About this episode
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 https://kyleroyerknives.com/ 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 www.tobyfireandsteel.com Email toby@tobyfireandsteel.com TFS Knifemaker Challenge Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/711126822742169/