In the backwoods of southwestern Arkansas, just off a ribbon of country road in the small town of Nashville, there\u2019s a one-room metalworking shop packed with scraps of metal, grinders, and a forge that exhales blazing heat. Within, on pretty much any day of the week, you\u2019ll find a man named Jerry Fisk sweating and (literally) burning as he hammers and grinds sheaths of steel into clean-lined knives, daggers, or swords. Fisk \u2014 a thick-drawled, bearded fifty-four-year-old who\u2019s partial to jeans and cowboy boots \u2014 might just be the world\u2019s finest bladesmith.<\/p>\n
The native Arkansan \u2014 designated in 1999 a National Living Treasure \u2014 merges the disciplines of metallurgy, lapidary, and woodworking to handcraft knives treasured by collectors for their incomparable beauty and utility. His blades can literally split a hair. The scrolled engravings are so logical and natural that they seem to be an innate part of the source metal, drawn out in the forging process. His decorative handles are made from the finest wood or mammoth ivory, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, silver, or gold.<\/p>\n
Fisk creates only thirty or so pieces a year. Prices range from $1,100 to $45,000. His clients include the sultan of Brunei and Wall Street billionaires. The queen of England\u2019s official armorer has traveled to Arkansas to study with him. \u201cBut I sell my stuff to guys who mow lawns for a living, too,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When he was ten years old, Fisk went on a school field trip to Washington, Arkansas, to visit the forge where in 1831 James Black was commissioned by Colonel James Bowie to make the most famous piece of cutlery in American history. \u201cThere was this old man at the forge with these big and shiny blades. It so impressed me,\u201d Fisk says. \u201cI went home that night and carved my own bowie knife out of wood and stabbed one of my brothers. As my momma was whoopin\u2019 me, I thought \u2018I\u2019m on to something here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By his twenties, he was selling knives for apiece while working odd jobs to pay the bills. \u201cI\u2019ve been a bootlegger, a railroad man, and a chicken puller,\u201d says Fisk. (Um, bootlegger?<\/i> \u201cI live in a dry county,\u201d he says.) In 1987 he started making knives full-time.<\/p> Fisk chops two-by-fours in half, then actually splits one of his own hairs before he deems a blade ready<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the early days, most of his pieces went to bodyguards and mercenaries. \u201cI sold them to Israeli groups and some others that I shouldn\u2019t name,\u201d he says. These days, his clients are mostly collectors who wait up to three years to get premium blades. The process usually starts with hand-selected metal. But Fisk is amenable to using anything a client wants. One man sent him twenty-five pounds of rusted barbed wire. Another sent him the hood of a wrecked Toyota. \u201cBladesmiths are the original recyclers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Then Fisk fires up the forge, which reaches a high temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. \u201cI work with my face only thirty inches from the forge,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s why I wear a beard. When I smell burning hair, I know it\u2019s time to back up.\u201d He dips the blade into the forge, then hammers the metal over and over (some blades have up to twenty thousand layers). The sparks from the hammering have left constellations of scars on his arms. \u201cI can take a pen and connect all the dots and make all kinds of pictures,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n After smoothing out the blade with a hand grinder, Fisk puts it through a series of tests; he wants his clients to be able to use the knives for their intended purpose \u2014 say, as a field knife. He chops two-by-fours in half, then actually splits one of his own hairs before he deems a blade ready to be finished with a handle and guard.<\/p>\n Sometimes the blades fail the test. \u201cOne year I broke fifty-two knives,\u201d he says. He buries his mistakes in his yard, a subterranean collection that now numbers in the thousands. \u201cSomeday some archaeologist is going to think that there was a heckuva battle here,\u201d he says.<\/p>