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 [email protected]

TFS Knifemaker Challenge Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/711126822742169/