When my story #1 left off, I was just beginning to understand how bladesmithing needed to be a part of my life. However, I was living at home...and didn't want to be that guy living at my parent's house forever. So what did I do? I got a damn job of course! Actually I got two of them. I began serving tables at the SLO Country Club and serving/bartending at Eureka (an excellent burger/craft beer/whiskey joint) in downtown SLO. Awesome, now I had money, a decent amount of it, but not that much time for bladesmithing!
How did I remedy this situation? Well, easy, I decided I was going to become a teacher! *Side note: I had originally planned to teach history, but changed majors freshman year at SDSU. Anyway, I got back on the horse and earned my teaching credential from Cal Poly. Here was my thinking: "My dad's a teacher, he had plenty of time to teach and coach and be a great dad, AND he had time for fishing! OH, and a teacher's day is done at 2:30 and they have weekends and holidays off! (Summer babayyyyy!)"
So...that was my thinking...that I would become a teacher because it would allow me more time for bladesmithing. Yeah. Freakin'. Right. Anybody who knows anything at all about teaching knows that it is a yearlong job. Days done at 3? HA! Not for any teacher who is excellent at what they do! Aside from the fact that teaching is very time consuming, and hard. I truly love it. What I like best is entertaining my students through learning. Having them learn through hands-on activities and giving them the power to drive the learning while I facilitate. Teaching has been excellent and I feel like I am just now finding the right balance between teaching and bladesmithing.
While all this was happening I met my soulmate, Sara. We met, we were friends, we fell in
love we had a baby, we got married...not necessarily in that order...wait, actually it was exactly in that order! So for the past 2 and a half years I've been a dad and it's been awesome! My daughter Everette is the perfect combination of Sara and me. Silly, cute, stubborn, helpful, smart and hangry, but most of all she is the sweetest little girl there ever was.
Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled, "monologue of a bladesmith." I was given a Chef's knife blank by Bob Brandl while I was in North Carolina. He is an excellent smith and an even better person. Super kind and helpful to aspiring bladesmiths. He also forges one hell of a chef's knife! After finishing the knife in my own shop, I loved the idea of making something that another person would use almost daily. The more I thought about it the more I was intrigued by the idea of making a tool that someone else would use to bring joy both to their own life and the lives of those around them. Cooking has always been central to the human experience. Good food makes people happy! It is known. If you have the perfect cooking tool, it will make you want to cook delicious meals, just so you can use it. Right?
So, me? I'm in the business of making people happy. That's why my favorite knives to make are kitchen knives. That's all for now, my next post will tell the until now untold story of my experience competing on Forged in Fire!