About Me

I've never liked talking about myself, always found it a tad narcissistic and more than a tad off-putting. So I’ll do my best to avoid self grandiosity, meaningless platitudes, pandering, and off the shelf personal sales tactics.

I started because of a video I watched on YouTube. (After all, where else could I search for pertinent information in a video format, that ultimately leads to ideological indoctrination and batshit conspiracy theories?)

I was a cook at the time and couldn’t, for the life of me, keep the cheap knives I had sharp. Which opened an Internet rabbit hole that swallowed me alive. I happened upon a video of a bladesmith forging a knife, I was enamored and my first thought was “I can do that better”. Turns out, I couldn’t. Who would’ve guessed that someone with no relative experience aside from general carpentry and using a knife, could put out a decent knife on their first try. After the creation of the abomination that was my first knife, I set out to learn everything I could, I scoured forums, watched hours of videos and read everything I could get my hands on, then tried again. The subsequent knives were better, not up to par with my current standards, but showed improvement. I gifted them to my closest friends and continued onward. I learned and applied forging techniques from Brian Brazeal and Uri Hofi, (thanks again to YouTube) and did my best to apply my own spin on classic knife patterns. I delved deep into heat treatment and geometry soaking up all relevant information I could (Dr. Larrin Thomas with his website knifesteelnerds.com and book Knife Engineering were and are invaluable).

All that being said, I’ve barely dipped my toes into the hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge, experience, and information that’s available. So I plan to keep growing and learning everything I can about this craft and I owe a ton of gratitude to all the people who’ve provided encouragement along the way.

Nate Turner