Pete Hamilton

Administrator, please move if not appropriate here. Pete left RMK for a while and went to Colorado. While there, did he make any knives, and if so, does anyone have examples? I believe he was gone around 2 years in the 80's, and returned to RMK. Thanks.

Pap

Pete left shortly before I was hired in Aug. of 1983....was gone only about 6 months...and to my knowledge he did not make any knives on his own at anytime.

Thanks Scott, couldn't remember the details.

Pap

Mr Hamilton sold me my first Randall Made knife, a model 8 that I carried thru my career as a Forest Ranger and still do.

HELLO Robert!!!

:-)Rocky

Haven't been here for a while and stumbled across this thread. Thought the following info could be of some interest to some.

Sometime after Pete retired from the Randall shop I spent about a week with him and Betty as their guest at their home in Havana FL. Pete was going to teach me how to make knives. That did not go well at all, more on that later. I really liked Pete, though he was a bit of a curmudgeon; however, he was a much better friend than a teacher at that point in his life.

Anyway, among some of the very cool things he showed me were a stack of blades that he had made. The blades all had a logo he had designed and etched or stamped into the blades. His logo was a stylized chair on rockers but it did not look like one of those granny rocking chairs with which we are all familiar. It was more like a straight back dining room type chair on rockers. I asked Pete if I could take pictures of the blades but he declined. I did not ask him when he made them and if he told me I do not recall.

The blades were about 7 inches long, kind of shaped like an RMK Model 14 but definitely not a duplicate of them, and had a full tang. If he had completed any of the knives I did not see them when I was visiting. I asked if he had completed any. I am not positive but I think he said he had not.

I had brought with me a Randall Kit blade for a model 12 Heavy that Tom Clinton had given me years earlier. I had soldered one of my pure silver lugged hilt blanks on it and had brought along a huge chunk of pure silver for the butt cap, some pure silver sheet for spacers, and a honking big center section piece of elephant ivory for the handle. The idea was that after Pete taught me how to make knives, I was going to complete the Smithsonian under his watchful eye.

As I mentioned, the lessons did not go well at all and my career as an apprentice knife maker came to a screeching halt while practicing on some scrap steel and chunks of 2 x 4. Not wanting to send me home to butcher the Smithsonian, Pete put the parts together and let me watch as he turned a collection of carbon steel, precious metal, and one humungous piece of ivory into the prettiest Smithsonian on the planet (in my humble and unbiased opinion).

So...did Pete Hamilton make any knives? If you run across a knife with a blade that could be a distant cousin to a Model 14 with a stylized rocking chair logo on it, it just might be one of Pete Hamilton's, and I have a Smithsonian Kit knife that he might have made over the course of many years, blade first and then the handle, if he ever worked in the forge at the Randall shop. I never asked him if he did, but I think I know who might know. DW ??

How bout a picture Doug.

Tried. My computer says the images are each about 1.6 megs but the program is rejecting them as too large. I know there is some software out there to reduce the pixels but I don't think I have any to do that. I'm running Windows 10 on a new Dell. Got any ideas?

Doug I go to a site that says how to resize pics, it is on Windows 10 and I hit resize and it shows the pixles I change them to 750 and the bottom number comes up without having to do anything. I may not have given you enough info., but hopes this helps some.

Doug you can email them to me and I will load them for you.

2 sent Thank you.

Regards,
Doug

Here is Doug’s beautiful Randall Bowie.
Thanks Doug.

The knife looks awesome Doug! Better skills than I remember him with!!

And no, Pete never did work in the forge...

Awesome knife.

Now that's a Kit knife with a story. Amazing outcome Doug.

Doug, I don't know whether you ever saw my 8-inch Model #2 wearing your pure silver. (Not as massive a blade as your knife, nor as big a chunk of ivory, but still a substantial knife.) Anyway, here it is:

Both are great knives without cracks as far as I can see. Knives to be proud of!

Yes those two are beautiful knives.

Ronnie, Thank you very much for posting the pictures and the kind words for Pete's work. I wanted to take pictures of him making it but he nixed that. No smart phones in those days.

Sidney, thanks for the info on how to resize the pics. I will try that next time. Nope, no cracks or checks in the handle after all these years. I keep the knife in my safe in Robbins' soft case with the handle wrapped in a paper towel soaked in baby oil with saran wrap around the paper towel. That's also how I ship ivory handled Randalls when I can bring myself to parting with one. I have had very good luck shipping that way...so far!

DW-I'm sure Pete appreciates your left handed compliment. :-) Thanks for the info on whether he ever worked in the forge. I never asked him that but sort of assumed that he had since I thought that back then new hires worked their way up from sweeping the floors to cutting fibers, and so on through the various operations. Well, it was kind of fun imagining that he might have forged the blade too. Oh well. When the kit blades were being sold, were they made by several craftsmen? Is there any way of knowing who forged them?

Steve, that #2 is awesome! nice Ivory and gorgeous silver. I recognize Ron Scaggs' engraving. Nicely done! Silver engraves beautifully, but then I'm not entirely objective! I've got #2 in fossil walrus with a silver lugged hilt, silver spacers and silver butt cap that needs to get engraved one of these days. I think it's an older knife since it has thicker than standard spacers. The shop tolerated that in the early days, but later on asked me to keep the spacers the same thickness as the brass and aluminum that they were using.

Regards,
Doug

Doug you are welcome. Glad I could help show this awesome Bowie.

Doug, all the blades were made in batches, Bowie's a little less than the standards, but then etched with the KIT just before shipping out...there really is no way of telling who forged them back then as the personnel changed frequently...

Not all of the employees start in the forge first anymore, we place them where they are needed at that time...if the forge is running well with current employees we'll set them where needed. Of course sometime during the first few years they may be placed there for a short period to learn how to grind as I was for about a week, but I also never worked in the forge to learn the ropes there...

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

Regards,
Doug