 Paul, how are you brother? All right, good dose yourself. Yes, wonderful mate, I mean we're here to talk about certainly one of the subjects I'm fascinated in and I'm a little bit involved myself and certainly not to the extent that you are but it's everything blades isn't it? Everything sword making, knife making, armaments in general. Yes, an interesting world, everyone likes shiny things. Yes, I'll just tell you my story very briefly but I went to a bushcraft weekend about 15 years ago with a mate and we camped the weekend and went to all kind of lectures while we were there and one of the chat was a forger but a forger in the sense of being a blacksmith and he not only knocked up his own blades but obviously did all the handles and everything and he had a load of parts you could buy so I bought some deer antler and some of these kind of pre, I don't know what you call them but like prefabricated discs that you can use for making handles and stuff. And I knew I wanted to make a knife and it took me 15 years to actually make it but there it is. Good job mate, good job. Yeah that's, it's actually got my name and my bear claw logo etched on the blade but it's come off when I sanded it so you can friends at home you can just about make out the logo there. Nice one. Yeah and I managed to find something that looks slightly bear clawish on eBay but yeah I'm a great believer in you know follow your dreams, make them come true even if it did take me 15 years. I will say that doesn't look much but that's about three and probably three and a half thousand pounds worth of equipment all in just to make that knife. Countless, countless hours of work. Someone said to me, someone said to me, Bloody Alchrist that's good and I said it's not my skill it's just that if you don't get it to a certain level of good you have to throw it away and do it again so it doesn't take you for anyone out there you know to get started in this you don't have to be you know I don't know some medieval Japanese sword maker something but so that's my story over to you mate how did you get involved? Really just as you said at the start it was following my own dreams and passions really I came to Edinburgh in 92 for university originally realised quite shortly in that I wasn't going to do that course for the rest of my life and that found something much more engaging along the way and that was fencing originally sport fencing that's all there was at that time but I just had a real natural fascination a kind of magnetism if you like towards the blades and towards the steel and at that time I found a couple of knife and dork and skein do the traditional Scottish knife makers on Edinburgh Edinburgh's Royal Mile they took us in teaching us you know various skills and one of them offered me full-time work finishing uni a couple of years later so yeah that got me on that path and I've followed it ever since starting up my own armories in 98 and very much working with the parallel path of the martial side of it as well in studying traditional swordsmanship and European martial arts and teaching that along the way as well incredible I was fortunate to go to a couple of museums in Tokyo one of them was the history of sword making and it was sort of set out at let's just say 12 stanchions the first one showed the raw ore coming out the rock the second showed where the swordsman the craftsman would like melt it down the third showed worried weld it onto the end of a rod and all the friends who've seen YouTube videos out there will know that the process hasn't really changed but the technology has and then finally folding this blade you know just hammering it flat then folding it over and hammering it which allegedly if you believe the film Highlander they can do a thousand times I'm not sure if that's the truth but then to go to the I think it was the National Museum and see the actual katanas there in all their glory so the original samurai swords all preserved lots of handles lots of what's the protective bit called the the super what I call a handguard and I just love it mate I love the whole ancestry in fact I'm going to tell you one more bear with me folks we are going to let Paul speak but I was at a party once with a uni mate I think we just graduated we were all a bit worse for where at this party and he went Chris look at this he reached under the sofa and he pulled out a Japanese sword and it was his great grandfathers had been handed it by prisoner of war in Burma and I didn't realise a lot of these Japanese officers were of samurai lineage so this sword would have been handed down over centuries and what they would do when they joined the armies they would just change the handle part to have it sort of military standard so to speak and all it had on it was the scabbard was snapped in half I remember thinking at that time should I offer him a grand for it or something because it would just be my dream dream to own one I didn't and I met up with him recently and I said I haven't still got that sword mate for any chance have you now mate sold that 50 quid nooo good lord wow we diverge diverge diverge diverge we go off track but yes incredible so how did your career develop what sort of stuff did you start producing well before I started my own armies I was really just making mild steel wall hangers for tourist market things that kind of looked like a sword from the other end of your room but weren't very functional and I think I had a real I just had natural fascination for the marshal side and accuracy in reviving the martial arts and to do that the only right way you can do that is to have the right weight the right balance tool in your hand so you know the swords have to be right so I was always interested in making something more historically accurate and the only way I could realise that I realised in the end was to start my own armory start my own business and you know learn as I went which I think with any craft you're always learning and every day is a school day you know you never stop learning that way but yeah I had to take that plunge and started the Armory's 98 historically accurate swords and knives that was the focus to start with I didn't have a main product at that time but that certainly changed along the way as my interest grew and became a bit more focused as well and it wasn't until 2008 myself and a good friend who was involved with the Academy of Arms at that time decided to start a World War 2 based living history group focusing on the original commando training from the Highland training centres and the close combat was the focus of that and it was quite evident that the FS fighting knife the famous commando knife was right at the heart of that too so that led to a path of quite intense focus on that knife to remake it again and as accurately and as closely as the original World War 2 examples and that has now become very much a main product Is it fair to say because I've handled one of these Sykes Fairburn can we call them replicas, is that what they're? Fairburn Sykes, yeah re-creations I got given one for a Royal Marines event that I organised and the lads very kindly chipped in and they gave me the one that's in the frame and took me about three years before I looked at it one day and thought is that plastic? Right, and I started Anyway, I digress but what I'm trying to say in it is that it's the black dagger it looks like it's formed from one piece of metal Yeah, it'll probably be something like this That's right, yeah That's what we call the third pattern, FS knife and that was the last pattern that was developed in World War 2 and it's the only pattern really that's been produced in numbers since that thing since 1943 Bringing that forward a bit when we spoke, I did a charity Speed March last year, Upper Acne Carry Oh yeah, another one, yeah We took those, about 10 of us elite veterans, elite forces veterans and we recreated the original Speed March, the original 9 miler carrying all the gear in the 90 minutes and the lads did really, really well and we raised a lot of money for the Royal Marines charity but someone, and I am going to do a bit of googling to try to remember which company it was but they very kindly donated a Sykes Fairburn replica and it raised over a thousand pounds at least and the point I was coming back to, Paul, was to look at it, I'd say that they made it way better than it probably was back in the day Yeah, yeah When you look at the closely, at the wartime originals you do see, you know inconsistent grinds, the center lines of the blades being slightly off or squiggly, and grind marks down the blades, you know, because it was wartime and they were mass producing as efficient hand crafting but still mass producing as efficiently as they could to keep up with the demand back then So yeah, I've realized that along the way myself and I've come to terms with I don't have a problem in saying that the blades that I make are of a higher quality than the blades then and I'm still looking towards still paying tribute really to the original makers and to, you know the original personnel that carried them to Yes, it's the ultimate tribute isn't it, is when you take something and you make it better is and back in the day then, were they just sort of so friends at home the original commandos, Second World War when they went behind enemy lines, they were issued this dagger and in essence it was for stabbing the hell out of your enemy or taking out that windpipe or other such horrible horrible ends but it looked very basic, Paul, as you just shown is that any sort of form of carbon steel or can that just be any of that? Yeah, I mean carbon steel hasn't really been improved on since the Iron Age you know, for good sword or knife blades and the form of the knife everything about it, it was all designed very specifically as a fighting knife not a knife fighting knife but as a knife designed for silent killing for basically entering the body and exiting causing as much trauma on the way out as possible and doing that job efficiently, you know it wasn't a can opener, it wasn't a bushcraft or a steelcraft knife every knife in its own way is a specific tool for a specific job and that means that every knife in its own way is a compromise as well because it's not good for certain other jobs so that's exactly what the FS knife was designed for and the FS of course, Fairbairn Sykes named after William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes who are two close combat instructors the original instructors that first established the close combat syllabus talked to the commandos and subsequent SF Yes, if they really knew commanders well they'd have put a lanyard on it there must be loads of those left in occupied France or something Oh they're absolutely, in fact I have one down stairs that's framed up and it was excavated in Sword Beach in 1968 the second pattern and the blade and the guard are extremely corroded but the brass grip is very much intact and so that's proudly framed up along with an image of Four Commando going forward in the beach that day Do you have any more there Paul to show us? Yes certainly do I've got a brief history of the FS knife Please, I think friends at home would love to hear it The story of the FS knife starts where Fairbairn and Sykes first were before the Second World War and that was Shanghai they were officers in the Shanghai Municipal Police and this was exactly the type of knife they developed for the police at that time so this is now known as the first pattern Shanghai knife and you can see similarities to the FS knife it's got what you call the coke bottle shaped grip it's a bit shorter overall though but it's got this tapering diamond section double edge blade and straight guard so the similarities are there but obviously the police are not using this for silent killing that's kind of frowned upon but it was basically a self defense knife for the officers you know it was getting yourself out of a clinch if you got one or two lads on you already and pinning an arm or two against your body and they accessed it by carrying it in a scabbard like this upside down rigged to their shoulder harness inside the jacket so all you need to do is put a hand inside your jacket and access your knife and cut your way out a clinch to overcome a situation that was the very first origins of it then moved to brass grips for a bit more efficient production again the brass grip formed the basis of the FS knife production that came to that how do you get the gnarling on that handle? yeah brass grips are turned and knurled this is a second pattern FS knife this is one of my own and yeah this is done by machine the original grips were cast and they were cast so they could have a rectangular recess for the tang of the blade to continue up in and then they were turned to smoothen the surface and then they were knurled by machine and you have to follow the contours of the machine by hand as well this is a little bit different to the third pattern you might be used to but this is the iconic first pattern FS knife right here so these were only produced in a very small number this is an original piece made by Wilkinson sword company and these were made from from about January 41 to August 41 only and only by Wilkinson sword and after that time they moved to the second pattern until October 43 when all production moved to the third pattern so by brief comparison there's your first pattern the first pattern has the very slight S shaped cross guard to it as well as this blunted area here the recastle and the second pattern in comparison hopefully you can see the slight difference there's a straight guard doesn't have a little curve on it more or less the same type of grip knurled and turned with the edges of the blade went all the way to the guard this time and the third pattern similar to the second same blade and guard really but the only difference being the grips went to being cast in zinc alloy and you can cast this concentric circle form if you tried that with knurling you would then have to you would interrupt the knurling it wouldn't work out so much Fairbairn actually wasn't a big fan of the cast grip in the end he said it could actually turn in the hand if it's wet you know water or blood or such as opposed to the knurling which tended to bite into the fingers a bit more so it's got its own story and I do like to pay tribute to that by using heritage materials and heritage wood especially so this is Acnecari wood this is Spalted Beech and from one of the trees that formed part of the original rope work course at the CBTC the Commando Basic Training Centre which is where all the recruits went through for their training at Acnecari between February 42 and the end of the war Wow and are you aware of the the top price one of these has fetched at say auction or similar Yeah I donated one of the the heritage knives to I think it was the Royal Marine Charity recently and I think it fetched two grand auction for them so it did well at that Stupid question time What's the fascination with these now? Why are they so beloved? Yeah they're still revered in a way amongst the forces communities because I think you know it really symbolises the nature of the job you know about going forward by stealth when you get there it's as much damage devastation as you can and extracting with you know fewer or minimum casualties it's about that you know the essence of who dares wins if you like you know going forward with bravery to close with the enemy and that takes it takes balls isn't it and that knife as always I think symbolised that job Took balls because you know a lot of these young lads didn't come back did they? Yeah absolutely Myself and my mate Mike I'd mentioned we'd started the Second World War Group in 2008 and we were very lucky at that time when we did start it that there were still enough World War II veterans travelling to Fort William and Spain Bridge every year for remembrance weekend events that we could sit down with them and engage with them and they were invariably happy to share the stories of their training and their experience in theatre as well and it just incredible these lads you know the stories they came out with and you know a lot of folk will look at the knife today and not realise there'll be a disconnect between this nice pretty shiny thing and the job it was designed for because the job it's designed for is not a pretty one it's a messy one quite literally and yeah you know these lads were using these knives and they're still used today in fact you know I think any form of theatre will always end up in some way in close combat and when it comes to close combat then we only the ancient ways and the ancient tools still work you know that's never gonna change so there's always room for and a place for a good knife in any theatre that way do you think the lads got to keep their knives or do you think they had to hand them back in when they finished their service yeah a lot of them kept the knives and a lot of families have been contacted by a lot of families that have their fathers or grandfathers knives so yeah if they were in they kept them Are you familiar with a chap just get his name up Kyle Royer Not sure Oh wow I just mention it because once you start knife making suddenly your YouTube starts throwing up loads of knife making videos and this chap's in America and I've never seen such exquisite knife maker I'm sure if I would if I came to your workshop but this guy works in his father's workshop over there in America and the swords he produces and the knives just beyond anything you can imagine everything down to the last detail I think he made one recently Excelsior was that a sword Excelsior Yeah I think it was a sort of along those lines Excelsior I think he called this one Excelsior but it was what's the name where they layer the the steel in such a way that you get that incredible pattern down the blade Damascus or Popper Weld Yeah and friends at home this might not sound a lot but you have to set your when you fold the steel you can layer it in a certain way that when you bash it and then you fold it and then you extricate is that the word when you make it go when you bash it long you get this incredible pattern down the blade like it's interwoven and then the all the rest of it was just made to exact perfection I mean there's no words for it Carl Royer folks if you just have a Google of this chat and finally he's laying gold 24 karat gold using a little chisel to chip out his name across the handguard and then he's bashing gold into it and he's even explaining this is a crap 24 karat gold it's not you know it's not working properly and then when he machines it off or sands it off it's just you know it's like the Rolex equivalent of a yes absolutely fascinating there are a lot of top top makers out there you know and there's a lot of impressive still still in the knife and sword making world and makers are relatively few and far between you know but yeah there's a lot of top lads out there well it's great that it's a skill that's come back and it's being reborn because obviously swords are not a big thing and not everyone I mean there was a time wasn't there when probably most fighting men age men had some sort of sword or in Scotland the Claymore sure to give you an idea of the demand and you know this qualifies that this is not a shameless plug for my company please do because I stopped taking orders a few years ago because my demand I basically have about ten years worth of work lined up at the moment and I think that's not unusual for high quality you know makers is your demand you know once your reputation starts to spread where the mouth and so on especially in military circles where it spreads quick your demand you know is going up and if you're only one pair of hands that becomes harder to keep up with you know I was telling folk that five years was the lead time for FS knives and ten years was about the lead time for custom work and folk were still saying that's fine I don't mind waiting so I made the decision when does that end I've got to cap that so yeah so took that decision and I think it's not unusual for high quality knife and sword makers that way to reach that point where the demand's going up and up and you have to say you know what I'm going to cap things for the moment and play catch up for a number of years yes exactly and also Paul I look at these guys and say they're making some sort of you know bushcraft knife and they're putting I don't know like at least two days effort into it if not longer and then when you look at the prices on the internet of these knives they're pretty bloody low I mean you can get them from a tenner to if you really were taking your bushcraft seriously you could spend four or five hundred quid not quite easy yet but after you take out the machine time and the materials and all of that there's very little profit in it for the knife maker yeah yeah there's very few shortcuts really to making a good knife certainly by hand you know if you're making everything by machine then it's all you know laser cut and you're using big kit to do it there's big investment involved in getting all that kit in the first place so but if it's small scale production there's very few shortcuts you know to essentially making that right shape of blade getting that heat treatment right using the best quality steel as you can and you know fit and finish of all the components leather for the scabbard and doing all that work again by hand there's very few shortcuts to it you know so it's all it's heavy it's heavy investment in the time that it takes to do it and that's that you know has to be reflected in the cost somehow yes I'm talking of leather that's my first effort there at a sheath or a scabbard oh yeah good work this is the precursor to me making the one for the actual for our actual bushcraft knife yeah so I thought I'd make my son one for his leatherman yeah my son's brought up with nice his first birthday present was a pen knife next one and he's been you know using it since he was one excellent he was driving a car by the time he was six I mean on his own not with me on his lap I just want him to you know I want him to be hands on and it might sound reckless to people out there but if you go to an indigenous community something you know the inuits in the north they need to give their kids a knife to play with it's just completely normal sure you know obviously you teach always cut away but you know these all these skills are being lost on and notice I mean no disrespect but you know the playstation generation I mean we might remember I remember my grandma I mean I was about six when I got my first pen knife and she'd bought she bought me one with a slightly kind of hook blade on it and that was it that was your weekend you're out whittling stuff you know making yourself bow and arrows yeah absolutely we used to rob bamboo from a neighbour's garden and make ourself blowpipes with James Bond but that's my first attempt it's not meant to be good Paul hence the zigzaggy what it is what it is I wanted to mirror this one so this is just your typical I got this when I was in training in the Marines that friends at home that there is the strap you get when you parachute it comes off you find them on the ground it's called a tie in the military if you can nab one you use it to put on your knife Swiss Army knife maybe we can talk a little bit about it because they just absolutely love this this knife this tool just they last so long and they're so precise but anyway I digress so I was trying to mould the lever like that and as you're going to I'm sure you well know it's not as easy as you think I tried doing it in hot water and I actually cooked I boiled the lever and it shrunk half the size and went rock hard so in the end I cheated and I did it in strips I just cut out U shaped strips that's why the stitching has gone a bit wonky because when I did it on the drill press and I brought the drill down and it was coming out the outs so I was like fuck it I'll just put a lot of layers there but it's an art in itself isn't it every different material is different scales it's different knacks when you're working with different materials and if you're a small scale maker you're kind of obliged to do that you've got to work with different steels you've got to work with brass, bronzes and woods and leathers as well and they all have their own issues when it comes to going wrong so you learn the lever is funny because it's actually a dead animal it's got quirks in it different animal hide types they act differently under the knife or when you soak them in so on as well when we talk about the swords what's the most popular sword what swords most in demand to be recreated that's a good question one of the swords I've made more of perhaps than anything else it's the He-Man Sword of Power the He-Man cartoon series right from that I've been a He-Man fan for years and I thought if something takes my fancy I'll give it a go that's an interesting one designed it up but with the form of it it's quite wide and thick if you made it an iron or steel it would be ridiculously heavy so did it cast aluminium for the whole thing you can polish up to practically a mirror finish so that was the right material for the job I made quite a few of those you see I don't tend to make batches of swords I'll make one or two swords at a time because there's a lot more time invested in them but I've made quite a few I don't know if you can see the basket hill swords behind me here very much associated with the Jacobite Risings through 17th and 18th century and because I'm Scottish based I get involved in quite a lot of research on the Scottish history side I've made quite a number of these along the way I bet the claymore is popular as well yeah I suppose over the years I've made a few of those the big two handed Scottish swords fairly popular not many pubs in Scotland haven't got a claymore on the wall I'll say everyone likes shiny things can we talk about sharpening because somebody I learnt an awful lot about sharpening blades was Ray Mears he used to not a lot but he did a few at least a couple of episodes on this sort of thing so I invested in some Japanese water stones and they're incredible and I got the little sort of clamp that sits on your table to stop them like your dad's wet stone when you were a kid and it would fly away and you'd get a little tiny stone and you soak the wet stones in water overnight or whatever to get them to work and then you get a slurry stone don't you and you make slurry and that slurry is so fine that it really gets the not even the final bit on the blade after stropping it on leather Ray Mears runs it down the edge of the window in his vehicle yeah but yeah I bought these stones it's easier than it looks I remember I bought a Japanese chopping blade in the fish market in Tokyo and the guy had a wet stone it was the size of my desk it was incredible and he just got my blade he said do you want it sharpened and I said yeah and you could see this guy just knew he'd probably done this hundreds of thousands of times yeah so yes how do we deal with this yeah sharpening is absolutely its own knack you know and it is something you certainly if you're working with blades over time you get a feel for you know the right angle and the right pressure and the right grit and material to be working with and really that's all sharpening is about you know it's about finding that right angle for your edge about realising how blunt your knife is in the first place you know how much sharpening it needs and because sometimes you just need to just subtly hone an edge and just you know refine it and if it's been well used then you're going to have to take some steps back and start with you know a bigger grit basically surface finishing you know putting a finish on any surface of steel and sharpening is it's a similar process in a way you got to move through the grits consistently and you've got to be thorough at every stage you know think think about the surface of a blade because the edge you know acts the same if at any stage you're leaving you know rough grit and you go on to the next stage well that next stage isn't going to you're still going to have rough scratches if you like in the surface so you've got to be as thorough as you can in the first stage then the second stage and then the third stage and so on to get everything reducing evenly and dealing with the edge is exactly the same in a way as dealing with the surface of the steel it's simply about knowing how much you have to sharpen and getting the right sharpening materials for that with a relatively blunt blade you're not going to do too well if you just take that straight to a fine diamond surface you're going to be there for weeks so you've got to start with something rougher and just thoroughly work your way through and it's getting a feel for the right angle see different knife types will be slightly different you'll have more acute or more obtuse angles depending on what you're dealing with some blades will go from the spine all the way down to that edge what you call a zero grind so it'll just go straight to the edge you can get an extremely sharp edge with that but yeah takes a bit more work to carefully get an edge back on it most will have what you call a bevel edge so it'll go mostly to an edge and then you'll get a secondary angle on that and that's easier to maintain in a way yes because you hear talk don't you of the Scandinavians have their Scandinavian grind which is like the triangle my one I don't know what it is Paul because I think after I did a bit on the belt sander which is an art in itself and obviously when you've gone to the trouble of cutting out your blade and shaping it and everything you just one wrong grind you're just going to screw the whole thing up I think I got the sort of rough bevel started but then I set up two electric drills two sanding pads those big round sanding pads I brought them in close and I synchronized the speeds so they were whizzing around at the same time and then I just I dragged the blade through it and I could feel it pulling the steel off it's a real satisfying feel and I could feel it pulling the steel off and finally it's got to this because it reflects slightly it's the perfect contour on each side so there's no grind I don't know if I'm going to find out to my costs I mean even it haven't even sharpened it and it's probably sharpened the most knives that I've ever used so yes fascinating is that a grind there's no it's like literally it just tapers to a point I was happy with it it was just right I'll lose my convex that sounds similar to I'll see if I can find it one of the best bushcraft knives I think it's ever been designed and made type D survival knife this was originally Wilkinson Wilkinson only made these and this is a convex grind to it which means that as you impact it splits it's great for bushcraft work because of that grind and it also means there's actually quite a bit of meat still on the blade and you're not intentionally reducing the weight of that blade as much as possible you're maintaining as much weight as possible and at the spine these are about 7mm thick actually quite hefty it's almost like a hand axe but it's short and compact so that's pretty much what you want in a bushcraft knife you want it to be compact you want it to be meaty and weighty as well for doing those kind of jobs yeah I built this for show really not show I just wanted every feature that I'd ever thought about in a knife in this one so for a proper bushcraft obviously you wouldn't have the saw the serrated edge because you want to be able to hammer down on it with a log don't you to use it as a chisel yeah that's a great thing about a thick spine you can hammer on it yeah for solid splitting it's almost like what they called in a navy a gullock I don't know if you've heard that term yeah I've heard yeah there was a development of this it became known as the M.O.D survival knife for a while but it was basically a much cheaper version the fit and finish of the grips were not great if you're using it in a tight grip for a while it'd blister up your hands in no time and the grinding the blade wasn't as smoothly convex as this it came to pretty much a kind of chisel grind down here yeah it was a you know it was a kind of cheap version yeah I was on the ship for a year and I think there was 12 of us marines on board and one day the buffer came up to our mess and he went with his knives and he gave each and every one of us a knife just like that like I say I think we called it a gullock he said I've only got 12 women I ain't giving them to my Mat Lowe's so yes Paul this has been an absolutely fascinating chat I can put your details below and all your social media below our YouTube videos so people can at least follow you even if they can't order stuff but not a problem so if you can just send me all your links that would be great what's the future for you is there a retirement plan in knife making does it that laugh might tell you something never had a retirement plan I really hope in a plan to just keep cracking on because I love what I do I really do and I feel lucky for it I've very much chosen this path because I love it and I feel that I can be quite happy doing it for the rest of my days and I have known knife and sword makers that have done exactly that and they've kept working till the end and I think that's a great thing to do yes old knife makers never die they only blunt their blade just get sharper one last thing have you got a YouTube channel I don't and I probably should by now I have done little videos now and again for the Facebook group and I quite enjoy doing it you've just given me a wee spark I'm more than willing to help you with that I've actually done a couple of knife videos I haven't tried to do any polish or anything I've just put up a few photos and said that's what I'm doing this bit but it's one of those things like if you don't start it's never going to happen and once you start then you start to learn the little bits and bobs but I mean they're so popular if I go back to our man here he's getting like millions his episode 12 of his it's got a million views and it's a half hour video so to give you an idea he's probably made a couple of grand on that video and all it really means is having a GoPro setup looking one down at your work one looking at you a lot of it he just narrates over it afterwards and it's satisfying having a YouTube channel but also I think it's great for our young people to see these skills and to realise that if you spend six hours on Xbox you literally okay you might have had a bit of you pass the day but there's nothing you get nothing at the end of it except for the score if you spend six hours in a workshop you can come out with it with something that's improved your skill made you happy demonstrated the opposite sex that you know how to bloody defend yourself you might get a few chicks there boys like you say with your lads and that's invaluable learning in life and I think it can give you a taste for that as well and it can help direct your own interest in life as you go as well should just to be fair do you come across many female craftsmen you know jewellery makers and such but actual and makers not many there's only one I know in Scotland and there's an exceptional scissors maker in England Grace Horne she's absolutely incredible next level craftsmanship but you know there's not too many out there so that means there's only room for more yes do you remember probably wasn't so much the old days but people go around in vans and they pull up in your street and you take all your scissors and knives out and they have you come across this you get the sharpening person comes around once a month and you take all your I mean I've seen it I can't even remember where I've seen it it's not something that happens in my street it used to be somebody went around Edinburgh right enough but I don't know if they still do it's something I offer just as a local service sharpening and I get folk bringing along gardening tools and axes and all sorts so you don't know what type of edge you're going to have to deal with from one day to the next but yeah yeah we didn't even talk about that our next project is an axe for my boy Viking stuff and yeah how are half the kids cartoons these days of people hacking each other yes so we're going to move on to a double bladed axe so yes Paul it's been incredible mate like I say I'll put your links below the video this has been a dream come true of mine to chat to somebody of your stature in the knife making profession so thank you ever so much it's been an absolute pleasure thanks very much for having us brilliant, brilliant so and Paul just stay on the line while I say goodbye to everybody friends at home you can follow Paul McDonald Armouries on social media I suggest you do something pop up in your feed that's not a photo of someone's someone's lunch so yes I'd encourage you to do that and massive thank you all for tuning in for another episode of bought the t-shirt podcast