[music] [music] >> This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. [music] I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. Hi guys, welcome to this special episode today. So I need to give the groundwork for you a little bit. I need to go back in the past. So for a few years now, we've been wanting to do a collaboration knife. So we've had kind of some, you know, loose, you know, not really sponsorship deals, but we had some loose relationships with some great knife makers from all over the United States. We've had some of them on the show, but I always wanted to collaborate on like designing a knife that was like for Undaunted Life. But you know how it goes, like when you're doing work and with us, you know, we're doing this podcast. I've got the Daily Blade. We've got all the other things going on. It was like, okay, we can't just, you know, seek it out and make that our full-time deal. But a few months ago, my buddy Wes Huff, he posted that he was releasing this sword and then he was releasing a gladius and another thing with a company called Dawson Knives. And so I hadn't heard of Dawson Knives for, I mean, there's tons of knife companies out there, but Dawson Knives I came to find out is an American company that only uses American labor and American sourced products. And literally everything that they build, when they build a knife or a sword or something like that, is made here in America. And so I said, "Hey Wes, you know, would you, you know, introduce me to these guys? I'd love to at least have a relationship with them and you know, maybe we could work something out." So he introduced me to their guys over there. He introduced me to Andrew who's his creative director. And so what happened was is he and I just hopped on a call and he was kind of talking to me about the work that he does with Dawson and you know, kind of what Dawson's done and how they've been around since the 70s and I was kind of describing Undaunted Life. And I said this in my interview with the CEO of Dawson Knives, John Roy. You can check that out. That came out in the episode right before this one. But it was like a word popped into my head, right? And I feel like God literally like put that word there cuz it doesn't happen very often like that for me anyway. And it was Nehemiah. And you guys know I love the the book of Nehemiah. I feel like people don't study it nearly enough. I especially love in Nehemiah 4 when it talks about how the people that were working to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, they had their working tool in one hand, but they stood ready with their fighting tool in the other. That was kind of like the visual that you were given because there were people that didn't want them to finish the wall, right? And so they were ready to throw down if they needed to. And so I was like, "What if we like came together? Like what if we made a knife that could do a bunch of different things? That could check a bunch of different boxes. It wouldn't just be a hunting knife or just be an EDC knife or just be survivalist or just be culinary, but that it could like check multiple boxes." And so I pitched it to them. They loved the idea. Dawson, you know, checked out our our ministry and they were, you know, at least somewhat aware of us at that point. And then we started working on actually doing a knife together. And so we talked a little bit about that process yesterday on that episode or the previous episode that we did with John Roy who's the CEO. But then we got to the design process. They sent me a bunch of knives so I could kind of handle them and I'm like, "Okay, well, this one may be a little bulky for what we're wanting to do. Okay, this one might be a little bit small. Let's kind of check out a few different ones." And what we knew we wanted to do and what I knew I wanted this knife to be able to do. I wanted you to be able with one knife to be able to skin an animal, maybe even like kill an animal if you're killing like a gator or a hog. I wanted it to be a survivalist tool, right? So I wanted you to be able to use it if you were like batoning or doing anything out in the field. I wanted it to be able to check that box. So it needed to be sturdy and rugged. EDC. So if you wanted to carry it on you depending on your job and you know, if you have an Ulticlip, you can kind of carry it deep in a pocket. I wanted it to be able to to be a knife for that as well, but also a fighting knife. So a lot of guys carry, you know, folding pocket knives. That's not necessarily a knife that you would want want to use in a self-defense situation. Sometimes you don't have your firearm, you have a blade. And so I wanted to be able to check all those boxes. And again, when I received the name and kind of pitched that to them, it was just like, "Okay, this is going to be awesome." So I just started getting on my iPad. I started looking at knives. I'm looking at their knives. I got them here and and I'm like, "Okay, what if we took this knife and moved this here and like what if we moved that around?" And after months of working with the amazing team over there at Dawson Dawson Knives, I need to present to you these knives which is the Nehemiah. So this is one version of it here and I'll pull the other one out here as well. Here are the two different versions of that. And so you'll notice uh again, whether you're looking at this online or whatever, cuz you just go to dawsonknives.com and you can check this out. So the one right here in my right hand, this has the blue and black handle that they made just for Undaunted Life. This is their Undaunted handle. And then the blade finish is what they call rainstorm. And you probably can't see unless you're looking at one of the pictures, but Scott our logo on there. So that's that one. And then this other one, they've got the black on black handle. And then they've got the hamon blade. Okay, so these are the Nehemiah's. And so just to give you a little bit of insight as to the knife, the knife itself, you know, the blades, it's 8-in 80CRV2 which is one of Dawson's heritage steels. And then again, it comes in their G10 textured handles, right? So it's going to feel really, really good in your hand. But there's two really, really awesome things about this. Dawson itself, not only is it an American company, but it is a legitimately Christian company. If you listen to John Roy, he's like, "Yeah, I mean this you know, I'm the CEO the company, but I feel like Jesus is. So I just try not to get in his way, right?" And again, they only use American-made materials, labor from Americans. So I absolutely love it. So in terms of this knife, you know, the the uses. So on the skinning the animal part. Okay, so as you'll notice on this blade, there's a good amount of belly on this blade. So if you were using it and it's got a good grip on it, if you were using it and you're kind of working off a hide or working some meat off the bone, you've got enough belly to do that. Now from a survivalist standpoint, the blade length is 3.375 in. The thickness is 0.125 in and the total length, right? The total length of this knife is just about 8.8 in and it weighs about 5.3 oz. So it's not going to be super heavy on your belt or anything like that. And one thing that we wanted to do with this is we wanted to do the drop point here. So you can see on the spine it's got this drop point. And what that does is if you're batoning, right? So if you're splitting wood or doing things like that, you've got a good surface area right here for you to be able to baton, to be able to kind of split things and you're not going to really damage any part cuz it doesn't come to a finer point or something like that. It's got that drop point on there. So we like that. And then also on the EDC side of things, every single one of their knives comes with this carbon fiber Kydex sheath. This isn't too heavy. It's got a few things that you can do. You can put it on your your MOLLE setup on your backpack or something like that. You can actually shift these two. So if you want to carry it vertical, you can, but if you want to carry it horizontal, you can just take, you know, that screw out, move it down here, take this one out and you can kind of move it to where it goes like that. And then here's the other part on the the fight side I said. So as I said as a joke on the, you know, when I was talking with John, is I had a guy teach me a long time ago and he would know. He said, "If someone comes at you like this, you know, with, you know, the knife in their hand how you would normally do it and they're attacking you like this, that guy can do some damage to you. But that's maybe not someone that's been trained fighting with a knife. But if you do a reverse grip, if someone comes at you like this and they're ready to box and parry and all that and slash and cut and stab, you got to run away from that person." And the reason why the Nehemiah works really, really well for that. You can kind of tell, look how the blade handle curves. Look at the how the handle of the knife curves up. So whenever you do that reverse grip, I mean, you'll just kind of have to get one so that you can see. There's a great place for your thumb here, but then it kind of curves into your knuckles and into your palm. So it it's man, I mean, they just thought about all kinds of things with this knife. It's got a couple of different holes here to where if you wanted to make a spear, and John talked about how he how he's been able to make spears out of their knives before. So you can put this, you know, onto onto a stick or a log or something like that and make a spear. And a great thing about the knives is 10% of the proceeds from the knife goes to support Undaunted Life. But also they wanted me to pick a charity to hook up as well. And so 10% is going to go to the charity of my choice which is Project Savior Outdoors. So a lot of you guys know Mike Draggets Fuller the man. He's the guy that I killed that gator with. But their mission is to forge community, ignite purpose, defy darkness, and stop veteran suicide. So if you know anything about Mike's story, when he got back from the Marine Corps, most of the guys that he served with didn't die in combat. They died when they got home. Either they had post-traumatic stress, they had some sort of a thing where they weren't given the time needed to kind of get back into civilian life. And unfortunately, a lot of the guys that he served with end up ended up taking their lives. And so Mike said, "Not on my watch. That ain't going to happen." And so he gets veterans from all over the country and he brings them out to Florida, out to Texas to go on these hog hunts, these gator hunts to have that biblically based, gospel-based community. And if you've ever heard Mike share the gospel, you know, he's going right at these guys with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so again, we got a couple of different options. You can choose your handle. I prefer the blue one, but a lot of people like the black handle as well. And then you can either do this blade. So you've got two different blade options there. And again, it's it's just [clears throat] in in absolutely, I can't believe. I wish you all could hold this, which you can. You got to order it. But you can just check this out. You got a couple of different options. Again, the link is in the show notes. So if you're one of those guys that knows how to get to the show notes, check out the link in the show notes. Or if you're listening to this on time, if you just go to dawsonknives.com, dawsonknives.com, it's the first banner that pops up. If you get there and you don't see it in the top bar, there's a little search bar. Just search the word Nehemiah and you can check it out. Guys, we've already got some ideas so for some future knives, but we got to make sure we sell enough of these. Okay? There there's kind of a thing internally that they want to hit. And if we hit that, we've got some other knives that we can bring to you guys. So again, check it out. dawsonknives.com. Get the Nehemiah. Get one for yourself. You got Christmas coming up later this year. Some of you guys got clients and all that. And in like the second week of December, you're going to start freaking out. What should I get? What should I get? Go ahead and get you a bunch of these Nehemiah's. Get them for your dad uh for Father's Day. Get them for different birthdays you got coming up. If you got a son and you're trying to give them something as like a rite of passage uh blade or something like that. Again, this is going to check a lot of boxes. If it's in your hunting bag, if it's in your EDC bag, your go bag, whatever. So, check that out. Again, dawsonknives.com. Get the Nehemiah. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life. That's i n f o@undaunted.life. [clears throat] Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook, and check out our website for everything else including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is their song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album on Facedown Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah. >> [music]