Growing up on a farm in northern Illinois, I hacksawed my first knife out of a ¼ inch thick plow colter in 1952. Naturally, the design was my 11-year-old idea of what James Bowie might have carried. After laboriously grinding an edge on an old foot-treadle grinding wheel, I got it as hot as a charcoal briquette fire would go and dropped it into a bucket of old tractor oil. Using a piece of an old barn board, I rasped the wood into shape for a handle before rip sawing it in half and wrapping the two halves together with baling wire. My first proud effort completed, I decided to see how far it would cut into a fence post, only to see several days of work shatter into three pieces. Going back to the Popular Science book that had provided me with the information about the basic steps, I found that I had neglected to temper the blade after heat-treating it. I tried again and found that putting the blade back in the charcoal fire for a few seconds after quenching it yielded a much more durable blade. I made several more knives during the next few years and even sold one to a friend for two whole dollars.

I was incredibly fortunate as an undergraduate to spend 5 years studying design under R. Buckminster Fuller. Southern Illinois University had a 5-year design program leading to a double major in visual design and product design. (Bob Loveless has indicated that he valued his design studies as a contribution to knife design, as do I.) I graduated in 1965, got a Master's in Education in 1975 and am close to completing my Doctorate. I spent a dozen years as head of training for General Electric, Aircraft Engines, where I got an incredible amount of technical knowledge in metallurgy and machining. I currently teach at the University of Texas at San Antonio.