I am married to my wonderful wife Lindsey of 10 years and we have 3 amazing boys together. I was a flight instructor from 2013-2021 with 2 years spent teaching in OR and 6 years spent teaching in WA. Little did I know back when we lived in Hillsboro, I worked right around the block from Murray’s Hillsboro shop and never knew it. Taylor and I have been great friends for many years and I learned about Murray in 2017 from Taylor’s father. He introduced us to a YouTube video of Murray demonstrating sharpness and I was very intrigued. I met Murray in 2018, who is also a pilot, and we connected over aviation and eventually I arranged to take a bladesmithing class. Through this experience I fell in love, not only with the art and expression of bladesmithing, but more specifically the art and expression of traditional Japanese bladesmithing.
After my time with Murray, I started working toward being able to make knives on my own. This led me to the decision that I would keep flight instructing and make knives as a hobby with the hopes that it could lead into a full-time profession. I spent a year or so getting a shop set up in my garage and was even able to get my hands on an old, very rusty, home built 1950’s power hammer that I was able to restore. I spent several months restoring it to working condition and still have it in my garage to this day. I had my garage completely set up to do my own blade smithing when my wife and I learned that Murray was opening a second shop in Council, ID. We met with Murray and I was offered an apprenticeship at Carter Cutlery in August of 2021. I have been blade smithing at Carter Cutlery since September 2021.
