Dohz r nuttin like italian mitballs.
You’re gonna have to forgive me for being persnickety on where documentation and conjecture meet. In their best moments, these knives are a neighborhood play because I would not have the technology and tools to grind a piece of metal into a blade. That’s what I am paying a blacksmith to do with an old file I gave him at Jacobsburg.
I’ve also learned over the years that, in our best moments, those of us who re-enact or craft are not studying history…we are studying culture. There is no way to say that some of these people did not come to Pennsylvania during an age where nobody passed through an Ellis Island. If you had the fare, you slipped on a boat.
Research is the sort of thing that can never stop so you can stake yourself in the ground without being fatal to study, because we simply don’t know beyond the limited documentation prior to the nineteenth and twentieth century. Anybody who stops asking questions becomes becalmed. That’s why I won’t kill myself just finding a document or a sample. Somebody else will probably do that, and all I have to do is keep asking questions.
I remember working in the museum village where I learned to make shoes. They had documentation for suspenders, drop front pants and one type of shirt. Combined with straw hats, we all looked like we were in an Amish Army.
The fun in writing about the battle of Lake George and finding all the journals, diaries and letters was eclipsed only by the fun of writing about one of the characters who shot William Johnson in the fanny from the slopes of French Mountain. The character who made that impossible shot was modelled after a good friend with whom I used to go trekking up there. If anybody could have made that shot without priority mailing the ball, it would have been that lunatic. Fun to write about, but sinful to the guy who would claim to be an authority.
Good, bad or indifferent, I will put these blades on a bag, cherish them until I see something else and flip them at Dixons. If I get the Willys to have a knife I saw in a picture, I’ll write to one of you guys because this forum will be where I can find guys who know . G’day.
