I often feel that Westerners seem to be much braver than Easterners in terms of career planning. They have the courage to try different things and hold the spirit of being the best at what they do. Regardless of whether they succeed in the end (of course success is the best XDDD), they always bring a period of time to their lives that others cannot easily copy. experience. Take knifemaker Michael Walker as an example. When he was in his 20s, his wife gave him a copy of American Blade, a knife collector’s favorite magazine, so he decided to leave the world of jewelry and join the knifemaking industry.
It was 1975, and by 1980, Walker had become a full-time knife maker, and the price of each knife he made could reach up to five figures. But Walkers achievements don't stop there. During his knife-making career, he obtained more than twenty patents and trademarks, including the Linerlock, which has become the standard specification for folding knives.
The origin of lining locks is quite interesting. At first, someone ordered ten fixed knives from him, and later asked him to make scabbards. But after Walker completed the scabbard, he didn't like the finished product very much, so he tried to convert the fixed knife into a folding knife so that the scabbard would not be needed, and this also launched his invention career.
Early folding knives pressed the blade through an elastic pressure rod. In order to fix the blade, a lining locking piece was hidden inside the handle. When the blade was opened, the lining locking piece could hold the blade tightly. , fixed blade. Because the locking piece is hidden in the handle of the knife, it becomes a lining lock. However, Mike discovered that in the old lining locks, the locking function of most of the lining locks was offset by the spring, so Mike decided to remove the spring and directly integrate the spring and locking device to form a new lining lock to strengthen the lining lock. The "locking" power. According to actual measurements, the new lining lock designed by Mike is four times stronger than the original standard locking device. In addition, Walker designed a self-adjusting mechanism for the lining lock to ensure that the blade does not loosen over time.
Unfortunately, Walker does not have a personal website, so it is unclear whether he is still engaged in knifemaking or has retired. But those who are interested can still appreciate Walkers past knife works on the Internet.
