things about this. And that's actually on the thicker side. This is on the thicker side? At least, especially along the cutting edge. That's probably twice as thick as it actually needs to be. Wow. Which is crazy. But it just, it comes down to the material. Not everybody, or a lot of people mistakenly think, you know, steel is steel is steel is steel and whatever. But they're not.

Steel is made for many different applications. And they're actually very is made for many different applications and they're actually very specifically designed for those applications so uh like a structural steel this kind of stuff that you know buildings are built out of very different from this it doesn't have very much carbon in it at all that way so uh and the carbon is what helps make these really hard so lacking that carbon it allows it to be way tougher so you can bend it all fucking day long it's not gonna snap exactly right so that's why you want it for buildings in la where the earthquakes hit yeah they wiggle a little bit yeah yeah um this is

much thinner than a lot of other uh hunting would be, which is interesting. With your use of this exotic metal and your methods, you're able to do that. Well, and also part of the reason that you're able to do that is because it's high-carbon steel, which means it has a high volume of carbon comparatively than other kinds of tool or cutlery steel. And what's the benefit of high carbon versus less carbon? So high carbon allows you to, especially for the meteorite steel, it's a kind of crucible steel called woots. And so the patterning you see in there is actually strands of carbon or carbide material. So all the extra carbon floating around in the matrix,

the iron matrix of this steel, jumps onto these bands called carbides, and there are different elements, and vanadium is one of the elements in this steel that draws that carbon in. So what you're seeing are thousands and thousands of all these ultra-hard carbon bands floating around through the Iron Matrix.

Do you watch Game of Thrones? I do. When they have swords that are made out of Valerian steel, do you get pissed off? Get the fuck out of here with your fake magic steel. No. Well, and what's interesting, back in the day, this shit was fucking magical right they didn't

understand what was going on now how did they learn i mean what is the history i mean obviously that sword there is from the 1500s but you know from back in the roman gladiator days and i mean how did they understand how to do this so the steel that they were using in europe was not really that great it was had the best shit japanese japanese swedish were pretty fucking good yeah as well as the vikings the persians and the indonesians vikings material wasn't the greatest wasn't too barbaric no time to think it just it comes down to uh what they had available to them right yeah so who was like the pioneer of like really durable badass sword material was it japanese so probably so the japanese and the

persian slash indonesian persians uh swords are probably the most legendary you know they're the ones where like it could cut through silk floating in the air and shit like that. Why is that? What did they do different? So it's... So the Persian steel is steel very, very, very similar to these meteorite.

So it's a crucible. It starts... It's called a crucible steel. And so essentially there's this clay jar, essentially, called a crucible. People melt all kinds of stuff in it. but you can melt steel in it as well. And so they were making these ingots of crucible steel and then forging them out. And they really, really very heavily relied on these carbide bands floating through the material

because unfortunately they didn't really have a very uh advanced way of quenching that steel so that not only did they have the bands but they also had hard iron matrix as well that those bands were floating and so they really relied on those that banding so did they just learn from trial and error of thousands of years of experimenting with different materials and different locations they got the iron from and different things that they added to it to make steel. Yep, absolutely. And that's why, you know, even watching Game of Thrones

or other kind of medieval or movies set in medieval times, you know, there were very specific makers who were the best, who could really make this shit happen. And it's because they had a tradition passed down to them. And, you know, all that, a lot of that stuff was very fictional. But in the real world, that was the same thing, you know. You had very specific lineages of people who had, you know, essentially the most advanced technology and skills and techniques

for creating the most highest performing weaponry essentially of the time which was like the currency of the fucking time somebody went to japan fairly recently and and filmed them working with a high level sword maker for a television show i'm trying to remember who it was. It was somewhat famous, but it was really badass. They went to this sword maker shop, and he's doing the whole thing, like hammering it all out and building the samurai sword from scratch the way it's always been.

Yeah, there are a few of those documentaries. Do you know what it is, Jimmy? On YouTube. Usually you've got to do a little bit of digging to find them um i i i actually just watched a few of them like in the last five years i do not recall what they're do you think you're gonna make a samurai sword one of these days i might do it uh eventually just i mean i'm always gonna do chef's knives because that's what i know like that's the tool I know the most. That's probably the biggest, like, market, right? There's a giant, I mean.

People are super foodies and want to let you know. Well, it's not only that. Like, but if you think about it. Momasi made this out of a meteor. You know, there's a lot of mystique around Japanese swords or even the American bowie knife as well as Viking swords. But nowadays, people have that shit made, but it goes on a wall. The things that are really getting used are like a hunting knife and a chef's knife. And cooking knives are used almost literally in every single household

around the world every day right year round yeah and uh it's what's interesting is because of its ubiquity to our everyday life it lacks that mystique because we see this shit every day we don't think much of it versus a japanese sword people walk in here and they're like fuck well i tell you one thing man when people come over my house and i'm cooking and they go where the fuck did you get that knife that happens all the time and when i show it's either this one or the other one when i show them the bog oak one the same thing they're like dude i'm like yeah man check it out now in terms of like this one or the other one that you made me the other hunting knife that you made me out of damascus yeah which one is like tougher more durable so they've been heat treated to perform

very very very similarly so they basically you'd essentially have to destroy them to really determine which one outperformed the other you'd have to stick it in a bone and try to break it yeah essentially use it how it's not supposed to be right but it it keeps an edge so well man it's crazy yeah i mean i get nervous every time i touch the blade i mean this thing slices through things yeah now um there's got to be an art to uh actually sharpening things too right oh for sure and how do you know like the right angle to approach sharpening it's i mean there are lot, there are actually a lot of great information online. They're, especially in big cities like Seattle,

LA, New York, Austin, they're, Portland as well, they're super reputable people, not only who will offer service, but usually offer lessons as well. I suggest, like, if you can't afford it, you know, you can dig around it you know you can dig around you can find the stuff online but it's not the same as having essentially having a coach next to you

saying uh-uh or yeah that's great that's perfect that's where you want to be doing that you do sharpen both sides i do so you sharpen the top and the bottom? I'm sorry. Both sides of the steel. Would you sharpen it like this and then flip it over and sharpen it like that? Sorry, yeah. Now, what are those things, and they have those metal things where people go, shing, shing, shing, shing. Yeah, yeah. Those ones seem like, I'm like, that looks brutal.

I wouldn't do that to a good knife. Am I right thinking that way? Well, it depends on the type of steel that your knife's made from and then what the material is that those rods are made from so those are commonly referred to as sharpening rods or sharpening sticks but the reality is they're not actually sharpening what are they doing so they're uh more accurately referred to as honing rods so what's happening at your sorry at the cutting edge of your knife is you have all these micro serrations. Essentially, if you go take it under a microscope and look at the cutting edge, it looks like a saw blade.

But they're like they're fucking microns. A micron is a millionth of a meter. Like they're teeny tiny. But what happens over normal use uh those teeth they they bend over they flex over or sometimes they eventually wear out and fall off and so what the honing rod does especially if they've bent over he's showing it right there oh yeah exciting look at that blade that's crazy you want to ignore like those long streaks and you're just like the tiny little thin black yeah that's the shit right there damn thin black line damn that's crazy

observation are you looking at it's like someone's doing it to your instruction but that's a youtube video crazy yeah that is I was like, are you doing that shit right now? 300X magnification view from the top. Yeah, so that's what's happening along your cutting edge. And what happens is those tiny serrations bend over, like I was saying, or break off. But as they bend over, and it's just normal shit, that honing rod, by swiping across that honing rod, and you don't just do it willy-nilly, like, you got to do it at the right angle and all this stuff. But what it does is it realigns and hones those teeth back into alignment. So people mistakenly call them sharpening sticks

because all of a sudden their knife is sharp as fuck afterwards. But the reality is that it's honed those teeth back into alignment so it can do its job again. Now, what's the purpose of the leather strop? So that's just a gentler way, especially for things that are super, super razor sharp, which essentially have been sharpened to a really high finish, like 10,000 grit or higher.

So those micro serrations are even smaller, which means they're even more delicate, which means they don't need as much force to realign them. So a honing rod or a strop is... That's a human hair? Yeah. Jesus Christ. That looks disgusting.

Imagine choking on that hair. So just to give you some reference, a typical and average human hair is about three thousandths of an inch. Whoa. Yeah. about three thousandths of an inch whoa uh yeah and to help put that a little bit more better perspective a sixteenth of an inch like a normal measurement one sixteenth of an inch is 62.5 thousandths of an inch wow so that's like one i can't even do the math right one twentieth of a sixteenth of an inch, which is fucking teeny tiny. Wow. That's crazy.

It's like split the hair. Yeah, yeah. He like shaved it. Yeah, literally. Yeah. There's a big debate in the world of bow hunting with broadheads, with what kind of steel to use. And there's harder steel that some people use, but it breaks. Interesting.

There's an issue with that. And there's like this big debate, harder versus steel that is less hard but will bend more and give slightly more. And then there's the broadhead that I use, which is a carbon steel broadhead from a company called G5. They make this broadhead called a Montech. It's a pull-up G5 carbon steel Montech. Montech CS, they call them. So you're talking it's just the head, like the triangular? Or is it even a triangular?

What you use for hunting. The one that I use, yeah, it is. It has, was that three points or four points? Here, he'll pull it up. You see it. That's it. Oh, yeah. Sure.

So it has three points. But that's a carbon steel broadhead. That's what I shot my elk with last year with, and that thing is virtually indestructible. Yeah. I have a crazy photograph. I'll show you this crazy video. Oh put it up on my instagram find it on my instagram where um uh my i was fucking around with something on my bow at at full draw i was trying to set something and the the bow went off and it hit a cement wall and it stuck into the wall like cinder block or solid cement solid cement wall

and didn't kill the broadhead i still have the broadhead back there it's stuck into the broadhead look at it did it's stuck into the broadhead the shaft yeah and look what it did to the to the arrow now look at that yeah that broadhead that fucking thing's got my bet for life yeah that thing's got my confidence forever because yeah that thing's got my confidence forever because if that does that to concrete what will that do to bone right you know that will go through anything that's going to kick some ass so the one of the things i would say after seeing that especially that first image is the geometry of the blades that the actual points they lend themselves similarly to how your hunting knife is sharpened differently

from your chef's knife. Like the chef's knife material is thinner, but they're also sharpened at different angles because they have different jobs they're supposed to do. And so the broader, essentially, or sorry, the more acute that is, the more easily that will break as well as the thinner, the thinner, the material that, that, that geometry is living on is more uh susceptible to breaking that first image that jamie pulled up the geometry looked like it was pretty robust pull that up again yeah as well as like it looks like it's probably at least 30 thousandths of an

inch thick which is you know that's about if not more actually actually. No, the original image, Jamie, we see the actual broadhead without the – yeah, my friend Brian Stevens turned me on to these. He shot a bear through the head with one of those. Jesus. It was from 10 feet away. It was coming at him. Oh, yeah. I don't blame him.

He's got an image of the skull that he sent me where you could see the outline of that broadhead through the bear skull that's crazy yeah and it killed the bear and didn't even fuck up the arrow i'm like that is crazy yeah and so a lot of like you see people doing these incredible feats like hammering through nails and shit like that with their knives they're like what the fuck the thing that most people are used to are a chef's knife, and they think if they did that with their chef's knife, they'd fuck it up. And 100% it pretty much would.

Right. But with the right thickness coming up to the cutting edge, as well as the actual lead cutting edge geometry, like the actual angle that it's sharpened at, you could do that shit all day long. Now, when you sharpen a blade, do you use something to hold it next to the stone so that it reaches the perfect angle or do you do it by eye i do it by eye i actually if you hand it over to me one of the things especially when i

first started learning i would use my finger as a guide so that would inform me uh as to the angle so when the edge of my finger would touch the top of the stone, that told me that was about the right angle. And then when I flipped it over to do the other side, I'd do the same thing with my thumb and essentially use the edge of my thumb. And you just know this from experience? I just know it from experience. They do make

sharpening guides that you can clip on to the back of the knives as well as little ramps. Those are all great especially if you're starting. The hardest part about all of this is the muscle memory portion. It's figuring out how to lock in and maintain that angle without wavering and twisting your wrists and all that kind of shit. And that just, it's like riding a bike or anything you've ever had to learn in your life.

With practice and repetition, you'll get better. What do you think about that those machines those like little they're like little i think they're the worst fucking thing ever really i i have a like a almost kind of a conspiracy theory that like the reality is like they're designed to destroy your knife so you have to turn around and reinvest again because most people but one because the knives aren't usually sold for very much money that are being used with those things and when you're not selling them for many very much you're relying on volume and what better way than to create a thing that does the job for a little bit but ultimately destroys it and you have to reinvest what about those ones where you stick it in the slot and go it's the same kind of thing same thing just it's just it's a little slower process but

you you'll notice the problem with those the real problem with those is that you can't sharpen the whole edge you usually start at the heel or just a little bit in front of the heel and then you do the major work i tripped myself out i was was like, fuck, I'm going to cut myself. This is actually still pretty sharp. Oh, it's sharp as fuck. And so the problem is because you're not getting the full length, you'll continue to dish this material out just in front of the heel. And then when you go to cut, there's just this little bit of shit there that's not doing any work. It's not doing anything, especially when you're relying on that cutting board

when the knife comes down to the cutting board to do some work. It's not happening. I cut my lunch with that today. Nice. Oh, fuck. Cut elk with that. That axis.

That axis elk. Axis deer and elk. Oh, my God. That was killing me. I probably didn't say it, but I was just like, holy shit, that looks so fucking good. Yeah, man.

Well, I learned how to cook. I mean, I feel like there's some real art to that as well from my friend Chad Ward, Whiskey Ben Barbecue on Instagram. He's like a pit master, like a legit world champion barbecue master. And he's the one that taught me how to cook slowly at low temperatures and then sear it after you're done. I always thought you're supposed to just put it on high heat, cook the shit out of it, and then eat it, you know? Yeah.

It tastes fine that way too, but when you're dealing with – I really had to learn, especially in particular, cooking with wild game is very unforgiving because it's low in fat. Yeah, it's got none. You're basically eating a sprinter. Here it is right there. Yeah, yeah. So that's the end.

I reverse sear it in a pan with grass-fed butter. You hear that, baby? That's beautiful. Listen to that sound. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, That's the last of my backstrap gotta i gotta get some more meat i eat the i eat so much meat it's crazy yeah super healthy though bitch fuck what you heard um it looks like it works no it well you know what too there's there's something really magical

about wild game and um i don't know what the fuck it is. I really don't, and I don't think anybody does. Because I don't think there's enough people out there that are eating it. But it has a different effect on your body. It feels different when I eat it. Even just beef. Like, if you have a— Grass-fed beef.

Oh, fuck. Like, total, like, pasture-raised, like— Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. The difference. Do you know about butcher box i'm aware of it yeah yeah dude that company's the shit they'll they'll send it to your house frozen grass-fed pasture raised like in the pasture finished and uh it's pretty cheap too it's a it's a good deal the few sponsors of this podcast and i i use them all the time i think it's

amazing it's brilliant you know and the few times that and it's actually i feel embarrassed saying that i've only eaten really good beef happy beef essentially only a few times yeah yeah it's hard to get well especially in some places oh my god when you take a bite like that even just that first bite it's just like it's you've entered a whole different world and it's like what the fuck just the flavors everything i have uh my friend my friend mike hawkridge uh he lives up in british columbia like the real british columbia look way the fuck up there and uh you know he's a hunting guide and um uh got him some tickets for the fights in vegas and he and his wife came down and then afterwards we went out to eat, and they were eating steak.

We ate at a restaurant, and they're laughing. They're like, they're used to eating moose. This meat is like this poor little sick animal. It's all mushy. If you eat a piece of wild moose meat, it's like, whoa, you eat it. You're like, holy shit. It's like filled with flavor. And it's just, it feels like it gives you energy.

It's crazy. I would totally buy that. Yeah. It's like the, what is that? People are trying to like inject young people's blood into their bodies to like try to make themselves feel younger. Like eating, putting good well source like i don't know if those two things are no i'm sorry i don't know if it's the same probably not the same no i but i do think that there's i mean there's got to be something to consuming an incredibly healthy vibrant animal

an incredibly healthy, vibrant animal versus something that's like raised in a cage. I mean, this just makes sense. But I don't think this is something that you can – I mean, they have absolutely measured protein content. And the protein content is off the charts. If you look at the difference between the protein content of chicken or regular beef versus moose or elk. It's much higher. Much denser in protein. Like, I think something like six ounces of axis deer is 48 grams of protein. Right.

Which is incredible, you know? Well, it's interesting to think about that, to get that same amount of protein. Like, you don't have to gorge on it. You just eat that little bit. You're good. A little six-ounce piece and you're good. Even less if you want to stay in ketosis. If you're like in a keto diet, you really need less than six ounces. You need like three ounces.

Right. You know, food is just to me, especially as I've gotten older, I've started doing a lot more cooking and it becomes a different thing i'm i'm it's not just i'm hungry i need to stuff my face right like the the preparing of food much like we were talking about with craftsmanship like there's an art to making food and i mean i'm by no means a chef but i can cook a few things really good you know know, and I take great satisfaction that I love it. You know, I'll take my wife used to hate this, but we would get home and we're like, we're hungry. I'm going to make some food.

Two hours later, she's like, she's like, and a lot of people are that my brother's the same way. Like, I'm fucking hungry now. I need to eat now. I'm going to rip your fucking head off. Well, what you need to do is set up some cheese and some like salami or so that's what i started doing putting out some snackums while i'm working everybody just relax where where like i could be starving i'll get done with a long ass day of grinding and i'll go home and i want to i'd like i have this thing locked in my mind that i want to eat i'll take two hours to make the fucking thing even though I'm starving.

I haven't eaten since like one o'clock in the afternoon. It's nine o'clock at night. Do you find that as a person who is a craftsman and an artisan, that you try to have that approach with like other things in your life too? Like what you're just talking about with like making food and. Yeah, sure. I mean,

I feel like I don't really think too much about the fact that I'm doing it this way it's just kind of the way I do things and I'm a little bit more methodical and um I guess not necessarily more thoughtful than anybody else just like when I go to when I approach these challenges or these things they got to do I take my time to do them right and try to do them right the first time. Actually, when I was working for Bob, we would have to mock up stuff or build machines or fixtures or shit like that. And his mindset was quick and dirty.

We've got to get this done as quick as possible. And if it doesn't work the first time, we'll make some modifications and we'll try it a second time if it still doesn't work second time so and so forth so on and so forth until we got it right where i would just think it through a little bit more first time it was all i needed but i there was a long time i used to do a lot of woodworking before i got into metalworking and i was uh i always had to measure five times and cut twice right yeah and so i started getting to this point where like i really had to think shit through because it's just to me it felt like a huge waste of time and energy and materials really to go through all that process and then so there had to be a long

learning curve though though, right? To really learn how to, especially I would imagine the forging aspect of it. It's probably incredibly difficult. Yeah, well, and when I was working for Bob, the only forging we did was forging the Damascus to make the patterns. And then we would cut blades out and go from there. I learned forging about five years ago, essentially, working with a gentleman named David Lish, who's also, he's a master bladesmith.

He used to work in Seattle. He's down in Olympia area now. But he, you know, he did, he's a blacksmith by trade that got into knife making. And he's fucking skilled. He's super talented, especially when it comes to bowie knives and hunters like he does some really great work and especially his damascus patterns are really great but to watch somebody move and manipulate material and really like i said before like stock removal is a very valid way of doing it because the cost of the actual materials um is very small compared to the...

Stock removal? Stock removal. So earlier I was talking about taking a bar and then cutting out the blade shape and then grinding it. Stock removal? Yeah, because you're literally removing stock from the starting to parent material. Would you take what's left and melt it down? You could melt it down.

You could turn it and forge it into other stuff. It's a really interesting practice it's actually it's kind of like you know people refer to yoga as a practice you know we're going to be perfect like there's never going to be perfection blade forging but there's always an opportunity to learn something and to practice it and so when you see like you have a decent little chunk you know you start smashing on that thing and see what you can get out of it to economize that material and again like i said you don't really need to do that because of how inexpensive material is but if you think back like even a hundred years like this high quality material is fucking expensive you had to get

the most out of it as you possibly could and so that's why forging was such a big deal and then as that price went down people changed the way they manufactured just because then the time was the thing that cost the most not the materials and so they turned around and made it easier to manufacture they didn't give a shit about the waste now how did you learn handle geometry like the handle and this hunting knife so yeah yeah so learn how to do that? Yeah, yeah. This is very unique. It is unique. And actually. It fits my hand perfectly.

Yeah. It fits in your hand. And that's the goal. A little notch here. Yeah. A friend refers to it as the knife shaking your hand back. Oh. Like it fits so well.

It feels like you're holding. Like this little thing that you've got got here for people that are just listening. There's an initial smoothness in the front, and then there's like this little bump, and then it's thicker at the bottom, and it just locks in your hand, and it just feels perfect. So I was inspired to do that by a maker named Claude Beauchampvy.

He's a Belgian maker. I first met him. Oh, Claude. Claude. Claude Beauchampvy. It was a wrong name, Beauchamp-Vie. He's a Belgian maker. I first met him. Oh, Claude. Claude. Claude Beauchamp-Vie. I think that was the wrong name, Beauchamp-Vie. He's a Belgian maker. The first time I met him was at Blade Show, which is a huge knife exposition. It's the biggest one in the world that happens down in Atlanta every year. The first weekend of June, he was my table neighbor.

And I had never told him the story but uh the first time i saw his knives i was like the blades and everything look great but that the handle looks fucking weird as shit this handle yeah very similar to that handle his his has more of like a nice gentle curve around to the end instead of uh kind of how that one's kind of at a clip or an angle um and so finally like on the third day of the show this really great maker that i look up to uh came over and he was just like doting over claude's work and i was like all right there must be something and i haven't i'm i feel like such an asshole like i didn't even touch the stuff i was just looking at it and judging and i picked it up

i was like what it was it was a totally like what the fuck right because that same feeling that you have when you're holding like it feels perfect i was like it it totally shifted my entire mindset and paradigm around what i thought handle shapes should look and feel like and that is definitely inspired continued especially for like hard use knives like especially like for a bigger blade, like a bush knife that you're trying to chop through stuff with a handle like that is going to benefit you immensely. Cause it just, it feels like a natural extension of your hand.

And is this your, your logo? Yeah. It's my insignia. So it's, my name's Marco Malmasi. It's two M's kind of swirling around each other and it looks kind of like a flame dude i'm such a dork for this shit i love it it's so interesting man and that the handle too there's something about the the handle being made out of antler like the antler the feel that it has in your hand too the organic materials yeah organic especially uh antler and and bone they have this kind of like i don't know if you've experienced it with these especially cutting up the like the greasy meat but it from it has from my experience it does it stays grippy it doesn't

become super slippery or anything the handle on my bow is actually made out of antler. I had it custom made. My friend John Dudley had these ones made from a bull that he killed on September 11, 2001. Like, it's the 9-11 bull. And he had these handles made out of the antlers of this. And it does, the way it sits in your hand, it's like it's got an, even if you're sweaty or, you know, there you know there's something you know it's raining out it just has an extra grip to it well and especially something like that like if you're skinning or breaking down an animal like it's important but it's not gonna like it's not like one of those moments where you relying on that grip for your life right but when you do need that for your life like right you're trying to do or like you're digging in

the ground you're falling down the hillside you're trying to jab it and get it get a hold like that's going to be really important but obviously that's a very rare uh yeah incident when that would happen well it's just just something cool about it too well and just like the tactility yeah it's just again it goes back to the essentially the user experience. What does it feel like? How is it different? It really does make a difference. Yeah, and one of the cool things to me also about antlers is that they shed them, that they lose these things every year, and that every year they grow a new one.

Do you know that it's the fastest growing organic material on earth? No, I didn't know that that shit right there that giant elk antler that grows in a couple months i didn't know that yeah falls off right they lose it after they're done rutting so after they thought it was like they fell off and they just kind of immediately started like kind of No, they grow the whole thing back in a couple months. It's radical. See if you find a video that shows elk antler growth time lapse because it's crazy how fast it grows. And it's all just for war.

I mean, that's all that is. It's to show off for the ladies. Hey! And it's also for war. That's interesting. Deer and elk. Look at my rack. Yeah, he had that rack. That's interesting. Deer. Yeah, that guy. And elk. Look at my rack. Yeah, he had that rack just so he could fuck people up.

Or fuck people, but also elk. Yeah, yeah. And definitely people. You get close to them, you know, fuck me up. But look at that. The following photos were taken about a week apart over a period. Look at this. April 1st.

Now, check this out. Watch. Just have it play out there. It says over four months they show the incredible growth. So April 1st. Watch this. Is it like at a farm? That looks like it is. Looks like it's an elk farm. Just let it play

out. April 8th. Boom. So seven days later. Look at that. April 15th. Bang! Look how big that shit is. Oh shit! April 22nd. It's getting crazy. Boom! April 15th. Bang. Look how big that shit is. Oh, shit. April 22nd. It's getting crazy. Boom. April 29th.

That's nuts. Boom. May 6th. Holy shit. I know. Nuts. May 13th. Kapow.

What, motherfucker? May 20th. Getting crazy. That's a lot of good handle material in there. May 25th. Yeah. June 4th. Woof. Right. He's getting ready to good handle material. Yeah. May 25th. Yeah! June 4th. Right.

He's getting ready to go to war. Yeah, geez. June 10th, he's thinking about pussy. Look at that. He's like, now, now I'm thinking about some pussy. June 17th, I will fuck a dude up

comes near me. June 24th, look at that. And then July 1st. That is crazy. What the fuck? It's crazy. And that's not even done.

July 8th, July 15th, now he's basically still in velvet. Right. And then July 22nd, that looks hard-horned to me. That looks like he shed his velvet. And then July 29th. Isn't that nuts? Bizarre. So by the time August rolls around, they're, like, right now,

the beginning of September, they're in hard-horned. And they'll go to war, and they'll keep that shit for, you know, until the end of December. they're in hard horned and they'll go to war and they'll keep that shit for you know till the end of december probably december i think maybe january and then they'll they'll lose it so it's the fastest growing organic material yes by volume weight yes okay yeah i think by all those things because it grows so fast and it's so heavy i mean that's like 40 pounds just of antlers yeah and it grows over a couple months yeah it's fucking nuts man it's seeing pictures i made that up about the fastest growing organic material but i think it's true i'm looking it says uh the first fun fact i found that they can grow 10 pounds of velvet per year

that's just the velvet just Just the velvet. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, but that's probably because it's a velvet farm. You know, they use that stuff for human growth hormone. Like a lot of baseball players were taking... Oh, no shit.

Yeah, a friend of mine, my friend John Rivett, shout out to Johnny Rivett, he lives in Alberta and one of his friends had an elk farm up there in Alberta and he grew elk not for the meat but for the velvet.

Because that stuff that grows grows so fast and so ridiculously potent that they would take antler velvet and they would turn it into a spray that would equal the effects of human growth hormone. How could you do that? Trust me, she's like that. I don't know. But athletes were taking it. Athletes were taking this stuff, and it was having this growth hormone reaction in their body. Aches and, like, it sounds like it's superficial. No, just get jacked, son.

Get swole, kid. Is it applied superficially, or are they, like, squirted in the mouth? I really don't know. You know, I'm too stupid to be answering your questions. It's swole, kid. Is it applied superficially or are they squirted in and out? I really don't know. I'm too stupid to be answering your questions. But there's something about deer velvet that was for quite – I don't even know if it worked. But it was a big thing in the supplement and fitness industry that people were getting deer velvet.

The new vitamin. I bought it. You spray it. And it's supposed to give you growth hormone. What did you think of that holy beer? Have you had holy beer before? Yeah, I have. It's great.

It's great. Olympia. Is this from Olympia, Washington? Is that what it is? Originally, yeah. I think it's brewed in Milwaukee now. What the fuck? I know.

Everything's being sourced overseas. I mean, what? You're from the Pacific Northwest, but now you live in Connecticut, the state I shit on the most. There's a whole video out there of me shitting on Connecticut. People have made a compilation of me shitting on Connecticut. I'm sure plenty of it's warranted. Yeah, there's all of it. Shout out to my good friend Tommy Jr. who lives in Connecticut.

I finally found it. So I think it's just antlers in general are the fastest growing tissue in any mammal. Yeah, and then elk antler is the fastest growing out of all of them because it's the largest. So it grows in the same amount of time

that a deer would grow its antlers, but it's far larger. Even more mass than a moose? No. No, a moose would be there some moose yeah yeah they're the biggest they're the biggest of all of the deer species like by far you know i think like a full-grown yukon moose could be as much as 2,000 pounds. A really big Rocky Mountain elk under normal circumstances is like a fucking giant one is pushing 1,000. Jesus. It's a giant though.

That'd be like a 400 inch bull. What does that mean, 400 inch? The inches, the measurement of the size of the inches of the antler. Do you see that one that's in the front? Yeah, yeah. That's considerably bigger than this one. The one out in the front is 382 inches. That's a giant bull.

And that fucker was about 1,000 pounds. He was huge. Huge. Moose is bigger. Moose is twice as big. Moose would see that thing and go, shut the fuck up, bitch. And he'd be going, oh, I gotta go.

And he'd just start running. But moose, the weird thing about a moose is their antlers are like a door. You know, it's basically like, they're so fat and thin. It's not like pokey. I mean, they're basically like, they're hitting each other in the head with doors. They're like big old gloves on their hands. But you've seen, have you seen, I've seen a few pictures where, especially the moose, their antlers get locked up and they're fucking stuck.

More deer than moose. Yeah. Because the design of a moose's antlers is like, it's not as intertwined. But with deer, it happens all the time because there's a little bit of flex to the bone. Sure. And so they'll clash. And in the force of the two of them slamming into each other, they get stuck. CTE.

Well, they drown. They've fought like that and then wrestled and wound up in the water and wound up drowning. There's a horrible video I saw of two deer that got stuck, and one of them got killed by a coyote. Not just a coyote, a whole pack of them, torn to shreds. They tore them, and they eat them asshole first, as I've documented many times in this podcast. I feel like a lot of animals go for the butt first. Well, yeah, lions do. Yeah, a lot of them do.

I don't know what that's all about. But the one deer was still attached to his dead friend. And these hunters had to help it get released. They sawed one of the antlers off the other deer, this dead deer, and freed it. And then this other one ran off. Like, what a nightmare that guy's lived through. Right. You know, his buddy gets his asshole torn apart.

They're literally eating him alive while he's stuck to the guy. Oh, my God. Probably fighting them off of him as well. Kicking and... And it could have... I mean, you talk about could have easily been you. I mean, literally could have easily been you. There's two deer. One of them gets eaten alive.

And the other one's just sitting there like living with the horror of his... And then these people come over and he can't get away from the fucking people. And he's like, these people are going to eat me. And they don't even eat him. They let him go. And they're hunters.

They freed him up and let him loose crazy yeah you got that oh there's one that elk got stuck with a dead elk that's a dead elk that's an elk head that's stuck on this other elks but see i don't know what that was that to me makes me think that that could have very easily been like an elk found a dead elk and just started headbutting and ripped its head off and got stuck with it. They kill each other all the time, though. I mean, all the time. Oh, geez. Look at those racks.

Dude, when you hear them fighting, like one of the first times I ever went elk hunting, we were coming over this hill and it sounded like two dudes slamming baseball bats together just crack crack crack crack and when we came over the top of the hill these two giant elk were just running at each other and smashing each other it was a magical day it was like one of the first times i ever elk hunted and there's a thing that happens when you hit a peak rut. And when the peak rut happens, they just go crazy all around you. They're all screaming.

And it might only happen once in a season. And you just, if you might be there for that couple of hours when it all goes down, it's insanity. Insanity. They're just all around you screaming and headbutting each other. I can't even imagine walking over the top of the hill and like fucking stumbling across that. Dude, you feel so vulnerable. You're like, ah! You just want to hide behind a tree.

I'm not supposed to be seeing this right now. And they're screaming at each other. Yeah. And they're so big, man. They're screeching. Yeah, there's two going at it right there. And you hear them. They just clash and slam at each other.

Oh, yeah. You hear that? It's, oh, shit. The poor guy's going to throw up. I was in the wrong spot. Like, fuck, man. And they don't even know he's alive, you know? And they kill each other all the time.

And the hormones they got going on. They're just like, I don't give a fuck about anything else. Yeah, my friend Cam came across one last year, and he crept up on it. He thought it was bedded, and he shot it with an arrow, and it didn't move. And he's like, what the fuck? And he got over to it. It was already dead. And another elk had stabbed it.

They stabbed it through the heart, and it lay down and died. It happens all the time. They're always finding them that other elk have murdered. They don't give a fuck. They're just trying to get that pussy. How long is the rut? Is that a month, two months? Just a month, maybe a little bit longer.

There's a second rut sometimes in October when another female will go into estrus and they'll resume the rut. Yeah. It's magical times. Yeah. I can't even imagine stumbling across that. It's pretty cool, man. It's pretty cool.

You know, the real wild, the actual real wild. Well, you are in Connecticut, man. You got to worry about two things, hitting a deer with your car and Lyme disease. The Lyme disease. Okay. So that's something that we didn't realize we were moving into. Oh, man. I wish I told you because you and I were going back and forth when you were about to move.

Right. Yeah, that was definitely one of the things that we were like, wait, what? They're everywhere? Everywhere. Yeah. Ticks, if you're listening to this, anywhere on the East Coast, especially New York, has got it really bad. I mean, there's a Lyme disease map, and you see, like, the instances of Lyme disease on the East Coast. It's horrific, man.

Yeah. And I know fucking at least a dozen people that have it, and it stays with you for life. Yeah. And my friend Jim Miller, he's a guy who fights in the UFC. He's got to take a giant fistful of pills every day. I mean, he's got it real bad, real bad. And he's still fighting, still fighting in the UFC. And those deer, too, I've been worried about.

Actually, especially when we were moving out because I was driving through Pennsylvania. I hit Pennsylvania. We drove cross country at sunset and drove from there all the way to Connecticut in the dark. And all I could think is, like, I'm going to fucking hit a deer. You see so many of them, right? You see so many dead ones on the side of the fucking road. Yeah. It blows my mind.

But the biggest issue has been actually other Connecticut drivers. That has been the biggest concern. My wife and I both have been T-boned in the last eight months. People in Connecticut, they're just giving up, man. They're just hitting the gas and closing their eyes. biggest concern my wife and i both have been t-boned in the last eight months people in connecticut just they're just giving up man they're just hitting the gas and closing their eyes well what's crazy is like i've driven i've driven in la i've driven in new york i've driven in fucking oregon seattle all kinds of crazy places but they all have like a culture about how they work and i could not figure out Connecticut. And a friend finally explained it to me. He said,

they're driving as if nobody else is on the road. I was like, holy shit, that makes perfect sense. The choices they make are as if nobody else is there. I'll be coming up in the passing lane, somebody's in the lane to the right of me. There's no exits coming up. There's no other cars for like half a mile. I'm cruising probably like 5, 10 miles faster than them. They change lanes right in front of me. Why? You know why? Why?

Because like say if you're – let's say there's a thing that you're making, like an epoxy, right? When you're making an epoxy, there's several ingredients that you have to add to it. Or maybe that's not the best example. Like say maybe there's electronics. Just whatever it is that you're making. So if you're making a thing and it requires 10 different ingredients, if you're a person in Connecticut,

you have eight ingredients. You don't have those other two and you just do with it without you just deal with it you're just missing two things and you just hit the gas and just drive places and no one knows what they're doing and it's not a real state it's just not well and what's also bonkers that we weren't expecting is that like unless you're driving 15 to 20 miles over the speed limit you're going too slow or uh like a stoplight and stop signs are a suggestion people use right or left i don't even know why they're speeding man they don't know where they're going where are they going they don't understand the state's so small you could drive through the

state in two and a half hours missing all sorts of stuff they're just they're so confused no and i'm not trying to sit here and shit on fucking connecticut it's just it's just it that those things haven't been a serious culture shock for us yeah it's despair despair they hit the gas what's crazy is it's a fucking beautiful state it's gorgeous yeah especially in the summer it's terrifying trying to drive around that time and you get out of your car you get bit by a thousand ticks, and you fucking can't walk anymore. The humidity, too. I was not expecting that. It's great on your balls, right?

That ball sweat. Yesterday I was in my shop. I wasn't doing shit. I could have just been sitting here fiddling around. I was sweating my ass off. Drenched. Summer's rough. Literally just everything.

I was just like, am I in fucking Florida? What the hell yeah well you're used to uh you know that pacific northwest doesn't really get that hot and the summers are glorious like seattle and oregon summers god they're glorious everything's fucking neon green and the sun comes out it. It almost, almost makes up for the winter, but not quite. The lack of winter? Well. Just the rain?

Just the rain. Non-stop raining. There is a winter. It's just, it's not, it's not frozen. It's tempered. But it's just gray and doom. And you're like, I could do this. I could hang in there.

And then the summer comes. You're like, hey, it's going to be fine. But you're like a beaten wife waiting for your husband to come home. You're like, hey, he's not home now and I got a great house.

But he's coming home. He's coming home. He's going to be home for eight months. He's just going to piss on your hair for eight months. It's just eight months

of clouds and fucking craft beers and just everybody's shooting themselves it's dark up there man i don't think people are meant to live like that i mean i think it's gorgeous and there's benefits to it for sure yeah but uh i had a buddy of mine he tried to convince me to live up there it's hilarious my friend salami he moved to portland that's his name okay he tried to move to portland i mean he did move to portland he's teaching jujitsu up there it's like dude i love it it's fucking great

up here it's fucking amazing i go you don't mind about the winter you don't mind about the rain he goes no he goes dude the people are so fucking cool the restaurants are amazing and the summers are so good three years later he's back in la i go what happened he goes i couldn't do it man couldn't do it anymore i go ah i see so it's a thing it's like you hang in there for as long as you can but you can't hang in there forever is that what it is but some people can i can hang i've you know a lot of people have what is it seasonal depression syndrome or some shit do you think it's because you grew up there i don't think so because my sister and my mom both grew up there too. My wife even. They can't handle it. They hate it. Especially the winter

time. The winter time. When it is that dark gray like it doesn't snow it just rains. It just gets dark. I think part of my issue is like I said I always worked in restaurants or in a shop so it's like I'm in a virtual cave all the fucking time.

So I'm not experiencing that except for the drive home or to work. What's up, Jamie? You just said SAD as I was looking up seasonal affective disorder. That's the acronym they give it. Yeah. SAD. SAD. That's what it is, bro.

That shit's real. I mean, they probably called it that on purpose. I mean, I don't think they needed to call it seasonal affective disorder. That's not the best. Feel like shit because of the rain disease. Isn't it something about the lack of

vitamin D? I'll tell you what, though. There's light therapy. I'll take it over Connecticut all day. I'll take Seattle over Connecticut all day. I'll take Seattle over Connecticut all day. You know what I dream about sometimes is Denver. You live in Connecticut? I lived in Denver for only a few months.

People that live in Connecticut right now go, what the fuck, dude? It's a running gag, folks. I don't really care. Actually, when we first moved to Connecticut. Denver's amazing. Denver's fucking beautiful. I fucking love Denver. Love it.

Love it. When I first moved there, I thought I was, so I grew up in Washington right at the base of the Puget Sound. Water around me. I actually used to sail on a racing team and stuff like that. I was like, I'm going to miss the water so much. And it was so green, too. I got there and I was like, I don't think I care about the water.

I care about the green. But the second the spring rains hit, everything turned green. All the trees started blossoming. I was like, holy shit. And it was beautiful. Beautiful. The only thing I hated about Denver, everybody had a fucking dog and nobody cleaned up the dog shit. That was the one.

Everywhere. Lazy bitches. I just didn't understand it. It was like, what the fuck? You've got a dog. You're not going to do the other half of the job. It's probably worse now because of all the free pot. All the legal pot.

It's everywhere. But you know what it has that's amazing, man, is the view of the mountains. There's something about being right there and seeing those Rockies that just like humbles you. It puts it in perspective. Well, that's what being in P puget sounds like as well because you always got mount rainier like it's crazy like the road the cities were engineered so like you're coming up and down hills and like boom the fucking mountain was right and it's a monster mount rainier is a monster yeah that's amazing man we went up looking for bigfoot up there once, me and Duncan. Yeah? Yeah, we found him. We just didn't want to tell anybody.

Yeah, that area, too, is so densely wooded. It's really incredible. When you go walking through the woods, you don't make any sound when you walk. You don't leave any footprints because it's just like feet thick of pine needles and moss.

This is so soft, and it's interesting and lush and filled with elk man there's elk everywhere up there and you like they run they run like 30 feet you can't see them anymore because there's like so many trees fucking god my in-laws they live south of olympia and they have 16 16 acres out there uh where they live and uh like three or i think it's like four or five that are like for a field and a barn and a house and stuff. The rest of it is all wooden. Then they've got black bears that cruise through there, large cats, or like bobcats and lynx and shit, and elk for sure. And they have an orchard, and the elk are just out there standing on their hind legs, eating that shit up.

They're beautiful. They're cool to watch too. Yeah. I mean, that is a lush tropical rainforest up there. It's so wild. It's so interesting too. When you're up there, you realize like how diverse it is with life when you're walking around in it. And you see just elk shit everywhere.

You go walking through the woods. It's just infested with them. There's piles of all these little pellets. Little marbles. Yeah. It looks like milk that. Don't want to eat those. There's so much life up there.

There's salmon. There's so much salmon. There's eagles up there. I mean, it's gorgeous, man. Yet here you are in fucking Connecticut. Bro! Mushroom hunting. There's all kinds of stuff.

You can really live off the land. There's some great spots. Go chantrelling in the Olympia area. Sure. Love getting out in the woods and just walking around. It's actually been really cool especially when we go back

in the summertime and especially in the summertime to go visit family. Take my little dude. My son's two years old. He just turned two and so walking with him and he just fucking loves it.

Walking through the... And you don't have to worry about the fucking ticks right you can get lime and shit like that and go out there roll around all you want but going up they have a nice little like uh quarter mile trail goes up through the woods and you just walk through that thing he just marches along the whole fucking way and just that experience of stopping and listening you can hear the red tail hawk crying over the top of everything else and then you they have great horn owls from time to time that crucible was there you can hear the little chipmunks and red squirrels you can hear the fucking crows and the stellar jays yeah everything and stopping and telling him stop you hear that you hear that and he just stops.

He's so intense. And it's wild to see a little kid who's so fucking rambunctious when he's in the house, but you get him out into the woods. I'm overwhelmed with senses. He's just listening. There's so much sensory input, right? It's so cool. Yeah.

Isn't it amazing, too, looking at it through the eyes of your child, just watching them experiencing all these things it's it's like you can almost see like the little cogs turning in the head yeah oh shit no it's amazing that's one thing that i didn't anticipate before i had children it's like watching them learn oh, wow, there's a crazy trip you get out of watching kids learn. There's something about you learn watching them learn. And it really sort of reinforces this idea that every human being is essentially, I mean, they're not a blank slate, but they are most certainly subject to the influences of their environment what they experience especially they take that data in yeah it's crazy like we have he loves maps we we got maps maps yeah we got you know

how like a lot of kids get those like bedroom uh mats that have like the roads and stuff we got one of the like the globe and none of the countries are marked down on it or anything but we knew some of the spots and so we started teaching him. He knows where over a hundred different countries are. He knows where they're at. He knows where they're at. He can point out the difference between Cambodia, Guam,

Vietnam, Nepal, Russia, China. But then you go over to Europe. He's like Hungary, Turkey, Greece. He knows those? He knows where Portugal is. Dude, I can show you Russia like Russia and China are pretty easy but then you go over to Europe he's like hungry Turkey he knows those? he knows where Portugal is dude I can show you three what the fuck

I can tell you where Africa is I'm pretty sure I know the difference between Australia and New Zealand the only reason I know them is because I'm playing the game with them so we got more maps

that have like the world again but everything's marked out and he's starting to learn all the different flags he knows like at least a dozen of the different flags. That's crazy. He knows, like, at least a dozen of the different flags.

They're so open, you know. Children, I mean, they learn language so quick. They're so open. I mean, think about kids learn language by the time they go to school. They already know how to talk. Yeah. They don't learn in school. They just learn how to talk.

Well, my wife has her master's degree at the university level for teaching English as a second language. And she's with him all day long. Oh, wow. And she comes from a family of teachers. Both of her parents, her sister, her great-grandmother. I'm sorry, her grandmother. All educators. Oh, this must be amazing for her to be a mom then.

Yeah. Teach her own kids. I mean, she's with the dude all day long like she fucking loves the shit of him but you know like you try spending fucking day in and day out with the little dude like they're little they're little fucking numbskulls running around and trying to learn how to interact with the world yeah it's fucking crazy but it's so cool and and with that background understanding how to interpret what's going on in his brain a little bit

to help nourish it, essentially, to help just make things that much more solid. It's fucking crazy. That's awesome. And he speaks so clearly. That's awesome. So listen, I got to get out of here, but I know you have a blind auction.

Yes. Why don't you go grab those knives so we can show them. Yeah, I'll go grab those real quick. Grab them real quick and we'll tell people about the auction. Yes. You have, why don't you go grab those knives so we can show them. Yeah, I'll go grab those real quick. Grab them real quick and we'll tell people about the auction. But he's got these fucking killer knives that he's made,

these chef's knives. Is that the one that's going up? I think so. God, look how beautiful that is. We're looking at his Mousy Fire Arts Instagram page and the design, the pattern on this chef's knife it doesn't even look real folks i mean it looks like someone's it looks like someone put

like one of those crazy cartoon filters oh yeah doesn't it is that it that's the knife right there so there's that one so people can see it and yeah here it is right here i'm holding it up so this knife is uh for auction no actually so this is not that one is not this one here in the cases you can pull that out and how can people auction how can people bid on so this is for benefit for alex's uh the alex or sorry la LA loves Alex's Lemonade Stand, which is for childhood cancer research. And so online. Smells good. Smells good.

If you go to my Instagram profile, Malmasi Fire Arts on Instagram, I have a link actually in my bio that goes straight to the auction page for this knife. Now, these knives are right now my current prices. This one knife is uh 4200 but right now i think the bidding is at like oh there it is 2100 so there's a chance that somebody could get it for less than what i would normally value when does it um when does it end when's it yeah so the auction ends on saturday the 8th so that's when the actual event is and i'm actually going to be there at the event hanging out. If anybody's got

any questions about it, talk about it. Or, you know, just kind of hang out. That's dope. It's interesting. Doing this kind of work is the first time I've ever had anything that I felt like I could give back with. Because otherwise I always just did shitty little jobs.

But this is the first time I feel like I have something I can offer so and coming up from very little very humble beginnings this was an opportunity now to feel like I can give back and so that's very try to do this from that's very cool for sure well listen man I'm glad we finally got together and thank you for making me these awesome knives I will cherish them forever. Absolutely. It's my pleasure, my man. You're an amazing craftsman. Thank you. And it was cool to do this. Absolutely.

Thanks for being here. All right, folks. We'll be back soon, you fucks. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.