My trip to the world's biggest knife store!

[Self Made Knives]

Here's a peek at my time at the Smoky Mountain Knife Works shop. This place is huge and is worth a stop if you're in the area. We vacationed in and around Gatlinburg, Tn this year. I've had a connection with this place since I was a kid, which I explain in the video.

 

[Drew Riley]

I remember getting a couple of catalogs from SMKW as a kid, and then begging my mom to mail in the order form for me and my brother. This was all pre-website days mind you. I think we wore those catalogs out, dog earing pages of "possible" purchases, and highlighting what we wanted on each page, before mom would give us a budget, and then we'd really have to narrow it down. I'm sure much of our purchases were encouraged by Tom Odell on the cutlery network as they hocked a lot of the same frost cutlery and simlar import brands of knives.

Frost, Master, the "poor man" brand, etc.... were kind of the mainstays of my crappy chinese knife collection from SMKW. I just had to have a "LINER LOCK WITH A SPRING STEEL BELT, BOOT AND POCKET CLIP IN 440 SURGICAL GRADE STAINLESS STEEL WITH AN ADJUSTABLE TENSION SCREW!" so that the knife just flicks right open.
Then there was the 15" long "poor man" bowie that was about 1/4" thick, saber ground, and weight about 5 lbs with a molded plastic handle, cheaply riveted into place.
I've still got a handful of those knives laying in a box somewhere. No telling what happened to all of them.

I'd love to actually visit the store one day, though I don't find myself in TN too often. Maybe we'll take a quick detour next time we drive down to visit the inlaws in south Florida.

 

[Self Made Knives]

Yeah, the catalogs were great when you were a kid. The first one's we got were printed like a newspaper, all black and white. I remember I just had to have this goofy snaked shape dagger. Cheesy to the max! I think it was just made out of mild steel, but I sharpened that dang thing! This was also about the time frame I got my first stainless steel knife, oh what a big shot I was. It was trapper with bone handles, actually a very pretty knife, can't remember the brand though. Good times.

 

[Drew Riley]

Yeah, the catalogs were great when you were a kid. The first one's we got were printed like a newspaper, all black and white. I remember I just had to have this goofy snaked shape dagger. Cheesy to the max! I think it was just made out of mild steel, but I sharpened that dang thing! This was also about the time frame I got my first stainless steel knife, oh what a big shot I was. It was trapper with bone handles, actually a very pretty knife, can't remember the brand though. Good times.

Yeah, I remember those kris daggers. It's funny to think back on what I thought was so cool, or great, or even necessary to have in a knife collection.

I remember thinking I had arrived at the big leagues when I got my large tactical linerlock from Frost Cutler with a pocket clip and partially serrated blade! The thing was actually very sharp and made somewhat decently. I'll see if I can find a couple of my old SMKW knives and snap a pic for my instagram later.

 

[Gliden07]

WOW!! A knife SUPER STORE!!!

 

[Self Made Knives]

While going through some boxes I came across one of the knives I bought as a kid. This is what I was talking about in the video at the start of this post. It's actually on the large side, fits me well now, but as a kid I thought it was kind of big. The bone was much whiter back then too. Good times!