Who Is Frank Warner?

Born and raised on California's beautiful Central Coast, where he continues to live and work today, Frank has been interested in knives all his life. From the time he was eight years old, he carried some kind of knife — a Buck, an Uncle Henry, or any number of others — even in California's public schools back when it was still legal.

For most of his adult life, Frank has worked as a printing supervisor in the town where he was born, although he has held many other jobs, including a tour in the United States Navy during the Vietnam conflict, where he saw combat before returning to the States to start a family. He has always carried a favorite knife.
Frank's early formal training was in the fine arts: painting and sculpture, and in the various ways of putting ink on paper, which lead directly to his professional career as a printer. He has always been interested in other crafts, including woodworking and metalworking.

He developed his woodworking skills on his own, but his metalworking skills were taught to him primarily by his father. A professional machinist for nearly forty years who also had his own full machine shop at home, the elder Warner could do things with a piece of steel that would bring tears to the eye, was accustomed to speaking in tolerances of ten thousandths of an inch and, through the sheer weight of experience, had probably forgotten more about the craft of metalworking than many machinists alive today—with their CNC mills and plasma cutters—will ever learn.

It is Frank's father we can thank for Frank's relatively recent interest in knifemaking. After his father's death at the age of 78, Frank found among his father's effects an unfinished knife blank, a Bowie made from some unknown stainless steel, which had been profiled and flattened but never ground to an edge or fitted with a handle. The blank might have been ten or twenty years old by the time Frank found it, but he decided to finish the knife his father started.

The experience of grinding and finishing that first knife fertilized and incubated the so-called and highly dreaded "knife-bug," a disease from which there is no apparent recovery, and no cure. For the next two years Frank refined his skills, learning as much as he could from other knifemakers, books, videos, and online sources. In time, Frank began to design his own knives, calling upon his knowledge of fine art, woodcraft, and metalcraft to produce edged implements that are at once classic and unique.

State of the Art:
Today, Frank prefers to make folding knives, although he occasionally produces an original fixed-blade design as can be seen in the Gallery Pages. But folding knives lend themselves more readily to the precision skills favored by the son of a machinist. Every part of the knife must be considered well in advance; the placement of the pivot must be perfect, all holes precisely drilled and reamed, and the overall design visually as well as mechanically balanced. The design of the folding knife, although subject to great variation, is dictated by several important constraints, foremost of which is that the cutting edge(s) must fit completely within the handle when closed. It must open and close freely but lock solidly when open, and not open unexpectedly when closed. Tolerances of ten-thousandths of an inch are not uncommon. Mistakes are often fatal to the operating characteristics of the blade. Whereas, if you make a serious mistake with many fixed blade knives, you can easily fix the mistake by merely making a shorter, thinner or differently shaped knife.

Additionally, folding knives are more readily carried and used in today's society. It is rare that you will see someone carrying a 12" Bowie knife on their hip at the supermarket or the ball park. But it is virtually certain that a significant number of those same people might have in their pockets or purses a small folding knife of some kind, if only used to open letters or clean one's fingernails.

Which brings up one of Frank's most deeply held beliefs about the knife: The artificial blade is primal. With the possible exception of basic hammering tools, the sharpened edge was almost certainly one of humanity's first tools. And the word "tools" is especially important, because the knife's first purpose was simply that; to help make one's way easier in a world where many other animals carried their tools in their jaws or their paws. Among modern humans who carry knives regularly, a scant few will ever use the device as a weapon—offensive or defensive. All too often, a blade is simply a way to open packages at Christmas or slice a savory wedge of cheese. And that's the real beauty of a knife.

Philosophy aside, Frank attempts to bring something different to each knife. No two are exactly alike even among those of similar design. Different steels, handle materials, colorations, blade grinds, and other embellishments ensure that every knife is unique.

To produce tools like these that are often also works of art, other tools must be used, but each knife is individually crafted. Frank makes one knife at a time. No computer-controlled or mass-production equipment is employed. He does, however, use an array of modern power tools, such as grinders, lathes, mills, drills and saws to shape various parts of the blades and handles; and ovens, chemicals, electronic etchers and anodizers, plus many hand tools and precision measuring tools to ensure that each knife is made to the highest standards of craftsmanship and artistic quality.

Frank favors blades made of stainless steels such as D-2 or ATS-34. Occasionally he will use high-tech stainless steels like Crucible Technology's impressive and expensive 440V. He enjoys the often unexpected results obtained from pattern-welded steels (sometimes called "Damascus") made by some of today's most respected forgers (Devin Thomas, Robert Eggerling, Jeff Furguson, to name a few), and will just as often make a blade from common carbon steels like 1095 or 5160. Most knives are made from steels manufactured for and sold to knifemakers expressly for that purpose. Some few others are made from "found" steels such as old files or a piece of stainless steel plate or pipe found at the junkyard.

Virtually all of the liners on Frank's folders are made from high-tensile strength 6AL4V titanium. A few framelock handles are made exclusively from this material.
Other handle materials are as varied as the materials you see in the world around you. From spalted grapefruit vine to recovered magnesium printing plates, from ancient fossilized mammoth tooth to modern carbon fiber composites, from pattern-welded steel to presentation-grade mother of pearl, from common red oak to solid 14-karat gold, and often in pleasing combinations on the same knife. If it can be shaped and made into a stable knife handle, it's worth considering for that purpose. The possibilities are, again, endless.

Frank performs nearly all production phases of his knives himself, from design to profiling, drilling, shaping, heat-treating, polishing and final sharpening. Occasionally he will engage the services of a jeweler or another knifemaker for assistance with tasks for which he lacks the proper tools or confident expertise. All of his knives come with a certificate of authenticity guaranteeing that they are one-of-a-kind custom handcrafted knives and a full 90-day warrantee against defects in materials and workmanship.

Frank is a member of the Custom Knife Directory forums, an online community of custom knifemakers who share advice and discuss many topics related to knifemaking at [link].
He is also a member of SoCal Knives [link].