St. Albert resident Bob Bryenton describes himself as an "all in" kind of guy. So when his wife bought him a set of hammers and an apron so he could start forging his own blades, he warned her that it was something he wouldn't turn away from.
"I'm not a guy that ever goes halfway. I dove in head first, into the middle of the ocean," he said.
Bryenton, 64, used to be a vice-president of IT with an insurance company. He described himself as a "road warrior."
"I was on the road three days a week. Which sucks. And you get to the hotel room and the only thing on TV at the hotel was Discovery Channel or a hockey game," Bryenton said. "So I used to watch Forged in Fire when it first came out, because I was like that looks kind of cool."
He said in a conversation with his wife about the show she asked why he doesn't go do that. He replied that he'd like to, but that it looked expensive to get started. For Christmas, she bought him a set of hammers and an apron.
Bryenton set up his forge in his garage, and most of the tools he uses are ones he made himself.
"If you need a tool, make a tool," he said. He still recalls the first knife he ever made, which came from a hunk of steel that had broken off a railroad track.
"A guy down the block gave it to me. So I hacked off a hunk of steel and hammered it into a knife," he said, adding that he still uses it at his cabin.
His focus isn't just tools. He's built custom swords based on Jason and the Argonauts, heirloom and memorial knives for people, and one request included making a backrest of swords for a client's motorcycle, based on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones.
"There is no request that is off the wall," he said. He prefers these projects where he gets to exercise his creativity.
"I've told people that have phoned up if they just want a simple, straightforward hunting knife: 'Cabela's sells great knives.' I don't want to reproduce something and charge you five times, which you can go buy at Cabela's," he said.
He's been building up a reputation and is booked until October, and has shipped to the United States, Australia and Brazil. Most of his recognition and traffic comes from his website, which he said his past 35 year career in IT helped him with setting up a website to gain traction online. Bryenton also has started offering lessons as of last year after being somewhat reluctant.
"I did not feel qualified to give lessons. But people kept asking," he said. He's selective about who he'll take on, and has said no to people before.
"You have to remember, everything in this garage is actively trying to kill you," he said. "You have to treat it with the respect it deserves. I don't want to give lessons to everybody, you have to have some form of familiarity or competence around tools."
He wants to dispel the myth that black smiths spend all their time at the anvil with a hammer.
"That is 10 per cent of the job. The other 90 to 95 per cent is spent with sandpaper, files, that kind of stuff. But that's a part nobody ever shows, because it's not sexy."
He hopes he can continue doing this for the near future, and will soon move his forge out of his garage and into a dedicated shop in North Buck Lake, Alta.
"It keeps me busy in retirement. I think I'd go stir crazy without it," he said. "I'm always a 'do something' kind of guy, and the learning process never stops. It's like anything, the more you learn the more you realize you don't know... There's always new techniques."
Vist Bryenton's website to learn more.
