Draco Integral

Bergam, Dalibor

Dalibor Bergam lives in Croatia. "My love for knives began very early , my grandpa gave me my first knife when I was a little kid , maybe 7 or 8 years old.. ever since than I was hooked! I tried making my first knife right after finishing college of Civil Engineering. I couldn't find a job...so I thought that was the perfect time to try and build my own knife. I always wanted to make my own knife...but that proved to be harder than I thought! Funny thing is that I had absolutely no prior knowledge in metal working and things like mill , lathe or a surface grinder were all strange to me and really didn't know how they looked like let a lone how to work with them. Soon after my initial idea of making knives I got my first materials , sheet of Ti and two sheets of s30v , needless to say I screwed up titanium and s30v completely... My first tools were my grinder and a drill press... now my grinder was a piece of crap , took about one day to grind a blade pre heat treat, after I got it back from HT it would take another day to finish it . Little by little I was investing all my spare cash into new equipment and better tools... and I can tell you that you always need more tools and machines. When it comes down to why I make knives the way I do, so thick and overbuilt, I guess the simplest answer is that I just love them overbuilt! And each knife I make, I make it just as I'm making it for my self!!! I remember when I first saw a Strider.. fell in love on the first glance, soon after I got my first SMF and was blown away by the toughness and yet simplicity of the design! As you can all see Strider was a huge influence on my work, love the huge pivot and the external stop pin as in my opinion it's the absolute toughest combination for a hard use knife."