Humor.

You may recall the temporary ‘rescue‘ of a butter knife blade from the dustbin of history. That went well for a year or two but the wood selected for the handle was a trifle punky, the whole solution did not well resist the delicately tenacious influence of frequent washing. We don’t surrender here, though. Such indignities will not be suffered whilst there is power yet within us. No, we will fix the tools, we will raise the banner, we will march forward, and not only that, but with peace, love, joy, and humor.

The wood here is some non-endangered tropical hardwood, an ipe or ipe cousin perhaps. I had a nice scrap of it lying around. The blades are again Meriden cutlery.

My father’s father was a type-setter for the New York Daily News. He died when I was but a year old. I was told that in his role he was the final editor. Could you imagine, having to set blocks to stamp ink on paper? Manually adjusting micro-spacing? As I used these old letter punches I began to imagine.

The three knives pictured all had the same (short round) tang. Cutting the narrow handle blocks and centering the place for said tang took a little more precision than I usually deliver. A few tries, a old Chinese drill press, got it done with approximate correctness.

The last one, which was the one that had formerly been rescued, had a short flat tang. I tried a sawdust/glue mixture to fill the gaps, that worked fine for adhesion, but not so gracefully for the stamping.

You can see the cracks introduced, yet maybe this was a graceful turn, a suggestion from the universe (if one like to talk that way). I ran with it on the other side.

Surely you can follow.