James Crowell

Bladesmith travels country to teach others craft

James Crowell, an American Bladesmith Society master smith, holds two blades from his collection. Crowell, who lives in Timbo outside of Mountain View, was inducted into the society’s Hall of Fame in August.
James Crowell, an American Bladesmith Society master smith, holds two blades from his collection. Crowell, who lives in Timbo outside of Mountain View, was inducted into the society’s Hall of Fame in August.

James Crowell can take the heat — thousand-degree heat, that is.

He had just returned home from leading a two-week Introduction to Bladesmithing course in Clyde, North Carolina, where he instructed others on the process of using 1,500-degree heat to forge metal to create one-of-a-kind blades — similar to the knives he sells starting at $575 a pop.

His Timbo home, surrounded by stretches of orange gravel road and the simplicity of Stone County, is also the site of his workspace, which is filled with knives hanging from nails, blocks of soon-to-be-forged steel and powerful machinery. Crowell’s specialty is the Bowie knife, and his stash of creations includes knives with handles made from the ivory of elephants — who were not hunted or killed for their tusks, he noted.

Crowell has been an American Bladesmith Society master smith since 1986 and was inducted into the society’s hall of fame in August at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock. The American Bladesmith Society promotes the art of forging metal to create weapons and tools, and master smith is its highest ranking.

An average knife at Crowell’s skill level takes him about 10 to 12 hours to create. As a certified instructor through the American Bladesmith Society, he travels the country to teach others how to heat metal, hammer it, forge and heat-treat the blades, and more. In order to move from the apprentice-smith to journeyman-smith ranking, the second-highest ranking, students must pass the journeyman’s test. The journeyman status allows creators to present knives for judging at events presented by the society.

“You must cut a piece of 1-inch rope that is hanging free. Then you have to take that same knife and chop through a two-by-four two times and shave your arm or your leg to show that the blade held its edge,” Crowell said. “The last part of that test is you have to put that knife in a vise and bend it 90 degrees, and it can’t break.”

To become a master smith, the same must be completed using a pattern-welded Damascus steel blade.

Before Crowell was hammering away on an anvil and achieving society rankings, he was a car mechanic who had moved from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to Arkansas in 1978. After he first moved to Mountain View, he purchased knives from a local craftsman.

“That got me thinking, ‘Well, I could do that,’” Crowell said.

Crowell worked under David Matthews, the founder of Stone County Ironworks in Mountain View, and made $4.25 an hour.

“I had heard about Damascus steel, and I remember asking David, I said, ‘Do you know how to make Damascus steel?’” Crowell said. “He said, ‘Oh, sure.’ Then he said, ‘But I don’t know if I can because I never tried.’ He understood the difference between knowing how and being able [to do it]. He and I worked Wednesday nights for a long time trying to get that sorted out.”

In addition to his Stone County Ironworks experience, Crowell received help from locals at the Ozark Folk Center and relatives. For a period of time, he was the resident blacksmith at the Ozark Folk Center and even presented craft shows there.

“I think anybody who says that they did it on their own is full of beans,” he said. “We all have help somewhere. Somebody helps us somewhere.”

For someone who was used to life always being in a hurry, moving to quaint Mountain View, which then had no traffic lights, was quite a switch, Crowell said.

“When I moved here, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh. What have I done?’” he said. “It took me eight years to acclimate to this culture. And now, you couldn’t get me out of here with dynamite. I love this rural culture. I love the small town. I love none of the busyness of a big city, no traffic. … You’ll end up working just as hard and frantically here in this little town as you would somewhere else — but you don’t have to. You can go a little slower, and it’s all right. I really like it here. There’s a lot of outsiders here now, myself included.”

Nowadays, Crowell said, others are in too much of a hurry to learn a craft. He likes when people visit his shop, but after an hour or so, he considers it a lesson, and he’ll charge visitors.

“I get tickled when somebody says, ‘I want to be your apprentice.’ And I say, ‘You want to work and live with me for five years?’” Crowell said. “They go, ‘What?’ like I’m crazy. I say, ‘Well, you said you wanted to be my apprentice.’ They say, ‘No, no, what I mean is: I would work for you for free on Saturdays.’

“I say, ‘Oh you mean you want me to train you for free on Saturdays, and about the time you get competent enough to drill a hole without messing up, you’re going to take up bass fishing or something?’”

Phyllis Haynes, director of the Arkansas Craft School, met Crowell this spring when she became director of the school.

Crowell also teaches courses through the Arkansas Craft School in Mountain View and will offer another course Nov. 4 at his studio.

“I visited his studio, and I was really, really impressed with the variety of tools that he had,” Haynes said, “but I’ll tell you, what impressed me more than that is his reputation. People speak highly of him and his ability and creativity with knife-making.”

Crowell said he cannot put a number on how many knives he creates in a week, month or year. His customers mostly purchase knives to collect, but others buy them for outdoor use and personal protection.

“I’m not real prolific, but I am real steady,” he said.

Complacency leads to injuries, Crowell said, and the profession can be just as dangerous as working with any inanimate object. As long as one is careful and aware of his or her surroundings, injuries are few, he said.

“How dangerous is chopping up vegetables with a big knife? How dangerous is driving a car? You bet, it can be very dangerous,” he said.

Though Crowell’s hunting knives start at about $575, fancier pieces can cost up to $5,000.

“Here’s the deal: Everybody has something they like. If you buy quality, it will last you, and you’ll always be happy with it. If you buy cheap stuff, usually it doesn’t work out, so now it didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and you lost some money as well,” he said.

As someone who isn’t a bladesmithing expert, Haynes said she thinks it’s awesome that people pay that amount for a handcrafted knife. Crowell’s craft is a benefit to Stone County, she said.

“I think it’s a treasure that we have,” she said. “It’s a small business that we have in our county as an industry. I think it’s important because I’m just proud to have people like that to live among.”

Crowell said most of his friends — such as all of the men who were in his wedding party — are fellow bladesmiths or were his customers at first. He said he cares more about making knives better than making them cheaper.

“People’s desire to put heart and soul into something that they’ve made that is a quality item that will stand the test of time — that’s important,” he said.

Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.

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