Atwood Knife and Tool and DL Knives

So, even though I rarely mention it, part of the purpose of me blogging is to spread the word about cool stuff, particularly cool stuff that falls within the boundaries of my love of guns. Interestingly, knives very much fall into those boundaries. You would be hard pressed to meet a Gunny who didn't have an opinion on knives, and it is equally hard to find a gunny who doesn't own at least one good knife, be it a good old fashioned Case or an uber-tactical Strider. The point here is that I like (good) knives almost as much as I like guns.

Atwood Knife and Tool is a one-man operation out of Turners Falls, MA. The guy that owns it, Peter Atwood, hand-makes small knives and tools for a reasonable price. Basically, he builds his tools in small lots, and sells them over the Internet. He isn't so much a custom knife and tool maker as he is a boutique knife and tool maker. He has a fairly wide selection of designs that he builds, but as I mentioned, he only builds small lots of a particular item at any given time, so if your interested, you may have to wait for awhile until he cranks out a lot of what you want. He can and does literally everything, to include the heat treating, although he mentions on his website he sometimes sends his stuff out to be treated as a time saver.

He came to my attention because of a tool of his called the "Prybaby", which is essentially nothing more than a small pry bar (and less importantly, a bottle opener) that you can carry in your pocket or even around your neck with no particular effort. It strikes me as a fantastic idea, with a pretty fair amount of daily usage possibilities. Anyway, you can check out the picture at the top of the blog to see what it looks like. He also makes bike tools, gas tools, knives, and a host of other things. I have a link to his blog (which is where you would go to see what products he has coming up for sale) under my links section, and you can link to his website from there to check out his different designs.

I am obligated to mention that I personally have never used an Atwood tool, only having become aware of them a couple of days ago. Research indicates that he builds a high quality product that he stands behind, and I could find no reports of bad business practices or unhappy customers. I found several positive reports. Anyway, check out his stuff and enjoy.

Along those same lines, I want to mention DL Knives. The owner, Don, is a frequent poster on The High Road, and he makes some exceedingly attractive knives. Don is a custom maker, and as such his knives are somewhat pricier than many (but not all) off-the-shelf knives. In terms of a custom made knife, his prices are very, very reasonable. I am particularly fond of his "Small Skinner" design, and one day I will own one. Below the link is an example of this design (albeit a fancy Damascus example, which is not the norm). Anyway, check out his website here:

http://www.dlknives.com/

Again, I have never used or owned one of Don's knives, but I feel absolutely comfortable saying that they are an excellent product. Additionally, from having read the stuff that he posts, he seems like a pretty nice fellow. Also, an example of his "Super Camp" knife was recently featured in the May issue of "Blade" magazine, and the same knife will be featured in the April issue of "Tactical Knives".

So, there you have it. If your into this stuff, you will enjoy looking at the stuff that these two guys make. If you don't like it, you're dumb, and probably a bad person.