THE RED HORSE KNIFE WORKS HELL RAZOR FIXED-BLADE LETS SLIP THE DOGS.

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY WAYSUN JOHNNY TSAI

A good knife is simple and simply does what it is meant to do.

I first met Ed Kim roughly five or six years ago as I stood outside the Holiday Club, a popular inner-city drinking hole on the north side of Chicago. He was bouncing at the time, and we were standing at the door trading bouncer stories when I learned he was friends with one of my closest cousins, Danny.

I put two and two together and let him know that Danny had mentioned his knife-making buddy who was an ex-military contractor, a martial artist and a doorman. We joked about how Chicago was such a “small” big city. That’s when Ed pulled out a prototype—a solid flipper that was kind of crude in build but a really stout and wicked design.

Over the next couple of years, I would see Ed walking around gun shows at which I had my tables set up. He and a group of guys would frequent my booth. I remember that at one Kane County Sportsman’s’ show, he pulled out a knife he had recently finished. It was a beautiful custom. Ed had come a long way as a knife maker from the first time I had met him outside the bar and was now a full-time knife maker. I knew at that moment that I would eventually be writing about one of his knives.