Lost Art Revived At Big Rock Forge
Curiosity and a creative childhood can be just enough to inspire a self-made life. Just take the story of Scott Roush, a former BBC/Discovery Channel underwater photographer turned bladesmith.
Prompted by drawing, sketching, and re-creating frontier and fur trader lifestyles in his youth, Roush today smiths knives and tools outside Washburn. His shop is called Big Rock Forge, named after the Sioux River's Big Rock hole, which is located a short distance away.
Though his knives are of collector quality — commissioned by chefs and connoisseurs as far away as Australia, Norway, England, Italy, and Germany — Roush is mostly self-taught.
“I'm not shy about bugging the heck out of someone when I want to learn something,” he said.
Surrounded when he was young by people who made their own things, Roush started following their examples and began making traditional longbows, like those used for deer hunting, as well as his own arrows. In making the longbows Roush learned about the workings of wood and connected with a community of traditional archers. Later, he made the jump to metal and formed his first knife from a saw blade.
“The hardest part was learning how to grind down the edge,” he said.
To keep up-to-date Roush joined the American Bladesmiths Society, attends gatherings of knifemakers, and regularly communicates with an online bladesmithing community.
After about 18 months of honing his style, Roush is moving from knife-making as a hobby, to making knives as a professional. What makes his work stand out from that of other bladesmiths is his artistic eye and his use of traditional bladesmithing methods.
He uses a forge and anvil to make his knives, and he built his own propane-fueled forge, which is lined with ceramic wool and has high temperature grade bricks standing guard at the flaming entrance.
“That process hasn't changed for hundreds of years,” Roush said. “It's still completely handcrafted.”
Roush explained that forging a knife shape is more efficient than the stock-removal method of knife-making, or grinding metal to form a shape, as forging turns a lesser amount of metal to dust.
“The knives are forged completely to shape,” Roush said. “I prefer forging because it's more traditional, you have more creative control, and you're more self-sufficient.”
Efficiency and creativity are central to his work, as he finds new uses for items that once had other purposes. Take for instance a flattened car spring Roush scavenged, or the still curlicued shock-absorbing spring from a truck, or even a rusted farrier's rasp that at one time was used to trim horse hooves.
“It's amazing how this changes your perspective on looking at junk,” he said.
Some of Roush's materials have come from the region's woods, as when he happened on two pieces of heavy metal. He also has a shipwreck spike he found while scuba diving in Lake Erie. Based on metal testing techniques, he knows the spike is wrought iron, or true iron.
“It's my favorite metal now,” he said. “I love it. It's so neat-looking when you work with it.”
Roush uses etching chemicals and back-sanding to create texture and bring out character in a blade. That same sort of adherence to the quality of material he uses is also reflected in the wooden knife handles and leather sheaths that he creates.
One knife Roush made, a Great Lakes chop knife, had shipwreck wrought iron bolsters, a Timeless Timber old growth maple handle, file work on the top edge of the knife, or spine, that represented waves, and then heat-treatment so the blade looked like shoreline.
“I wanted the wood and metal to flow naturally and look like they grew and evolved together,” he said. “I've always been fascinated with nature.”
Chopping knives are made with stable blades that require more frequent sharpening than deer skinning knives, which are more fragile but are easier to keep sharp, he explained. Roush uses a variety of heat treatments to temper metal and make it soft or brittle, depending on how the knife will ultimately be used.
Roush prides himself on the effort he puts into the quality of his knife blades, which are able to hold an edge and stay sharp. His lower-priced knives, starting at around $65, are all-metal utility knives, whereas his higher-priced knives involve figured woods, wrought iron guards, and deer antler handles. To see some of his work visit bigrockforge.com.
“I want to encourage people to have me make them a knife out of something that means something to them,” he said. “Though I tend to make better knives when I work completely creatively.”