JOHN BAILEY'S
throwingknives.com
John Bailey is an accomplished knife throwing artist, and pioneer of selling high-quality throwing knives on the internet.
His dad introduced John to knife throwing in the 1960s.
During his army time (including stays in Germany) he trained many soldiers and worked to refine his style. An accident ended his time in the army, and he switched to teaching knife throwing - to hundreds of people. In fact, his special-effect Starlight throwing knife was designed to teach the boys in the boy scouts club he started at his church. For some knife throwing backyard fun, he would visit Harry McEvoy and on one occasion Harry came over to his home in Florida for a visit. A committed Christian, John Bailey later combined preaching, knife throwing and bullwhip cracking (here he holds a Guinness World Record) in the Lash & Steel show show that got him traveling to churches all over the USA. Read for yourself how John tells his story.
When I met John Bailey in 1999, he had recently acquired the Sunshine Knife Outlet from Curtis Lovejoy, and made the inventory available at his own site throwingknives.com. This was the first dedicated throwing knife shop on the internet! Whether he was at home in Winter Springs (Florida, USA), or traveling, he took the orders and shipped quality throwing knives to sports knife throwers all over the world. Monika, his wife and show partner, had a big part in managing the website.
Of course, John Bailey was part of the nascent knife throwing community on the very young internet, which was held together by the thrower mailing list (that also triggered thrower and Sticking Point). As Harry Munroe posted there in August 1999, "John Baily from Sunshine Knife Outlet sells some great stuff".
Via the mailing list, I got to know John. When he and his wife Monika traveled to Germany to launch the line of throwing knives he designed for the knife company Boker, we met up in the Solingen factory. He taught me his special knife throwing style - and yes, that's the Boker courtyard you see in the photos. Generally, John gave me fresh ideas and boosted my knife throwing motivation. The knife throwers map, my own throwing knife online shop opening in August 2001, and making all my articles available in English all happened in the wake of meeting John - thank you!
To this day, I continue to sell his instructional video "Recreational Knife Throwing" (order here), and closely follow and test the Bailey-designed throwing knives launched by Boker (Pro recommendation: Ziel throwing knife).
In 2022, John Bailey asked me if I wanted to take over throwingknives.com from him. I gladly agreed, and will continue John's tradition of making quality throwing knives available to sports knife throwers all over the world.
Throwingknives.com now hosts my knife throwing shop previously located at shop.KnifeThrowing.info and later ThrowingKnives.shop, a shop which John inspired me to start more than 20 years ago.
To document the history of knife throwing on the internet, and preserve all the tips and anecdotes John collected on his site, I asked him if I could keep an archive copy of his pages online. He was very much OK with that!
Over time, John Bailey's site was the catalog of the Sunshine Knife Outlet, a knife thrower's page with tips on throwing, a showcase for the throwing knives developed in cooperation with Boker, a booking site of the Lash & Steel knife throwing church show, and a picture documentation of John and Monika's travels to fellow knife throwers. I wanted to show all those facets, so the archive is not a snapshot from a specific time, but pages from different ages combined.
This archive is a part of ThrowingKnives.com, where you can also contact the maintainer of this archive, Dr. Christian Thiel, and consult the privacy policy. This archive is published with friendly permission by John Bailey, who still retains his copyright.
Christian Thiel
You can reach John and Monika Bailey via the website of their show Lash & Steel.
