Knife Blog 2: PDC and inspiration

The knives we make were the suggestion of Rob Avis, the instructor of our PDC.  Rob had been a mechanical engineer in the oil industry for years before he and his wife both quit their jobs and devoted their lives to making the world a better place through permaculture.  I liked them both immediately, and Rob's background as an engineer laid to rest any fears of being taught by someone named "Eclipsing Flower" who sold shitty handi-crafts out of the trunk of his car to get by between PDC's.*

We, the class, were walking down the steep road that lead back to the main building at Mountain Waters for lunch.  We had just finished a section on water catchment and had spent a portion of the morning climbing through thick stands of impossibly tall cedar, treading heavily on the soft leaf-littered ground, examining the local terrain.

Now, we bounced heavily down the gravel road in the dis-jointed, uneven fashion often employed by the exhausted.   We had been learning a lot, and the fact that we were surrounded by examples and illustrations of our lessons lended gravity to any little stroll through the woods.  Trees and shrubs and insects weren't just there, they were filling specific needs and producing specific yields in the forest ecology.

I was one of the more giddy and preoccupied of the bunch as I had just finished three months of construction in a building so dry and dusty the skin on my fingers had began to split.  It seemed impossible to go from an extreme like that to a place where the air was laced with life and springs rose to form creeks of their own accord.  I was lost, thinking and so was surprised when he began to speak.

"So you know how to work with steel?", I was walking next to the much taller Rob.

"Yup,"  I said.

He nodded and put his head down, in the computational manner common to people of his trade.

"We were using these things called rice knives in Australia, cut grass down faster than a weed-wacker.  We had a race, way faster.  Think you could make some?"

"Probably."

"You could make them out of car hoods... reuse steel."

I nodded, and listened.  He described the knives in detail as we continued to walk back down the gravel road for lunch.  At the end of our talk, I was sold on the idea, green manure and sustainable tools, no engines to prime or cords to endlessly pull.  No black clouds of exhaust, just a simple knife, a little sweat, and fresh air.  It sounded good.

*To the Eclipsing Flowers of the world:  I am sorry.  I'm sure you're all wonderful people and potentially great teachers, but after being on the job for the past three months straight, I was looking for a bit more of a pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts approach to design.