Keown, Daniel

"As a young man I started wood carving and that led to my enjoyment of knives. One day while scrolling through YouTube I saw a video about a woodcarver named Ernest "Mooney" Warther. In the early 1900's he was unhappy with the knives commercially available and decided to make his own. With this particular knife not being made nor obtainable I set out on a quest to make my first slipjoint. As a specialty pipe welder I built my own belt grinder and got to work. My first knife was a fairly complex knife that had interchangeable blades, catch bits, and a little door held shut by an additional leaf spring. As crude as that first knife was, once finished, I was hooked. Building slip joints quickly became a passion of mine. I have been fortunate enough to have great mentors from the start. One mentor and heavy influence of my work has been Tom Ploppert. Much of what I do I strive to reach his level of quality. Personally, the knives that I'm interested in are complex or rare traditional Sheffield patterns. I also have a thing for orange blossom/lobster knives. It is a goal of mine to build some of these patterns. I tend to use a lot of natural material in my work leaning strongly towards ebony, mammoth ivory, ivory, and bone. I truly enjoy jigging all types of material and if I think the knife will benefit from it I will jig the scales."