What are you in real life? Does that help your knifemaking?

I told you before, I haven't had a mohawk in 20 years. And I sold all my gold chains to buy steel and tools. I will ignore the rest of your post since I'm in a forgiving mood today!

:D
 
I am a Project manager for a large Computer Networking Company. We handle the Deep South Texas Region. We Install networking equipment like fiber optic cabling, copper cabling, routers switches, firewalls call managers, wireless networks, etc........ I get to tell the smart guys where they go and configure all this stuff and manage large cabling installations. I get sick of technology sometimes and wish I would have studies Anthropology instead. I guess knifemaking lets me work with my hands and get dirty and is the opposite of my cubicle life.
 
I'm an oil and gas accountant for a major oil company. I actually find that it does help my knifemaking because I'm becoming more organized and more methodical. Attention to detail is a skill set that transfers as well.
 
I'm full-time knife maker/designer.
I started with pattern welding about 16 years ago and moved to more design/production-intensive projects (stuff requiring CAD, etc.) about 6 years ago.

Before that I was a journalist in the motorcycle industry and did about 6 years as semi-regular radio cohost on a motorcycle-related talk show in the L.A. market.

The journalist thing helped with the knifemaking in that I was eventually able to go 'freelance', which meant I was able to manage my own time. That meant more time studying steel! Eventually, I simply slipped over to full-time knifemaking, concentrating on historic pattern welding.
So really, the connection between the two occupations seems to be one of facilitation rather direct skill-set overlap.
 
Boeing 777 Captain for American Airlines, recently retired. Former Marine Corps aviator. No connection to making knives.....except maybe hand eye coordination.
 
I retired in 2008 and started to learn to make knives. Before that I was the Instructional Media Specialist at the Madison Area Technical College, Madison, Wisconsin, for 18 years. It was an administrative position and my department was responsible for all the instructional/Audio visual equipment the college used. Prior to that I did audio and TV production at another Wisconsin Technical college for ten years, and before that I did all sorts of audiovisual related services at yet another Wisconsin technical college.

One of the things that I learned along the way is that we have to learn to see (and hear, taste, feel, smell, etc). After shooting video and editing it for ten years, as well as teaching photography, I notice things like poor edits, lack of continuity in edits, video noise, and digital artifacts in pictures that other people just shake their heads and think I'm making it up.

This is why I can believe that with "enough" experience a person can learn to tell the temperature of hot steel. They have learned to sense the state of the steel in ways I could not understand, and probably neither do they.

Also, that for an artist to improve and grow (Knife artists too) it is ESSENTIAL that their work be displayed to the public. Anything that you make has a little bit you YOU in it. Art is a form of communication and good effective communication is two-way.

- Paul Meske
 
I'm a union Ironworker by day,makes me real good with an angle grinder and an 8# hammer....not so nice with finesse :eek: I have however developed an eye for color when pre heating my welds ;)
 
im a starving artist
it helps me find the cheap way to pay bills and not own anything of real worth
but im happy
 
Professional Tattoo Artist/Tattoo Machine Builder. I worked in a heat treating plant before that and a cnc operator before that. I think it helps because i was always using tools to make the tattoo machines, and the heat treating experience didn't hurt :P Also i have a pretty good idea about flow and design. Detail work is what i strive for.
 
I am a civil engineer. I own an engineering company in Salem oregon. We work all over the US and in several other countries. I was in the US Army for 10 years. So they ran out of wars and I quit. Having no other skills than jumping out of airplanes and calling artillery fire upon the heads of unsuspecting pilgrims I opted to go to the university. Five and a half years later I hobbled across the stage at the ripe old age of 35. I did a few nuclear plants. Did some work on the shuttle after Challenger. I worked at the Hanford site in Washington. They made all the bomb material there. Pretty cool work. Old, abandoned nuclear plants, supplied air, dark, dead bats and pigeons. Manhattan Project stuff that had to be disassembled and moved. I got REAL tired of the desert so I moved to Oregon and I get rained on every day. I ride a very fast motorcycle and I train Labrador Retrievers to be gentlemen. I have three sons in the military (all Army except one squid in the Seabees) and a smart ass daughter headed to ROTC and pre med this fall. Why would ANYBODY want to be an officer?
 
gnique said:
I am a civil engineer. I own an engineering company in Salem oregon. We work all over the US and in several other countries. I was in the US Army for 10 years. So they ran out of wars and I quit. Having no other skills than jumping out of airplanes and calling artillery fire upon the heads of unsuspecting pilgrims I opted to go to the university. Five and a half years later I hobbled across the stage at the ripe old age of 35. I did a few nuclear plants. Did some work on the shuttle after Challenger. I worked at the Hanford site in Washington. They made all the bomb material there. Pretty cool work. Old, abandoned nuclear plants, supplied air, dark, dead bats and pigeons. Manhattan Project stuff that had to be disassembled and moved. I got REAL tired of the desert so I moved to Oregon and I get rained on every day. I ride a very fast motorcycle and I train Labrador Retrievers to be gentlemen. I have three sons in the military (all Army except one squid in the Seabees) and a smart ass daughter headed to ROTC and pre med this fall. Why would ANYBODY want to be an officer?
Click to expand...



Sounds like an interesting life.
 
Im a bottling mechanic and our company throws out a ton of mostly stainless steel, sheet, bar, brass etc perfectly good motors, and loads of neat odds& ends etc.
even got a bunch of 0-1 once when they had us clean up the old machine shop stuff in a storage building out back. So yeah it helps ;)
 
The details of my life are quite inconsequential.... Very well, where do I begin?

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament... My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon... luge lessons... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking... I suggest you try it.

Sorry guys i could not resist :)

I grew up in northern Vermont, went to school and got a BSEE degree and then started a software consulting company. I have been an amateur woodworker for about 30 years and i spend as much time in the woods as my wife allows. Only the woodworking contributed to the skills needed for knife making.


OH yea, Happy birthday Rick Marchand !!
 
I'm an Electronics Tech that works for a Television Network up here in Canada. Dad was the machinist, he said that he didn't want me to follow in his footsteps. Wish he was still here, because I have questions.
Started knife making after buying a handmade knife off of a guy in Alaska. I looked at the knife and said, I can make one of these.

FB
 
One of my main jobs at Hyundai is process improvement/engineering..... I stand and watch people work, then I go figure out how to make their work more efficient, then I watch them work some more to make sure I'm right. I feel it helps make my work more efficient. In as much as this craft can be efficient.
 
i was an electrical engineer when i was in america. but metallurgy was always the first of my interests, i think i could do much better being a metallurgist.

now i am in china, helping my family run some coal and iron mine for more money. my father's friend runs one major steel supply company in northeast china. and a personal friend of mine is a metallurgy engineer who does the research and design on low alloy steel. these sources here really help me becoming a blade smith, though i had just started.

well, i really miss america.
 
Mechanical engineer for small manufacturing company that builds steerable axles for airport ground support equipment, i.e. the tugs that pull baggage carts up to planes for loading/unloading. Being a small company I wear many other hats besides design, which is good because I don't like doing the same thing day in day out. The owner of the company is a knife guy, and every year for Christmas he buys himself a bunch of knives. One year as we were looking at them, I decided, "I can make my own" and that's when I found BladeForums. I have lots of hands on experience in fabrication, which has helped my knife making, but you people at BladeForums have graciously allowed me to channel those skills to knives. This website is the epitome of how the WWW should be used.
 
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