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Show Notes
Kyle Royer is a highly respected American master smith, making knives from 14 years old after being encouraged by his mum. He is a skilled maker who believes in sharing what he knows, doing a lot of free content including YouTube and Instagram; he has recently released a very detailed course on the making of a Bowie knife. We talk about growing up in a home school family, being a knife maker, YouTuber, the Blade symposium and so much more. As a family run enterprise with his mum doing most of the Instagram amongst other things, and his brother doing the video work, they have a dynamic that most companies do not have. At the Blade Symposium, Kyle will be teaching several classes and a mosaic Damascus master class, and his brother Josh will be teaching social media for knife makers.
What we talk about.
- How long it takes to make knives and film it.
- How much it helps not having to do the film making.
- Homeschooling and Don Hanson and how they were possibly responsible for him being a knifemaker.
- His first knife was a file with a deer antler handle.
- He and his siblings were homeschooled.
- The way I try to let my children learn.
- Kyle Royer is 29 years old and been making since 14.
- How he got stated 1 or 2 a month.
- First grinder was a grizzly.
- He was lucky enough to have a lot of fabricating tools from his dad.
- Online mentors and mentors he met at shows.
- How mentors can critique and make you wanna do better.
- How you need to be able to hear people's criticisms to make you better.
- Over time you can take the critique and still be your own person and have a style.
- Who to listen to and who not to.
- The integrity behind how you make knives.
- How he feels he'd like people to talk about him behind his back.
- Hopes when someone purchases one of his knives; he hopes that they see part of him in it not just a nice knife.
- Why he goes further than the expectation of the customer.
- Over time you gain a larger vocabulary of skills and techniques to add to a knife.
- When a customer orders a knife from Kyle what can they expect the process to be like.
- Why he doesn't like making the same knife twice.
- Just sold his first knife to an Australian customer.
- He is excited about the blade symposium 2020 and the master class that he will be running on mosaic Damascus.
- What he will be covering in his master class and his hope that people will leave with.
- Documenting Damascus patterns for the sake of repeatability.
- His keynote at the symposium will be on mosaic damascus.
- One of his sessions on plunge grinding.
- To counter not being prepared he is overly prepared.
- How he sees social media and why he sees it's important.
- Blade forums were his avenue to getting his knives out to the work.
- The more content you show the more people see, so it snowballs.
- Instagram is quick updates to your life and process.
- YouTube is where you can put your full processes out to teach people.
- Kaleb started the YouTube process originally, but his brother Josh runs the channel now.
- Josh is an analytics kind of guy who knows how important it is to always be giving the people what they wanna see.
- Mom Patty Royer oversees Instagram and the business stuff.
- How they decide where they want to populate their social media feeds.
- How important it is to be doing native content to each platform.
- Why they keep trying new things on social media stuff.
- How computer learning algorithms are hard to chase.
- As well as their free content, they are doing online learning courses and have just finished a takedown bowie course.
- The Bowie course in a great quality 15-hour course. It took nearly 8 months to make.
- Why it was important to them to make their videos 'newer maker' friendly.
- Title and thumbnails of the videos are down to josh and how important it is.
- He feels the way he was raised was to do the best in whatever he does and that relates to the customer.
- The reason knives change and evolve as the process goes along.
- The balance between profitability and creativity.
- His creativity and integrity mean he loses money on some knives.
- How his whole family is in this together for the same paycheck.
- His family has all undertaken jobs that they knew very little about but if you start doing it you will learn.
- Even though his family has been doing this for about a year he has been full time for over 10 years.
- He was forging before he was knife making.
- Forging is one of his favorite parts of knifemaking.
- Great to have his dad as in inhouse builder for maintenance.
- He's beyond excited for his trip to Australia for the Blade Symposium.
- This is his first time in Australia.
- He only does a couple of shows per year; Blade Show and one in Little Rock Arkansas.
- Last year did a show in China.
- If he's lucky he'll have one or 2 knives on a table for the shows as they are sold.
- Shows for him are more about the people as opposed to the knives.
- He attributes the speed to which he learned to the eagerness of more experienced makers to help him.
- If you don't like making knives do something else.
- Try to stay out of being in a box because that's where creativity comes from.
- Why Stainless clad damascus is a life changer if you don't like hand sanding.
- Do what you love and try to eliminate the stuff you don't.
Maker Mention
Don Hanson
John White
Ron Newton
J Neilson
Jezz Heywood
Bruce Beamish
Sam Towns
Alex Norton
Company mentions
Kajavie is their online learning platform.
Eveleigh Works Sydney
Anyang Powerhammers
Oblivion Blades
Links
Kyles Website
Bowie course
https://www.learnknifemaking.com/
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/KyleRoyerKnives/
Find us at
https://www.instagram.com/tobyfireandsteel/
https://www.facebook.com/MurrillandSon/
Products and site
Email [email protected]
TFS Knifemaker Challenge Group