Becoming a Master Bladesmith w/ Zack Jonas

CRAFTED

Host Eli Brown interviews Zack Jonas, a master bladesmith and founder of Jonas Blade & Metalworks, about his unconventional path to craftsma

Key takeaways

• Zack Jonas transitioned from a background in philosophy to bladesmithing after attending a continuing education class in Boston.
• The American Bladesmith Society (ABS) maintains a highly exclusive group of only 117 Master Smiths.

Main topics

• Career transition from philosophy to metallurgy
• American Bladesmith Society certification levels

Notable quotes

A knife, at its most basic, is a tool that makes one thing into two.

Conclusion

The episode offers a deep dive into the discipline of bladesmithing, h

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Hello everyone, and welcome back to Crafted on the Blister Podcast Network. I'm your host, Eli Brown, and in this episode, I am finally veering off our well-worn food and beverage trail, at least a little more than usual. In doing so, I think it's important to begin with a question, namely, have you used a knife today? If the answer to that question is no, then I would feel pretty comfortable assuming that you will probably encounter one before your head hits the pillow this evening. A knife, at its most basic, is a tool that makes one thing into two and yet today's guest is one of less than 120 individuals who have earned the title of master bladesmith so there must be a little more to it than that zach jonas the founder of jonas blade and metalworks joins us today to talk all things cutlery from swords to kitchen knives to chinese style cleavers we also dive deep into the topic of damascus steel a craft which has always been fascinating to me but I couldn't even pretend to understand. Zach's knowledge and passion for his craft is absolutely oozing from his pores. So without further ado, here we go. Speaker 1 (1:10) Hello, everyone. I'm here today with Zach Jonas, the master bladesmith behind a really cool company called Jonas Blade that I happened to stumble across not that long ago. Where are you and how are you today? I am in Warner, Speaker 2 (1:27) New Hampshire, about an hour and a half north of Boston here on the East Coast. I'm Speaker 1 (1:30) in Speaker 2 (1:30) my workshop, which is a couple of hundred yards from my home, and I'm pretty good. I'm just coming off of a big show, so I'm getting my brain back into the studio. figuring out how to make knives again, but I'm good. Cool. Big show. What do you mean? So every year I participate exhibit at a show called the League of New Hampshire Craftsman's Annual Craftsman's Fair. We call it Sunapee for short because it happens right at the foot of Mount Sunapee, which is a ski mountain here in New Hampshire. And that's, it's an annual craft fair. It's the oldest annual craft fair in the country. This is its 93rd year and I've been doing it for 15 years. It's Speaker 1 (2:03) a Speaker 2 (2:03) nine day show. And it's just a great event. And so I just finished that at the, well, mid-month, mid-August, and then took some time off after that. And so now I'm getting back Speaker 1 (2:12) into the studio and trying to re-engage the brain. Right on, man. A nine-day show. That's like kind of a haul, man. That's intense. Speaker 2 (2:20) Yeah, it's funny. That was the Lee show, Xenope, again, was my first show that I had ever done. And it's the only show I did for... good several years when I kind of started out my career. So it was sort of set the baseline as normal. And I only found out that that was not normal when I was talking to a fellow bladesmith and I'm just kind of offhanded mentioned that it was a nine day show. And he was like, are you insane? Like, what's the matter with you? But it's, it's a hall. I'm lucky it's 20 minutes from my house. So like I could sleep in my own bed. I don't have to rent a hotel. I can, you know, just kind of chill. Um, but I am also very lucky in that I am truly an ambivert. I'm not only an introvert or an extrovert, I get energy in both ways. Most of the year I'm alone in my studio doing my thing. And that works great for me. And then for this, you know, a couple of short stints of the show, I get out and talk to people and that's recharging in another way. Speaker 1 (3:08) Well, in sort of perusing your background and learning a little bit about Jonas Blade. I was intrigued by the fact both the founder of this company, Jonathan, and I have like a little bit of a background in philosophy. He's got a much more extensive background than I do. But it looks like your background was in philosophy. And yet you're sitting in, I'm looking at like a bunch of workbenches with a bunch of tools, and I have no idea what any of those things do. So why don't you give us a little primer on the background, man? How did you get from a philosophy degree to master bladesmith? Speaker 2 (3:42) Yeah, that's a great question. And there's nothing linear about it. Well, about the answer. I went, so I don't know how far back to go. I've, I'll start as a kid. I've always been an inherently curious person. It's probably my single like defining characteristic. I want to know how things work and why is it this way or whatever. And that sort of found a match for me in art. And I'm doing some form of art one way or another. I started art lessons when I was about four years old and I did some form of instruction all the way through college. And after. And I have also always, always loved knives since, you know, long before I can articulate any kind of reason in any intelligible way. But there's just something that I've always found compelling about them. It is not for me about the fact that it's the Kent that a knife or a sword can be an implement of violence. That's like a fact, but it's not particularly interesting. I just like the object. And eventually I found my way into a continuing education class in Boston on, you know, introduction to knife making. This was after my college career. So since you asked about my education, I went to college planning to study marine biology. I was a little naive about that. I thought that it would be like swimming in the Caribbean with fish and like just kind of hanging out. That's not what marine biology is. But in fulfilling my core education requirements at college, I went to Connecticut College. here in New England, I found myself in a Philosophy 101 class with a wonderful professor named Derek Turner, who was the perfect mix of enthusiastic, cool, nerdy, and just kind of into it. And I really connected with the, I'm going to use a totally unphilosophical term, the thinkiness of it. I enjoy thinking. I enjoy digesting people's arguments and talking about them and debating and just kind of working through ideas. So I... Studied philosophy because I enjoyed it. And my goal in that study was not to absorb specifics of, okay, well, Immanuel Kant said X, Y, and Z and da, da, da, da. It was more, I want to learn, I want to test my ideas and test other people's ideas and figure out how to think rather than be instructed in what to think. So I ended up writing an honors thesis on free will and moral responsibility because that was an interesting topic for me. And then from college, from studying philosophy, one of the kind of main paths for people who study philosophy often is a career in the legal profession. I thought I wanted to be an attorney. So I got myself a paralegal position at a corporate law firm in Boston straight out of school and hated it like instantly. It wasn't going to be the right fit for me. So then I went and got a job. I was just kind of working, doing normal stuff. found my way into this continuing education class in knife making, and I just was completely smitten. I fell in love with it. So like Speaker 1 (6:31) I said, there's nothing strictly Speaker 2 (6:32) linear about the path, but that's how I ended up going from philosophy to knife making. Speaker 1 (6:36) Yeah. What do you think intrigued you so much about the, I guess that continuing education course? Like what was it the first sort of, you were like, this is awesome. This is so cool. I Speaker 2 (6:47) mean, the easiest answer to that is knives. Sure. Because knives are awesome. And I, did not approach the class with any kind of a deep background in like making stuff. Like I said, I'd always done art and done like ceramics and things like that, but I didn't know my way around power tools particularly or any of that kind of thing. So the challenge of like figuring out a whole new set of tools was fun for me because that kind of scratches the curiosity itch. The satisfaction of starting with, you know, raw materials that are basically nothing on their own and turning them into an object that is. appealing and useful. One of the very early experiences was that the teacher of that class became my mentor. His name is J.D. Smith. And J.D., on the very first day of class, I'll never forget it, kind of went around the room as a way of introducing ourselves and said, so like, why are you here? And I said something to the effect of what I've just said. Like, I've always loved knives. I've always been interested in them. I don't really care that they're weapons, da-da-da. And J.D. said, no, listen, for me, it actually really is about the fact that they're weapons because J.D.'s a black guy. And for him, you know, his own cultural heritage and thinking about the fact that the freedom to possess a weapon, which is guaranteed by our constitution, but the freedom to possess a weapon was like the sort of absolute baseline of freedom over your own body and to control yourself, your own destiny. So that was really important to him. And that, from my own personal experience, I don't relate to that. I understand how he does. But it... put me in a philosophical mindset in the class about like, there's actually ideas here and things to be mined. And I have enjoyed engaging with that aspect of knife making ever since. I alluded to the fact that like, it's not necessarily about the fact that a sword is a weapon, but there is some philosophy to be done there because a sword really is more than a knife. A sword really is only a weapon. A knife, you can cut your food, you can do surgery with it, you can kind of whatever you need to do. Like a knife is a tool and can be a weapon. A sword is a weapon. So another mentor of mine who I came in contact with later than that is Peter Johnson, who is a swordsmith out of Sweden. And Peter kind of introduced me to that idea that a sword is only a weapon. And you have to think about that as a maker of like, what does that represent? And what does it represent? Today, you know, in 2026, when there really isn't a place, even as a weapon, there really isn't a place for a sword in today's culture, not only because we're not really in combat, we're not in hand-to-hand combat. So like, is it an object of power? Is it a symbol that represents your convictions and the things you believe in? Because it does, you know, it is kind of that last line of defense, so to speak, in protecting your own convictions and beliefs. The whole philosophy of it really appealed to me along with the physical and the manual aspect of it, the satisfaction of making a thing and dealing with cool tools and fire and sparks and all that kind of stuff. There's definitely a romance to it too. Speaker 1 (9:39) You go to a continuing education course, obviously plenty of people go to continuing education courses and don't end up doing whatever it was that they did in that course as their career. So like, how do we get from that point to where you currently are? Speaker 2 (9:54) Yeah. Another great question. And also a very valid observation. I would say that of the, I don't know, 100 people that I interacted with during the span of time that I took that class, because I took it back to back eight times over a few years, people came and went, most of them were taking it. And I don't mean this in any demeaning way, but most of them were taking the class as a make and take is a kind of a term. This is like you show up, you do something cool, you make a knife. And that was a fun experience. And that's all there is to it. Um, that's enriching and valid and nothing wrong with that. But yeah, like you said, almost nobody in those classes was going to like become a knife maker. Right. That being said, a few of us actually have, I still have some very good friends who I met through JD around mass art at that time. And the class was off Massachusetts college of art and design called mass art. Um, who did become knife makers, but back to your question. Um, I mentioned my curiosity and. Because the class was mostly geared toward that make and take aspect, JD wasn't offering instruction to teach someone how to become a knife maker. He was instructing people how to make a knife, which are two different things. I was interested very early on in taking it farther. So the first kind of inclination I had towards, okay, this is going to be a thing for me was I went and I did a kind of a deep dive. And this is. this is back in like 2006, so kind of the early days of Google and the internet is hitting its stride and all that sort of thing. I went, okay, well, JD told me to do this and then told me to do this. What's actually happening there? So I went in, I actually ended up building a document that I turned into kind of a glossary of practical metallurgy for knife makers. Because if JD said, okay, now first what you need to do is heat this to 1475 degrees and then you need to quench it in oil and that's going to cool it down and make it hard. I'm like, okay, I can understand that in a practical sense, but why does that make it hard? What's happening there? So I went and dug into that and produced this document purely for my own edification so that I could understand it. And I brought it in to show it to JD. Question. I was like, hey, you know, am I on the right track? Have I understood this stuff correctly? And he read the document and he was like, this is great. Can I use this as part of my instruction? So he. He recognized in me early on that there was a real hunger for knowledge. I wanted a deeper understanding. And I recognized early on that this was something I really wanted to kind of push. I didn't really think that it could necessarily be a career for me, but I knew I wanted to push it farther. Then I was working in a normal job in Boston in financial services, nothing very interesting. And that was around 2008 when the economy kind of hit the skids and a bunch of people at the company, including myself, got laid off. And I used my severance to go back to school. I went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for a post-baccalaureate program, which was a one-year program, which I was doing essentially as a test to see if I wanted to go back to school for real and do a master's, an MFA. In that experience, I discovered that I really enjoyed making knives because I was kind of really hitting my stride with that at the same time. And that I really did not enjoy at least that version of art academia. It was very... Very academic. It was too conceptual and not enough substance for me at the time. It was a great positive experience and a totally valid outcome of it was, no, that's not what I want to do. And it was at that time that I figured out that I wanted to pursue knife making as a career, or I should say to try to pursue knife making as a career, because like the math of it doesn't necessarily make sense for a good long while. And it's a struggle and most people don't make it. So I kind of figured out a hypothesis and then. started and have been working my way somewhat blindly Speaker 1 (13:32) forward ever since. Okay. Obviously, you've since received quite a bit of education on the knife making side from, there's a couple of different certification entities that it looks like you've been involved with. And now the title of Master Bladesmith, were you immediately working towards like... achieving that, I guess, title and certification? Or did you spend some time just like making knives before you kind of went back and started working on that path? Speaker 2 (13:59) Yeah. The certification, so the most relevant certification is first journeyman and then master bladesmith offered to the American Bladesmith Society, the ABS. JD was an ABS, is an ABS mastersmith. And so that was kind of, And when I started my first class, I'd never heard of the ABS, didn't know what Master Smith was or anything. And I had no idea. I remember, you know, that story I just told you about JD saying that the fact that it's a weapon is important. I didn't know that I was sitting in the room with one of the best bladesmiths in the world. I was just excited to be there taking a cool class. But yeah, so once I found out like, oh, he's an ABS Master Smith, what's that about? And then once I figured out that I was going to be, you know, pretty interested and serious about this craft, that did become a conscious goal kind of right away. But there's also... It's, it's a, you know, it's, it's the top certification in the world for a reason. It's hard to do it. And most people, there are a couple of exceptions, but most people take a while to get to it. And most people don't get to it. People try and fail and people never try. And I'm not trying to, you know, boost my own ego here or anything like that. But like, it's not something that you can just go like, oh, I want to be a master Smith. And then you just follow a set of sort of quantitative steps. And all of a sudden you're a master Smith. Like you got to take the time and. build the skill set. And, you know, that took me, let's see, I started in 2006. I got my Master Smith in 2019. So 13 years to get that. Speaker 1 (15:21) Wow. What makes a journeyman Smith? Like what are the qualifications that actually get you that title? Speaker 2 (15:28) So first I'm Speaker 1 (15:29) going Speaker 2 (15:29) to answer a question you didn't ask, which is the term journeyman Smith. A lot of people don't know. First of all, I've never heard that term, but the term journeyman Smith came from, you know, way back in the day when a craftsman would apprentice under a master. And get good enough that the master then would say, okay, you can go and like practice your craft and you can come back and rely on me if you need to. But like you can go journey around and work on stuff. Oh, interesting. That's where journeyman comes from because it was someone who would journey around and do the thing. The test for journeyman in through the ABS, there are actually two tests. The first. is by far the easiest, and it's not that easy, is a performance test. So a test that demonstrates that you can make a knife that will do the things a knife needs to be able to do to a very high standard. Not a test of artistic ability or fit and finish or any of that. It's just, can you make a knife that will work? That test is four tasks. The knife has to be no longer the blade, no longer than 10 inches long, no wider than two inches. And you have to cut through a one inch hemp rope, free hanging, no tension on it. You have to cut that rope with one stroke, which demonstrates that your blade is nice and sharp and keen. Then you have to hack your way through a pine two by four twice without resharpening or anything like that. You just got to work your way through it and there's no time limit. You can take two hours to do it, but you have to hack your way through that two by four twice. And then without touching up the edge at all, demonstrate that it's still sharp enough to shave with. Literally, if there is any damage to the edge, either visible or, you know, through the shaving test, if there's any damage to the edge, you fail the test on the spot. And that includes a slight dull spot or chip or rolled edge or anything like that. That demonstrates, the first test demonstrates that it's sharp. The second test demonstrates that it's tough, you know, that it's robust and can hold up under that. And then the last test is to clamp the blade in a vice and bend it to 90 degrees. Not a corner necessarily, but an overall arc of 90 degrees without breaking it. And that demonstrates that your blade is flexible. And in order to do that test, you really need to know at least in a practical sense, the metallurgy of how to work with your steel. Because if you don't, it's going to fail on one of those parameters. And those tests demonstrate parameters that are sort of in conflict with one another. So for example, the rope test, the cutting test, you can make a knife that's crazy screaming hard steel, make it wicked sharp, and it'll cut through that rope no problem. But it'll also snap if you try it and flex it and vice versa. So you really need to know how to balance the properties that you're going for. Once you've done