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By COLLEEN JENKINS, Times Staff WriterJack Davenport has carved out his niche in a hobby that has satisfied his mind, heart and wallet.
NEW PORT RICHEY - "This," says Jack Davenport, "is man jewelry right here."
He's holding a splitback whittler, a small folding knife with a handle made of brown jigged bone that he keeps in his pocket. He brushes away some cheese crumbs from a blade.
A wide smile spreads his jaw. He looks like a man with a secret.
Luckily, he's willing to share.
Not everyone succeeds in finding a hobby that satisfies his mind, heart and wallet. Davenport has.
For nearly 20 years, the Dade City native has been crafting handmade knives below the incandescent and fluorescent lights in his cluttered, dusty garages in New Port Richey and Dade City. His work has been featured in several national knife magazines.
The International Knifemakers' Guild named one of his creations as the best folding knife at its annual convention in August. The award brought an onslaught of knife orders and helped push him into the country's top tier of handmade knifemakers.
"His work is just superior as far as craftsmanship," said Circuit Judge W. Lowell Bray, a fellow knifemaker and an officer in the Knifemakers' Guild.
All this for a guy who stumbled into the craft by chance.
Davenport's first art was gunsmithing, and his teacher was his father, Clifford Davenport. As a boy, he stripped old gun stocks and polished old guns in his father's metal and gun shop. The extra cash paid for their hunting and fishing trips.
But the junior Davenport viewed the work as a chore. He swore he'd leave it behind in adulthood.
He made good on his promise as a young man, when he headed to South Florida to become a game warden. Then he worked in the sugar industry before taking a job as a mechanic at the CF Industries chemical fertilizer plant near Zephyrhills.
Years passed. Davenport realized he could only hunt and fish so much. He needed another hobby. So he ate his words, pulled out his father's old supplies and opened a gun repair shop on the side.
Then, the hobby he never thought he'd want led him to the hobby he initially didn't understand.
He had run out of the steel from his father's shop when he wandered into the Knifemakers' Guild annual show in Orlando in 1987. Handmade knives filled tables and tables.
"Why," he wondered, "would you go to this trouble to make a knife when you could buy a perfectly good knife at Dade City Hardware?"
His answer came by show's end. Davenport saw a man pay $800 for a small knife. Suddenly, it all made sense.
"I knew what I was going to be doing on Monday."
Two decades later, Davenport retells the story with his charming Southern accent, the product of a childhood spent among Alabama and Georgia transplants in Dade City.
He's good-humored and friendly, and makes knives seem interesting whether you know, or care, much about them.
Davenport's interest developed over time. Early on, he made as many titanium frame pocketknives as he could, hoping to cash in on what he thought was a fad. He sold them alongside his refinished and custom-made guns.
His focus later turned to knives with blades that jumped out automatically with the push of a button and handles made of expensive materials. Some had mother of pearl or ancient ivory handles; he set opals and diamonds in others. Collectors shelled out $1,500 to $3,800 for each knife.
In the last few years, he's worked hard to perfect multiblade folding knives fashioned in the old-style patterns of knives once used by country doctors and horticulturists. Many knifemakers steer clear of the multiblades, said Blade magazine editor Steve Shackleford, because it is difficult to smoothly line up all the blades on a single spring.
"He almost seems to relish the challenge," Shackleford said. "He is improving as much as just about anybody."
One of those knives, a five-blade reproduction of a pattern created by the Joseph Rodgers cutlery company in England with a mother of pearl handle, won Davenport the best folding knife honors this summer. A couple from Sweden bought the piece for $1,800.
"It was gorgeous," Shackleford said.
The award had an immediate impact for Davenport. Within 25 minutes of the judging, he sold $14,000 worth of Davenport Knives.
"It was like getting the job I've always wanted," Davenport said, "and I could set the salary."
That's good news for the 60-year-old's plans. After spending the last 25 years working for CF Industries, he hopes to retire in 15 months and turn his attention to knifemaking full-time.
First, he admits, he needs to work on time management. Crafting a knife is a slow, intricate process, one prolonged even more by Davenport's tendency to get sidetracked.
He might spend four or five hours on a Saturday working on a knife. But his schedule goes something like this: look at handle options for a while, then steer his bike to the Anclote River for a little fishing, come back home and work for an hour, clean the fish or go out to dinner with his fiancee, then return home and work some more.
"So it's impossible for me to tell you" how long it takes to make one knife, Davenport said. "I don't even want to know. It would take all the fun out of getting paid."
And when you're having fun, time doesn't really matter anyway.
To contact Jack Davenport, e-mail him at jacknife@verizon.net Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 727 869-6236 or cjenkins@sptimes.com