#MyWilliamHenry

By
Ed Roberts

Boots
and Denim. Seeing that William Henry design for the first time changed my entire
outlook on men wearing bracelets. More specifically, me wearing a
bracelet. I’m not afraid of style that breaks tradition, but traditions run
deep here in my neck of the woods.

For years the standard uniform was a polo, khakis, sunglasses, croakie, and a dive watch. Fellas break that tradition during the Brewgaloo Beer Festival where it’s acceptable to wear the plastic wristband provided at the ID checking station. This wristband gives you access to the best craft beers brewed here in the Old North State.

Times are changing. Or maybe I’m just getting older and a bit more daring after losing 75 pounds. Either way, there was something about 10,000-year-old fossilized woolly mammoth tooth, blue sodalite, and carved silver that just looked damn cool to me. It was me, so I bought it.

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Have a question about the William Henry multiverse? Email community@williamhenry.com and Matt will choose a couple to answer in this monthly forum...

Question:  Where do you get your amazing materials?

Everywhere.  Literally.  I’ve been at this for 30 years now, and WH has been around for 22 and counting.  During all that time, I and the staff at WH have searched out rare and storied materials and where to find them.  We’ve built relationships with some of the best metal forgers, engravers, silver smiths, gold smiths and other artisans in the world. We’ve found the individuals who find fossil materials, the finest shells, the best premium natural woods, and the most exotic state of the art alloys and polymers.  It’s a global supply chain of mostly very small shops and businesses that we’ve cultivated to be able to make the coolest stuff we can imagine, one piece at a time, one day at a time.

Question:  Are your blades engraved?

Never.  After all these years, some people still look at our forged damascus steel blades and think the patterns are ‘engraved’ on the blades. 

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Chris Grady has been with William Henry for 9 years and has worked in several areas. He started in the pen shop shaping pen blanks and doing the final assembly of the finished product. Working with patina for mokume accents, etchant for damascus accents and Renaissance cleaners (used to restore museum artifacts) as well. He then moved to the knife shop shaping handles and scales. Currently Chris can be found in Shipping and Receiving, usually buried under a pile of shipping boxes.

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As a child of the South, a pocketknife was as much a part of the wardrobe as the pants it was carried in, and I was no exception.  There is not a time I can remember not having a Case or Buck or Gerber knife in my pocket.  Little did I know there was a much wider world of knives out there until 2009.  While on vacation in Sandestin, Florida, I stumbled on Baytowne Jewelers tucked in between the Acme Oyster House and the Ice Cream Shop (and across the street from the Candy Store – food and sweets being a real close second to my knife passion).

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Hi all, I’m just back from a big trade show in Vegas with William Henry.  As exhausting as these big shows are, it’s always good to step outside the bubble and see what we do in the world. 

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Have a question about the William Henry multiverse? Email community@williamhenry.com and Matt will choose a couple to answer in this monthly forum...

Question:  What is Koftgari?

Koftgari is an ancient Persian technique for inlaying precious metal into steel.  I have an old knife that I found in a bazaar in Pakistan that features sterling silver inlaid into the forged steel blade, somewhere around 300 years old - so the history runs deep...  Today, this artform is practiced only by a handful of small shops in India, and we’ve worked with two of those shops for 20 years now.  We machine and pre-finish our parts in a high carbon tool steel, then send them to India with guidelines for the artwork, almost always rendered in 24K gold.  The work is intensive – first the artisans use a hand-scribe to create a fine raised grid pattern across the metal, then they use very fine gold wire to create the pattern over the grid.  That gold wire is then burnished, by hand, down into the grid in the steel.  As they burnish the softer gold into the grid in the steel base, they also close the grid onto the gold, capturing the gold within the surface of the steel.  This takes many burnish steps, and between each one they use a salt solution to blue/black the steel the same way you would ‘blue’ a gun.  When complete, the gold is completed sealed and captured in a darkened steel frame, built to last generations (as per my own antique described up top).  Amazing work, and we are proud to bring this ancient artform into a modern context thru our select WH offerings with Koftgari...

Question:  Where did the name William Henry come from?

When I started William Henry in 1997, I had a silent partner.  I decided to combine our middle names to create the brand – mine is William, his is Henry.  I liked the name, liked the sense of history it had, and particularly liked that it was not, in fact, a real person.  I wanted people to fall in love with the brand and the work, not a persona or individual.  Right out of the gate I had customers telling me that their grandfather had a William Henry back when, and who was I to disabuse them of this notion?  I always wanted to build a brand and products that were timeless, belonging equally to 100 years ago and 100 years into the future – William Henry seemed like the perfect name to manifest that intention...

Edgar Manriquez has been a blade guy at William Henry for 4 years. In fact, his anniversary was last month. His job includes etching blades and handles, doing the WH logo engraving, and hand sanding blades. Edgar spends his weekends running. Literally. An avid trail runner, he also enjoys playing soccer and spending time outside and in the mountains. His favorite food is avocados and the last movie he saw was The Godfather Part II. No word on if he was eating avocados while watching the film.