Journal

Production in a Small Shop

Production in a Small Shop

Join or Die Knives is four businesses in one. I started selling my handmade knives in 2014 and a few years later started offering basic knife making classes. As the shop grew I founded the Hardway Workshop which is a membership community knife shop and now I have added small scale batch production. 
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Reproductions

Reproductions

I am sometimes asked to make reproductions of knives and swords. It's not very often but when it happens it is always an interesting challenge. Every project incorporates at least...
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Shad Fishing on the James

Shad Fishing on the James

Living in Richmond gives me the opportunity to work with some great people. The guys at Current Culture Fly Shop are a good example. They were interested in carrying our...
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Head Space

Head Space

  There is quite a bit of repetitive motion in the knife shop. Forging can be fun but grinding and hand sanding are the real time sinks in knife making....
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Entropy

Entropy

Chaos is clearly the natural state of my knife shop. There is a constant battle against clutter, dust, spills, and general disarray in the shop that I feel like I...
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Community

Community

Many knifemakers have a workspace where they can go be alone. It’s a refuge from the stressful elements of their life where they can put on music or a podcast...
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Competition

Competition

As I sit in my tiny cubicle trailer on the Forged in Fire set between Doug Marcida's "Keel" test with the other contestant I can't help but think back on...
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Opportunity Cost

Opportunity Cost

We have a saying around the shop that goes like this: “Knife makers don’t make mistakes, just shorter knives.” But we do make mistakes, a lot of them all the time. Knowing how to fix mistakes or unexpected problems is essentially what it means to be good in any field of pursuit.
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