Samuel Riner may only be in his mid-20s, but he already has more than a decade of knifemaking experience under his belt – and his goal this year is to showcase his work to its widest audience yet.
Riner got his first taste of the craft as a kid. His father was actually in the handle material business, creating and selling Micarta slabs for knifemakers. “He showed me the basics, and then I taught myself from there,” Riner tells us. “I was fourteen when I first felt like making a knife – and I had some equipment, so I made my first knife out of O1.” Some business owners will keep the first dollar they ever earned, but in the knife world we do things a little different: Riner still has that first knife and, while it’s retired from active duty, he keeps it around as a reminder of the long art of knifemaking. “I made about 50 knives before I turned out anything that was any good,” he says – a real grind. “Everything takes more time than you imagine.”
Sam is a heck of a young maker. Local to us here in Knoxville. He was featured in our “Young Guns” article a few years ago.
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Shop Talk: Samuel Riner on Homemade Micarta, Custom Equipment, and the Penny Test
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