Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jamison Chopp. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jamison, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Its been a long road, but I was able to get to a point where I am making a living with my full time creative work. Around 8 years ago I quit Wells Fargo to pursue being a full time bladesmith. Although I wanted to make the change as soon as possible, both in terms of my sanity but also the sooner I start building experience and a customer base in my new career, but planning and patience was paramount in my transition. At the time I was 27 with no major obligations, so finding a way to live cheaply, and paying off all my outstanding debt made the pressure more manageable and gave myself as much runway to make it work as I could. When I went to work as an apprentice for an experienced knife maker, I was 100% commission and coming in with next to no experience, so it took several months to learn the basics and get to the point of even having product available to sell. The first year of the jump was definitely the hardest, but within a few years was meeting my monthly bills. At 5 years I opted to start a shop of my own, which felt oddly familiar to my first 1 year on my own, although I have a customer base, setting up your sales network and day to day operations is a different kind of learning than how to make your product. In my experience, there things at start up that may be necessary to take out a loan (in my case large investment upfront of machinery) but minimizing reliance as much as you can on debt, both personally and business helped keep things in perspective and more manageable for myself.

Jamison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Jamison Chopp and work at Acre Forge in Portland, Oregon, I’ve been a full time bladesmith/knifemaker for almost 9 years. I worked at Wells Fargo out of college and quickly realized this wasn’t a sustainable path for me personally. Growing up on a farm, I always enjoyed working with my hands, and discovered custom knife making. After researching people in my area I may be able to learn/apprentice from, reached out and made the plan with them to join next year (continued working 1 more year to save/payoff debt). I was one of ranging from 2-8 apprentices at a given point in time. I apprenticed there for 5 years, before going off to start my own business in February 2020 (not great timing) We faced significant delays in setup with the shipping of equipment in lockdown through early 2020 but were selling knives by the 2nd half of 2020. After 2.5 years of running Jamison Chopp Knives, I was approached by several bladesmiths I had previously worked with about starting a larger shop which we eventually named Acre Forge. With bladesmithing, there are some very expensive pieces of equipment, that are not in use much of the process so the ability to consolidate made sense from a logistical perspective. Additionally, having all worked together previously allowed for a level of trust, and baseline level of our work from the start. Instead of 7 individual makers, we felt all of us under one roof adds a level to our ability, to learn, collaborate, and a sense of stability that many of us have never felt. It has had it moments of difficulty to say the least, but learning to communicate with each other has been enormous.

As for products, most of us focus on culinary knives with the philosophy that every passionate chef deserves a quality knife. As with most creatives and makers, we take pride in what we put out there and will always stand behind our work. We embrace both a more straightforward process of knifemaking as well as a more artistic element of forging unique patterns of steel by hand. The end result is always a knife that is focused on performance and quality with the idea that we want our knife to be the one you reach for time and time again off your knife strip. We would prefer to sell you 2-3 high quality knives than pursue selling the standard cookie cutter knife block where only 2-3 knives are used regularly anyways.

Another big piece of advice that I’ve faced over the years is you need to treat it as work. I 100% love what I do for a living, but because of that, there’s times where its been a misconception that everything is laid back and I just show up and do what I love everyday. But when its your livelihood, you need to approach it as any other job, be disciplined about hours, what work needs to get done, and saying no at times to go meet up with friends because you make your own hours. With that said, its also important to get out of the shop and and disconnect, so its a delicate balance at times making sure both your personal life and professional life are functioning how you want them to.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met Dane our founder while working together at Carter Cutlery, although we had a very small overlap I did want to emphasize in the maker community, I think there’s a huge importance in building relationships within that community. All of the makers here at Acre had meet previously and only felt comfortable scaling up larger in part because of how we all treated each other and had a sense for everyones moral compass. In particular I had connected with Dane while talking about volunteering with an organization and hopes of doing more community based work and advocacy in the future. Had you told me 4 years ago, the person I had just met would be founding a business that I would be working at, I’d call you crazy. In short, being willing to open up and build relationships vs being protective will show in the long run, and in my experience has led to growth in many facets of my life, business, relationships, and my emotional abilities.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being a creative I think is how humbling small piece of metal can be. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if everything went perfect, but I also enjoy embracing the hardship of trying something new and it not going as planned, or even a new curve ball from something I’ve done hundred of times. I’ve always been someone that loved puzzles, riddles, hidden object hunts, challenges, etc….so in ways knives can feel like putting together a puzzle, but instead of having the pieces and just assembling them I have to first make the pieces then put it together. I’m a very lucky person to do what I do.

Beyond that, the idea that I’m making a product that I genuinely hopes outlives me. When my grandfather passed, I remember he had 5-6 pocket knives on his dresser, and I loved everything about them, but in particular I could see the wear and tear they all had over decades. I loved that he carried these small, familiar objects with him everyday and used them accordingly. Knowing I have a couple thousand knives out in the world with my name or mark on it and the hope that someday the knife will be passed on to a loved one, not just because it cuts exceptionally well, but because their person loved and used that knife throughout their life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.acreforge.co
• Instagram: @jmchopp, @acre.forge
• Youtube: @acreforge

Image Credits
Credit to Acre Forge