Arkansas Made Dozier Body Guard Green Micarta

Arkansas Made Dozier

Bob Dozier made his first knives when he was only twelve or thirteen years old. He told me the other day that after those few knives, he did not make another until he was about twenty-three and working as a rough neck in the oil fields in Louisiana. He talked about that first simple knife and then told a story about a co-worker asking to come to watch him make knives. Bob had made several knives by then and had created a small rough shop. He said the man stayed and watched until the knife was finished which took most of the day. When it was finished, he asked to look at it. After handling it for a while, he asked Bob how much he wanted for it. Without giving it any thought, Bob says he said $12.50. The man pulled out twelve one dollar bills and two quarters, laid them on the bench, got in his truck and left. Bob went in the house and told his wife he had just sold a knife which took him most of the day to make for $12.50. But, he told me, at that moment he knew he was going to be a knifemaker. That was about 1963.

If you had the opportunity to look through Bob’s collection of his old knives, you would find that he has made many different kinds of knives; hunters, Bowies and fighters, and more recently folders. You can definitely see a relationship between a pair of fighting knives he made in those early years and the practical, utilitarian fighters that began to appear from handmade knifemakers and knife manufactures from the late 1960s and became tremendously popular during the Viet Nam War era. These knives used to be called fighting knives. Today they are called Tactical Knives.