Making The Cut Aerospace Physicist’S Hammer, Forge Take Him To The Edge

Ray Rantanen Age: 57 Occupation: Aerospace physicist, blacksmith

If Ray Rantanen were stranded in an Amazon rain forest, he’d want a Damascus steel knife with him.

Not any Damascus knife. One forged in his own shop.

Rantanen knows the value of his knives. Each thin blade contains 224 layers of steel.

The knives get their name from the ancient Syrian city where the layering technique was developed. Correctly made, a Damascus blade can bend 90 degrees without shattering.

“If I had to survive, I’d have one,” Rantanen says. “They stay sharp, and they can’t be broken.”

Knife-making is a serious hobby for Rantanen, a 57-year-old aerospace physicist who lives in Spirit Lake. He has made more than 4,000 knives - no two alike.

Hunters use them to skin elk. Chefs use them to cut up brisket. An Alaska geologist carries one when he heads into bear country.

Bob Timm, a Colorado farmer, is seldom without his.

“I have eight Damascus knives, all made by nationally known knife-makers. His cuts better than the other seven,” Timm said of Rantanen’s work.

Rantanen started his blacksmith hobby during the early 1970s when he lived in Colorado.

A former wildlife painter, he switched hobbies because there never was room on the kitchen table for his canvases.

The lonely image of a blacksmith laboring away at a dying art also appealed to him. So did the physical aspect of the work.

“It doesn’t bother me to go out and hammer all day until my arm swells up like a watermelon,” said Rantanen, a former judo competitor who boasts powerful forearms, thick shoulders and a barrel chest.

“Even though Ray is extremely artistic, he needs to be physical in his work,” said his wife, Ranae.

But more important than Rantanen’s strength is his knowledge. He studied metallurgy as part of his course work for a doctorate in surface physics at Washington State University.

Blacksmithing quickly consumed him.

“It ate me alive,” Rantanen said. “For six months, all I did was forge. My wife thought I had completely lost it.”

His first smithing work, done in his driveway, smoked out the neighborhood. His mistakes were tossed into a nearby canal, which revealed a mountain of rusty steel when the water dropped.

Rantanen worked in an intense pool of concentration. So focused was he that he often saw feet before he heard a person approach. Ideas came so rapidly that he got up in the middle of the night to jot them down.

Blacksmithing provided a new outlet for the question that constantly niggles at Rantanen’s mind: How could it be better?

Store-bought garden trowels exasperate him because the metal bends and breaks away from the handle. So, Rantanen designed a sturdy one. “You could jack up a trailer with that thing,” he said.

He also created a barbecue tool that will flip a whole roast, and dozens of other metal gadgets.

His most difficult challenge, however, came from two North Idaho sportsmen.

“I had two crazy uncles in the Silver Valley who broke every knife they ever owned,” Rantanen said. “I thought I’d like to make them knives they couldn’t break.”

He knew the blade had to be worthy of the men.

The two brothers - Richard and Jerry Nearing - used their knives to quarter deer, brush out trails and chop tree limbs. No ordinary knife would do the job.

Rantanen chose his steel carefully, crafting the blades from recycled drill bits. Any metal designed to stand the shock of drilling could surely withstand his uncles, he figured. He was right.

That was the beginning of Rantanen’s interest in knife-making, which also grew to include spear points, axes and swords.

His reputation was cinched during a 1983 gathering of 45 blacksmiths.

Rantanen and another knifemaker got to talking about whose knives were stronger. That led to a challenge. Rantanen’s knife easily cut through the other knife’s blade. Blacksmiths still retell the story with awe.

Of all the knives he makes, Damascus are Rantanen’s favorite.

Each of the blades begins as seven layers of steel. The metal is heated to 1,600 degrees - what blacksmiths called “a hot yellow” - then repeatedly pounded and folded until the seven layers multiply to 224.

“Damascus knives are the stuff of legends,” Rantanen said. They were prized by fighters and handed down through generations.

He also enjoys the nostalgic pieces he makes for customers.

Miria Finckenor asked him to make a sword out of the leaf springs of her husband Jeff’s first car - a ‘76 Dodge Aspen station wagon affectionately known as “The Tank.”

Rantanen designed an Excalibur-style broadsword with a 51-inch blade. Jeff Finckenor wears it with medieval garb.

“When he walks into a room with that sword on, no one pays attention to the rest of his costume,” says Miria Finckenor, an engineer from Huntsville, Ala.

Rantanen and his wife moved to Spirit Lake six years ago, where he splits his time between aerospace consulting work and his smithing shop.

He recently received a NASA grant to study spacecraft contamination. That work, though rewarding, will be outdated in 10 years, Rantanen said.

“The things I make out of iron will last forever.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: LEGACY OF A BLADE “This knife … has a soul of its own,” reads a statement that comes with each knife Ray Rantanen sells. “Its medicine contains the heat and force of the forge fire, and the power, skill and creativity of the maker that forged a part of himself into the blade. This knife will outlive men, and should be handed down and possessed by those worthy of such a creation …”