I'd like to tell you about Bill Scimio, a knifemaker and bladesmith in Spruce Creek near State College, Pennsylvania.

 

Bill Scimio’s blacksmith shop is rich with contrasts and incongruities. Simple 1800s tools litter the small open-air shop—anvils, tongs, hammers, swage blocks. The music from an iPod, covered with coal dust, plays Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Benny Goodman, or John Coltraine. A small smelting pot hangs nearby, an abandoned Carolina wren’s nest nestled inside. The anvil he works on is a prized possession—perhaps 100 years old and used by the last practicing smith in the valley. Other items hang on the wall as inspiration or medicine: a horseshoe, old barn strap hinges, grouse feathers, deer antlers, and a painted cow skull.

 

The man himself looks like a country local—jeans, T-shirt, and work boots, except for the colorful African kufi cap perched atop his balding head. A college-educated, former middle manager, he gave it all up for simpler pursuit—making knives and creating sculpture from steel. As he cranks the blower with a slow rhythm, the flames leap and he stares, relaxed, carefully watching the piece of red steel buried inside the white coals.

 

“Knives have been a part of human experience almost from the beginning,” he says slowly, deliberately, timing his breaths with the pounding of his hammer. “Starting with the first pebble tools and flint knives to copper, bronze, steel, ceramic—you name it.” To illustrate his point, he stops what he’s doing and reaches for a flawless flint knife blade, perhaps 2,000 years old, found during one of his many walks through freshly plowed fields. “The most basic of tools has fascinated humans for more reasons than I could care to describe. We use them in the field, the kitchen, the office, and every environment where men and women work. It’s always been that way.”

 

He confesses that he’s always been fascinated with knives, remembering fondly the first pocket knife that his Uncle Dario gave him as a seven-year-old. The jigbone-handled Shefield is worn and battered, but the blade still sharp without a trace of rust—testament to the care that’s been long instilled.

 

Today the knives Bill creates seek out a primitive note—18th century influence, for sure—however, he does not want to be limited by period authenticity as an absolute. “It’s a feel, a note, a soulfulness—a pursuit of simplistic design, born of old country ways.”

 

A self-taught blacksmith, Bill has tried his hand at many forms of craft—from drawing and printmaking to wood carving. But he has finally found himself as a knife maker and a metal sculptor. "Don't rule out the other stuff, though," he says with his usual straightforward honesty. "Follow the passion."

 

Perhaps it was the place that he lives—the valley itself—that pushed him towards this ancient art form. Or perhaps it was he was just always meant to be here. Spruce Creek valley, today lush, green and prized for its trout stream, was once smoke-laden and bare, thanks to charcoal pits, iron furnaces and other iron-related industries. John Quincy Adams once operated an axe factory here. Though the iron furnaces have been quiet for 150 years, Bill has rekindled the iron-age tradition.

 

“I’m a bladesmith. I hand-forge knives. My methods are simple and some say old-fashioned. Well—so be it. In a complex world, I can live with that criticism.”