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My forge mentor in Tulsa told me to stop chasing pretty hammer marks and I've been chewing on it for 3 weeks
I was at my mentor Dale's shop in Tulsa about 3 weeks ago, showing him a Damascus billet I'd spent maybe 12 hours on. I was real proud of the pattern and kept pointing out how clean the ladder lines came out. He picked it up, turned it over twice, set it down and just said "you're building a picture, not a blade." At first I got a little hot about it. I'd driven 90 minutes each way to show him this thing. But then he walked me over to his bench and pulled out a camp knife he made back in 1998 that's been used hard for decades, and the surface was plain, almost boring, but the geometry and the heat treat were dialed in perfect. He said nobody ever cut themselves out of a bear encounter because the spine had fancy texture. That hit different, mostly because I realized I've been spending my weekends on stuff that makes me feel like a craftsman but doesn't make the tool work better. I've since gone back and refinished 4 of my older knives to fix the edge geometry I'd been ignoring. Anyway, curious if anyone else went through a phase where a mentor's blunt comment reset how you spend your forge time?
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