I grew up in Texas around heavy equipment, construction, and a country way of life. I’ve always liked working with my hands and figuring out how things work, so over the years I’ve dabbled in a lot of different things.

These days, I work full time as an equipment operator and truck driver, and somehow I also manage to be a knife maker full time at pretty much the same time.

My knife-making story started around 2012, when my kid came home one day talking about a knife made from an old rasp and wanted to try making one. I thought it would be cool, so we decided to give it a shot.

We built a makeshift fire in the backyard to heat treat it, and most of the knife was made with an angle grinder. It certainly wasn’t fancy, but my kid loved that knife, and I loved making it with him.

I think that was the spark that got me into knife making.

From there, I bought a cheap 1x30 belt sander and started teaching myself. Eventually the little grinder burned up, I put another motor on it, and kept going. As I learned more, I invested in better equipment, eventually moving to a 2x72 grinder and the other tools that let me make better knives. I’m still always looking for the next piece of tooling that can help me do something a little better.

I made fixed blades for about eight years before I started getting a little bored with them and stepped away for a while. In 2020, I came back to knife making with the idea of teaching myself how to build pocket knives, specifically slipjoints.

I learned a lot from whatever I could find online, including Chris Crawford’s DVDs and videos. I eventually got the mechanics figured out, but I hit a wall. I could make a knife, but I wasn’t really getting better.

That changed when I spent some time with a great slipjoint maker in South Texas, Stanley Buzek. Stanley taught me how he approached making knives, and more importantly, he changed the way I looked at the process.

He started pointing out all the little things I was overlooking—the mechanics, the fit, the aesthetics, and the details that can make the difference between a knife that works and one that feels right.

That sent me down a different path. These days, a lot of my time is spent chasing those small details and trying to refine every part of a knife. I’m still learning, and I’m still finding things I want to do better. That pursuit of refinement has become one of the things I enjoy most about making knives.

For stainless blades, I really like working with CPM-154. For high-carbon steel, I use A2, and I especially enjoy working with Damasteel for Damascus blades.

Bone, stag, and mammoth are materials I come back to often because they fit the aesthetic I’ve developed over the years. I like materials with character, and I like making a knife where the materials, mechanics, and overall design work together.

I never really intended for knife making to turn into what it has become. It started with a kid, an old rasp, an angle grinder, and a fire in the backyard.

Somehow, it turned into something I’ve spent more than a decade learning, obsessing over, and trying to get better at.

Maybe it’s gotten a little out of hand.

But I really do love knives, and I love making them.