“Life’s a forge! Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You’ll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you’ll scarce know what’s happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal’s worthless till it’s shaped and tempered! More labor than luck. Face the pounding, don’t fear the proving, and you’ll stand well against any hammer and anvil.”

— Lloyd Alexander (American Author, Army Veteran)

“Vulnerable.” If there was one way to describe Lucas O’Hara it would be just that. The 6’6” towering behemoth might look like a lumbering savage but the man creates true works of an ancient artistry at his forge in Salt Lake City, blades that disappear off the market as soon as they hit his website. Maybe it was his time as a sniper in the United States Army or maybe it was his time in the Continental Color Guard, or possibly a bit of both. His unique touch has become his staple, a beautiful mixture of strength and serenity through the median of metal and wood. As impressive as he is as an artist, the human being is so much more than that. No matter who you are around Lucas, you’ll find yourself a subject of his vulnerable affection and that’s something to be admired nowadays.

The fact of the matter is, Black Rifle Coffee Company doesn’t accept any slouches into their business model; so when a company is adopted as a cohort of theirs’ you know there is something special about that group. O’Hara’s ability to sift through a seemingly inundated market and create his own distinctive stamp has allowed him to amass a cult following, only further solidified by his BRCC backers. He is a true student of the craft, ascribing his own eminence at the forge to other artists who’ve been in the game much longer. His humility is refreshing and his ability to lift others up in the same market, makes him a wonderful advocate for personal growth through art. Still, his coronation as a part of the master class of blade smith wasn’t wrought on an easily-tread path. He’s passed through the fires of life himself, facing trials and tribulations on all sides. Before we turn it over to Mr. O’Hara we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our friends at Eberlestock who were kind enough to sponsor this project. Let’s let Lucas take it from here.

How did this all get started?

LO: So the relationship with Black Rifle… I knew of everybody, especially Mat (Best). Mat was the first person that I started following because I was in battalion (Ranger) for a very short amount of time. When Mat started doing videos, it spread very quickly through the military. Like, “There's this dude making fun of everybody. It's freaking hilarious.” His rap battles and all that… so I started following Matt and I was like, “Oh my god, this guy is hilarious,” because nobody was making fun of us at the time. It's something that we do all the time when we are in and it was really cool to see someone highlight that, the veteran humor and how we really are. Then at the end of one of his videos, there was this little bitty short guy who's like, “Hi, I make coffee. I'm gonna sell coffee,” and they did the very first intro to Black Rifle Coffee. I saw that and I was like, “Oh, holy shit. This is so rad.” I also love coffee. I think it was the second batch they ever roasted out of their garage, I bought one of the bags from Mat. I was like, “Oh my god, these dudes are so sick.’ Then they started a podcast called “Drinkin' Bros.” Well, when Drinkin' Bros started it was Evan, Mat, and Rocco. I don't even think Ross was on for the first ones, I can't remember. But they started this community called Drinkin' Bros and it was about supporting each other and at the time there wasn't much of that. There weren’t a lot of veterans building a community where we could all come together and have each other’s back.

So Drinkin' Bros started and I was blown away by it and I was just getting out of the military when that started. Plugging into that community via social media was super easy. You felt like you were back in the military, being able to laugh, and joke, about the things they talked about. It was just like eavesdropping on a conversation between friends. Fast forward, I got in a really rough spot with somebody I was bodyguarding for at the time. I lost a lot of money and was at a really, really, really dark place in my life. Didn't know where to turn to. I felt like I was drowning. Everything happened all at once. I shot all four of them a message on Facebook and was like, “Hi, my name is Lucas O'Hara, you don't know who I am. I don't even know why I'm sending this. But I'm in a really bad place.” I literally didn't know why I was messaging them. I just felt like I needed to. Within like 15 minutes, Jarred Taylor replied back and was like, “What's your phone number?” I shot him my number and he called me right away. He asked, “Where are you located?” I said, “I'm in Atlanta, Georgia.” He goes, “Okay, hold on,” and hung up. I was like, “What the fuck?”

First off, Jarred Taylor just called me. This is wild. I know these guys are super busy. They have a brand new coffee company, Art 15 (Article 15), their liquor, and all this stuff. He made time instantly. These guys kind of practice what they preach. Then he called me right back and he says, “Hey, I've got a job interview for you at our t-shirt facility that's right down the road from you. Terminus… that's where we do all our t-shirts for Art 15. Go do an interview and we got you a job. It doesn’t pay a lot, but it's like $15 an hour.” And I was like, “Holy shit…” I went in, got the job. Then luckily, a few weeks later, I got picked up contracting so I didn't work there very long. But the fact that they practiced what they preached meant more to me than I think they'll ever know. The fact that they took their time, not even so much that they gave me that job and hooked that interview up. But just letting me know I wasn't alone because I felt pretty alone at that time. I had friends but nobody really understood me or what I had just come out of.

Who is Lucas O’Hara?

LO: I'm one of six children, I was raised incredibly religiously, and I was homeschooled my entire life. Faith was a very powerful part of my family. I still have a strong amount of faith, but it was used in my home in a scary way. Everything I did, was going to send me to burn in hell. I couldn't listen to any music that had more than a piano or organ in it. To the point where the first thing I ever stole was a DC Talk CD, which is like a Christian rock/rap group. It was called “Jesus Freak.” Literally, that's the name of the album but I had to hide that because they rapped. I was raised very confusedly. My mom has some mental issues and one day, one thing would be okay, like, “Hey, here's all your Star Wars toys.” Then the next day, they're in the garbage disposal getting shredded because I'm going to burn in hell for them. Then she buys them for me again in six months because it's not that serious. So it was really hard knowing what was right and what was wrong, especially when it came to women, cussing, and anything like that. It was all bad or all good all the time. In 2001, my father was killed by a drunk driver five minutes from my house. He was an amazing father. He didn't watch sports, he didn't do anything besides take care of us. And when the guys at work asked him, “Why don't you watch the game?”

He always said his kids were his sport. So we were outdoors a lot. We camped all the time. He was a construction worker and we lived poorly. Not poor in the sense of we never had food on the table but I didn't have my own bedroom until I picked up rank in the military. So I shared a room with all my brothers, my three sisters had a room, trundle beds, and bunk beds. My dad literally built my brother's loft in our room. Very close quarters, very old school. We worked for everything we ever had. All I ever had was hand-me-downs. If I wanted it myself, I had to work for it. To be honest, now I love how I was raised because it taught me to appreciate things a lot more. Being a father now, I have a hard time spoiling my children because they have way more than I ever had already. So it’s hard trying to find that fine balance between the two.

For me, it was an interesting way to grow up especially mentally. I wasn't very well socialized and all I ever wanted to do was to go to public school because I needed that structure. Especially once my father passed away, my mom struggled a lot and she kind of gave up on homeschooling but we still were at home. In about seventh grade, I kind of stopped learning because she would give me my schoolwork for the day and the answer books were right next to it. I would do all my school for the week on Monday and then I didn't do anything else the rest of the week except fuck off essentially.

Do you think a lot of that trouble and trauma started when you're when your father died?

LO: Oh, 100%. My dad was the one that really kept my mom together. There was a lot that was kept from me and my siblings when we were young that now, being an adult, I can look back and see it wasn't all roses like I thought it was. And it's hard for me too, because I never got that adult relationship with my father. I have all these amazing memories of like a perfect father but being older, I wonder how much of the bad was hidden from us. One thing I'll give my parents is that they never fought in front of us. We were spanked growing up, but it was never out of anger. My mom slapped me one time when I was 16. And then the year my dad passed away, we were in the living room and I said something to one of my siblings, and he stepped towards me,

I lifted my hands up in clenched fists to my dad, who was a 6' 6" construction worker and he launched me across the living room and very quickly reminded me that I was a skinny, scrawny little child. Those are the only two times that that ever happened. So I didn't have a bad childhood but it was just different. They never spanked us out of anger. There were parts of our childhood they handled really well but once he passed away my mom just kind of lost herself and gave up, especially on me. I just didn't have any of that structure that I needed and I need structure.

What was that like going forward and kind of what brought you into the Army and the decision to join?

LO: My choice to join the Army started with a lot of fighting with my mom. Junior year, all I wanted to do was finish out high school and we had a lot of fights about that. I knew I wasn't getting an education at home, all my friends were in public school and I really wanted to have that. Luckily, we were members of a really awesome church so I still got the mentorship because I got really involved with mission trips. I wasn't so big into going to the Sunday morning service. I wanted to do the outreach side of things. So, I flooded my life with traveling and mission trips because I at least felt like I was doing something positive. I've always wanted to help people. I've been that way my entire life and I never had a platform or way of doing that. I started looking at becoming a sheriff or a detention officer when I was 17 years old. I found out I could start a program at 17 then I could get hired at 18. So, that was the goal.

I was going to get into law enforcement but then I found out I couldn't carry a gun or do any real work until I was 21. And I was like, “Okay, well, that sucks. I don't want to just work in like a jail and open a door.” Then I went to a recruiter at 17 and was like, “This is what I want to do. I'm going to join the Army.” My mom signed the paperwork and then a week before I shipped I got mono and it almost killed me. That put me down for about six months. Right after my 18th birthday is when I kind of beat it and then went into the Army, finally. I went in at 6' 6" and about 145 pounds… like beyond a rail. And I was like, “Alright, this is what I'm going to do now.” I wasn't getting anything at home. I was fed up with being told I was going to burn in hell for literally everything I did and I wanted to find myself. I knew I wasn't going to do that at home so I joined the Army.

Do you think joining the Army helped you a lot on your path to becoming who you are now?

LO: It was really hard because I was so sheltered and I knew I wasn't like everybody else. I tried really hard to fit in and that backfired 90% of the time. Now, where I'm at in life, I can see when someone's trying really hard a mile away and I knew everybody did that with me. Basic (training) was hard because I was on a weight-gaining program. I had to gain 20 pounds before I was allowed to graduate because I was so underweight for my height. My whole family is a bunch of bean poles. I'll never forget my recruiter telling me, “Hey, lay low. I know you're really tall but if you can get through when no one knows your name, you did a great job.” Within the first week, everybody knew who I was because I was front-loaded on chow. I ate doughnuts. Everything you're not supposed to eat in basic was getting force-fed to me—fried chicken, cheeseburgers, ice cream, the whole nine yards. So I would go in early, and eat while everyone else was getting screamed at and fucked with, then I would join the formation after the last person ate.

I had 15-20 minutes to eat, then we would all get smoked after and I was throwing up all my food… which goes completely against what they were trying to do. So, then I didn't get smoked for about an hour, an hour and a half after. Now I'm sitting in a little lawn chair that I had to carry with me while everybody else was getting smoked. It wasn't much fun. But I was a really good runner and I was a really good ruck marcher so that helped a little bit, especially on the running and the rucking. I wasn't the best at a lot of things in the military but I was good at fucking rucking. I could ruck all day long. So that kind of helped me a little bit, but it was really rough and I got picked on a lot. Now looking back, I'm glad because it made me who I am and now I don't really care. A lot of people say, “Oh, I don't give a shit,” but really, everyone does. I'm blessed to where it doesn't affect me as much as a lot of people just because I got it all growing up, and it made me pretty thick-skinned, which is what saved me when I got to my unit because I'd already got it so much in basic.

Where did you go from there?

LO: I had a RIP (Ranger Indoc Program) contract, so from there, I did Airborne/Airborne RIP training. And I had some issues there. Long story short, I didn't snitch on some people that got in trouble and they pushed me out pretty fast. Looking back now, I would have done things a little differently but then again, it wouldn't have gotten me to where I am. I know that's such a cliche, but it's a fact. Right after that, I got lucky one of the instructors was a really awesome dude. He took a liking to me, he was another tall guy, and he was like, “Hey, you got orders to Fort Polk. That place sucks. Because you're so tall, you should check out Washington D.C. I can get your orders to D.C. and then you can try again for RIP.” I was like, “Okay.” I didn't even really know what Ranger Battalion was at the time. I just knew I wanted to be a sniper. That's all I've ever wanted to do. I love shooting and I've looked up to Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon since I was a kid. So that was what I wanted to do. I got sent to D.C. and I did a little over two years with the Presidential Honor Guard, where the first year I was in a Presidential Marching Platoon and did 526 funerals in Arlington National Cemetery, for about 13 months. Then I tried out for CCG, which is the Continental Color Guard. Failed my first set of tryouts. I tried out again and then the rest of my time was in the Continental Color Guard. That was my D.C. stint.

Was that pretty cool? Did you enjoy doing that? That's a lot of attention to detail man, which probably led to your career as a sniper.

LO: There's a lot of attention to detail. I have a lot of mixed emotions about it. I saw a lot of guys go to D.C. to try to hide. But then I saw a lot of guys take a lot of pride in that job. I'll never forget my first active-duty funeral in Section 66 in Arlington. That's when it really hit what we were doing. It's the last time that family, for the most part, is going to have anything to do with the military. When I was in basic, I did one of those little funerals and they make privates go do those funerals. I felt dirty doing it because they literally taught us the customs an hour before. It's just this little bitty cemetery at Fort Benning, you run out, and do a 21-gun salute, which sounded horrible. We didn't know how to fold a flag. I felt dirty doing that one (laughs). Then when I got to D.C., I was like, “Oh, okay, this makes sense. This how it's supposed to be done, especially for active duty funerals.” There's a long waitlist for a lot of the funerals but the active-duty ones go straight in. So, half the funerals you're doing aren't active.

They are gentlemen who passed away sometime years before and they're finally getting buried in their final resting place. That first active funeral was a lot and once I did that, it changed my whole mentality on everything. I took a lot of pride in it. It was a really, really cool unit and I got to do a lot of cool things, especially when I made it to CCG. I got to go to the 65th anniversary of Normandy. I got to do the Forge funeral, the inauguration, and every home game for the Ravens, Nationals, Capitals, and the Daytona 500. Anywhere you see the colors, that's my platoon that did all that. I really enjoyed it and got to do a lot of cool things. I learned a lot of history doing that and I had a lot more pride going into my next unit because of D.C.

That's huge. What was the decision from there? What got you into wanting to be a sniper?

LO: When my reenlistment came up, I said, “Where is the first unit deploying? I don't care where it is, I have to deploy because I got a really bad taste in my mouth because of the Old Guard.” There were a lot of guys there—E-6, E-7, E-8—that never deployed. They were Old Guard babies and they just hid. I did not want to get out of the military being that person. Once that happened, I asked, “Who's deploying first?” I remember they were like, “This unit is a mechanized unit, 3rd ID.” I was like, “Done… where is it?” And they responded with, “Benning.” I was like, “Oh, I get to go back to Georgia. Well, I'll go there and then I can go somewhere else after that.” So, I reenlisted for 3rd ID, got to 3rd ID, and then deployed three weeks later. On that deployment, I became really good friends with a lot of the snipers that were in the sniper section. Their CHUs (Containerized Housing Units) were a few down from us. That was Iraq. I never made it to Afghanistan. I did Iraq three times but never made it to the mountains. Even contracting I tried to jump on those deployments and I still got sent to Iraq or Africa. I never got to experience Afghanistan. I mean, I'm not complaining about it. It's one of those things that would have been cool to check the box off, but I have no regrets. Not even one letter. I'm good. So I went to Iraq and became good friends with a lot of the snipers. Then they pulled me over on that deployment into section and then when I came back, went straight to school and then went to the schoolhouse. How does a guy make a decision like that?

The funny thing is everyone always talks shit, especially about stalks in sniper school because stalks is what get people kicked out the most. I'm what's called a Bravo 8, instead of a Bravo 4… I went through it twice. So I went through sniper school and failed target detection in week two, which broke my heart. I was so upset because I messed up one of my grids. I found all the objects but I was just a grid number off. I failed that and then the instructors were super amazing. They were like, “Well, you can stay and then just walk on to the next class,” because I was stationed on Benning. I did 10 straight weeks. That class graduated on a Friday and then I picked right back up. I can't remember, I want to say Sunday, but I might be off. It was a two day flip flop, where I just stayed in the schoolhouse, in my bunk, and then picked back up. I did all events minus graded events. I did stalk lanes, I did nine sets of stalk lanes, and never got caught once, which makes sense because I love stalking. That was my favorite—camo stalking and playing in the woods. That was what I knew I was going to really love and enjoy.

A lot of guys rush and try to move really quickly. I don't mind going slow and I'm really good at stacking trees. At Benning, there are so many pines, if you understand how to tree stack you will most likely make it. In my final shot for my test, was standing a little over 300 meters back and I was completely standing up on a tripod. I didn't even have my Ghillie top on. I just had, probably, an eight-tree stack to where when they tried to walk the walker in on me and they lost the walker. I was just lucky and I understood the terrain. To be honest, I got a lot of practice because when I got to do stalks the first time I had already failed. So, it took away a lot of that pressure that a lot of other guys have and I got to practice different techniques. I was lucky enough that I never got caught. I got rid of those butterflies and the sniper section that I was a part of, and we did a big workup leading up to it. And it's the exact same training because we were at Benning. So I was very blessed. The guys coming from Germany or Hawaii, didn't really know what they were getting into and I had a lot more understanding leading into it. I finally graduated after five weeks.

Did you enjoy your time as a sniper?

LO: Every second. I really enjoyed it. I loved the shooting. I loved the math. I loved the stalking. Things that I have to focus on really hard I do really well with because it quiets everything else in my mind. That's literally how I got into blacksmithing. My first time doing this, everything else got quiet. My head is very jumbled and there's a lot going on in it. When I find something that makes it go quiet, I pay super close attention. Shooting was that way, archery is that way for me now. I started archery not long ago and a lot of people were like, “How are you so good at this already?” I'm very blessed to have amazing instructors. We've got the Isaacs here at BRCC and we have a full bow shop.

How long were you a sniper?

LO: I'm very blessed in that. But for me, again, back to being a sniper, it's all about steps. I watched John Dudley's videos on YouTube of how to be an archer and I followed them exactly. I have these guys to yell at me when my elbows are off or my hand placement is off. I do well at it because I'm only focused on one thing. Same with blacksmithing. Same with driving. Those are the only three things in my life right now that I love doing because I'm only focused on one thing in the process. Anything like that I do pretty well at.

You did a couple more deployments to Iraq?

LO: Yep, I was almost seven years active, and then I went to an LRS (long-range surveillance) unit in the National Guard in Georgia. I wanted to give that a try because I wasn't quite ready to get out. I also didn't like where the Army was going. I don't enjoy garrison very much. I did that in D.C. and it was turning into that like, “Alright guys, we have nothing to do, but we're still gonna stay here for another four hours.” There was a lack of common sense I don't do well with which is why I work by myself and why I had so many jobs when I got out. If it doesn't make sense, I don't want to do it and a lot of the military doesn't make sense.

So, I got out, did the LRS thing, and was blessed with a super high speed unit. The guys there, I think, every dude in my platoon was tabbed or scrolled. I was blown away and got more jumps in that unit than I did in my entire Army career. I think I did 32 jumps that year. I got to go to Africa and jumped into Africa. I got to do some really cool shit. But I was struggling with balancing civilian life and the military. I'm an “all in person” to a fault. I felt like I wasn't doing a good job balancing the two. So either I stayed active duty, or I got out and I chose to get out.

So you get out and your Army career is over. And obviously, there's that period of reintegration, that we all talk about transition is difficult for everyone in some way. It was especially difficult for you, right? What was that like?

LO: It was difficult transitioning. That's one of the reasons I did the Guard because I thought it would help a little bit and it did. I started working in bars doing security at that point, literally $50 a night to get in four or five fights. It sucked. But, I was very blessed to move up in that community very, very quickly. I got out of the shitty bars pretty fast and I got into bodyguarding. I went and tried out for a company called “Gavin de Becker and Associates.” I made it through that program and then found out I had to move to California. I had zero interest in living in California. They have a field office in Atlanta that I was hoping to get and I didn't get that.

So I got the training from them, which I appreciated, but I knew that wasn't the route I wanted to go. I also didn't like not getting to pick who I worked for. I wanted to work for people that would listen and take what I said very seriously because it's not about taking bullets for somebody or getting in firefights or doing anything crazy, like a lot of rapper's security does. It's getting your client out of there before there's ever even an issue. If your client doesn't listen to you, then you're going to get shot up, especially working in Atlanta and working for a lot of the clients I had. They had to listen because it was going to get ugly really quick, in a matter of minutes.

I was very lucky to have a close friend who was a very prominent bodyguard in Atlanta. He kind of took me under his wing and through him, I got some really awesome clients. I tried out for just about every security company there was and quit within a month of every single one. I think my first year and a half I had close to 32 jobs because I just hated everyone I worked with. They either drank on the job or didn't pay attention. Our supervisor would say, “Hey, we need this, this, and this…” and they didn't do any of those things. I was getting in trouble because of other people's mistakes and I just couldn't handle that. I was super frustrated because I'm also not a snitch. So I didn't want to be like, “It wasn't me! I did exactly what you said, this person did something completely different.” But, by then I was getting railed and my reputation was going downhill because of this person or that person. I got into freelance and started bodyguarding after that, which led me to get in trouble, so now we're back to Drinking Bros.

I had a client who essentially did the exact same thing Bernie Madoff did and was with him for close to six and a half months as his little personal bodyguard. About five days a week with him, traveling everywhere, the whole nine yards. I got picked up by him because he carried a lot of cash. He was a big partier. He was an older gentleman, but, to put it in perspective, we went to Vegas for four days and $2.5 million was spent in those four days. So he blew money pretty big, private jets, the whole nine yards. Yeah, but in Atlanta, people are like, “Wasn't that a red flag?” It's not… because Atlanta is a big flex city. It's all about how much money you throw around. People spending $40,000 a night in a club is not uncommon. You get used to it and I didn't think too much of it. I watched the guy work all day long. So I was like, “Oh, he's on the stock market.” I knew he was from Wall Street and all that. Then when we were in Nashville, Tennessee, we got surrounded by 45 Federal and local PD, a full call out, and the vehicle got surrounded. He got black bagged.

It was pretty terrifying. I didn't see it coming. I had no idea whatsoever. But, I found out he did the exact same thing Bernie Madoff did. Two weeks before we got arrested I gave him close to $75,000 of my own money to invest. Which, let's say $50,000, you put that into the hedge fund, and then you get a return of $2,500 on the first of every month for that money. I took a loan out for that. So my idea was, I get that and pay off that loan. Within two years, I'm making a profit of $2,500 a month. Do another one. So within five years, I'm making a little over five grand a month for not working. I did a lot of research. I watched plenty of people do it with way more money than that. I had my hands on the money and handed it over to him. I'll never forget, he put his hands on top of mine. He said, "I'm so proud of you.” And I said, “This is everything I have. I've never taken a risk like this in my life.”

I don't even gamble. If it's not guaranteed, I don't really fuck with it. He put his hands on top of mine and said, “I love you like a son and I'm so proud of you.” I was looking to create my own security company and then two weeks later, was held at gunpoint by the FBI in Nashville, Tennessee. Found out everything was a lie, his name, all of it, which hurt a lot. I had never dealt with a true sociopath before. I'm pretty good at reading people and I was blindsided like nobody's business because he called me his son. Even his age, all of it was a lie. So I am now stuck with losing that money. We had an up-armored Suburban, which was in my name, a $120,000 vehicle, and he made the payments on it. Now I'm stuck with that, all this debt, monthly payments on this loan that I didn't have. I didn't have that money and now I don't have a client anymore.

I was making $750 a day with him. I am good with my money so I paid off my car and paid off all my debt. I was debt free and had a good bit and savings so that's what floated me as I tried to figure out how I was going to keep up. I was debt free and now all of a sudden, I'm almost $200,000 in debt, including the vehicle. The vehicle was repoed. I'm burying myself, working three jobs a day, averaging two and a half to three hours of sleep trying to keep up. I just couldn't do it. So I got into contracting and then that's when I wrote the letter to JT and all those guys. They got me the job and then I left to contract right after that. I did the contracting and really loved that. It was great being back overseas but it was taking a toll on my relationship. I wasn't going to lose that for that.

We wanted children and everything so I gave up contracting and then we got pregnant. And I was like, “I don't want to do security anymore. Security is not working out. I have two or three really good clients, which I'm going to keep but I'm going to get out of the clubs. I'm going to get out of all this. I'm going to use my GI Bill and I'm going to go into school for welding.” So I went into school for welding and during that time, I found out about this school called “Goat n Hammer” in Atlanta, and they teach blacksmithing. They had this little railroad spike class for $120 and I was like, “I'll try that…” I love doing new things so I went and took that class and became obsessed. That was the start of my blacksmithing

What do you think about it was so enrapturing? What was it that drew your attention?

LO: I can't really explain it. It was that focus I think. It was that when I was behind the anvil, everything went away. It was taking something from nothing, as cliche as that sounds, and turning it into something beautiful. There was a lot that spoke to me—the heat, the danger, the high pace. I do not do well when things are calm. I thrive in chaos. I know a lot of people in our community say that but when you're used to a certain tempo and a certain speed when things are quiet, it's not good. For me, I get really anxious, and I used to have really bad panic attacks, because I needed something going on, to the point where I would create chaos. If things are going good with the wife, if everything's good, okay, I'm going to have a conversation that I shouldn't have in my DMs with someone because I need that. I gotta hide this, I gotta hide that. What can I do to create something in my life that makes me feel alive? I was doing it in all the wrong ways. Blacksmithing was the first thing for me that gave me that chaos but it had a purpose. That was really the change in my mentality. And me, for the first time ever, finding who I am as a person, and literally, the beginning of my growing up.

Was it that attention to detail that brought you into the detail of this because this is a very detailed line of work?

LO: One hundred percent in the sense of cleaning your rifle the exact same way, every time checking your gear, two, three, four times, getting that practice. You have to do a lot. If you took me out right now and said, “We're going to shoot at 1000, go.” I don't know if I'd be able to. I'd have to pull out all my notes, get my DOPE (data) book, and refresh because I haven't done that in a while. My brain doesn't retain things very well. It's one of the reasons I don't talk a lot about my past, especially military stuff, I don't remember a lot of it. If I have a lot of time to think about it, and can look at photos and stuff, I might be able to figure it out eventually but I just don't remember a lot. Blacksmithing is very much like shooting because when I get set up, I have to prep my material, and my hammer sits a certain way on my anvil. The way my mentor, Mark, taught me is exactly what I do. “Your tongs go here, hammer goes here, don't do this. This is exactly how you do it.” Those are the steps that I get to work through in my head every single time. So it is very similar. Same with archery, go through your steps, and here's your list. If you do all these correctly, there's going to be a good product at the end of that process.

You know, I noticed so much detail in your work and all that you put together. And you talked a little bit about, you know, some of the stippling and some of that being looked down upon in the community and the stuff that you do. How do you develop your own sense of identity and purpose within that work and not let the other’s ideas of what that should get to you?

LO: I owe all of that to my mentor Mark Hopper. He is one of the greatest blacksmiths I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and knowing. Not a lot of people know it because his joy in life is teaching. Instead of making all the money, he could make knives, swords, decorative art, and gates, he is a true blacksmith and blade-smith. Having him as a mentor, I think is the only reason I'm where I'm at because he's the one, even though he teased me for certain things I did, when you talk about stippling you're talking about the pattern on a lot of my knives I do. I won't say how I do it. Some people know, but it's more of an aesthetic thing. In the blacksmith community, it's looked down upon as lazy. “You're not hand sanding, you're not doing this so you must not be doing it right.”

There are a lot of cliches in the community. Some guys are awesome and they don't give a fuck. But a lot of purists and a lot of other people are like, “Oh, you're just cutting corners,” or you're just doing that “blah, blah, blah, blah.” I had a few people I look up to greatly kind of shun me on that, including Mark. He gave me shit when I first started doing it. But the difference between Mark and all those guys is… there was a gentleman at Blade Show about four years ago, who said something and it straight-up hurt my feelings. I felt like I let him down because of the style I was committed to. I don't want to be disrespectful to the blacksmith community. I want to learn the original ways. After that railroad spike, Mark didn't even let me make a knife for a while. I did tongs, I made my own hammer.

I learned the basics of blacksmithing before I actually started making a knife because he said I needed to know how to be a blacksmith before I could be a blade-smith. I'll never forget after that gentleman said that, I stopped doing those texturing marks on my knives and they stopped selling. Mark was like, “Why'd you stop doing that?” And I was like, “Well, so and so said…” He stopped me and he replied, “Is he buying your knives?” I said, “Well, no, I just didn't want…" He goes, “It doesn't matter. Have I bought one of your knives?” I said, “No, sir.” He goes, “It doesn't matter. We're not the ones supporting you and buying your knives. If you're doing something people love and you like how it looks, fuck what everybody else says. You're not trying to sell to blacksmiths. Who cares who follows you? The people that know who you are, they'll follow you. As long as you're being honest about what you do, and you're not pretending to do something, or telling people, yeah, this is fully forged or brute to forge.

Whatever it is, as long as you're honest about that, who cares what people say? You're successful, you're doing a good job, and you're doing everything right. You're being honest about who you are. So keep doing that.” A lot of the things I do in life, like how I forge, and how I sharpen, it's literally a mirror of Mark. But he never made me do everything exactly as he does. He gave me the room to create my own style, and follow my own stuff, and he encouraged that. When I take a knife to Mark it might not be what he expects, or what he would do, but he looks at it as this is what I do. He gives me critiques based on that. Having somebody with that confidence and having someone to guide me into the community, because I've only been blacksmithing for a little over three years. I've only had my business for a few years. So, I'm very new and I am still learning.

But, having him guide me through this community and a lot of the other guys who've taken a liking to me and helped me has been huge. I can see one of my knives a mile away and know it's one of mine because I was lucky enough to kind of come up with my own style, which is really hard to do nowadays. Everyone's made it before. Every knife has been done, every style. Even in the beginning, I was having a hard time finding mine and I reached out to other knife-makers and was like, "I really liked your knife. Do you mind if I practice and make something like this?" If I posted a photo I said, “inspired by Simple Little Life” or whatever it was, gave that credit to that maker. Through that, I found my own way to make it mine. Once I found my own style and stopped caring what everybody thought, that's when I truly became free.

What is that about finding your own creative identity that's so enlivening? I mean, that's gotta be cool, right?

LO: It is, especially when you do something that you know, not a lot of people have done. I recently did that with one of my daggers. It's a little dark for some people but I found it incredibly awesome because, to my knowledge, I've only been able to find three or four knife-makers that have done it. But I recently did my first dagger and the handle of that dagger was a human tibia. We found a retired cadaver that was in a teaching college. One of the gentlemen here at work purchased it, we repurposed it yet again, and we're making knife handles out of it. I love thinking outside of the box and trying and when someone says, “There's nothing new you can do.” It's like, “Okay, cool. Let's try to figure out how to do that.” For me, having that freedom to do whatever I want to do and being blessed with such an unbelievable following, I can't put into words how lucky I am to have the clients and the following that I have. Because I know blacksmiths that have been doing this for 15-20 years who still struggle to sell knives.

How much of that was a niche thing like how much of that was finding your niche and getting the BRCC stamp of approval on your thing? I mean, I know your work is good. I've seen it. It's beautiful.

LO: This is what I believe. I do understand my work is amazing and I work really hard at it. Especially on my heat treat. I take a lot of pride in the caliber of steel that I put out into the public, but a lot of it is who I am. I uncomfortably share a lot of who I am because I have been blessed to meet a lot of people that I looked up to on social media and when I met them, they sucked. I swore that I would never be that. The person you see on my Instagram is exactly who I am.

So what about the connection to BRCC?

LO: I was doing night school for welding and then blacksmithing during the day. I was very blessed to have a year where I didn't have to work because I was getting paid to go to school with the GI Bill. So, there wasn't a lot of pressure. I started just having fun and it was a hobby. Then people started buying my knives and they continued buying them and they got into more and more people's hands. Baker Leavitt was one of the first people within the Black Rifle community to get one of my knives because he's best friends with one of the owners, Jamey Shirah, of an amazing restaurant/bar in Atlanta called The IVY Buckhead.

They're really close. One day Jamey came into Tongue & Groove, the nightclub where I was running private security, and I was like, “Holy shit Baker, and introduced myself. “Hey, I'm a big fan of Black Rifle…" This was four or five years ago, I can't remember the exact date. He was like, “Oh, holy shit,” and I told him how Jared helped me out a couple of years ago when I really needed help. Baker thought that was rad and said, “You make knives? Let me get one." I said, “I'd love to make you a knife.” I didn't even charge him. Then Baker showed people around the company and Lacey, who's a photographer for Black Rifle hit me up and I made one for her. It started taking off like wildfire and more and more people in the company started asking me for knives.

Then one day, I got a phone call out of nowhere. I'm trying to think of the history of when it happened. I went on a cruise… a Drinkin Bros cruise. Mat (Best) and everyone else was on it. I met Mat and he ordered four knives for Christmas for him, his dad, and his brothers. After that, I think, that's when I popped up on the radar for Evan. My business was doing okay. I had graduated from welding school and Grizzly Forge was doing well. I knew I was going to try to follow this and see where it went. It didn't go very well off the top (laughs). I was taking a lot of custom orders, which is kind of what you have to do and I was making a lot of stuff I didn't like. I was not having fun. I was reaching out to a bunch of people, making knives that I wasn't very good at.

I wasn't doing anything I wanted to do. The business was crashing and wasn't making a lot of money. Two months behind on the mortgage, life wasn't good. Right before I photographed everything in my shop to put up for sale, my wife said, “Just give it a little bit longer.” One of our friends literally loaned us $120 to turn our power back on. I got paid two days later, got the water back on, and all that. Then I got a text from Evan saying, “Hi.” And I remember thinking, “Holy shit, Evan Hafer.” He said, “I kind of want to do a bag opener. Do you have any interest in doing this?” I said, “Yeah,” and he goes, “Awesome. Whenever you have some designs, send them over and I'll pick one.” I forged out five designs that hour.

I loved that bag opener too. That was beautiful. That was right after you were turning the power back on.

LO: Those first 50 bag openers Evan ordered. He was like, “I want that one, make 50.” I said, “Okay,” and I killed myself making those. I'd never done anything that big. I was trying to forge all of them out from scratch. It was the roughest two and a half weeks ever. I finished those 50 and that is what caught us up on our mortgage, all of that. Black Rifle was posting them. This was two, maybe three years ago. I'm so bad with dates, but roughly two years or so ago. Because of that, I started getting orders. Then Evan said, “Hey, man, I love those 50. Can you do another 250?” I was like, "Oh, okay.” Right after the first 50, I told my wife I'm never doing these again. But then I said, “Yes, I'll do it.” So, I sped up my process a lot, brought some friends in to help and we made 250.

We were feeling good so that gave me enough space to stop doing customs. I canceled a lot of my orders because the people weren't very nice. I wasn't enjoying the work. I was like, “I'm just going to do this.” So I finished those 250 bag openers, dropped them off at the post office, and was going to take three or four days to take a break and I broke my back. I was helping a buddy move a thousand lb gun safe and it fell on top of me fracturing my spine in four places. I finally had that momentum of the business and I knew I was going to finally make it. Then that happened. Now we're stressed out again, a lot of crazy stuff. My life is just a lot of, “Whoa, that's a freak accident.” It always happens to me. Even at this point, I have 10 stitches in my ankle as we're speaking, because of something stupid I did. I don't even understand how I got hurt but it happened.

So that happened and I got a nice lump of money in my bank account two weeks later. I reached out to Fiona at Black Rifle and I'm like, “Hey, I've already got paid for the order. I don't need more.” She said, “Oh, Evan wants more for the upcoming future. So he went ahead and paid you.” I texted Evan and told him, “Hey, dude, you know I broke my back.” He said, “It's all good. That'll float you, we'll see you when you get better.” Again, I don't have words for what that meant. That took a lot off my plate. I was going through a really rough time in life, personally and business-wise. My wife now, we were just engaged at the time and had just separated. I moved out of my house that week. Now I have a broken back by myself, no one in the home, and I couldn't even get off my couch.

So that was a lot of soul-searching. This was at the beginning of 2020. This was two weeks after COVID started. Everyone's freaking out. No one wants to be around anybody. I'm literally cleaning my cereal bags out of the box because I don't want my daughters to die from COVID. No one knew what was going on. For someone who doesn't do well sitting still, it put my brain in a weird place. It could have gone really bad or really good and I was very blessed that it went really well. 2020 was the greatest year of my life and it was the biggest year of growth I've ever had. I was really selfish leading up to that. Looking back, that's one of the reasons I lost my family. With a lot of things my thought process was, "Oh, it's all good. You're just over-exaggerating.” But I wasn't doing well—as a man, as a father, as a business owner, as somebody in the community. Being alone sucked.

How low did you get?

LO: Pretty low… pretty low and I was on a lot of edibles at the time. The doctors gave me close to 40 Percocet, oxycodone, and 20 plus muscle relaxers. Because of COVID, they doubled up all the doses because they didn't want me to have to come back. So I had enough narcotics to send somebody to the moon and definitely enough to get somebody addicted. I was drinking a lot every single night. But I had recently started smoking weed seven or eight months prior and because of that quit drinking, came off all my meds, no more antidepressants, which I didn't even need but the VA thought I did because I was having a hard time sleeping. Not because of depression or anything, I just didn't sleep well. They were like, “Well, here's an Ambien and all this other stuff.”

When I started smoking, it took all of that away. I was waking up better. I was happier. I quit drinking, which took away feeling sick for two days, the weird depression slump after a heavy night of drinking, and then drinking again to make it go away. It was this vicious cycle. When I broke my back, I didn't touch any of the meds and I was walking again. They said I wouldn't walk for six months and I wouldn't be able to work for close to a year. When I went to the doctor to do my second round of X-rays, he closed his door and he was like “Hey, can I ask you a question? Do you smoke?” And I was like, "Oh no, I quit smoking. Years ago, I used to be a big cigarette smoker."

And he was like, “No, no, no, what have you been doing?” And I said, “I'm doing close to 100 milligrams of edibles, daily smoking, and around 1500 milligrams of CBD." And he was like, “You have zero inflammation. We never see a recovery like this unless they're not touching the drugs we gave them.” It blew my mind. When I smoke it makes everything kind of go away and I can really lose myself in my thoughts. Being single, I've been a man whore my entire life. Drugs, and alcohol, they've never really taken a huge hold of me, but women always have. And being in a committed relationship is not the best thing on Earth. Normally, when I go through a breakup, I go full man whore and I didn't this time. I just didn't want to and instead of ignoring that, and burying that feeling, I was at a place mentally where I was like, “Okay, this is new, let's focus on this.”

Instead of finding someone to take that pain away, I lived in that pain for about four or five months and suffered. I still made mistakes, a lot of them, trying to figure that out. But I didn't make the same mistakes I always make. I focused on work. I focused on myself. I started keeping a journal. I changed the friends I hung out with. Because of the weed, I wasn't drinking and partying anymore. I wasn't doing to the club every night. I focused on being a father. Through that, I got my business, I got my family back. I'm now married to the love of my life. The person I've been with for seven-plus years. We've had some incredible rocky patches, but we fought through them and we got to where we are today. It was all because of that stupid broken back. And because of Black Rifle promoting my stuff and having my back through all of that, when I started working again, I no longer took custom orders. I made what I love, which then pushed my work even further because I cared about it.

It wasn't just, “Hey, man, I want you to make this crazy knife with this." Like, “Okay, that's stupid but I need money.” Now I make exactly what I love and they're getting better every single time because I love it. People, for some strange reason, love it too. Since then, when I do a drop they're normally sold out in about 60 seconds. I have a panic attack every single time I do a knife drop because I believe this is the one that's not going to sell and I'm screwed again. But it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and people keep becoming more and more supportive. I still, to this day, don't understand why.

Well, I understand why when I see your blades, your work is incredible. It's beautiful. But having these guys next door can't hurt, right? They win a lot.

LO: They win a lot because they've built a community that supports them and through seeing that, that's what I wanted to do. Even in the knife-making community, a lot of people are like, “Fuck you, I'm gonna get mine. I'm gonna make my knives. I'm gonna do this without anyone else.” With Half Face blades, Montana Knife Company, with all these knife makers that are in our community, it's nothing but support. If I don't have a knife drop, hey, guess what, Josh Smith has a knife drop on Friday, go support him. Guess what… if you spend the money you're going to spend on me on him when he has a knife drop and they sell out instantly, he's going to send you to mine.

That community we've been building is directly off of watching what Black Rifle has done. Evan tried to move us down to Texas right before Sydni and I separated. When that happened, it broke my heart because he made the offer to move us to Texas, two and a half, maybe three years ago. I had to tell him I just separated from my fiancé. My daughters were staying in Georgia. I knew I couldn’t leave them. He didn't skip a beat. He goes, “Okay, cool. That's fine. We can still work with you in Georgia, still, make knives. It's not a problem, be with your family.” Then, when we got back together, within a month, he's like, “Hey, you want to move to Salt Lake?” I thought Sydni was never gonna want to move but then I brought her out here and she saw this community and the life we could give our children, especially in the outdoor space. She fell in love with it.

We packed our family up and did a cross-country move to Salt Lake City, Utah. The guys here, Evan, Matt, and Jared, gave me this unbelievable, beautiful shop, and an amazing opportunity. We're going to start a veterans program where we're going to bring vets out and they're gonna get to spend X amount of time with me making knives and hopefully find as much therapy as I found in this line of work, whether they take it and do something or they just create a hobby. There's a lot in blacksmithing that's so therapeutic and I want to help as many guys as I can.

What's the dark side of this work?

LO: The dark side is “Forged In Fire” made blacksmithing super, super, super popular, which is amazing and sucks at the same time (laughs). Anytime anyone does anything blue collar I get excited. Fuck a college education. Become a welder, become a pipe fitter, AC, HVAC, whatever you can. There's so much money in working with your hands. People want that quick paycheck without any work. So anytime I can promote it, I'm all about it. But with a massive influx, there is a lack of inspiration. There are a lot of people trying to make money really fast. I never wanted to do this as a business and I will swear that on everything. It was fun for me and I got put in this position. I don't want to be famous. I don't want people to wait in lines to know who I am. I feel like that takes away so much sincerity. Where right now, I could go somewhere, maybe one person knows who I am. I can have a 30-minute conversation with that person and get to know them. Unlike other people I've seen that are super famous and social media famous.

They can't have more than a three-second conversation with someone. I don't want that. I just want to be normal, be able to help, and just show people that there's a much better way in life to do what you love, and potentially still make money at it, or just find that thing. What this does for me, is find that in your life, find a purpose. A lot of guys are getting into this and they want to make a lot of money really fast. So what they do is find somebody who is successful, like my good buddy Tory at Gunstone Creations. He's the one that did the Black Rifle collaboration with me. He learned how to stabilize coffee beans, it's the knife that's up on my shop wall. He stabilized coffee beans and ammo and put it in a handle on a collaboration piece we did.

He's one of the only ones that do that. Lately, there have been some makers that are copying his work to a fucking T, like the colors, the name, everything, and selling it as their own. When they get called out they say, “I have no idea what you're talking about.” I ignore those people. I've had plenty of people knock off my work, try to do my stippling, and try to do certain things. All you have to do is tag him, all you have to do is say inspired by, give that maker his credit. You didn't come up with this, you are literally copying what they did to a T and that's stealing.

Straight up, you're making money off someone else's design. Like it's okay, everybody's work looks like somebody's work. As I said, there isn’t a lot of originality left in the knife community. So if you do copy somebody just give them a little credit. Even if my blades look like somebody else’s, I give them that credit, especially in my early days before I figured out my own way. I purposefully don't follow a shit ton of knife makers because I don't want to see something that I love and then see my work start mimicking it. I tried to kind of stay away from that. But really what makes it hurt more is Tory shares almost everything he does to a fault. If you call him he'll stop whatever he's doing and say, “Oh, yeah, buddy. Let me help you with that.” So when you steal from somebody like that, that's where I have an issue with someone who if you would just call and asked would have helped you just come up with your own way.

Come up with your own way to twist it. Behring Made Knives is my favorite knife maker that has ever been around and they make their knives based on a gentleman called Scagel, William Scagel. He was the first to come up with that style of knife. Some of my knives, my arctic camper, resemble a little bit of Scagel. But I found my own way to make it my knife so it's not a Scagel but it picks up parts of it. And I paid homage, especially in my early days, because a lot of my knives looked like theirs. I made sure that I tagged them, and shared their stuff, and whole nine yards because I never wanted them to see what I was doing as being disrespectful. Then, as I became a better knife maker, I started finding my own way, because you have to learn how the steel moves, you have to understand a lot to find your own style. So in the beginning, a lot of people’s work looked like imitations because they hadn’t found their way yet. Just be respectful and don't steal their shit, especially if it's someone who wants to help the community.

What's been your coolest project so far?

LO: The bone dagger is by far my favorite thing that I’ve done so far. One, it's my first time doing a dagger. Two, it's my first time using human bone. Before that, it was that collaboration piece we did with Black Rifle. The whole thought pattern behind that is to share the wealth. So I found Tory at Gunstone and then another gentleman, who's amazing, Imperial Leather Works. I became friends with them. I said, “Hey, guys, you want to do a collaboration? I believe you two need way more publicity than you're getting.” Tory had just become a full-time knife maker, which is terrifying. You quit your job and say, “I make something cool enough that I can make a living out of it.”

So, he had just made that move. Imperial Leather Works is one of the greatest leather tool makers I've ever seen. And I was like, “Let me use my platform. Let's do a Black Rifle collaboration. I'll forge the blade. Gunstone, you do the handles and some file work on the knife. Then Imperial will do all the leather. Then we're going to send it off to Josh, who now works for Black Rifle and he's going to photograph it. Whatever it makes, I'm not going to take any money on that. I'll split it between you three. I just want to do this to have fun and get you out there.” They were really, really awesome about that and they were like, “Holy shit dude, this is such a cool idea.” So we did it and gun to my head, I thought that knife might do $1,100 and it raised over $6,000 in an auction. We were losing our minds about it. So, the story gets even better.

The knife auction was going great and then in the last 30 seconds of that auction, there were three bidders that just kept jacking it up. And in the last 30 seconds, it jumped a few thousand because I didn't put sniper rules on the auction because I didn't think I needed to. I thought somebody with a little bit of money would be the highest bidder so no one would touch it. It jumped so much. We were stressed because we didn't even know who really won. It came down to the second. We hit refresh, and this person's name was at the top, and then when we hit refresh again, it was up another $800. The price was almost $7,000. So I reached out to the three top bidders and we were like, “Hey, this person won. I'm so sorry. I had no idea it was gonna go like this.” I reached out to the girl that won… Miss Aubrey… and I was like, “I need to get ahold of you.”

She said, “Can we WhatsApp?” I was like, “Great. I just got scammed.” She says, “I'm in Afghanistan.” So she's hours and hours ahead of us. I reached out to her and she's like, “Oh my god.” I go, “Okay, not to be disrespectful, but that's a lot of money.” And she said, “I've been saving it. I wanted to support a veteran-owned business and I wanted to support you.” Now that’s when I got emotional. I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing. I'm so glad you won.” I told the other gentleman, one who is a very well-known bulldog breeder and then another gentleman who, to this day, I don't know his name. He goes by "Bruce Wayne” on Instagram (laughs). Hilarious. And he's a franchisee for Black Rifle. I reached out to them and I was like, “Sorry, gentlemen. I don't really know how to do this, but you didn't win,” and they were cool about it.

I luckily had her story and they were all like, “That's rad.” She deposits the money and then I shared her story on Instagram. “This is a female Marine, stationed on an Army base in Afghanistan. The story is so rad. I'm so happy she won the knife.” Bruce Wayne shoots me a message and goes, “Fuck that. Give her money back. I'm paying for the knife. She still wins but I’m not letting an active-duty Marine pay this much money.” So I'm losing my mind, crying like a baby. I called her and I'm like, "I just sent your money back, He's paying for it.” So now she's crying and she still donated the money to another veteran organization. All of this happened with something that I was trying to do, just to promote these guys, and it turned into something so much more. Then all these other people jumped on board, we donated extra knives and it turned into one of the coolest experiences of my life because of the community that had gathered around us.

What we're doing, what the Bert Sorin's are doing, what Black Rifle is doing, what you guys are doing. There's a shift in the mentality of veterans in the last few years of, “It's not just about me.” There are plenty of people who still believe that way but there are more and more and more of us who are supporting each other. Let's create a brotherhood where you can hug each other, where you can cry, where you can say, “I fucking love you, dude." I tell everybody, I love them, and I give hugs. First thing I do when I saw you was I gave you a hug. There's something to that where you can still be a badass but you can also care. You can care about your community, you can care about the people around you, and you can show a bit of a sensitive side. I didn't know that part of me existed until I had my little girls.

They brought back the human side of me. And then that soul searching during 2020 just turned it to another level. I left a lot of toxic friends and I left a toxic city and I left a lifestyle that I gained nothing from. I learned that my time is everything and to who I give my time is the most important thing on earth. When I can hang out with some buddies, and then walk away, as I will today when you guys leave, I'm gonna be so fucking high. I'm gonna feel amazing because of the true conversation we had. The brotherhood, the support, hopefully, this helps some people. There is meat and potatoes to that and this is just the beginning. Like we're just getting started. I just figured out what kind of man I want to be two years ago. It's an unbelievable feeling. And it's an even cooler feeling when you have people surrounding you that say, “I'm fucking proud of you,” instead of, “Must be nice.”

What's really cool is when you see the people that are succeeding at the highest levels, you know, the Evans and guys like that. The really successful guys are never bringing other people down, they're lifting other people up because they don't have that insecurity. Evan doesn't have to be insecure about anything within this work. He's developed something truly unique and original, you're not that way in your work. That's what tells me you're going to be successful, not only the production style, the hard work ethic, everything that first drew me to you, within your work has now become an amalgamation of all that and you're tied to Black Rifle. But you have the success model that you've grown in, it's all come out of a place of kindness. And that's huge. Like, guess what, if you show empathy, you're actually more of a badass, because of all the things that you've done already, and then showcasing that side, that's who you are. And that's the purpose you live with.

How do you carry that forward in your work? I'm sure there are moments of, you know, jealousy where, you know, you'll see somebody do something, you get that internal ego to pull like, “I wish that was mine or whatever.” How do you push forward and get out of that? And how do you push forward and kindness?

LO: For me, It's remembering how I got here. I will never forget the people like the Bakers, the Jarreds. The people were there for me before I was anything. Evan didn't have to do what he did. I was nothing before that. That's what gets me back if they didn't take a risk on me, and they didn't show me that I wouldn't be where I'm at. So when I get put in that position, that's what I think about. I think about it from the standpoint of, “What would they have done?” And fuck, man, I'm not perfect. It annoys me so much when everyone's like, “You're so positive.” I'm not positive. I just know how to not let shit get me down.

I just know how to not let things bury me. I can just figure it out and get up. When so much crap has happened to you, you just have to realize nothing can completely beat you down. When I have those moments of jealousy I remember how freaking blessed I am to be in the position I am, the people that took a risk on me when they didn't need to when they didn't need the credit. Those people were like, “Hey, you should meet this person…” and then they ghost. They don't want that credit. They don't need everyone to know, “Well if it wasn't for me, this wouldn't be possible.” They did it out of the kindness of their hearts because they want to see people succeed. That is what makes me push every single day because so many people have taken a risk on me, to give me this shop.

I worked out in my garage and now I have a shop where guys would give their left nut to have. So instead of me saying, “Well, now I have the space, I'm gonna make all the money and fuck everyone else.” How do I turn this into a teaching space? How do I host hammer-ins? How do I promote my brothers and sisters who don't have a platform or an outlet? What can I do to give back? If I do that, hopefully, they'll have the same mentality that I have with Evan and Matt and Jarred, and everyone here, and the countless other people that have helped me… it's not just Black Rifle. It’s Bert, its “Flag Nor Fail.” It’s Rob and Dana Linn Bailey. It's all these people that were an example and lead by example. Essentially, every single banner on my wall is companies and business owners that I look up to, that remind me every day, they're still working, they're still pushing, they're still giving back, and helping others. That's what keeps me humble. And that's what makes me want to, to my own fault, almost do too much. I want to help.

We're hoping to expand here in the next few months. But it's a rad thing to say that I'm so exhausted and I'm overworked because I'm involved in so many amazing events, organizations, and nonprofits. It's a really cool problem to have. I hope it never goes away. I've made my mistakes. It's how you come back from those mistakes and how you eat your words or eat that ego. I essentially don't have an ego anymore. And the second that I lost that and gave it up and made it, it's not a dick-measuring competition. It's not. Same with the military. When someone comes up to me and the first words out of their mouth are, “Who were you with?” I'm already out of that conversation because I know it's a dick-comparison conversation. They don’t really care about who you are. They just want to tell you how much better they are than you.

Guys get stuck in that vicious cycle where they tell the same story over and over again. How do you get out of that and move forward?

LO: I don't want to leave a legacy before I'm dead. I don't want to do something 10 years ago and that's all people know me for. Because then what's the rest of my life? I want to be leaving a legacy 'til the day I die. And then once I die, that whole life is a whole. I don't want people to be able to sum me up in one quick conversation. “He was this guy. He was on teams.” Like, I don't want one thing to define me. I want every single day to be, “Wait, you did what?” I just want it to continue.

How did you decide to get into archery?

LO: Peer pressure (laughs). Everybody here shoots and we're very blessed to have an unbelievable range on the property. We can shoot up to over 120 yards right here at Black Rifle. Everybody shoots all the time. There are guys shooting when I get here. There are guys shooting at lunch break, and there are guys shooting in the evenings. Everybody always told me about the focus that comes with archery I would love. I avoided it for a long time because I didn't have the time. Blacksmithing was my escape and now it's work. I still love it. It's I'm very blessed to do what I love, but it's work. I needed something that allows me to just go outside and take a break. That's what it used to be. I'd eat dinner with the family, everyone's kind of watching TV, I'd go and fiddle in the shop and work on a knife. Now it's archery. So we're very lucky to have the Isaacs, Isaac Sr. and Isaac Jr. here at Black Rifle. They're our bow techs.

We have a full bow shop and they just wouldn't leave me alone. “When are you going to shoot? When are you going to shoot? You have to shoot..." and I was finally like, “Fine, let's do it.” Total Archery was coming up. “Everybody's going to be doing this. I live out west now. Everybody shoots.” I was like, “Now is the time.” So I went and shot a bunch of arrows with them, found the bow I love and fit me perfectly and fuck, just started shooting. I'll tell you what, the first time I pulled back I was like, “Okay, I get it.” Everything went away again and it was that focus. Then thank god, there's someone like John Dudley out there. He made these videos on YouTube. It's like the intro to archery parts one through three and starts at the basics all the way to release and follow through. I watched that whole set like three straight times in a week and a half because I started shooting two weeks before Total Archery happened. I had a lot to learn. But again, something I learned being a sniper, I would go do classes with guys who came straight out of basic. I've been to some of the classes with the highest levels of shooting, and I would still go do those little basic ones as well. Because you never knew what you were going to learn, or who was going to be there.

I might take one thing away from the instructor that I'd never heard before. So swallowing that ego is huge, and just being like, “I'm here to learn.” It’s better with females. I will teach a female how to shoot over a male any day of the week, because a lot of times they walk into it way more patient, with zero egos. A lot of times they’ve never shot anything before. So, they're eager to learn and they'll do exactly what you tell them. Unlike some dude who's like, “Well, I grew up hunting with my dad, this is how we always did it.” It's like, “Yeah, but the way you always did it is wrong. Just listen to me, we'll change it and you'll get better.” So I got into archery with that mindset of watching these videos. I was like, “Okay, I'll do exactly what he tells me.” I'm not some amazing, talented human. I just follow instructions really well. I was very blessed to pick up archery really, really fast. At TAC (Total Archery Challenge) Black Rifle puts on an adapted athletes shoot. We bring veterans in who are missing arms, or legs, have been blown up, you name it, they're there… and built a course that is wheelchair accessible. We have these huge tanks they ride on. It’s a community and a brotherhood, which nobody will understand unless they witness it. So I got to shoot that with all the guys. And at the end, there is a challenging shot that everybody gets to send one arrow down.

For this one, it was a very elevated shot, 65 yards on a coyote, and the closest arrow to the little sticker gets you a rifle build of your choice, which is super sick. I was lucky enough to win that. The gentleman I beat… “Trainwreck”… he's a double amputee. He was in second place and I felt really guilty for winning it. The only reason I shot at it is Dudley, Bert, and all the bigger guys that I've been talking shit to all day, they shot at it. I was like, “I'm going to shoot it too…” because I never thought I'd win. Then when I did, one of the most humbling moments is I when I went to Trainwreck and I was like, “Hey, brother, you can have the rifle.” I first went to Evan and was like, "I think I accidentally just won.” And he was like, “Fuck you, good job,” like super supportive. I said, “I’ll give it back, was I allowed shooting?” He's like, “Hell no, you don't work for Black Rifle. You're good to go.” Then I went to Trainwreck and I was like, “Hey, sir, you can have the rifle,” and he got irritated and was like, “I don't need a fucking handout. Fuck you. You beat me fair and square.” He said, “Congratulations, you've only been shooting for two weeks.

That's what it's all about.” It meant so much to me just to hear that kind of reaction and that support and I was like, “Cool.” So now I'm making him a knife. And I was like, “Well, if you're not going to take this from me, then I'm building you the sickest knife ever.” He got emotional. He and I had a really cool heart-to-heart. But it was a moment that never would have happened if it wasn't for this community and all this. Now he and I talk a good bit and I'm making him a super rad knife for second place. We've built a friendship based on that. Archery, it's got me. Grizzly Forge has donated a knife for every single TAC to raise money for the BRCC Fund, which is a nonprofit, that Black Rifle started last year. A lot of people have donated a lot of stuff to go up for auction and then all those funds are going straight to the BRCC Fund. We're raffling one of my knives off, which is a custom build for each TAC. In the month of July I've got a TAC every weekend, because I'll be doing Colorado, Montana, and then both Utahs. It's just another really sick community of us being in the outdoors and fuck, man, I'm addicted. It's so much fun. Again, it's just all the guys here pushing it and they all do it. It's just another way to be outside and have those good conversations and do something really sick.

That's incredible. You know, another thing I want to talk about, I saw you obviously we saw each other at Winter Strong. How cool is that? You know, you're in that experience. You're surrounded by those guys some of the other and grow Josh Smith and some other incredible knifemakers. I saw you forging something with Kyle Carpenter, a good friend of ours. Medal of Honor recipient. How cool was that?

LO: Kyle and I have a history together and go back a good bit. I met him in Atlanta almost six, seven years ago, and we had an unbelievable conversation. He was leaving a Braves game and I was working out on a patio at one of the bars. I saw him walking and I was like, “I know who that is.” So we had met two or three times before, just random encounters and then when he came to Winter Strong. He parked his car and I was walking towards the tomahawk area and the first person he saw was me. It's just wild how small the world is. He forged a bottle opener with me. I don't even know if I want to say this but he actually broke my finger. He has a hard task gripping a hammer and we were making a bottle opener and he drilled my finger like two or three times and I thought I was good because of the adrenaline. Everyone was around the scene, the forges were roaring, it was such a powerful moment. The next morning my finger was double the size. I didn't even tell him because I didn't want him to feel bad.And not just getting to forge with him, but getting to forge next to Jason Knight and Josh Smith. Two of the greatest bladesmiths alive in my book. Get out of here. It's something that's overly terrifying, especially when you're talking to them, they're like, “Oh, man, you have the best stuff!” I’m just thinking, “You’re way better than me.”

So what's the goal moving forward with this? Where do you want to take this?

LO: I'm surrounded by a bunch of brilliant businessmen who want to see the best out of me. I think that's one of the first things Evan said was like, “We could turn this into the greatest knife company ever.” I don't want to. I'm so blessed to be able to make the money I'm making now. I never thought I'd make more than $60,000 a year. I’m just a realist. I know my skill set. I know what I can do and I'm happy with this. I just want to be happy. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband and I want to help as many people as I can honestly. That's just who I am. I'm in the best place I've ever been in my life. I’ve never loved my wife more than I do at this exact second. I love my daughters. Being a father is the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I get to make knives and hang out with amazing people like you daily. How much better could life be? Moving on, it's more or less of how can I give back more? So what we're doing with the shop right now is we're getting it prepped to bring in a few more grinders, more anvils.

I want to start hosting hammer-ins here. I want to start bringing veterans in. I want to create a workspace for other people who are interested. I'm blessed financially now to be able to buy more equipment, more anvils. It's expensive. People don't even realize how much an anvil is. This little anvil we have on the desk right now, I just got this. This is an Arm and Hammer anvil from the early 1900s. I spent over $1,000 on this and it's a 102 lb. anvil. That's just how much they are, one thanks to Forged In Fire and two, everything's just expensive (laughs). You're paying close to $7 a pound right now, for anvil the one behind you that I forge on, that's a Hay-Budden anvil and that one's 242 lbs. I spent I think $1,600 when I bought it three years ago. Then your grinder is about $1500, attachments and everything around $2,000. It adds up. I've been slowly building this shop for the last few years. I started buying stuff for my shop a year before I even started blacksmithing just because I knew I needed to start collecting things for a shop. So my goal is to create a space like my mentors did and create a space where I can bring guys in.

Trevor Thompson, for instance. Trevor is a guy out here at Black Rifle. A lot of people know who he is. Super rad, travels all over the place but he has got to go forge with Josh Smith and he's got to learn a lot in this space. I want to create a space where he can come in and say, Hey, bro, I'm going to forge for a while. He can practice what he's learned from these other amazing blacksmiths. Hey, maybe I'll pick up something from it. But I want a place where everybody can just be in here working. We can all feed off each other, I can host people. And then when it comes to the veteran side of things, I want to be able to teach. For me, that's where I'm going. I'm hoping to fly out my mentor here in the next month or so and he's literally going to go over what he does and his scheduling for how he teaches classes. He'll be able to teach me how to teach because I don't know how to do that. I don't even really know what I do. I just kind of do it. I need to learn how to teach how I make a knife. Once I kind of learned that, that's my next big goal and then bringing on a couple apprentices and maybe one or two employees.

That way I can still pump out knives without losing my touch. I have no desire to become some massive rich knife company that just pumps out a bunch of knives. I have people that waited over a year for a knife. Those are the people I want to get my knives to. The people that appreciate it, love them, know the little flaws, the bevel shifts a little bit to the left, they can look at their knife and know it was handmade. I don't want to lose that. I'll bring somebody in to help with the Kydex or help sand handles but I always want to be the person that does the most behind it. If I can get somebody to come in to help with that lighter work, that would be huge to free me up to do more of the teaching and more of the stuff that I have a vision for in the next few years. Then, I want to highlight more knife makers. I want to start storytelling and traveling to guy's forges and putting them on the map, getting to learn from them, and continue building this community that me, Josh, Jason, Half Face, Gunstone, this small little group that we have right now… I want to add another 50-60 guys to that, to where you won't be able to stop us. And if you're an asshole, you're never going to survive. The people who are real, they're the ones that are going to survive, and the ones that are going to be successful because we're all supporting each other.

It's going to weed out the ones that are just here to steal, use our stuff, or ride our coattails. We are gonna build a real community. I think more people are starting to pick up on authenticity. People are kind of tired of the bullshit you see on social media. I hate social media with every bone in my body, I only have an Instagram. I don't have anything else. People keep telling me to start a personal one. I don't even want to do that because now that means I have two sets of DMs and I can't even get through my normal ones. I don't want anything to do with that. So with my one I have it’s about—positivity, honesty, showing the good times with the bad times, not just the perfect knife, but the one I worked 10 times and had to throw away, or when I sliced my finger open on my grinder, because I was an idiot (laughs). Sharing all of it because that honesty is what people want right now.

The more people that stop trying to be a cool guy and stop worrying about themselves, will get so much more successful. Gunstone, since that collaboration, and this isn't even on me, he's sold out every single time. His knives sell as fast as mine. People are seeing that authenticity through him. All the people he's helping, all the other knife makers he's supporting. He's on the exact same track I'm on, which is why I wanted to do that collaboration, because it made sense. His brain is doing the same thing and people see that and they support that. The more people that you can get onto that mindset is the more the world's going to be a better place. Politicians aren't doing it, nobody else is doing it. So it's up to us and hopefully, that'll catch and we can make it a little bit better than it is right now.

We should be in the leadership space. We worked hard to get to where we are, we were willing to put our name on that dotted line. I'm not speaking for myself, but I'm speaking for some incredible humans in this community, that sign their name on the dotted line that formed the blood wall that protects this country. Those are the people that I want to be listening to going into the next generations, just flat out. So that can be in the business space, that can be in politics, that can be in every space. And I believe that just like the World War II model, those guys led the structure of this country, and it was a powerful thing. And we can be that. I really believe it.

LO: 100%. You don't have to have a crazy, huge platform, it could literally be something like opening the door for someone or seeing someone on the side of the road and stopping to help out or anything like that. It doesn't take a lot. So many people are waiting for somebody else to do it. “The government is going to help us. They’re going to give us the money. They're going to tell us what to do.” Fuck that. Yeah, we're going to do what we think is right. We're going to do what is right. I don't need somebody to tell me what's right. I know what's right and I'm going to do it. And if they tell me it's not right, then there's a problem there. So I'm not going to listen, and I'm still going to do what I'm going to do and I'm going to be exactly who I say I am. That's what it's all about.

We think you will agree that artist’s greatest passions are often found through adversity, and Lucas is no stranger to that world. Be sure to follow Lucas’ journey on Instagram: @grizzly_forge and keep a close eye on his blade drops at www.thegrizzlyforge.com. Check out our sponsor for this story at www.eberlestock.com where you can purchase their latest, world-class outdoor gear including everything from winter parkas, to hunting packs, to modular custom solutions built for your day-to-day needs. Stay tuned for our podcast with Lucas, premiering next week.

SGT Lucas O'Hara (Army, OIF Veteran)

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