Jay Fisher - Fine Custom Knives

Note! CDs Extinct?

I've seen a lot of technology come and go in my three decades of making knives. I remember when there was no internet, and we had to get our knives out there with paper advertisements, fliers, and brochures. Can you imagine the size of the brochure it would take to display the 600 pages of information and 15,000 photographs that are available on this very website? Why, that would weigh a hundred pounds or more! Since none of this information is shipped anymore (it's all instantly available on the internet at your fingertips) this clearly explains why the USPS is forever going out of business... but that's another story.

I don't offer the CDs anymore. As the volume of knife projects grew, I expanded the CDs to six discs, each capable of storing over 700 megabytes of information. But this is nothing compared to the volume of information on the website. The major difference in the CDs is that the photos had extremely high resolution, sixty times the resolution of the internet. But the volume of CDs became too large, and CDs are slowly becoming extinct. More and more, it will be the DVD that this data is stored and offered on, and I'll probably offer a high resolution photo set on DVD in the future. DVDs are evolving also, with Blu-ray becoming the current standard. This is HD viewing, and this will probably be the direction I take the archive. Who knows what is after the Blu-ray? Something smaller and more compact, you can be certain. Maybe I can stream the photos directly into your brain, and you can touch the knives and virtually cut yourself on the razor-keen edges!

But, for now, you can look over this page to see the "way things were," and stay current with this website to see any future offerings of high resolution knife photos coming up. As always, the website will be the most current (even if not the most resolute) information and photos I have. Thanks for being here!

A Record of My Works

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:

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. My fifth CD started in April 2011. My sixth CD was started in 2012. 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 sections include:

• Studio Shots
• Museum Pieces
• Knife Sculpture
• Art and Collectors Knives
• Daggers
• Folding Knives and Knives with Mechanisms
• Military and Commemorative Knives
• USAF Pararescue Knives
• Tactical, Combat, CSAR Knives
• Fine Working Knives
• Early Knives
• Miscellaneous Shots
• Shop Tour
• Knifemaker at Work
• Over 400 Custom Knife Patterns that I make
• Lots of knife information, text, and details

The CDs have resident FlipAlbum software that will run on any computer.