Todd Davison Knives

[redneck]

You do beautiful work. Those multi part scales would turn my swear jar into a barrel

 

[Valkman]

Those multi part scales would turn my swear jar into a barrel

You could make a million bucks! LOL Reminds me of Al Bundy's wife selling cosmetics and being her own best customer and bragging how much she makes.

 

[redneck]

I'd be writing IOU's before the epoxy was mixed

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Thank you all very much!

Been busy making knives, here are a few more done.

Have a great day!

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

few more....

 

[bikerdoc]

Nice,

Do you always make 3 of same kind ?

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Nice,

Do you always make 3 of same kind ?

Only on Wednesdays....

 

[hso]

Just...

 

[RA40]

I may try that Wednesday...

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Few more - thanks for the looks.
Have a great day!

 

[Deltaboy1984]

All your work is stunning and museum quality!

 

[RA40]

Excellent knives and photos!

 

[bannockburn]

All are perfection! This time #1753 caught my eye as being just a little bit different!

 

[hso]

Todd,

The pics of your work are great, but can you tell us about how you make them?

I thought folks would like to see your shop and "hear" a bit about your work (taken from Davison Custom Knives page).

You can see the variable speed grinder, I've only had that a few years. All grinds in the past have been done at full blast - about 3500 rpm. I picked up a couple small mills, one I use on the nail nicks and the other to mill relieve the liners. I do not have a CNC and probably never will.

All my grinds are hollow ground done freehand on a 14'' wheel. I do not use any jigs or armrest to do the grinds. The way I make them is called stock removal. And I do all my own heat treating. The bolsters are all soldered on, they are not integral. (milled out of solid stock) I do not use any screws, washers or bushings in my knives. They are pinned together by hand. The only knives I make now are slip joint pocket knives, I do not make lock backs or flippers. Each and every knife is done from scratch, all are one of a kind, no patterns are used. All file work on the knives is done by hand. They are made by me alone, I have no help in the shop.

Here's a great bio piece on Todd. https://franksclassicknives.com/pages/todd-davison

From:


Knife World Publications, PO Box 3395, Knoxville, TN 37927 Vol. 38 No. 11 November 2012 www.knifeworld.com

Slipjoint Maker Todd Davison
by Mike Robuck



Traditional pocketknife maker Todd Davison is a rebel with a cause. Davison has the gruff timbre of cowboy actor Sam Elliott and when he’s not making pocketknives he likes to ride his Harley, but he’s a self-made knifemaker that likes to do things his own way. Davison, 49, doesn’t use patterns when he makes a pocketknife.

“I don’t have any patterns,” he said. “I’ve had guys call me and ask for patterns and I tell them I can make them one that is close, but I don’t have patterns. That’s just the way I learned how to do it. I drilla hole in a piece of steel and that’s where I start at. A lot of people say it’s the wrong way and that I should use patterns, but to me a true custom knife is your own design.

“A lot of the knife guys kind of dogged me out and have made me the dark sheep because I don’t use
patterns. Some of them seem to kind of frown on me for not following suit. I just try to do the best I can and really the guys who are building knives, they’re the ones that are doing it every day. They know what works and what doesn’t work and what is the best and what isn’t the best.”

Growing up in Mississippi, Davison used knives for hunting and fishing and eventually ran across a custom knifemaker. “They were kind of crude but they were cool to me,” he said. “It just amazed me and I came home and bought a bunch of stuff and thought I’d try it.”

Davison didn’t have a lot of help in the early days of his fixed blade career, but he did come across the name and number of another knifemaker in a knife magazine, which at least lead to some tips over the phone.

“I picked up a Blade magazine and I was looking for someone to talk to and ask questions,” he said. “It just so happened that when I got that magazine there was a guy in there with his phone number. I called him up and asked him a million questions and guess who it turned out to be? It was Bob Loveless. I called him and starting asking all of these questions and I didn’t have a clue who he was.

“He was always nice to me. He never told me he was too busy and he laughed at me for some of the things that I was doing, or trying to do. He set me straight and after all of these years I finally figured out who he was.”

After periodically making fixed blade knives part time over the past 25 years, Davison started making traditional pocketknives eight years ago and then went full time six years later. Davison said he started out by taking old pocketknives apart and then putting them back together. He also consulted vintage knife catalogs and studied traditional patterns.







“After I got to where I could put them back together I started making the pieces and parts and tried to put them together,” he said. “I kept trying to make them better. Tony Bose helped me a whole lot. I got to where I could make a pocketknife, but I really didn’t know the specifics of how everything was supposed to work, the fit and finish it was supposed to have, the action, the grinds. The perfection came from Tony Bose.

“He’s the one that really helped me and he’s helped a lot of others as well. I’ve called Tony Bose so many times that I was expecting him to say ‘Todd, don’t call me anymore,’ or tell me he was just too busy but he never did. He always took the time. It didn’t matter, he would answer every question I ever had the best he could.”

Davison has made all manner of pocketknives, but is primarily known for his single-blade knives with micarta and wood scales.

“I make a swayback, but I make mine by either looking at a picture or it’s something that I make up myself,” he said. “I can look at a picture of a knife and make it by the picture. “A knife I make may look like the one I made before, but I never drew it up from the last one to put on the next one, so it’s all brand new. I think that’s a little more unique.”

While Davison can make a knife with any handle material, he favors the strength and utility of micarta scales. Davison came up with his own “striper” micarta scales as a way of setting himself apart from the crowd, and to add a little color.

“Micarta is the strongest material there is, but I thought I would try to make a pretty micarta knife,” Davison said. “They used to make those candy stripe [celluloid handled] knives and then you had ol’ Scagel that made a lot of knives with stripes on them. I was trying to make the best knife I could and make the prettiest knife out of the strongest material. Those stripes in the handles, across the bottom of them, just barely above the bottom of the micarta, there’s two sixteenth inch pins that run the full length of the handle underneath there and they’re pinned together and then pinned to the liner so they can’t ever come out.

“Tony Bose told me I was crazy. He said it was hard enough to make them without doing that.”

Davison also likes to use stabilized wood from Wood Stabilizing Specialists International on his knives. I think it’s just really super stuff,” he said. “They used to use wood on a lot of the old pocketknives, but some of them would crack and break. This stuff I use now is penetrated all the way through, and it polishes out good and seals real well. I’m trying to make them last a long time, and I’m just trying to build the best knife that I can.”

Davison will use stag, jigged bone, elephant ivory, or mammoth ivory for handle scales if that’s what a customer wants. His knife blades ran the gamut from the traditional wharncliffe, spear, clip and drop points to a utility razor. His models include trappers, swaybacks and other assorted jack knives. He has also made two-bladed, threebladed and four-blades knives, and vows to make more multi-bladed knives going forward.

Davison heat-treats his blades in his shop in Lyons, Kansas, and the blades are hollow ground on a 14-inch Bader grinder.







“I do my own heat treating and I test every one of them,” Davison said. “For all of my tainless steel I try to get them between 60 and 61 Rockwell, sometimes it’s between 61 and 62. I do a cryogenic quench on them so it raises them a point or two. “I use 410 stainless for the liners and bolsters and for blade stock I use a little bit of everything. I use a lot of ATS-34, D2, and CPM 154. I’ve used about everything that there is. I can pretty much make it out of anything they want.”

If a customer wants a high polish on a blade, Davison said he tries to steer them away from S30V and if it’s going to be a user knife he’ll suggest a belt finish.

Aside of his phone calls with Loveless and Bose, Davison said he’s only stepped foot into one other knifemaker’s shop, which was Rick Menefee’s shop in Oklahoma. “I’ve talked to Menefee on the telephone and we both decided that when you are learning how to make slip joints it’s suicidal,” he said. “You work on a knife for three days just to tear it apart and throw it away. There’s just so much in there. The hardest thing for me was to learn how to hide that (pivot) pin in the bolsters, which is usually hard for everybody. I’ve had several knifemakers call me to try to figure out how to do that. It’s not easy to do.

“There’s a lot to making those knives. A lot of people just don’t know what really goes on with making a pocketknife. There are just so many things that make a difference. Everything you do makes you do something else different.”



Each one of Davison’s knives has a number stamped inside the liner, and he has numbered every pocketknife that he has made. As of September, Davison was into the 920s with his numbered knives. When he finishes a knife, he writes down the number, what kind of knife it is, the type of shield and scales, the length closed and the date it was made, all of which makes it easier for a new or old customer to order a similar knife from him.

“I’ve known his dad for a long time and he actually gave me knife No. 100,” said Jim Reavis, a knife collector in Pueblo, Colorado. “I’ve gotten all of his 200, 300, 400, 500 and up knives to date and I’ve ordered them all the way through 1,000. They’re quality knives and the craftsmanship has definitely improved from 100 to 900.

“He is quite the character.He’s one of a kind. He’s done bronc riding, trained horses and he’s done a lot of other things. He’s just a quality, down to earth, good American. His word is his bond.”

Davison also uses a chainsaw file to put filework on the inside of his springs.

“I started off doing that because of the way I cut the spring. When I started I didn’t have any way to get a good finish in there,” he said. “I didn’t have a machine to get up into those curves to give me the finish that I wanted. So started doing that so I could put a mirror finish and to make it as perfect as I could down in there. I’ve done it on every one of them.

“I can get more of a precision finish in there plus it kind of gives me a little better way to adjust the tension on those springs. With a mirror finish it reflects off of the liners so when you look down in there it’s really lit up instead of dark.”

Lately Davison has been selling a lot of linerless micarta or G-10 shadow knives, which are both durable and lightweight.

One advantage of Davison’s free wheelin’ knife-making ways is that he can make changes on the fly when he is making a knife. He said he’s always trying to think of ways to make a better knife, or to make something different than what the rest of the knifemaker herd is doing.

“Ever since I started making pocket knives I’ve gone 10 or 12 hours every day, hard,” he said. “Most people hate their jobs, but I get up out of bed and instead of sitting there and drinking coffee I grab my coffee and take it out to the shop. I’m ready to go. I love it and you’ve really got to, because learning how to make those things takes some time.

“This is about all I do. I have a Harley and I go ride it every once a while. I’ll take a trip down to Mississippi to see my kids, but other than that I really don’t have any other hobbies. I’m either making knives or taking a short trip on my Harley to see my kids. That clears my mind and relieves all of the stress. When I get back I’m ready to go. I’m always thinking of how I can make a better knife, or a different knife.”

 

[bannockburn]

hso

Thanks for the Knife World article on Todd Davison. Answers a lot of questions I had about how he makes his knives so unique and so perfectly finished.

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

First of all - THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH! I do appreciate the support.

The write ups from Mike & Frank tells a lot. As said I made fix blades for about 25 years, sold my first knife in 1981. Seen an old man named Grady Carpenter with some knives, I ask him where he got them? He said that he had made them, well I never heard of someone making their own knives. So off I went to make my own knives, got me a vice and a hand held grinder. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. You should of seen me trying to put a mirror polish on a piece of steel I just ground out - hence the phone calls to Bob L. He even told one time that he had a little house that I could come stay in he would show me everything he knew about making knives. (I didn't go) We live and learn and that's just what I did. When making a fix blade and I would screw it up, I didn't make a smaller knife or toss it out. I would heat treat it and destroy it, by driving it into a tree bending and breaking it, chopping the edge of my anvil with the blade. This taught me what my heat treat was doing. Over the years making the fix blades I would NEVER toss the cut off-scrap, it went into a pile. And then I would make miniature knives.
This helped me to grind small blades along with the big blades. Never using any patterns on the knives accept when a customer sent me a drawing of a knife he wanted made.
I had a pistol on the bench one day (I had already started doing file work on the knives.) I picked it up and filed the bottom of the grip. Well that opened up a new can of worms, cause I started filing pistols even down the barrels. Then my brother bought a brand new Puma 38-357 stainless rifle and told me to go cut it up and I did. Took me over two years to do it, there are some photos of it and a pistol I did. (All by hand) I took it to the Spirit of Steel Show in Texas, Bill Ruple seen it and he couldn't believe it. Had a couple machinist try and tell me I machined it, until they looked at it closer and figured out that it couldn't be machined.

So I had my grind down, my fit and finish down (I could do a mirror polish on D2 that would impress Bob Dozier), my heat treat down, and my file work down. So time for something new? I know, how about slip joint knives..
End of 2005 I started making slip joint knives. And these too would be made with out patterns. I just jumped in an went for it (how hard could it be?)
If I new how hard it would be before I started, I would have NEVER started making them. But I did (hence the calls to Tony B.)

So when I start a new knife (slip joint) I drill the pivot hole in the steel first. Then sketch the blade out by hand, cut the blade and back spring out of the same piece of steel.
Next grind the profile of the blade and start cleaning up the back spring. After that I put the blade and back spring on a piece of 2x4 wood and start fitting it together.
I do NOT use a dial indicator, never have. I did buy one and tried to use it, but could do them my way better and faster. (by hand a bit at a time)
Look at my knives closed in person, the blade looks like it barely misses hitting the back spring on the end. Out of 1760 knives, I think I made two from Tony Bose's pattern (wharncliff trappers) and the blades came out short on the end of the trough. I also tried use bushings on my knives, that was in between #300 and #400's. Those would be the only knives of mine to have bushings. I do mine like Reese Bose, no bushings. One of the hardest things I ran into was hiding the pivot pin ang getting the walk and talk right. Like the article said that was around the #400's that I was getting really good, not perfect (but really good)

Even now after making over 1700 of them, I'm still always trying to make them better.

Have good one. - Thanks!

Todd

P.S. - I moved back to Mississippi from Kansas at the end of 2012.

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Here are some photos showing the file work.
The pistol shown only goes half way around the barrel because it was the first I did and I was a little scared to mess it up.
All the rest went clear around - and did a LOT of them, can't remember how many I did?
No more though - only pocket knives.

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[Deltaboy1984]

Good Lord you do some fine work , the Old world Masters of Sheffield and Germany before World war 1 would be impressed!

 

[bikerdoc]

You are a hard worker Mr D.
Kudos

 

[RA40]

Very nice!!! One of the ongoing challenges of the craft to push your abilities and learn new techniques to improve. Very motivating! Much respect for the makers and the creative application of integrating them into knives. Great have have great craftspeople to help the pursuit too. Tony Bose, Bob Dozier and Bill Ruple are fantastic makers!

 

[bannockburn]

Todd

Thanks for the remainder of your back story! Fascinating and inspiring to say the least!

I'm also incredibly impressed with the file work that you did on the Ruger and the Rossi; simply amazing (and thanks for the photos)!

You sir have a talent of working with steel that is unsurpassed! Kudos to your knife making accomplishments!

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Couple done - all stripes are pinned lengthwise through handle, with two pins on each side. Not just glued in.
Afzelia Lay Wood & Stag Striper's
Shield's on both sides of the knives.

Thanks again guys!

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]

Ready to catch up??

Here are #1700's up to #1804

Thanks for the looks, have a great day!

 

[T.A.DAVISON knife maker]