Joe Kertzman - Greatest Loveless Knife Designs: Discover the Best Knife Patterns & Blade Designs from Bob Loveless

World War II was well under way by the time Bob Loveless hit his teen years. Too young to enlist in the military, he made a discreet adjustment to his birth certificate and joined the Merchant Marine. During the course of his career aboard ship, he sailed to more ports than he can recall as a deck hand, able seaman, coal passer and yeoman seaman.

Shortly after the war, on his 17th birthday, Loveless joined the Army Air Corps and was given a two-year stint in the Pacific on Guam and Iwo Jima. He didnt fly while in the Air Corps, but he did work the air traffic control tower on Iwo Jima. Later on, he finished his tour of duty at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. Finally, he was discharged from the service in 1948.

During his time at Wright-Patterson, Bob made the decision to enroll in the Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois. Even though he wasnt a high school graduate (he had earned a GED), he was accepted to the school based on drawings he had done while in the Army Air Corps.

It seemed to me that everyone at the Institute was only interested in designing commercial centers, while my interests lie with more practical architecture. What really stirred my thought processes were things like single-family homes and mobile homes. Without any meaningful encouragement from my instructors, I just up and quit school, Bob said.

Shortly afterwards, Bob enrolled in Kent State University in Ohio. I definitely wasnt the average college freshman. My knowledge of the workings of the English language wasnt up to par, but I could express myself. And I was an avid reader. One of things you acquire from reading is a basic knowledge of the English language. That knowledge will be exhibited in straightforward writing. To be successful, a man needs to possess both logic and an extensive vocabulary, Bob said.

While his stint at Kent State only lasted a couple of quarters, the experience did stimulate his intellectual interests. However, he quickly grew tired of campus life and returned once again to the Merchant Marine. For a time, Bob worked on bulk carriers plying Great Lakes waters. Seeking a greater measure of stability, he finally ended up on an oiler that went to various ports on the East Coast.

In 1953, while working on the Sun Oil Company tanker the Passaic Sun, Loveless read an article in True magazine about knifemaker Bo Randall. Knives were used on a daily basis aboard ship. After reading about Randalls knives and how well they stood up to abuse, I decided I wanted one, Bob said

On his day off, Loveless went to the Abercrombie & Fitch store in downtown Manhattan, New York. At the time, Abercrombie & Fitch was the preferred outdoor gear establishment of discriminating sportsmen. President Teddy Roosevelt had shopped there before traipsing off on his African safari. Likewise, Hollywood film star Clark Gable and author Ernest Hemmingway made regular visits to the store. Abercrombie & Fitch as a retail sporting goods entity is no more (Abercrombie still operates as a youth-oriented clothing chain in many major cities). At that time, however, the store carried everything an outdoorsman could need, from the finest camping gear to handmade English shotguns. If there was a Randall knife to be had, young Loveless thought that he could find it there.

I am certain that my oil-stained denims, pee coat and watch cap didnt really make me the typical Abercrombie & Fitch customer, Bob recalled. He was promptly met by a rather snippy salesperson who seemed to consider Loveless not the type of customer he was used to serving. When Bob asked to look at a Randall knife, the clerk told him, We simply dont have any. And it will take at least nine months to get one.

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When asked about the experience, Bob said, The clerk didnt even ask if I wanted to put my name on the waiting list for a Randall knife. It was evident that he didnt want to be bothered with a young guy wearing the working clothes of a merchant seaman.

In his early 20s at the time, Loveless might have been short in years, but he was long in worldly experience. Unable to acquire the knife he wanted, Bob decided that he would make one of his own. Doing things himself was nothing new to Loveless. Growing up on his grandparents farm during the economic woes of the Depression had taught him self-reliance. Toys were costly and the money to purchase them hard to come by. If you wanted something to play with, you had to make it yourself out of whatever you could scrounge. Scrap wood could be fashioned into a toy gun, a piece of tin doing service as the hammer, trigger and trigger guard, with a little blue ink providing a touch of realism.

On his return to the ship, Bob passed a huge junkyard. I told the taxi driver to stop and let me out. I reasoned that automotive springs would make a good knife and I wanted get some pieces from the junkyard. One of the workers at the yard took a torch and cut four or five pieces of spring steel for me out of a 1937 Packard. Back at the ship I rough ground the steel to the shape I wanted. Working in my spare time, it probably took me a week to get the knife finished, Bob said.

Cutting out a blade blank, putting a handle on and finishing it was one thing; heat treating the steel was something else altogether. Bob heated the blade up on the ships galley stove until it was cherry-red. He then plunged the blade into a five-gallon bucket of refrigerate oil. All of the scale easily fell off and the knife came out a dull gray color. The knife looked pretty good to me, Bob said.

Bob didnt know about tempering, and the heat treatment he had applied to the blade had made it so hard that it was unable to withstand contact abuse and started chipping. The blade cut well enough for a short time, but then the edge started flaking away, Bob said.

The chief engineer aboard the ship suggested that the solution to the problem lay in the hardness imparted by the initial heat treatment. Reading up on heat treatment of metals in a local public library, Bob was determined to solve the blade edge problem. Taking the knife handle off, he placed the blade on a copper plate that had been heated on the galley stove. It didnt take too long for the blade to turn dark blue, a sure sign that some of the hardness had been drawn out of the steel.

My approach to heat treatment wasnt very scientific or even well-experienced. Even so, it worked. The change in blade edge performance was tremendous and the knife turned out to be a great cutting tool, Bob said.

Determined to show up the clerk at Abercrombie & Fitch who had at one time in the past looked down his nose at him, Bob returned to the store with knife in hand. However, satisfaction was not to come. Abercrombie had wisely terminated the clerks employment. The floor manager looked at Bobs recent edged creation and liked it well enough to order four more just like it. When Bob had completed work on the knives, he returned to the store and the manager promptly paid him $14 for each one.