Eight Fingers, One Grinder, and a Book Press: Dean of Severed Metal Works

Watch The Great American Knife Tour™ video: https://youtu.be/qxdt742dy1A

The first thing Dean wanted us to notice about his shop was the air conditioner.

That is not a small thing. Most of the videos people know him from were filmed in a shed in the Alabama heat. He and his wife spent a long time hauling everything out of it and into the garage, which is cooler in both senses of the word. I run a garage studio with no AC, so I was openly jealous within about ninety seconds of arriving.

This was Severed Metal Works, and the man making the knives is a part-time maker with a full-time job in the firearm trade, a wife who vetoes his color choices, and an origin story that does not sound real until you hear him tell it.

Rebar and a hair dryer

Dean is one of the Forged in Fire generation. He watched it as a teenager and thought it looked fun. Add RPG video games, a lot of rewatching Conan the Barbarian, and a kid who built weapons out of sticks and rocks in the yard, and the direction was set early.

"I've always been fascinated with weapons," he said. "I know to a lot of people that might sound crazy, but it's just kind of who I am."

What he did not have was any tool experience at all. He knew how to use a screwdriver. That was the list.

"I never even used a hand drill before I started making knives."

At some point he decided he needed a hobby that got him outside, and it came down to two options. Reloading or knife making. Knife making won.

His first knife was a piece of rebar, forged in his parents' backyard in a 55 gallon steel drum that was far too big for the job, with a hair dryer feeding it air to get the steel red.

"It wasn't structurally sound. It was rebar. It's not good carbon steel. And it was the ugliest thing you've ever seen. It was awful."

He wishes he still had it. Not for sentiment exactly, but as evidence.

"If you or any customer saw the first knife and then you looked at these, you'd be like, that's not the same knife maker. There's no way you can go from that to this."

He is direct about how he got from there to here, which was by failing repeatedly.

"I can't sit down and read. I have to fail at it first and then go, that's what we have to do different this time."

The shop, and the machinists he keeps upsetting

The centerpiece is an OBM 2x72 grinder, where all the dirty work happens and where the metal powder and sawdust get thrown into the air. Then there is a fit and finish table that is supposed to stay clean and does not.

After that it gets improvised in ways I found more interesting than any expensive setup would have been.

He does not own a mill. He uses a drill press with a vise clamped under it to move work on an X and Y axis, which is a thing machinists on the internet have opinions about.

"I've gotten so many comments like, that is an abomination. I can't wait for your drill to blow up on you," he said. "I work with machinists. They're also not very happy with it."

His position is that the Harbor Freight drill press has been doing wonders, and that anyone sufficiently bothered is welcome to send him a mill.

His Kydex press is a book press. Most makers use two plates of metal or wood with foam and a clamp. Dean realized a book press spindle would hold even pressure across the whole sandwich without him fighting a clamp one handed. He has never seen anyone else do it.

The oven in the garage is the detail that gives the whole shop away, and he mentioned it in passing like it was normal equipment.

It is his wife's bakery oven. She made wedding cakes in that garage, along with custom cookies and cupcakes with icing flowers that genuinely look like real flowers. She has since moved to a cafe, and after what Dean described as many months of begging and crying in the backyard from sweating, she agreed to let him have the space.

"Fine, just don't make it a mess. I don't want sawdust and metal shavings in the house."

He is highly motivated to keep that agreement, because the alternative is going back to the shed.

The rest is a Harbor Freight vise, an air compressor, a sand blasting cabinet, a band saw, an arbor press, and a makeup container his wife gave him that used to hold eyeliner and now holds his sharpening stones and dog tags.

Here is the part that surprised me most. Every handle that leaves that shop was shaped by hand.

"I literally just get a block of wood, drill holes into it, put it in my vise, and I hand file and hand sand all of the handles that come through here," he said. The grinder only removes the bulk. Everything after that is a file and sandpaper.

Why everything is orange

Dean sprays his blades with a gun coat finish rather than Cerakote or DLC, and the reasoning is refreshingly practical.

Cerakote is expensive and time consuming, and that cost would land on the customer. The finish he uses needs no hardening compound mixed in. He sprays it and cures it in the oven. It also tolerates a working garage where dust is constantly in the air, which matters when your shop and your grinder share a room.

It also comes in colors, and this is where Severed Metal Works stops looking like everybody else.

"The community and myself included love the ability to have a knife that is orange or a knife that is purple," he said. "Don't be boring."

He has a magenta he has not put in a drop yet that he describes as violently pink, the pinkest pink you have ever seen. He wants to get into camo patterns and splatter finishes. A blood splatter over green came up and neither of us hated it.

There is a quality control filter on this, and it is his wife.

He brings her what he calls an emotional support knife, whichever piece from an upcoming drop he is most attached to, and shows her the handle, the finish, and the sheath.

"She goes, orange and purple, why orange and purple? And I'm like, because it's weird. And she'll be like, no, no one's going to buy that."

So if you have bought a neon green and dark purple Severed Metal Works knife, she signed off on it. If it is a strange one, he may have snuck it past her.

The knives

The Zealot is the design he makes exclusively for us, and it is the one I own personally. Mine has a handle from 285 Woodworks, maple burl in epoxy resin with aluminum wire run through it for support.

The Militant is the newest. The Skelly Squire is a skeletonized version of his Squire, which runs a hollow primary bevel with a flat grind at the tip. It ships with no handle on purpose. Wrap it in paracord or grip tape in whatever color suits you and it becomes yours for the price of supplies anyone can buy anywhere.

The Templar is a double edged design he has made exactly once, born out of his love of two handed swords and scaled down to something you could actually carry in the woods. The Warlord, at 12 inches overall, is the only design currently on his site for custom ordering. Full custom work is on hold while he is still working another job.

Coming next is the SV3, the third version of the Squire, in MagnaCut. He has the heat treat oven. The next big purchase is a dewar, essentially a very large thermos for liquid nitrogen at negative 300 degrees. The blade goes from heat treat straight into cryo, which is what MagnaCut wants.

On the hardness arms race he is measured. "A lot of people will go for a higher number every single time, but that's kind of the surface knowledge of it," he said. Push it too far and the steel gets brittle. "Just because it's metal doesn't mean it can't shatter like glass. Sometimes a little bit of wiggle is better than a break."

The scales on the yellow G10 Zealots deserve a mention. He laser engraved a honeycomb pattern layered with a spiderweb, erasing parts of the file so some areas sit at the surface and others cut deeper, which you feel in the hand rather than just see. His laser is not fast. Each scale took about an hour and a half.

The Militant retails at 165 dollars. One man, in a garage, filing every handle by hand, paying for his own equipment and materials out of that number.

He also does not let much slide. Cosmetic flaws he works around, usually by rock texturing the blade, which he thinks looks better anyway. Structural flaws never leave the building.

"I will not send a knife out there that I don't have confidence in," he said. The failures get their blades cut off and become handle fitting tools.

Phantom Pain

One of his designs is called the Phantom Pain, and the name is not decoration.

Dean is an amputee. He was born in 1996 and amputated at six months old, through the knee. There was no warning before he was born.

"I came out and everybody was like, whoa, that's a lot of toes and fingers. What's going on?"

The terms he used are mirror hand syndrome and mirror foot syndrome. The bones in his right arm and right leg mirrored themselves. He had eight fingers on his right hand and no thumb, with an extra finger where the thumb belongs. He had eight toes on that foot, and no tibia in that leg, which curved like a question mark.

He wrote a college research paper on himself, because he was allowed to pick a medical story that fascinated him and the material was sitting right there. He found roughly 70 recorded cases of the hand condition and about 50 of the leg condition. As far as he has been able to determine, he is the only person recorded with both.

Phantom pain is the sensation amputees feel from a limb that is no longer there. Doctors still do not fully understand why it happens. Dean has no memory of ever having those eight toes, and he still feels them at nearly 30 years old.

"You can still feel your toes wiggling, and it kind of feels like a taze in your leg."

He named a knife after it, which tells you most of what you need to know about his sense of humor.

The knife also has a job. Dean got connected with Amputee Blade Runners, a charity that provides running blades to amputees. He never had one growing up. They gave him one for free. Every year since, he has run a charity drive for them.

"They're doing great things for other amputees, and me making a knife and generating some money to send back their way is what I can do."

I asked what it is like working a craft this dependent on hands and feet.

"I have never had the option to take it easy," he said. His parents were told repeatedly he would not walk or run. He now works a trade that keeps him on his feet and using his hands all day. "I wasn't babied as a kid at all. Everything has always been a struggle, but that's all I've ever known, and I'm grateful for it."

Then he said something that stuck with me.

"Would I like to have two opposable thumbs? Yes. But I don't. Everybody has their own problems. And if you give up, what's the point of doing anything?"

Why he is really in the garage

Dean was open about something most makers would not bring up on camera, and he brought it up himself.

"I make knives as a great mental health support system for me as an amputee," he said. He has dealt with depression at various points in his life. Becoming a father helped with some of it and added its own pressures.

"Being in here making things for other people, and seeing how much they love things that I've made with my own hands, this has done more for my mental health than any pills or anything a doctor has prescribed."

His advice to anyone in a similar spot was not to skip the doctor. It was to add something.

"Find out what you're passionate about, what you love to do, no matter what it is, and just start doing it. Going to the doctor and talking to people is great. You also need to take steps into finding what brings you joy."

The drops

Severed Metal Works drops sell out fast on our site. Some go in 24 hours. Some go in 10 minutes. Dean is refreshing the page right along with everyone else.

"No matter where I'm at, what I'm doing, I have to watch the drop," he said. "It gave me a feeling of like, people want things that I make. It's definitely a feeling that I chase, and I get in here every second I can to chase that feeling."

Every knife is serialized. He laser engraves his logo and the serial number himself as the last step before it goes in a box.

For himself, he carries one knife rather than rotating a collection. He thinks in terms of iconic weapons, the kind a character in a movie or a game is never seen without.

"If this was post-apocalyptic, people would know me and the Phantom Pain that I carry," he said. He wants his designs to have a level of what he called badasserie, and to still be useful.

One last thing

Ariah had her knife with her, the 80CrV2 santoku she forged at Djinn Designs on Day 1 of this tour. Dean spotted it on the bench.

He asked if we noticed the problem with it. She did. It had no sheath.

He asked her what color she wanted. She said black. Then he scored a sheet of Kydex with a box cutter, heated it, pressed it in the book press, taped in the spacing, and handed her a finished sheath before we left.

Two shops, two states, one 13-year-old with a complete knife.

That is what this tour is supposed to look like.

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Severed Metal Works knives are available at LoneStarKnife.com. Drops go fast, so it is worth being on the list.