It was about a 30 minute drive down. First time I had been to the Evergreen Fairgrounds - driven past a lot on my way to hikes and tourism but first time I had stopped. The place is HUGE.
The event was hosted by the local chapter of SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism - the Barony of Aquaterra in the Kingdon of An Tir. I had been to some of the SCA events in Bellingham but the group up there didn't really attract me. This group does. The vendor area had the usual merchants selling KSOs but they also had three really good actual blacksmiths / bladesmiths. One of whom I had seen several times at our local blacksmith guild meetings doing demonstrations and Tim was also a winner on Forged in Fire. Here is the website: Fa’el’s Forge & Metalworks
A KSO is a Knife Shaped Object and refers to knives made of unknown metal, made in China and acid etched to show a similar pattern to a true Damascus Steel. They look like this:
and cost $11 USD. With shipping and customs and everything, you are looking at about paying about $18-$20 per blade. The vendors were selling these for $40 each so they were making a fair profit. They were very honest to a fault and saying that this was not Damascus Steel, it merely looked like Damascus. This way, a beginning collector could get a cool looking blade for just some pocket money. A link to the Ali Baba website for this blade. For comparison, a hand forged blade usually runs around $90 and one made from Damascus starts around $180-$240.
Damascus steel is steel that has been layered and welded together - usually alternating layers of high-carbon steel with layers of low. The high-carbon steel will take a much sharper edge but it is brittle. The low carbon steel is more ductile and offers a perfect backing for the high, preventing it from flexing too much and cracking.
Anyway, spent about three hours there talking to the smiths and watching the combat and knife and hatchet throwing. Went to Snohomish and spent about an hour walking through the old part of town by the river. There are a lot of antique shops there so it was fun to poke around. Dinner there and two pints at my local.
All in all, a fun day. Up to the farm tomorrow for a couple days of packing.
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