Pounding

"Remember, there are no miracle steels. There are only known steels with known weaknesses and we must work with those known steels to minimize its weaknesses." These words were spoken by a tall thin gentleman in his 60s. He wore a large leather western hat that shaded large wire framed glasses and a wrinkled face. His long sleeve denim shirt was tucked into jeans and on his right boot he had an 18" Bowie knife in a scabbard.

Ray Johnson, Silver Dollar City's Master knife maker, eloquently and persistently shared his views on knife making with a focused crowd of onlookers. His speech was a mixture of warning, "knife making is dangerous, costly and definitely more than a hobby," and philosophy, "you may forgive a commercial knife makers mistake when you can earn the cash to buy it in an hour or two, but you will not forgive a custom knife maker who charges you a weeks salary for one of his knives." All through his speech Ray would reach down and draw his 18 inch Bowie out of the scabbard, plunge it into a steel barrel, then hold up a piece of hemp rope and slice an inch or two off the loose end of the rope.

Ray said that consistency is what every craftsman should shoot for. A clientele will expect a certain standard of performance from their craftsman and that craftsman should do his best to meet that standard every time. He said, "I can build a flexible knife or a stiff knife but once I start selling, they all need to be the same, every time, so that the customer will know what they are getting."

Toward the end of his demonstration I noticed that every time he pounded his hammer onto the glowing steel sweat would fly off of his face. I realized that this was real work.

I thought about how I feel like that glowing steel, getting pounded by a hammer by a master craftsman. If I listen carefully I can hear, "Remember, there are no miracle people. There are only known people with known weaknesses and I must work with those known people to minimize their weaknesses." I know that the pounding will continue until I am pounded into the image of likeness of Christ.

I have often thought about this image, but I have always thought about it from the viewpoint of me. I have always thought about the difficulty of being heated and pounded over and over. From now on I will also think about the sweat dripping off the nose of my maker as he continues to pound and work, relentlessly, until I am in the image of his son.