While I consider myself much more of a knife user than a collector, and don’t generally dabble much in presentation knives, sometimes you run across a story that’s just worth telling. The ASP presentation knife is one of those. It’s as much about the people involved as it is the knife itself, as stunning as that knife may be.
If you’ve spent any time in law enforcement, you’re probably familiar with ASP. The company is best known for its expandable batons, along with handcuffs, flashlights and other law enforcement gear. Each year ASP holds a “Christmas in July” party in conjunction with its summer sales meeting and other company events. As part of that tradition, ASP employees pitch in to buy company founder and CEO Dr. Kevin Parsons a special gift.
For 2025, they decided to do something a little different. Rather than simply buying Parsons something, they commissioned a custom knife made from the product most closely associated with ASP itself: the expandable baton. That unusual project ended up in the hands of 23-year-old Texas knifemaker Tyler Tipton.
Tipton Hill Forge
Tyler Tipton owns and operates Tipton Hill Forge in Lipan, Texas. The name comes from the piece of family property where he grew up, known locally as Tipton Hill after having been in his family for generations.
Despite his age, Tipton’s interest in making knives goes back quite a bit further than his professional career. He says his mother still likes to tell the story of finding Tyler and his sister at the family fire pit, heating a piece of metal and beating on it with a hammer while using a rock for an anvil. They were, as he puts it, “playing blacksmith.”
As a teenager he continued experimenting, making roughly cut throwing knives that apparently didn’t work very well and what he describes as other “less than useful knife-shaped objects.” Things got more serious in 2021, when Tipton was 19. Friends and family started asking to buy the knives he was making and Tipton realized he could make some money doing something he genuinely enjoyed.
Today he’s a full-time knifemaker and also works part time at Maker Material Supply, a store specializing in materials for knifemakers. That’s a pretty convenient side job for someone in his line of work.
As impressive as the ASP knife is, it isn’t the sort of work that makes up most of Tipton’s output. He primarily makes functional knives intended to be used, and most of his regular work consists of stock removal stainless steel knives rather than forged pieces.
“I mostly do stock removal stainless steel knives as that’s what my customers tend to gravitate towards,” Tipton told me. “But when I have the time or the custom orders, I love forging and working on Damascus steel and other more unique projects.”
Tipton shows his current work through the Tipton Hill Forge Facebook and Instagram accounts. Looking through his other knives reinforces the point that these are working knives first, even when he puts some extra effort into materials and finish. The ASP commission gave him an opportunity to take that approach in a very different direction. It’s hard to imagine a project much more unique than turning police batons into Damascus.
From Baton to Blade
The relationship between Tipton and ASP actually started with Tipton reaching out to the company. He was working on a project and wanted information about the steel that ASP used in its products. The folks at ASP were receptive and helpful, and in the process they got a look at what the young maker was doing. They were impressed with his work, especially considering his age.
Before long, the conversation turned toward something considerably more ambitious. ASP’s employees needed that year’s gift for Parsons and Tipton had already demonstrated an interest in working with the company’s steel. Why not have him make a knife using ASP’s own batons?
ASP identifies 4140 as the primary steel used in its batons and Tipton confirmed that the baton tubes supplied for this project were 4140. He decided to pair that steel with 1084 high carbon steel, a material he was already comfortable using in Damascus.
“I chose to stack it with 1084 high carbon steel as it’s a tried and true steel for Damascus and I knew I could get it to etch dark and contrast colors with the 4140,” Tipton said.
Getting from a collapsible baton tube to a forgeable billet wasn’t exactly a matter of tossing a few batons into the forge, though. Tipton started with 20 individual baton tubes. A complete ASP baton consists of three individual tubes, so there was quite a bit of material to process before he could even begin making the blade.
The tubes first had to be cut and split open, flattened into bars and ground clean. Tipton then stacked the resulting 4140 bars with 1084 and forge welded them together. Those bars were stretched out and re-stacked multiple times to increase the layer count. That’s where the pattern visible in the finished knife gets particularly interesting.
Tipton produced separate 80, 40 and 20-layer sections and arranged them around a solid 1084 core. He describes the final construction as 80 + 40 + 20 + 1 + 20 + 40 + 80, with that single center layer being 1084. The solid core forms the actual sharpened edge and gives the knife a known, reliable cutting steel at its center.
The different layer counts weren’t arbitrary. They were Tipton’s way of controlling how the pattern would appear in the finished blade. “The 80+40+20 method is what led to the pattern having the fine lines at the top of the blade that waterfalls down to thicker lines at the edge, which luckily came out just like I imagined,” Tipton explained.
Looking at the finished blade, you can see exactly what he means. The pattern is fine and tightly packed toward the spine, then opens into progressively broader waves as it approaches the cutting edge. It gives the steel an almost topographic appearance rather than the more uniform repeating pattern you often see in Damascus.
Using 4140 also gave Tipton a somewhat different result than he’d get with a more conventional Damascus combination. A high nickel steel such as 15N20 can produce very bright contrast when etched. The ASP 4140 resulted in a more subdued gray appearance, which suits the knife particularly well considering where the material came from.
It wasn’t necessarily easy to get there, though. Tipton had trouble getting an etch he was satisfied with and made four or five attempts before settling on the finished result. In this case, simply switching to a steel that was easier to work with would have defeated the whole point. The ASP steel wasn’t there simply to create a pattern. It was the reason the knife existed in the first place.
A Working Knife in Presentation Clothes
The finished knife is a substantial fixed blade that looks more like a serious field knife dressed up for a formal occasion than something designed solely to spend its life in a display case.
Tipton’s original drawing called for a knife around 12.5 inches overall with a 7-inch blade, but the finished knife grew somewhat from the original concept. The completed piece measures approximately 14 inches overall with a 7.75 inch blade.
That’s a good-sized fixed blade, and the broad drop point gives the unusual Damascus plenty of room to show off the transition between its different layer counts. A small guard projects below the blade, while a substantial polished brass bolster provides the transition to the handle.
Tipton used stabilized curly koa for the scales with a thin nickel-silver spacer separating the wood from the brass bolster. Black G10 liners sit underneath the koa, and brass pins secure the handle. The dark, highly figured wood and polished brass complement the subdued gray Damascus without competing with it.
It’s an attractive knife, but more importantly to my eye, it still looks like a knife. The handle is heavily contoured, the guard is functional and there’s plenty of blade there to actually do some work. Nothing about the design suggests Tipton forgot that a knife is supposed to cut simply because this particular one was destined for a presentation case. Considering the kind of functional knives that normally come out of Tipton Hill Forge, that probably shouldn’t be surprising.
Leather From JRE
Tipton’s part of the project ended with the knife, but ASP wasn’t finished yet. A presentation knife this distinctive needed an equally distinctive sheath. This is where I ended up having a small part in the story.
I’ve known Glen “Spen” Stelzer of JRE Industries for years and was already familiar with the quality of his leather work. When Michael Hess at ASP needed someone to build a sheath for the presentation knife, I connected him with Spen.
JRE built a custom brown leather sheath specifically for Tipton’s knife. The front has extensive basket weave tooling along with the ASP logo and Dr. Parsons’ monogram. Brass hardware complements the brass fittings on the knife, and the overall result looks remarkably cohesive considering that the knife and sheath came from two different craftsmen.
The sheath also reinforces something I like about the knife itself. It’s ornate enough to be appropriate for a presentation piece, but it remains a functional sheath built to carry and protect a working knife.
ASP’s in house master engraver, Adam, handled the final part of the presentation. He created an engraved placard and installed it along with the knife and sheath in a fitted wood presentation case. The finished display places the knife above the sheath, with the plaque documenting the materials and process that went into the project. It’s a package that makes sense even before you know the whole story. Once you know it, the choice of materials carries a lot more weight.
Christmas in July
The completed knife was presented to Parsons during ASP’s 2025 Christmas in July event. This wasn’t a corporate award ordered from a catalog or a commemorative knife with a company logo added as an afterthought. ASP’s employees had collectively commissioned a knife made from the material used in the product that has defined much of the company’s history.
Twenty ASP baton tubes had been cut apart, flattened, cleaned, forge welded with 1084 and transformed into Damascus. Tipton turned that steel into a one-of a-kind fixed blade. Spen made the custom leather sheath, and ASP completed the package with its engraved plaque and presentation case. More importantly, all of that work was done to create a personal gift from the company’s employees to its founder.
The significance wasn’t lost on Parsons. ASP says its founder and CEO was moved to tears when his employees presented him with the finished knife.
For Tipton, the commission was also an opportunity to step outside his usual workflow and learn some new things in the process. I asked whether he’d be interested in tackling another project along these lines if someone approached him with the right idea.
“Absolutely! It was a great opportunity to learn new things and do something outside of my usual work flow,” he said. There was, however, a qualifier. “Though I may be hesitant agreeing to cutting, splitting open, flattening, and grinding clean 20 more baton tubes, without a lot of motivation haha.”
At 23, Tipton has plenty of time to decide just how much motivation that would require. In the meantime, turning a pile of collapsible baton tubes into a one-of-a-kind Damascus presentation knife isn’t a bad addition to a young maker’s resume.
While it might be considered a little blasphemous, I have to admit that if the knife were mine, I’d be awfully tempted to pull it out of that presentation case and see what it could do. From what I’ve learned about Tyler and what I already know about Spen and JRE Industries, I don’t have any doubt that as gorgeous as the finished presentation piece is, it’s also a completely functional knife and sheath.
That’s the kind of performance art I can appreciate.