The difference between $35 beginner and the $500 professional was about a seven year period of trial and error.
His knives came into demand around 1972 when collectors attending gun and knife shows found that Wilson unlike many of his colleagues was on top of his orders. Meanwhile, Wilson was becoming enamored of the buckskinners who toted muzzloading rifles. He liked their romance and mountain man image; their swagger appealed to his ebullient personality. He admired their tomahawks, too, but like the $35 knife, the current $75 dollar price, in his opinion, was too high. He began making his own tomahawks, intricately
 carved and inlaid, with each requiring sixty to one hundred hours of work. Wilson adopted as show garb the buckskinner hat and fringed deer shirt he had been itching to wear publicly ever since he and his wife had a matching pair made shortly after their wedding.
Knives remained in the forefront, however, until a prop man from Warner Brothers Studios discovered Wilson's tomahawk display at a Tulsa, Oklahoma gun show. The encounter landed Wilson a consignment to produce 12 tomahawks for the Robert Redford film "Jeremiah Johnson," and to loan the studio four more. Three were returned - one still bearing traces of fake blood, supposedly from Jeremiah's eye - and an apologetic letter said the fourth was lost somewhere on the set.
"Humph!"Wilson snorts. "It's probably hanging on someone's wall."
Soon after "Jeremiah Johnson" was released, Wilson received a staggering order for five hundred tomahawks for the 150th anniversary of the Texas Rangers. The two assignments coming back-to-back carved
 Wilson's reputation in knifemaking circles, but caused a major setback in his knifemaking production. Before long, Wilson found himself in the position he hoped to avoid in 1972; with a backlog of knife orders one to two years long.
There is one difference, Wilson notices, between his current knifemaking career and its real beginnings in 1972; collectors don't care that there will be a long wait for a knife. The orders keep coming in, and evidence is the wall papered with order acknowledgement slips above his workshop desk. Collectors from all over the country, and a few from overseas, are ordering any one of Wilson's thirty-two knife styles ranging from boot knives to Bowies, hunters and skinners. Some carry specifications for a custom-piece.
"I really don't consider myself a perfectionist," Wilson says. Yet it is his strict attention to detail that draws the collectors to his show table. His style is clean and classical. He avoids the bizarre and sticks to knives that demand to be done well to carry off their simplicity. Wilson's knives are balanced, graceful and functional, bearing the same straightforward purpose of a well-thought-out piece of silverware.
In the last four years Wilson's knives have all borne his trademark of a V and a half circle next to the guard. The trademark was developed, Wilson says, "so my knives would be different from anyone else's. I don't believe in copying anyone else's knife or tomahawk. I make mine - or try - a little different from any others I've ever seen."
Collectors can be doubly sure they are purchasing a genuine Wilson knife if the blade, held edge down is signed on the right side. His blade kits - Wilson sells a complete line of knifemaking supplies - are signed and stamped with a K on the left side.
Wilson's penchant for detail drove him to design a sander that would combine most of the knifemaking functions, with the exception of polishing. It took him six years to develop the mix of flat platen, slack-a-belt and grinding attachments to his satisfaction. "It is the best doggoned sander going," Wilson says with pride.
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