William F. Moran, a legendary figure in the world of custom knives, died yesterday morning in the hospital at Frederick, Maryland of cancer at the age of 80. Born in 1925, on a family farm near Lime Kiln, Maryland, Moran began making knives as a ten year old boy working in a smithy on his father’s farm, using discarded tools as his source of steel. By his teenage years, Moran had learned the skills of tempering and heat-treating blades, and his homemade knives had already developed a local reputation for holding an edge.