Bob Dozier gives Jake a tour of his knife making shop in St. Paul, Arkansas. In this series we will take a look at Bob's Shop, as well as see parts of his knife and sheath making processes. This is a tour of a working shop and the sound is pretty loud - headphone users beware. It's loud and Bob is from Louisiana, so I have added captions to help make out his words.
Dozier is a renowned handmade knife maker who has been making knives for decades. He has mastered the heat treating of D2 tool steel, and can be credited as being the man whose work made D2 such a popular steel. No one's D2 steel is cooked quite as good as Bob Dozier's heat treated D2. He is well known for his fighting knives or "traditional tactical knives", as well as his barebones no non-sense hunting knives. A knife marked Dozier, St. Paul was made entirely by Bob.
Knives made directly by Bob Dozier in St. Paul Shop:
bit.ly/34VX0gf
Part 1 - Shop Tour: • Bob Dozier Knife Shop ...
Part 2 - Grinding a Knife • Grinding A Blade with ...
Part 3 - Fitting & Soldering the Guard • Soldering The Guard - ...
Part 4 - Gluing up the Handle • Gluing up the knife ha...
Part 5 - Touring Bob's Leather Working Shop • Touring Bob Dozier's L...
Part 6 - Making a Leather Knife Sheath • Bob Dozier Handcrafts ...
Part 7 - Leather Care Tips • Bob Dozier & John Cost...
Part 8 - Bob's Man Cave Tour • Bob Dozier's Man Cave ...
Bob Dozier Background written by A.G. Russell:
Bob Dozier made his first knives when he was only twelve or thirteen years old. He told me the other day that after those few knives, he did not make another until he was about twenty-three and working as a rough neck in the oil fields in Louisiana. He talked about that first simple knife and then told a story about a co-worker asking to come to watch him make knives. Bob had made several knives by then and had created a small rough shop. He said the man stayed and watched until the knife was finished which took most of the day. When it was finished, he asked to look at it. After handling it for a while, he asked Bob how much he wanted for it. Without giving it any thought, Bob says he said $12.50. The man pulled out twelve one dollar bills and two quarters, laid them on the bench, got in his truck and left. Bob went in the house and told his wife he had just sold a knife which took him most of the day to make for $12.50. But, he told me, at that moment he knew he was going to be a knife maker. That was about 1963.
If you had the opportunity to look through Bob’s collection of his old knives, you would find that he has made many different kinds of knives; hunters, Bowies and fighters, and more recently folders. You can definitely see a relationship between a pair of fighting knives he made in those early years and the practical, utilitarian fighters that began to appear from handmade knifemakers and knife manufactures from the late 1960s and became tremendously popular during the Viet Nam War era. These knives used to be called fighting knives. Today they are called Tactical Knives.