"I live in central Minnesota and am a full time blacksmith, bladesmith and primitive/survival tool maker and enthusiast.  Ever since childhood, as long as I can remember, I have had some internal primal need to recreate and use primitive knowledge. I have been making primitive survival tools, along with many other things, for 30 years. I spent the first 21 years of my life surrounded by concrete, steel and brick in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At that point, I moved to central Minnesota to an area that had lots of woods to play in and time to practice my skills. The first thing I did when I got here was to brain tan and smoke some deer hides and made a pair of knee high, plains style, lace up the front, moccasins to run around with in the woods. Its really weird to look back and see how one thing has lead to another, where I am now, and where I would like to go." 

Although I have been making primitive and survival things for 30 years, I have only been making them to supplement our income for a few years, and have only been full time since the spring of 2006.   My wife and I are a team of two.  I do the metal and wood work, she does the online work.  Our biggest dream is for both of us to be able to do this full time with our three children surrounded by, living and breathing, natural skills.  Nothing makes me more proud then to watch my children identity plants in the yard or ask for yet another fire piston to play with."  

"I have no idea why I wanted to know all this, but now all the information and skills are coming together into something much bigger than I would have ever dreamed. This is still fun for me, and it gives me the ability to create new things and get better at what I'm doing everyday. When I make something, I always start off thinking "I'm going to keep this one.." But I don't keep anything I make because, before I'm finished, I'm already thinking of something different and better. It works well for everyone else because they know that they are getting the best of my ability each time that I make something."

"Now that need inside has grown to a stronger need to begin passing on the knowledge and skills. That is the only real useful reason for having the information, that it may be used somewhere along the way in the future, if not in my life, in my children's, or whomever may be in need or want of the information. But most of all, so that it may not be forgotten."