Bill Moran ... The Washington Post

[KNAdmin]

I thought you all might like to read this. It's from the Washington Post. Sent to me by Don Guild.

Alex

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Artisan's Creations Lure Kings of Countries, Film
Frederick Bladesmith Among the World's Finest

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2003; Page C05


William Moran's workshop at the foot of Frederick's Braddock Mountain has floors stained with four decades of tobacco juice, no running water or phone and only an old electric fan to counter the 2,000-degree heat of its flagstone forge.

About five times a year, a work of art emerges from here that is created of material so rare, its craftsmanship so fine, it has drawn the likes of Jordan's King Abdullah II to this remote hollow, in hopes of owning one.

Moran makes knives, by hand -- from the forging of the steel, to the precious metal inlay and carving on the handle, to the stitching of the sheath. Over 60 years, he's become known as one of the world's leading bladesmiths, practitioners of a once-dying art that he helped revive by discovering a largely unrecorded formula for high-grade steel and founding a school.

About two decades ago, Moran, 78, charged about $500 for one of his better works. Last month, one sold privately for $25,000.

"I certainly wouldn't pay that much," said Moran, who laments that his knives have become "too expensive to chop a tree down with it."

Like the graceful works born in his soot-streaked shop, Moran is a study in contrasts. He is largely self-educated, yet his knowledge of U.S. knifemaking history and his reinvention of the art of making Damascus steel draws scholars' interest.

A trapper, hunter and fisherman, he has spent his life in Frederick's woods and hollows. His favorite work is not a long, gleaming bowie knife with rattlesnake embossed on the sheath, but a slim, elegant Mediterranean utility knife, its wooden handle inlaid with a spray of silver flowers. Moran charges only for his time and materials, leaving subsequent buyers to price in his reputation. But he demands what he's worth: When Sylvester Stallone offered him a movie plug in exchange for nine of his finest blades, he said, he told him: "Who the hell reads the screen credits?"

These days, Moran is slowing down. He doesn't take custom orders anymore. He lost his wife and business partner in 2001, and a battle with colon cancer has left him thinner and less able to travel for teaching and appearances. Yet he still spends most days in the forge, where he welcomes Japanese trade writers and European bladesmiths but more often local folks who want to shoot the breeze, talk politics and, most of all, watch him work.

"Bill Moran means everything to bladesmithing," said Joe Kertzman, managing editor of Blade, an industry magazine. "He is one of the five most collected knifemakers in the world."

Moran was born in Frederick to a well-off dairy farmer. He forged his first knife at age 12, from one of his father's old wood saws. By 14, he was selling knives, having taught himself how to forge a blade by asking local blacksmiths "and getting all the wrong answers," he said.

Bored by school, Moran nonetheless read every book on knives he could find. He traveled to Washington for a wood-carving exhibition, to see the carvers' tools. He attended hunting shows, studying, sometimes buying, well-designed swords and knives.

Before he was 20, he'd built his first forge on the dairy farm, in Lime Kiln, a few miles from where he now works. By the mid-1950s, he was selling knives through a rudimentary catalog and was one of only a handful of custom bladesmiths in the country. Most of his customers wanted bowie knives, but Moran also experimented with such exotica as the cinquedea, a Renaissance dagger composed of more than two dozen parts. "Of course nobody bought them, but I liked them, and I did finally begin to sell them," he said.

About that time, the late Smithsonian Institution scholar Harold Peterson featured Moran's bowies in his book "American Knives." Moran began getting orders from all across the country. In 1960, he sold the family farm and built his current shop.

In 1973, after years of trying, Moran reinvented the centuries-old process of making Damascus steel. Forged by Germanic tribes in the first millennium and resurrected briefly by the Nazis, Damascus had never been developed in the United States, and the unrecorded process was in danger of being lost.

Damascus is made of iron and steel, welded into three layers, heated and hammered flat. The piece is folded, rewelded and hammered out again, a process that is repeated eight times, exponentially multiplying the layers into as many as 500. The blade is then acid-treated, exposing its layers, which form a watermark-like pattern that belies the knife's superior edge and strength.

After Moran unveiled his Damascus blades at a Knifemakers' Guild meeting, the process grew into the industry's gold standard. Shortly after, Moran helped found the American Bladesmithing Society to promote the technique and a bladesmithing school based in Texarkana, Tex. Today the society boasts 800 custom bladesmiths.

"Knife collecting is on the upswing, and what's driving it is a nostalgia for old world craftsmanship," said Mark Sentz of Taneytown, Md., a well-known bladesmith trained by Moran. "And Bill Moran is the granddaddy of us all."

Moran's proficiency with Damascus bridged the hunting and art worlds, bringing him fame. In the late 1980s -- he can't remember when -- Stallone called, wanting "the most elaborate knife I could make," Moran said. He made a curved, Asiatic-looking Damascus steel combat knife, its handle and case inlaid with more than 30 feet of silver wire. The price: about $7,000. After the disagreement over supplying knives in exchange for screen credits, Stallone called back, ordering three less expensive models, Moran said.

Moran's favored celebrity client, however, is King Abdullah, who he said visited in the early 1990s -- U.S. bodyguards in tow -- to order a long, slender combat knife with a maple handle delicately inlaid with pure silver. Abdullah returned several weeks later to pick it up. "It cost about $3,000. He also gave me a beautiful Swiss watch," Moran said. "Very nice man. I never met a king before -- but of course he was only a prince then."

Moran's knives feel like a well-balanced instrument -- even a hefty bowie knife feels light. The blades are sharp enough to shave with, yet they just as easily cut timber.

Moran makes every element himself: Even the brass stud that fixes the belt loop to the sheath is hand-lathed. He insists on the best raw materials: dense stag horn from India; maple whose curled grain occurs once in 10,000 trees. He won't compromise on tools, often making his own. His tiny hammer and chisels used for setting inlay are themselves works of art.

About 20 years ago, Moran spent months searching out the purest coal in the United States for his forge. He found it in a remote corner of West Virginia. "I ordered nine tons," he said. "It'll last the rest of my life."

How long that'll be is a question that haunts knife collectors. Moran aims to stick around for a while but has cut his output of 40 knives a year to a half-dozen or so detailed ones that he sells once every two years at an invitation-only show in San Diego. Childless, he has willed his forge to the local Frederick County Landmarks Foundation. Like his knives, he said, "I'd like to see it get used."

? 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Chuck Burrows]

Alex-
Saw this a few days ago and was going to post it, but it just got lost in the shuffle. Anyway here is a link to the actual article which includes three photos of Bill and his work.

http://www.wrtcleather.com/1-ckd/bmoran.jpg

[Osprey Guy]

When we got married nearly 20 years ago, my wife taught school just down the road from Bill's shop, and we lived not too much farther away (just outside a little town called Sharpsburg, in the middle of the Antietam battlefield...I commuted to work every day nearly 1 1/2 hours each way to Baltimore). The only reason why I was even aware of Bill Moran, the knifemaker, was from a similar article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper, way back then. If only I had known then what I know now, I would have done all I could to try and meet Bill and maybe learn a thing or two.

Our home is now in Baltimore, about 45 minutes from Frederick. Bill's got a knifemaking workshop and knife show scheduled for a few days in October and I plan on attending as a birthday present to myself*.

Dennis Greenbaum

Yeah Baby!

* The list of scheduled demonstrators reads like a knifemaking who's who...Neely, Hendrickson, Gaston, Szilaski, Barnes, and Fisk to name a few...Oh yeh, and Joe Keesler will be demonstrating "Fancy Filework!" 8o

[hammerdownnow]

Our living history. Thanks for posting this Alex.

[whv]

thanx alex/chuck. he sure has lost some weight since i last saw him. glad to hear he is on the mend.

[AchimW]

Interesting reading about a very interesting and honourable person. Maybe it's also interesting to know that Mr. Moran is more or less unknown over here in Europe, except, maybe, to those people reading american knife publications, which are very few. I am collecting knives since 1975 but first heard about Mr. Moran in 1996.

There is one single small mistake in the article, which is the reinvention of damascus steel. The technique itself is much older than first millenium, the first examples date from the la-T?ne period. It wasn't developed from germanic tribes. And the process wasn't lost nor reinvented in 1973. There has been an uninterrupted production of a huge number of damascus blades (tenths of thousands of them) during the whole 20th century in central Europe. Most important damascus smiths for single pieces of art as well as for the Solingen knife industrie during the 1940s and 1950s was Paul M?ller and from the beginning 1960s to 1998 was Manfred Sachse from Rheyd, M?nchengladbach. Mr. Moran brought the process to the american continent and into the american knife industry.

Achim

[hammerdownnow]

Achim, Thanks for the clarification and info. We really enjoyed seeing the pics of your "Wootz in" that Tim W posted. The pics gave us a chance to put a face to your name. We need you to come over and teach us how to build a bloomery. Manfred Sachse, what an artist! Here is an example of his work for those who have never seen it.

[hammerdownnow]

I love these German boot knives. They also go by the names of Knicker Knives and Gent fighter. Nice little unobtrusive back ups or jewelery type EDC"s. A traditional style. Achims version is to drool over.