SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Good Old Blades Podcast. I am your host, Eric Movier, and I'm joined with my co-host, Chris Crawford.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thank you for tuning back in to our interview with Derek Melton. This is part two.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

So I know you have a tire hammer, you have some uh air hammer, um and some other fly press and some other you know big forging tools like that. I think a treadle hammer in your shop. Just real briefly, just talk about the the hammer type tools that you have, saving the tire hammer for last, and then I want you to talk about your involvement with tire hammers and the building process. And before you do, I do want to go back and ask a question real quick about Lyle Wynn. Are they still offering that class tools to make tools?

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Yeah, so uh so Lyle Wynn was teaching the Tools to Make Tools class, and then he handed that off to uh Palmer Robbins. And so Palmer Robbins is a blacksmith here in Pearl, and he's currently teaching that class. And then Brian Brazil and Ed Brazil, Brian and Ed are brothers, they're out in Oklahoma. They they still teach the class out there. Um, and there's a number of people that have gone through that curriculum that also teach the tools to make tools curriculum, and um it's it's a particular curriculum and a particular way of going through a progression of tools, and and not just anybody out there uh can teach the class. It's really it's um you you have to have Brian Brazil's blessing basically to teach the class. And so uh there's there's probably I think four or five people out there, I think, that are still teaching that. So it's it's very much available if you want to take the class. Um you can you can find some of the guys that are teaching it. Um Mark Ling comes to mind right off the bat, he's a blacksmith in Texas. Um Andrew Larson in Kentucky, I think it's I think he's in or Tennessee or Kentucky. Um he's teaching it. So yeah, it's available, it's out there.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Okay. All right, I just want to follow up with that. All right, so get into uh your hammers and then talk about your tire hammer, and then talk about the the tire hammer class that you've been involved in, and then kind of finish that with how others might get involved with that if they're interested.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Yeah, so I got my first power hammer right before I went on Forged and Fire. So I got an Anyang ST33, which is a 33-pound air hammer, and um great little hammer, really nice, but ran super fast like a sewing machine, super, super fast. And so um, anyway, I that that hammer was the first power forging tool that I had. Um, in you know, I think I went 15 something years before I got uh a power forging tool. And so I got that, and then I got a fly press, a number four fly press. And then over the past few years I've upgraded um to uh different kinds of power hammers. I've gone from an Anyang 33, uh, then I got a Dave Custer power hammer, which is a uh a type of tire hammer. Um, it was a 70-pound tire or a 65-pound tire hammer, I think. And then um I went and took a class from Clay Spencer, and the class was called Tire Hammer Tools, and in that class, you we went to, it was three of us, we went to Clay's shop in Alabama and spent um a Friday and Saturday making tools, using tire hammers in his shop. And um, well, let me back up. I took this tire hammer tools class before I got my Dave Custer tire hammer. Um, and so when I went and took this class from from Clay, um it was it was a class on how to make tooling for power hammers and how to use power hammers with this tooling, and that was the first time I had ever used a tire hammer was in Clay's shop, and I was absolutely stunned at how great they were. Um, before I went to his class, you know, I had the Anyang 33 in my shop, and my only experience with with power hammers up to that point had been little giants and uh my little air hammer. And um, I just kind of naively had this idea that that a tire hammer just couldn't be as good, you know. And and I went to to Clay's shop, took this class, and was just blown away by how great the tire hammers were. And I left his shop on a mission to get a tire hammer, and um, and so then I I I found a guy in Texas that was selling a Dave Custer tire hammer, and so I sold the 33 and ran to Texas and bought that tire hammer. And um, and well, for a short, short time I had both of them in the shop. I had the tire, the Dave Custer tire hammer and the Anyang 33, but um not long after that, there was a class that was put on in Louisiana at uh Chapapila Crafts, and uh that's John Perrile's school in Louisiana, and John and Clay Spencer and Curtis Herman, Curtis is a guy out of Oklahoma who uh metal fabricator, uh great, great guy, does all kinds of really cool machine work. Um, those three guys got together to put on a tire hammer class at John Perrile's shop, and when I heard about that, I thought, well, I'm gonna sell my tire hammer and go take this class and build one. That way I'll know how the hammer works really well. I'll have a brand new hammer, and so I went and did that first class in Louisiana with 30 guys, I think, or the first class was 30. Yeah, the first class was 30 or 31 guys, and we built 32 tire hammers in two and a half days. And I was hooked not only on the hammers, but on the experience of going to the class itself, because uh you're you're you're around a big group of people that are all excited about power hammers. Um, you're working together pretty hard and intensely on a product that you're all going to take home. Um and um it's just it's a big weekend of of camaraderie and you know fabrication and welding and building, and it's just a great time. And then the bonus is at the end of the weekend, you know, everybody gets to go home with their own with their own tire hammer. And so I've done that now. I've done the class three times, and I've sold one of the tire hammers from one of the classes, and then I've gone and bought one from somebody that was in a class. And so I think all total I've purchased four of those hammers, and I have three of them still in the shop now.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Yeah, I didn't realize you still had three in there. That's cool. You're running out of room, aren't you? I mean, your shop you gotta be running out of room.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Um I'm way out of room. Um, I've got two fly presses. I've got a number nine fly press, I've got a number six fly press. I've got three tire hammers, I've got two inline treadle hammers, and uh a hydraulic press, the Anyang 88, and uh two belt grinders. Yeah, it's all stuffed in there. It's just enough room for me to walk around to each one of the tools. But two of the tools, the one of the tire hammers and one of the treadle hammers is not in use right now, they're just parked in the corner until I do some demolition of the shop. Um, there's a corner of my shop that used to be a like an office, and I'm gonna take those two walls out and uh put those tools in place, and then I'll have a line of all these tire hammers and treadle hammers all in a row. And the idea will be I'll be able to have a different die set or different tooling in each one of those machines, and I'll just be able to walk down that row uh when I'm going through the process of uh, you know, if I'm doing a production run of uh stake turners or whatever, I can have each die or each process in each tool. And uh it it really, really speeds things up, you know, when you when you have multiple tools set up that way.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Well, one of the tools that you didn't mention there, I know probably just because I asked you about hammer type tools, but uh tell us about your induction forge, what made you want one, and what has been the benefit of that to you? And and explain what an induction forge is too, because I I didn't really know what one was until you got into it and started talking about it online.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Well, yeah, I've I've had one for two years. I'm I'm uh I'm known as the godfather of induction. Um I don't know why, but uh probably just because uh I I documented the process, but I was not the first guy to do induction stuff. I was probably the first guy with a big social media following to really push it, but I was hardly the first guy out there to do it. Um the first guy that was really instrumental in getting induction forges into the blacksmithing or bladesmithing arena was a guy named Grant Sarver. And Grant has passed on now, but Grant was the first guy to really bring those things over to the U.S. and push them out in mass to to the maker community. Um, but but where I saw them first and where I really got excited was at that tire hammer tools class at Clay's shop, at Clay Spencer's shop. He had he had two induction machines in there, and uh, and that was my first time to use one. But induction forging, it looks like a big computer, it looks like a desktop computer. Uh, it's got a bunch of buttons and dials on the front, and uh sticking right out of the front is a copper, uh, a big coil of copper, and uh it's got a foot pedal and it's connected to 220 volt electricity, and it takes that electricity in. It has water cooling that runs through the machine. It basically works on the principle of I'm gonna butcher this, and uh, I know there's gonna be somebody listening to this that knows a lot more about induction forging than I do, and they're gonna be rolling their eyes at my at my uh description of what it is. But the best way I know how to explain it is you remember when you were in school and you would take uh a nail and you'd wrap a copper wire wire around a nail, and then you connect those wires to a battery, and it would magnetize the nail. Well, induction machines basically do that really quickly in an oscillating fashion, like it's it's it's reversing the magnetism back and forth, the polarity back and forth really fast. And because it's doing that, the molecules inside the steel are agitated and it creates heat in the steel really quickly. And so, just for an example, you can stick a piece of like half-inch square into an appropriately sized coil on the induction forge and press the pedal, and in about 30 seconds, you're gonna be at a yellow heat at 45 to 60 seconds, it's gonna be throwing sparks and almost melting. It's extremely fast localized heat. And uh the the first place that I saw one of those machines was at the tire hammer tools class, we used those induction machines to uh bend steel for some of the tooling that we were making in that class. That was the first time I had ever used one in person and seen one in person, and being able to walk over to those machines with a piece of one inch by quarter inch flat bar, press a pedal, and then bend it by hand in like 10 seconds just blew me away. And so my first mission when I left that tire hammer tools class was acquire a tire hammer. The second mission was acquire an induction forge, and so I got the tire hammers under my belt, and then uh after a year or two of forging with tire hammers, I got my first induction forge, and I've been using it for two years straight now, and it's changed the way I do everything pretty much. I mean, uh I don't really use propane or coal anymore. I would say 97% of the forging that I do in my shop happens with induction forging.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah, that's that's that's really interesting. So you started uh you started your own podcast several years ago. Tell us about why you started it, uh, what's your podcast about, and how it's how it's been going.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

So yeah, I started my own podcast uh I guess I guess a little over a year ago. No, it's a little longer than that because I was recording the podcast when I was driving to and from the hospital job, and um I'm working from home now, and I know I've been working from home for over a year. So um anyway, I I used to listen to this podcast um seven, eight years ago, I got really into triathlon, and I was doing all kinds of running and biking and swimming, and I and there was a guy that I listened to. There was a podcast that I listened to called Zen and the Art of Triathlon. And it was this guy, and it was just him grabbing his phone while he was in the car, and he was talking about his triathlon training. You know, he would talk about he would talk about what he was eating, he would talk about what kind of training he was doing, what he was doing on the bike, or what kind of swims he was doing. And it was just really, it was off the cuff. He would just record, you know, seven, eight minutes, and then he'd come back and say, Okay, well, I'm back from my swim now, and this is how it went. And he'd talk for another 15 minutes about some upcoming race. And, you know, he would do 20, 30-minute episodes of his podcast with just these little short snippets that he recorded throughout his week. And uh I was listening to all kinds of blacksmith podcasts and metalworking podcasts, any that I could find. And um, I thought it would be fun to start my own just to just to basically have somebody to talk to about forging, you know. And so I started doing the same kind of format. You know, I would mount my phone in uh a holder in the truck, and when I cranked the truck up and took off to go to work, I'd start talking about whatever I was working on in the shop, you know, and um and I would do that over two or three days, and then I would take all those pieces and I'd shove them together into one audio file and post it up as an episode. And um, I just recorded episode 67 today, and it was uh it was a 13-minute episode of me talking about um just the things that I've been working on lately in the shop and with 3D printers. It's basically just me talking about the things I'm interested in. And um, and so I wouldn't say that it's been wildly successful. I think I don't know, when I just looked at the app today, I think the last episode had 168 plays. So, you know, I've got 80 some odd thousand people following me on Instagram, 115,000 people following me on TikTok, and I had 150 plays of a podcast. So I don't know how I don't know what kind of math social media math that is, but that doesn't sound like it's wildly successful, but um it's just another outlet for me to to to talk about the things I'm doing and to put put more media out there.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Well, I'll try to go out there. I got two or three different podcast players, so I'll go try to at least load it up in each one of them, help your count go up.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah, yeah, just just hit play and then quit.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Yeah. So you you you mentioned social media a couple times, and I you just mentioned about how many, how many followers is it again you have? What those numbers again?

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Like, I don't know, last I looked, it was over 80,000 on Instagram and uh 115,000 on TikTok, and I don't really count Facebook. Yeah um probably four or five thousand on Facebook.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah, that's that is crazy, man. Uh I I I know there are people that have more than that too, but for me that's that's unimaginable. That's you definitely figure out how to use social media um, you know, and to drive customers to your business. You know, I remember us having this conversation, Derek. We were I I don't remember if it was when I was there at your place where we're filming the hammer making video, um but we were at Penn's, I know where we were when we had the conversation, we were over there at Penn's grabbing some lunch, and you were talking about using social media to grow your business, and I think you were particularly talking at that time about TikTok, because I, you know, I'm old and I had no idea. I mean I knew what TikTok was from just hearing it, you know, hearing it here and there, whatever, but I hadn't been on it and I just didn't see any. I thought it was just a place where kids dance and that kind of stuff or whatever. But yeah. And I was hoping you weren't on there dancing. I mean, I didn't I was scared to go look, you know. You never know. You never know. That's why I'm not following you on there because I I just didn't know what I was gonna see.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

But uh that's really what's that's really what has grown my platform, is is my dance method.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Well, um, so yeah, so if you don't mind, just take a few minutes and talk about the the benefits of social media, the pros and cons of social media. And you know, this is another conversation that you and I have had about the kind of the dangers of social media is that it is easy to become prideful, um, but also social media is a great tool for driving customers to your business. So so if you don't mind, talk about the pros and cons of social media and how you have incorporated it or used it as a marketing tool and um and and just a way to advance not just your business, but advance the craft uh overall.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Yeah. Well, I I look at it as just another tool in my in the rack. It's it's social media for me from a business perspective is no different than any of the hammers in my shop. It it's it's another tool that I that I need to understand and know how to use if if I'm gonna get more eyes on the things that I want to make. You know, and you know, if I'm if I want to support myself and and get something out of the hobby, you know, monetarily, um, then I need to sell things. And if I want to sell things, I need to get eyes on those things. And so it's important to look at it as a tool, but also not to be so cold and callous about it so that you represent that idea out to the following. You know, I don't, I mean, that's kind of a confusing way to put it, but I guess what I'm saying is I look at the social media uh platforms as tools, but the community engagement that I get on those is is kind of like a lucky uh byproduct of it. You know, I really enjoy the community engagement on Instagram more than on any other platform. Yeah, I feel like I get people that comment on my posts and have discussions and instant messages and stuff on Instagram where where I feel like it's it's more of a of a real community, you know. Whereas over on TikTok, it's like it's a whole different feeling. And it's a different kind of audience over there. And my main my main purpose on TikTok is just to try to drive traffic towards my website. It's not so much to generate and create community over there because I just don't I don't feel it the same on that platform. But but I think today in 2023, if you're not using social media, if you're a maker and you're trying to sell things, you know, if you're trying to be involved in a maker community, you you have to use social media to be involved and to get eyes on your product. And so it it it just it's a smart thing to try to learn what works on those platforms. So years ago when I first started getting into it, I I wanted to see what what was it that made uh successful social media accounts successful. And so I started just doing the basic research, you know. I started going to YouTube and just watching people who uh their channel was all about uh what current algorithms were successful or not on YouTube or on Instagram or on Facebook, you know, and and why one type of content was working better than another. And so I started trying to gear content. And what I learned over time and over looking all at all these things was that all these successful strategies had one thing in common, and that was just be honest and be real, you know, be uh you, you know, don't try to be somebody that you're not, and that sounds cliche, and that sounds like something that people have said over and over and over. But I mean, Chris, you've known me since I was in high school, right? I knew you when you were the old Derek. Yeah, that's right. That's a running joke. But but it when you watch my social media, do you see the Derek that you've always known, or do you see some different?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

No, no, I no, I yeah, I see you as I've always known you. I mean, you're right. I mean, it's a it it's a at least you know yours seems to be uh what I might would consider transparent, you know, it's not right, and there's there's a limit to that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

I mean, I don't want I don't want to put my whole life out on social media. You know, there's there's obviously things about my life that I don't share on social media, but but I I guess the point I'm making is I don't want to be somebody on social media that I'm not in real life. And uh my goal in social media has for a little while, I'll be honest, for a little while I was like, you know, I think when I had like 10 to 15,000 followers on Instagram, I got wrapped up in follower count. I was like, man, I've got to post, I've got to post regularly, I've got to post three videos a week, and I've got a daily post a story, you know, and I was trying to do all these things that people were saying would, you know, get more people to follow you and all this kind of stuff, and I kind of got wrapped up in it, and then I got burned out on that, and I was just like, this is just for the birds, you know, it's just not fun. And so then I I just wanted to be helpful, you know, because the the the I found that the accounts that I was the most invested in, the people that I wanted to watch the most, and the people's accounts that I was paying most attention to were the people that I was learning things from, right? And so then I I thought, okay, well, certainly every time I go to someone else's shop, I learn something. You know, when I go to when I travel to your shop, I learn something. When I watch Forged in Fire, my favorite part of watching Forged in Fire is the home forged portion because I get to see how someone else is using their tools to do something. And so I just started, I just started thinking, you know, I'm gonna share every little thing I'm doing on social media because somebody out there has not seen someone using a drill press like this, or they've not seen somebody, you know, using induction heating or or whatever. And so that became my mode on social media was is what I'm sharing helpful to somebody, and when I started doing that, then my social media started exploding, and it was like I wasn't paying attention to trends or analytics or anything, it was just like that really seemed to resonate, and so that's kind of been my shtick, I guess, for lack of a better way to put it on social media is is I just I want to be I want to be authentic, I want to be the same Derek to everybody, and then I want to be helpful, you know, and that's that's that's turned out to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Along uh the same lines is really what I'm hoping to get out of this podcast, is that I think I I think I might have mentioned this in our in in the episode where I got interviewed, but you know, with my videos and the the things that I put out, particularly the things that I charge, you know, my goal is to give the give people a a good product at a fair price, you know, and and even with the with a podcast, you know, there's there's not a price involved, but there's a there's a time involved for people to to listen and and so one of the goals and the reasons that I ask the kinds of questions that I do here is I'm hoping that these things help somebody. You know, I when I ask you about how you got started, what what tools, what what what book did you use, you know, these kinds of things, hoping that the information that our guests share will point people into a direction that will help them grow in their makers' ability or in their you know in in making what they make, whether that's blacksmithing or knives or anything like that. So I I totally understand what you're saying, you know. I mean that's we we've talked about this. It is it is easy to get wrapped up, like you're saying, in in the the um subscriber count or followers or whatever it's called for whatever social media the likes and all that stuff. And that I think that is where the where the pride comes in, and and there's a danger there, but um Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

I mean it it you know I I I had a period recently of of massive account growth on Instagram where I just exploded on Instagram because of a few uh Reels videos that I posted. And uh they they went viral, and because they went viral, I got more people looking and more people that followed. And and you know, there is there is this kind of temptation to feel like, oh man, well now I've got this many followers, and I'm you know, now I'm really something, you know. But that follower count doesn't mean anything if you're a jerk, you know, and it doesn't mean much if you're not providing some value to people, you know. You might get you might get 20,000 people that follow you because of some crazy uh viral video, but if you're not doing something helpful or interesting to them, then they're gonna unfollow you, you know, at some point pretty quickly. And so it goes back to Batson. I keep thinking of Batson Bladesmithing Symposium over in Alabama, you know you and I both started going to that years and years ago. And one of the great things about that is that everybody over there, and this is this is in the bladesmithing community in general that I've found, everybody's really willing to share their knowledge. You know, there's no there's not a lot of people going, I don't want to show you this technique. Very early on, I I remember going to Bats and seeing people that were just superheroes in the bladesmithing world that were that were showing up to Batson. And I could walk up to these people and ask them, hey, how did you do that? And they would stop and talk to me, you know, about it and tell me. And it was just so that's been a theme in bladesmithing for me for years, is that I've people have given me so much help over the years that that I just feel kind of obligated that that that I should be about the same thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Right. Well, and I think uh I think it's also important to notice like a compare and contrast, right? So your your Instagram account for for instance, you have maybe 20, 20, 2,000, 2100 some posts, right? 83,000 followers. In comparison to that, if you look at my Instagram account, I have maybe 800 some followers, right? So you have a hundred times more followers than I do, and I have maybe about half the posts. But I think it's important as uh as a maker, but also just as a person, that you can do things right, or you can uh you can try to post up uh relevant content and you really just don't hit a stride where you do become viral. And I uh I kind of go back to that because in in one way you can get an ego because you have a social media f uh following that's large, or you become an influencer, as it were, but uh don't be deterred if you have less followers because that's not the measure of of a man or the mantle of who you who you are, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Oh no, absolutely not. Right. Yeah, and you know, um so let's say you have 800 followers and I've got 80,000. You know how many people that I regularly interact with on a daily or weekly basis on my account? It's probably 30 or 40 people, you know, like the usual suspects that always comment and always talk and always interact. It's kind of a very small group, you know, and that fairly small group that is consistently interacting with me. I I think about those guys when I'm posting something. I think about, oh man, you know, man, Mike Mike is gonna want to see this, you know, or James is gonna think this is cool, you know. I mean, I'm I'm thinking about certain people, these usual, and it's not 80,000 people that are interacting with me. It's a very small number. 80,000 people might be following me to see my stuff show up in their feed every once in a while, but the community is fairly small, and you know, you can have a hundred followers and have a great amount of community, you know, on on any social media platform if you've got engagement with we you know with a with a group.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

You know, I've kind of thought about I guess I'm not gonna do this, but I I would like to reset my Facebook friends to be more of the people that I that I know personally and interact with. But I but I do also understand that you know that a lot of people I'm friends with that I may not know personally, but just because of the of the videos and and and also maybe people like my knives and that kind of stuff. And so it's again an opportunity to to let people know when I have something new and or or if I'm working on something, some kind of instruction or something. I think people benefit from it, but but you talk about the smaller community, you that that is something that the larger it gets, the larger your friend base gets, the well I see a lot of this I I don't see as many of the old pe the old guys I used to go to high school with, you know, and and or the people that I go to church with uh in my feeds. And I think there's things in Facebook you can do to to elevate those, and maybe I need to look into that. But but the point being, you know, the larger you're following, it it almost seems to dilute the interaction that you might have seen people who you're actually closer to. Yeah, it can for sure. All right, well, let me ask you this. So moving on to another subject that I guess is is kind of similar. And um we've talked before, and this is something that I'm particularly interested in, is how you have incorporated your knife making or your blacksmithing into ministry opportunities. I know you spoke at the church in Cyreville, and me and my son went out and got to listen to you, and that was that was excellent. But um talk about some other ways that you've been able to, I know you're you're a a Christian and you know that's important to you, and talk about ways in which you've been able to tie your blacksmithing stuff to your to to some type of ministry, using it uh for the glory of God.

SPEAKER_03 35:28

Yeah, yeah, that's that's a that's a big part of it, and and that's one of the reasons why you know you just said on Facebook you've got people that aren't your friends. I've I've generally got a rule on Facebook. If someone sends me a friend request, I generally will accept it because for one, Facebook is where I post a little bit more faith-based kind of content, but I figure that's an opportunity for one for people to see me share Christ occasionally, two, it's me, it's an opportunity for them to buy something from me, you know. Um, but money changed. I'm sorry. Yeah, but yeah, so you know being a Christian, I feel like we're all made in the image of God, and God is the great creator, and so I feel like w everyone has the ability to create and to make things, and I feel like it makes the Lord happy when we use our talents in that way to make things, you know, make beautiful things out of out of raw materials. I think that's I think that's a God-honoring thing. And if you can also do it where you can bring people in who um, you know, for example, uh, I've got a men's group that that meets in my shop on Wednesday nights. It's a very small group, four or five of us meet there, but that group started out of a desire to get some guys to come to an event or a small group that normally hasn't felt like any other small group or opportunity of the church was kind of for them, you know, like they just didn't enjoy or feel though that they fit in in some of these other places. But you get guys into a shop environment and put tools in their hand, and it relaxes them and it opens up opportunities for fellowship and discipleship and and that that they otherwise might not be open to, you know. And and the other part of it is our our church is fairly large, and it's easy just to go to church on Sunday and see people and wave at them, and go to go to the church, and you know, listen to the message and and hear the word and then leave and wave at the same people coming and going, and not really get to know some of the people. And so that was another idea was hey, you know, I want to I want to get to know some of these guys, and um, and so we started doing this men's group, and it's been a lot of fun. And um we we meet and we we study the Bible for about 45 minutes to an hour, and then we just start playing with tools. And the last two times we've done it, we've we've made knives, and and so I still do get some knife making in on Wednesday nights, but we're at this point in the current small group, we just forged out the tips and uh handles on our blades, and we're just starting to get into the blade bevel forging, and um we'll we'll probably finish these blades up over the next uh three or four weeks. But it's been fun to look for ways to use uh knife making and bladesmithing, you know, as a way to reach people for Christ. And uh I was invited to come out and demonstrate for the Texas Blacksmith Association meeting last year, and um that was really uh pretty cool. Uh as a Christian, you know, uh I I think all the demonstrators were Christians that year, and I think everybody during their demo at some point or another shared uh their faith journey, you know, and so that was really uh interesting. And it's been it's been neat to see the ways that God has opened doors in that regard. You know, when the whole forged in fire thing happened, as a as a Christian, I look for the reason uh or God's purpose in events in my life. You know, I look at things that happened in my life or opportunities or events, and I look at, okay, what is the Lord's purpose in this? You know, and so when forged in fire happened, um, I was kind of like, man, how is God where is God in a TV show like this? You know, what what is the opportunity here? And so one of my goals when I went on that show was to represent not only myself well, but to represent the Lord well and to not do anything that you know cast dispersion on on Christians, you know. I didn't want to go on the show and someone to come back and say, oh, he's a hypocrite, you know, or he's he's not practicing what he preaches, you know. And then also just the parallels between the forging and the Christian life, you know, there's a lot of parallels there between the process of taking a piece of metal and the transformation that happens between you know going through a fire, so to speak, and coming out refined on the other end. And so there's been a lot of opportunities there to use that those parallels to talk about the process of being a Christian.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

So kind of along the same lines, and maybe maybe you already answered this a little bit, but for you personally, um, are there any life lessons or personal growth or truths that you have gained from your time as a knife maker or blacksmith, things that you you might not would have known or or grown to know or experience otherwise? And I'm not talking about just like general experience, like going on shows and that kind of stuff, but I'm talking about life lessons, personal growth.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Yeah, as a knife maker or a blacksmith, I think in this craft we experience failure at a rate that maybe is higher than in other crafts. I don't know if that's true or not, but it just feels that way. And maybe it feels that way because when you put so much of your blood, sweat, and tears into making a knife, and then you discover a fatal crack during the last 400 grit hand sanding stage, you know, that's kind of a soul-crushing experience the first couple of times it happened. But you but you learn that it's just part of it, and you learn that it's a mistake that you made, or you skipped some step you shouldn't have skipped, and you paid a price for it, you know. And so one of the one of the great life lessons that I've learned through forging and blacksmithing and bladesmithing, whatever you want to call it, has just been how important failure is in our lives, and how important it is that we do fail and we learn from it and we change from it, you know. And uh that's just been one of those things that's been it's become a precious thing to me now. You know, I don't I don't get really upset about failure in the shop the way I used to. You know, I kind of look at a failure now and I kind of smile about it and I go, oh, okay, well, there's that's a new thing that I learned. And uh whereas when you're young and when you're just starting in the craft, when you have those failures, you you want to chunk the knife through the window or throw it off in the woods, you know, you get really angry about it and it makes you want to quit, you know. And and now those kind of failures don't make me really angry, they don't really make me want to quit. They just make me realize, hey, that's you know, at this point, after having so many different kinds of failures, if I have a really bad failure now, man, that's a valuable lesson. That's something I need to pay attention to. And that carries over into my life, you know, that carries over into all areas that, you know, if I'm failing somewhere or if I'm screwing up somewhere, well, that's that's somewhere that I need to make adjustments and changes.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

All right, man, we're winding it down. I think this may be the last question here, but what advice would you give someone interested in, or someone who's just getting started in bladesmithing or blacksmithing? Uh I asked the same question to Aaron. You know, uh, if if if you could look back at yourself in 2001 and or maybe even 2000 and give yourself some advice, what what would that be? Or how would you encourage somebody who's just wanting to get into it? Somebody today that don't know where to start. What what advice would you give a young maker?

SPEAKER_03 44:06

Uh well, I would tell them to go by the Melton ForgeWorks guide to getting started in forging.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Is that a for real thing?

SPEAKER_03 44:14

That's a for real thing. I wrote an ebook a while back, yeah, with that in mind.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Um, you know, and then after that go buy your hammer making video.

SPEAKER_03 44:27

That's right, yeah. No, I you know, I think what I would tell somebody is to, and this is this is something I didn't do for a long time, is I didn't spend money on classes. And I think the number one thing that I think people um the big tendency is it's it's a lot easier to chase equipment than it is to chase skill. And I fell into that same equipment gathering trap, even you know, even with the $50 knife shop knife shop, and as rudimentary uh of uh equipment set as I started with, I very quickly moved into the I've got to get this tool, I've got to get that tool kind of mindset. And instead, I should have been into the I've gotta take this class, I've got to go to this seminar mindset, you know, because the times in my maker career or maker journey where I excelled or progressed the fastest or the most were after going to classes. And so I would just encourage young makers, you know, if it's super easy to get all excited about getting a power hammer or a huge nice anvil, but you'll get so much more out of a really good class, you know, than some fancy piece of equipment right off the bat. So that would probably be the number one thing that I would encourage people that are just getting started to do is to seek out opportunities to take classes from good teachers. Well, good deal.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

All right, man. Well, Derek, uh I I appreciate. Tell us real quick what your website is and where you can be found on social media and how people can interact with you and purchase that ebook you just talked about.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Yeah, that's funny. I wrote that ebook. Uh, I kept a Google Doc for years of all these different equipment recommendations and stuff, and uh I got kind of tired of people telling, or I got tired of answering the same kind of questions over and over, so I started writing this guide, and it just it just turned into a turned into an ebook. But um my website is just my name, it's Derek Melton, D-E-R-E-K-M-E-L-T-O-N.com. Um, I'm on Instagram as Derek Melton, D-E-R-E-K-M-E-L M-E-L-T-O-N. But funny enough, there's another Derek Melton out there. It spells his name the exact same way, but he's Derek.melton. And he's also a knife maker, and he's a pastor of a church somewhere, and he's a really good knife maker, too. But um, yeah, my website's just my name, Derek Melton.com, and I'm just Derek Melton on all the different social medias.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Well, Aaron, is there anything else you want to talk to Derek about? I'm just gonna go ahead and turn it over to you to close us out.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Yeah, no, I mean, uh, Derek, it's uh been really great to learn more about you, the person. I I really feel that your social media presence does represent you pretty well because you're talking to you through this interview. Um, I feel like there's a lot of consistency between the two. So that's a good thing, right?

SPEAKER_03 47:47

Good.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

But yeah, it's been it's been a pleasure to get to interview you and get to hear some uh conversations and things that you know a lot of people might not necessarily know about you. And I just uh, you know, really appreciate you being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

Yeah, absolutely. Are are you going to Blade Show this year?

SPEAKER_01 48:07

I will not be going to Blade Show, Atlanta. I'll be going to Blade Show, Texas, and mingling around. I I've had I've had a table uh Blade Show, Texas, the last two years, and I had had one at at uh Atlanta the last two years, but I kind of burned out's not the right word. Um but I put I've put a lot of money over the last few years into going to shows and uh the over-under financially for me. It just hasn't really been there. So I've uh made some decisions to do more local Texas shows and to just uh try to do orders and and try to you know spend more time in the shop than going and traveling and working towards shows.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

We'll see how that works out, and maybe next year I'll get back into it.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Yeah, I think this will be my first year to have a table at Blade, and uh it will be a very non-uh Blade Show table. It's gonna be a lot of blacksmith stuff.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Well, that's good. The one thing that's uh good about uh Blade magazine and what they bring to the table is uh variety, I think. Um that's one thing I've always enjoyed about going to the shows is that you get just a large swath of things that are knives, bladesmithing, uh blacksmithing, and uh and material related. So I usually, if I sell some knives at a show, I usually end up giving it right back to somebody for materials.

SPEAKER_03 49:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me on, guys. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Thank you once again for joining us for another episode of the Good Old Blades Podcast. Remember that you are loved and God bless.