The Kooskia, Idaho-based Byler family – consisting of father Edd and his three sons Paxton, Zach, and Zane – is the proud new owner of Muteki Knives, a shop founded by Murray Carter to show off his apprentices’ bladesmithing work. The Bylers intend to make it their own, building on Carter’s strong foundation and growing under his tutelage this year.
There are lots of people who already know Edd Byler’s name. Byler is a luthier, and his violins are highly sought after. “I went full-time 12 years ago, and have won some awards, and it’s been a blast,” Byler says. He’s being a tad modest: his work has netted him more than ten different competition distinctions in the world of custom violins. “These competition judges look for tone – it needs to sound good – but they also want it to look good,” Byler explains. Among many painstaking processes, the scrollwork on a Byler violin is done by hand, with a chisel, until it just looks right. “People can’t believe how long it takes to agonize over every little detail.”
Byler and his sons have been interested in edged tools all their life. “It’s an interest I’ve always had,” Byler says. He grew up experimenting in his own father’s mechanic/fabrication shop, and still has a knife he made as a boy. “And Paxton – my youngest son – made his first knife when he was just 12 years old,” Byler adds. But none of the Byler men became serious about knife making as a possible career until late last year. They have had a years-long friendship with Murray Carter, who lives and works in Council, Idaho; after moving closer to that neck of the woods they became fascinated with his craft.
Then came a day when Carter made the Bylers an offer to purchase Muteki lock, stock, and barrel – and we mean that literally: not only did Carter provide the Bylers with a coke forge, Japanese power hammer, and enough Hitachi white paper steel and ironwood slabs to make 1000 knives, he gave them a five gallon bucket of Japanese clay for coating the near-finished blades before quenching. “The thin clay coating prevents a vapor barrier for forming at the surface of the steel, allowing it to cool quicker,” is how Byler explains it. He says that part of the purchase deal was training in, and access to, Carter’s particular time-honored bladesmithing techniques, of which this is just one. “We use the exact processes that he uses, and he’s a real stickler for the traditional Japanese bladesmithing techniques – that’s what makes him such a great teacher.”
While Muteki originally functioned as a showcase of apprentice work, the Bylers want to move it past that designation into full-fledged, full-featured custom pieces worthy of their teacher. “That was the dream – to make a knife like Murray Carter!” Byler says. “We went into this pretty optimistic we could do it, and Murray’s optimistic too.” So are early customers. The new Muteki website launched just last month, but Byler tells us there has been steady sales and positive response from customers. “We have people coming to us who have bought a Carter knife in the past, and we want them to know we are committed to providing our customers with a top-quality knife,” Byler says.
The plan, over the next few months, is to ramp up the workflow until each of Byler’s sons can make around 30 knives a month. “Once the boys have hit their stride I’m going to back away a bit,” Byler continues. He remains committed to luthier-work, and needs time to work on his instruments, but will still very much be a presence in the Muteki shop. “I’d like to do about a quarter of the knives my sons do each month.” Each Byler has their own mark, too, so buyers will be able to tell which Byler made which Muteki knife.
Currently, every Byler-era Muteki knife is a Carter design, but sometime in the near future we can expect to see the first original Byler model – and that knife will have a unique stamp on it to show that it will be the first of a new generation of Muteki blades. “We’re excited to design our original knife,” Byler says. “But we really want to think about it a bit first.”
Beyond that, the Byler boys’ training isn’t over. “The association with Murray is ongoing, it was very much a part of the deal,” Byler explains. They’ll be attending shows and sharing a table at them with Carter this year: Blade Show in June, the Idaho Knife Association Show in August, and they are all at the OKCA show in Oregon this weekend. They’re even planning on going with Carter to Japan – where he lived and worked for more than a decade – to be introduced to his suppliers there, and establish their own relationships with them to keep the flow of authentic materials coming. In short, while the Bylers want to make Muteki their own, they are keenly aware of the importance of maintaining the Japanese bladesmithing traditions.
After a winter spent making their first knives in an uninsulated, unheated garage, the Bylers are also getting ready to build a full-on knife shop. By this time next year, the new Muteki should be in full swing, but Byler has no intentions of forsaking the name’s roots; he is carrying Carter’s commitment to hand-made pieces forward. “We know what we’re supposed to be,” says Edd Byler. “We know we’re being watched closer right now than we ever will be. We want people to trust that Muteki is in good hands.”
A new batch of Byler-made Muteki knives are available at KnivesShipFree right now.
Knife in Featured Image: [Top to bottom] Muteki Knives Petty, Paring Knife
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