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Jay Fisher - World Class Knifemaker |
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I've always thought that it is important to keep a record of my works. The archive of an artist is important, and though this website features a large amount of my work, it is limited in scope and photographic rendition.
The internet can only display photos at 72 dots per inch. This is not a great resolution. If I post larger pictures (larger in memory) on this website, they just get physically larger on your display, and will quickly wrap off screen, forcing you to scroll around to look at the photos, piecemeal. This is an awful way to look at large photos. Also, a smaller internet image is more manageable, and takes less time to load. This is convenient for internet browsers, so most of the internet images are kept relatively small, though I'm constantly upgrading to the largest reasonable rendition. Important also is that most internet photographs are stored in a JPG format, which is "lossy" Lossy means that as the image is saved, it looses some resolution in an effort to save memory.
In my CD photo archives, the photos are huge. In comparison, a typical website photo is 30K in size, the CD Rom Photos are about 500K to 2.0 megabytes, that translates from fifteen to over sixty times the size of the website photo! Every fine detail is represented in rich color. The internet or even publications, books, and magazines can't even come close. Here are the specs:
| First CD | 1150 pages | 1057 pictures* |
| Second CD | 504 pages | 480 pictures |
| Third CD | 541 pages | 520 pictures |
| Fourth CD | 320 pages | 305 pictures |
| Total catalog | 2515 pages | 2362 pictures |
| *Many early and smaller pictures in this CD | ||
I know of no other knifemaker in the world who keeps such a detailed history of his work. If you think you know of one, please let me know, I'd like to compare notes!
My first CD ROM catalog features hundreds
(and hundreds) of high resolution
pictures of my work, my shop, an my career making knives for collectors,
military, hunters, and knife aficionados. The first CD has many
smaller, early knife pictures, so there are more in the count. My second
CD features mostly knives and patterns starting in 2007. My third CD ROM
features knives and patterns starting in May of 2008. The fourth CD
started in September of 2009. Each picture is
annotated to describe the materials and information about each knife.
Thanks to modern technology, this is better than a book; a book
of this magnitude is not even possible.
The images can even be printed and shared.

The albums have a content section, are indexed, thumb nailed and annotated for each image, describing the materials used to make the piece. Most pieces have multiple pictures to illustrate every side and angle, filework detail and sheathed appearance, case angle, or stand view. The albums feature auto flipping and clickable shortcuts and bookmarks. The images can be viewed in thumbnails, page views, full screen or full size, where you can zoom in and inspect every gemstone, engraved cut, and curve. If viewed on a large monitor, most of the photos are displayed at larger than the actual size of the knife.
The CD ROMs are being continuously updated with new models and many interesting knife making photos.
The CDs have resident FlipAlbum software that will run on any computer.
Time and expense has prohibited me from offering the CD ROM set to the public, but if you are a client and interested in the set for your records, evaluation, or comparisons, email me and let me know. Sorry, I no longer offer the CD ROM Catalog set to the general public.