Swords.  That’s what started my journey at age 30.  Well, let me back up.  When my brother and I were kids, we found a box in the garage which contained four or five obviously home-made knives.  We asked our father about it and he told us that he’d made them when he was our age.  We were hooked!  Dad helped us make some Japanese styled katanas out of some cheap cold rolled 1” wide steel, some brass pipe we split and hammered into guards (tsuba), some maple from the trees up the hill behind the house, and some bicycle inter-tube for the wrapping (ito).  My brother and I loved those swords and often sparred with them.  One day we were sparring violently while Mom and Dad were out (now keep in mind we were old enough to be left alone, but not old enough to know better, obviously) and Jack landed a blow on my hand.  The swords weren’t sharp, thank God, but the force was enough to cause a serious wound on my middle finger of my right hand…down to the bone.  My brother told me later that I’d turned an interesting shade of green when I looked at my finger.  

Needless to say that was the end of our sparring, but what we did take up was knife making.  We convinced our parents to get us Christmas present/birthday present combination of a drill press, sander, and metal cutting band saw.  Eventually, Dad even built a shed and coal forge for us.  My brother took off like wildfire making knives.  I only dabbled and got easily discouraged when things didn’t work out.  We also bought swords when we had extra cash, mostly cheap stainless steel junk that would break under any real usage.  Eventually the urge to make knives/swords faded as we went off to college, I for a music degree, my brother for a journalism degree.  The only vestige of my former passion that remained was the doodles in my notebooks of swords and knives I’d like to make one day.

Fast forward to late 2002.  I’m married with a child on the way and an eclectic job history that includes substitute teacher, meat and seafood wholesaler/retailer, music teacher, jewelry salesman, insurance salesman, Ford salesman, and bus driver.  All that in only two and a half years since I’d graduated college.  I would quit a job whenever it got hard or boring.  When my wife got pregnant I decided that it was time to stop fooling around and get serious about a career.  I needed a job I couldn’t get out of if I didn’t like it.  Solution? Military service.  I joined the Air Force.  Since they weren’t accepting “non-technical” degrees for officer school, I had to enlist.  I ended up in a career field that used skills I’d developed (albeit only a little) back when I was making knives and swords: Aircraft Structural Maintenance, better known as Sheet Metal.  The work and tools were familiar, and for a while I was satisfied just using the tools of my youth to put aircraft back together again.  

In 2006, after three years stationed in Anchorage, Alaska, we had to move to Abilene, Texas.  We loved Alaska, and would jump at the chance to go back, but we were told to move.  Since moving to Texas, we’ve endured family tragedy, heat, scorpions, joys, and sorrows, yet it wasn’t until I attended a Wild at Heart seminar at Beltway Baptist Church and touched the swords that my childhood passions began to stir again.  Since that time I’ve started, and nearly completed, an MBA in Human Resources.  I’ve researched as much as I can about swords and knives.  I’ve learned that stainless steel is a poor choice for a sword blade, unless it’s just decoration.  Because of the unique metallurgy involved in the alloy, it actually makes a sword dangerous to use because it is easily broken unlike a carbon steel sword. 

I’m now close to separating from the Air Force and once I do, I’m going to get a regular job and set up a forge and make knives and swords.  I believe the Lord has directed me to use the proceeds of that business to help finance missionary/ministry organizations.  My passion for this has not abated as it has with so many other things in the past.  I see swords everywhere, the utility poles, the road looks gray like steel sometimes.  Whenever I see metal somewhere I wonder if it’d make a good sword.  I look at the railroad that rumbles through Abilene and think, “All I need for an anvil is a small hunk of that track, and I bet those springs on the box cars would make a good sword.  It is carbon spring steel after all.”  

Bottom line, Wild at Heart Ministries has helped me re-discover my dormant passion.  I wanted to say thank you for re-awakening my soul.