80CRV2 Flat Finish / OD Green Micarta
A fantastic EDC blade. Alec, the maker, personally carries one of these all the time. They're fantastic for precise applications like intricate carving and tracing but still robust enough to take a massive beating.
ABOUT THE MAKER (Taken from the Wachtman website)
My name is Alec Wachtman. I originally started my journey into metal working when I was about 6 years old. Our local Boy Scouts organization hosted a maple syrup festival every year at which they had a blacksmith making nails and giving them to the kids watching. That was always my favorite place to go growing up. I was mesmerized watching him pound hot steel.
I saw the first Hobbit movie around a year after it came out. I was captivated watching the dwarves pounding out swords and axes in their smithy deep in the mountain. I knew I just HAD to try it for myself.
My first project was blacksmithing a knife out of aluminum in my grandpas fireplace. I'm not entirely sure where it got off to, but I remember it having a gut hook and a similar shape to that of a rounded butter knife.
MY TIME AS A BLACKSMITH:
One year and thousands hours of YouTube videos later, I finally got my first forge at the age of 13. After a few hours of smithing, I realized forging a sword was going to be a lot harder than I thought, I could barely even lift the hammer!
Nevertheless, I persisted, watching more YouTube videos and experimenting on my own, I finally made my first knife out of steel. It was incredibly crude and wasn't good for much other than stabbing. It was given a paracord handle and then promptly lost somewhere in my garage.
I decided to continue to pursue bladesmithing. I remember hearing a lot of smiths say to make at least a hundred S-hooks before moving on to anything else. They were probably right, but I was young and naïve. I just continued to try and make knives, swords, axes or whatever else I liked at the time. I never got very far with any of them.
Determined to find me some proper instruction, my mother reached out to several living history museums to ask about an apprenticeship with one of the smiths. I was eventually connected with a man named John King who would prove to be an invaluable resource in the next few years.
