Charles May Stump Review Keith A. Williams “Bootlegger” I must a pologize for waiting s o long for this revi ew. I remembe r giving my initial i mpressions he re and there, but then time ust got away from me. Where to begin! I"ve had heard of Knife ma# er $harles %ay for a while but had never seen any of his wor# in person, until a &ouple of years ago. I was attending a yearly event &alled 'W(' in Western )$, when I was privileged to have a loo# at several of his fine #nives. Without e*&eption, the fit and finish was flawless, and ea&h and every one appeared to be a beautifully &onstru&te d e*ample of an e*tremely pra&ti&al design . I am not eas ily impressed, f re+uently finding impra&ti&a lity in many of t he blades that I see being sold these days, and surprised myself my spending a lot of time around these &reations. f about a dozen of his blades whi&h were on hand, there was one in parti&ular that felt as if it was ust made spe&ifi&ally to fit my hand. -his model was &alled the tump. It had an overall length of /”, with a 0 1234” blade. -he one that I was parti& ularly interes ted in was made of 56 steel and had Bla&# %i &arta lab handles. %ore often than not, I find myself drawn to #nives on a stri&tly utilitarian level. 7ow a blade feels and fun&tions is far more important to me than fan&y pins, &ustom handles, mirror polished finishes, or any bells and whist les that mig ht be added to ma#e it more ap pealing to the masses. Well, I had handled this #nife around all day trying to ma#e a de&ision on whether to spend my hard earned &ash to buy another high pri&ed #nife that I #new fully well that I did not need, when a photographer and friend of mine named 8arrett 9u&as approa&hed me and in+uired as to whether I had made up my mind or not. It seemed that he had also had his eye on this parti&ular blade, and if I wasn"t going to buy it, he planned to snat&h it up before anyone else &ould. -o ma#e a long story short, I let him have it, but the ne*t day, I wo#e up regretting it, so I pur&hased the only other one that was present. -his model is identi&al e*&ept that it had
