Knife carver

GARDENDALE No, Dwayne Watson didn't find all those arrowheads in his workshop in a lake bottom, nor did he unearth those stone knives from some several-hundred-year-old abandoned Native American campsite. The knives are only a few years old, and he made them himself. Every one of 'em.

"I made a thousand arrowheads or more," he said as he showed his shop, the size of a small bedroom that was entirely taken up by this work. Watson still calls it just a hobby, but over the course of nine or 10 years he designed hundreds of these arrowheads and knives, occasionally selling them to friends and, recently, through a new crafts store in downtown Odessa.

Making the knives is a time-consuming process. Even shopping for the right stones takes work. He can order some of the rocks over the Internet or through a supplier in Midland, like the keokut from Missouri that he used for some of the blades. For some of the others, he trades for them through a flint-knapping club that meets in Fredericksburg, getting the stones from all over Texas and Oklahoma.

Then he gets to cutting, using two large rotary saws - which he built himself - to cut a general shape and then a smaller grinder to turn the piece into an unfinished blade. After that, he puts them in a kiln for an entire day to heat them up and give some of them a glossy shine.

He goes through a similar process again to make the handles, only those are cut into more of a rectangular cube shape and then rounded out with a diamond-bit grinder, and he adds a notch on one end where the blade will fit in.

The two are attached with glue, left to dry and then the display piece is finished.

Watson said it was a learning curve for him though through the first six years.

"I didn't have anybody to teach me or even learn from and couldn't get anything to work," he said. "It was just a waste of time the way I was doing it."

Watson said it was after he joined the flint-knapping club, which he said had no formal name, when he was finally able to hone his technique.

Among other things, before he was able to buy a kiln, he was using a turkey roaster to bake the knives, often getting an uneven glaze on the knife, or on occasion, a shattered, exploded piece of rock to clean up.

Some of his friends still try using the kitchen stove, he said. Despite his troubles with the roaster, he said it could work in a pinch.

"You can heat it up in your own stove if your wife won't kill you," he laughed.

Marcie Bunce, who owns the recently opened Crafts and Collectibles at 922 N. Grant Ave. in Odessa, said Watson was one of the craftsmen that started selling his wares at her shop when she opened in early March. She liked his knives so much she bought one for herself.

"The workmanship in those knives is just incredible," Bunce said. "I've never seen anything like that."

FACT FILE

>> Crafts and Collectibles

922 N. Grant Ave. Odessa

332-4105