Master Bladesmith Crafts Utility & Specialty Knives

By Thomas P. Caldwell

Residents and visitors to the Granite State may be surprised at the number of artists and craftsman inhabiting its towns and cities, many of whom have attained world-class distinction. Among them is Master Bladesmith Zack Jonas of Warner.

A bladesmith, similar to a blacksmith, forges metal tools, weapons, and art forms, but with very specialized skills for the creation of knives and blades. Attaining the rank of journeyman bladesmith from the American Bladesmith Society in 2012 and master bladesmith in 2019, Zack has created distinctive pieces that have gone not only across the country but also to Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Dubai, Hong Kong, England, and Canada.

Some of the more unusual creations have been a Roman-style gladius, worn by foot soldiers between the third century BC and the third century AD, and a custom piece combining features of the American Bowie knife and the Arabian khanjar, a traditional dagger worn in many Middle Eastern countries and considered central to masculine culture.

Zack said the gladius was commissioned by a son as a gift for his father’s 80th birthday.

“The father was a big Roman history buff, so the son wanted a Roman sword for him, which was really fun,” Zack said. “I also really like doing that kind of project that has a personal significance, both for the giver and the receiver.”

The khanjar has a short curved blade shaped like the letter “J” while the Bowie knife has long straight blade with a curved, keen point.

“So this guy wanted a fusion of those two things, and, you know, those two knives are very different. So I went, all right, how’s that gonna work?” Zack recalled. “I can’t picture that at all, but the thing that made me want to work with him was that he said he wanted it not to be too Aladdin-ish, which, to me, told me he wasn’t taking the cultural importance of it too seriously, and he just wanted something cool. So I went, I had no idea what that’s gonna look like. Let me try and figure it out. And ultimately, I came up with a piece that I really liked the design of. He was really happy with it.”

Zack said the customer was originally from Jordan, and he wanted the number seven incorporated into the knife, because the Jordanian flag has a seven-pointed star.

“An odd number is fairly tricky to incorporate into a symmetrical style of thing,” Zack said, “so I ended up making the handle’s cross-section seven-sided. It was a septagon, and I did some silver inlay into the handle and some other fun stuff. Anyway, that was a cool and rather unusual project.”

Earning a master bladesmith designation from the American Bladesmith Society requires working through the ranks, first as an apprentice bladesmith for at least three years (or two years with a certificate from an ABS-approved course under the guidance of a master bladesmith instructor) and recognition for high-quality work. Those who accomplish that become journeyman bladesmiths. To be eligible for the master bladesmith designation, the journeyman bladesmith must have practiced for at least two years before presenting work for evaluation. The workmanship must be judged to be “excellent” to “superlative” in quality, transcending to the level of functional art. Less than 200 individuals in the world hold the master bladesmith title.

Zack recalled, “To earn that rank, the second test that I had to do was to create a set of five knives that were sort of to the limit of my ability and very artistic and fancy. And those knives were presented to a panel of master smith judges, who had to look them over and try and find anything wrong with them, and determine whether or not I was worthy of the rank of master smith. So those five pieces were five of the best knives I’ve done to date, even though that was five years ago, and they were pretty elaborate and special.”

Zack also is an active member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, serving on the Standards Committee and sitting on the board of directors. He recently was elected chair of the board of directors.

He had a booth at the League’s Sunapee Craft Fair on August 3-11, selling 86 of the 120 pieces he brought.

“I think this year was my best in terms of gross sales,” he said, “edging out last year, which was my best ever, edging out the previous year, which was my best ever. So the trend is good … in the right direction.”

He also took part in his first-ever knife show in California, and he plans to return next year.

Asked how he got interested in knives, Zack said he has always been fascinated by knives, even as a child.

“Whenever we went into an antique shop, it was, ‘Zack, put your hands in your pockets,’ and it wasn’t because I was going to break something; it’s because I was looking for knives. When I was 10, I stole one of my mom’s paring knives out of the kitchen, and I never did anything with it. I didn’t cut anything with it. I hid it under the couch in the basement, and I used to take it out from time to time, and it wasn’t anything special, for that matter. … I just wanted to possess it.

“Obviously, stealing is wrong, but it didn’t occur to me quite how stupid that was until I was in my 30s, because I could have taken it out and looked at it anytime in the kitchen, anyway.”

He had not considered a career involving knives; from the age of about four, he started taking art lessons, then studied philosophy in college. After graduation, took a desk job in Boston.

“Then, around about 2006, maybe it’s 2005, I discovered a website called knifeart.com, which was an online custom knife purveyor. And I went, ‘Hang on, custom knives? That means people are making these. I have to try this.’ … So I started asking around, and eventually my sister’s friend’s colleague’s husband, it turned out, was apprentice to this guy, JD Smith, who was a master knife-maker and was teaching at Mass Art down in Boston … so I signed up for the class and just was completely hooked.”

During his apprenticeship with JD Smith, he helped to teach the class. Then, in 2010, he traveled around the country to learn from other instructors.

“And a thing that I observed was that many master-level makers … had the desire to teach, but simply didn’t have the space physically,” Zack said. “So I concocted this notion in my mind of, well, what if I built a studio that was larger than I needed, so that I could say, ‘Hey, come and teach a class out of my studio. You make the money, the students who come to learn get the skills, I make a little bit of money. I get all this networking stuff. Everybody’s happy.’”

Not only did he earn his journeyman bladesmith ranking in 2012, he got married, moved to New Hampshire, and broke ground on a workshop.

His first workshop was in Wilmot, “and the first instructor agreed to come before the paint was dry on my first studio,” he said. “I thought it would take 15 years to kind of get any reputation out that anyone would trust me to do that, but the guy in question … said, ‘If you can get a quorum of four students to sign up for a month-long class to do this, you know, immersion, crazy thing, I’ll show up. And he came up from South Africa. He’s an Englishman who was living in South Africa at the time, and he came up and we did this crazy class.”

Zack continued, “That’s how I got connected, ultimately, to Peter Johnsson, which is how I got into making swords.”

Peter Johnsson is an influential, world-renowned Swedish swordsmith who devoted decades of extensive research, documenting artifacts from the bronze age to the early renaissance in museums across Europe and the United States. Over the last 20 years, working as an artist and exhibition curator, he has reconstructed historical swords, edged tools, and weapons.

Zack said, “It’s hard to imagine being interested in knives and not thinking swords are cool, and, you know, I grew up on fantasy novels and action movies and stuff like that. So that all was definitely swirling around in there. But sword-making, while there is certainly a lot of carryover in terms of the tooling and some of the techniques, it’s actually swords are not just larger knives, and that is a misconception that a lot of knife-makers have until they make a sword, and the way that I got into swords, specifically, was through Peter Johnsson. And Peter is now a dear friend.”

The student workshops are an integral part of Zack’s business today, and Johnsson leads sword-making classes at his Warner shop.

Zack himself is too busy making pieces to teach. He does enjoy leading tours of his of workshop, pointing out the various machines and equipment and describing the range of knives and swords he makes.

“Some of them are simple — you know, chef’s knives — and some of them are very elaborate projects that I can’t necessarily go into detail on because they’re for prominent individuals, but that’s an exciting development for me, because I like doing the sort of what I call my quote, unquote production work, which is all still individual knives, totally handmade,” Zack said.

“But, you know, I’ve got, let’s say, a standardized model, my seven-inch chef’s knife. It’s my most popular knife. I’ve sold hundreds of them. I love making them, but I can do it kind of without thinking about it at this point, I’ve made so many of them. You know, it’s like putting on an old pair of shoes. It’s very familiar. And I love that those wind up in the hands of people who are going to use them and who are going to love them, and people come up to me at craft shows and say, ‘I bought a knife five years ago, and I smile every day when I cut stuff.

“That’s awesome and fulfilling for me, but it’s not necessarily creatively challenging. So these more elaborate projects are really cool, because they test me as an artist and allow me to level up my skills and really push myself.”

Even simple knives require skill in their design.

“You have to think about how the piece is going to be used,” Zack said.

When making a hunting knife, for example, the smith has to keep in mind that, a lot of times, “it’s dark, cold, your hands are wet, maybe you’re inside of an animal so you can’t see exactly what you’re doing. So the knife has to be ergonomically shaped, both so that it’s comfortable for use, but also so that it indexes to your hand in the right direction in an intuitive way. So there’s a lot of contouring and stuff that goes into it,” Zack explains.

Similarly, balance is important. Zack will ask a visitor to hold a finished sword in a neutral position, parallel to the floor. Then in the other hand, the visitor is given a sword without the hilt.

“Which one is heavier?” he asks. The choice is always the unfinished sword, even though the other one weighs three times as much.

“It’s just the way it’s balanced,” Zack explains. “One of the comments that I get constantly, and it’s very gratifying, when people pick up my chef’s knives, they’ll say, “It’s so light.’ I mean, there’s usually an audible gasp. And the funny thing for me is that my chef’s knives are often actually heavier than commercial knives, heavier than what they’re used to, but they are balanced properly.”

He explained that, when the sword’s weight is toward the front, the bearer must use the small muscles of the forearm to keep the point elevated. When it’s balanced properly, the swordsman is able to use the larger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder to control its position, making it easier to move and tricking the brain to think it is light.

To learn more about Zack Jonas’ work, visit https://jonasblade.com.