BLADE's Best Knifemakers: The Best Knifemakers of BLADE's First 40 Years

BLADE enters the home stretch in observance of its 40th anniversary by doing a three-part series recognizing the top 40 custom knifemakers over those first 40 years (1973-2013).

We compiled a list of some of the top makers and submitted it to a panel of seasoned knife observers and asked them to select their top five to 10 and rank them.

Though "top custom knifemakers" can be subjective, we would like to think a top maker is one who excelled in terms of setting a standard that other makers attempted to emulate, and/or excelled in quality of craftmanship, originality, and creativity - or both.