We all have that one box in the loft. For some, it’s old photos or school trophies. For me, it’s a box (or several) of tarps, paracord, and the evolution of an obsession with the woods. When I started this obsession I wasn't a blacksmith or an apprentice instructor. I was just a man with a passion for the outdoors. I had started wild camping, building shelters in the woods to sleep in, spending nights around campfires, under the stars with friends, setting the world to rights and eating our weight in barbecued food.
Last year, while digging through my collection of survival gear, I pulled out a small, unrefined piece of steel. It was the very first knife I made.
Looking at it again I remembered exactly where it had come from and as I looked further I found a copy of Bushcraft & Survival Magazine, Issue 45, dated thirteen years ago. I instantly remembered buying it. One day whilst in the Metro Centre I had been browsing through W.H Smith's, randomly found this magazine and had to buy it. Inside was the article I'd followed to make my first knife.
It was from a series titled Bushcraft on a Budget. The premise was simple; you don't need a heavy wallet to be a woodsman, you just need resourcefulness. It detailed how to take a discarded circular saw blade and, through some ingenuity, transform it into a functional knife.
I looked at the author of the article, stopped, and looked again. I recognised this man, I know this man, not only have I met him without realising but I now work with him as a colleague on the Woodland Ways Team - Ian Nairn.
In 2025 I found myself at the Bushcraft Show for the first time. Not as a spectator, but as an apprentice for Woodland Ways. I was able to meet many members of the team for the first time. At the time I had no idea I was working alongside the very man whose article I had followed thirteen years prior to make that first knife in my loft.
There is a profound weight to that kind of realisation. In the bushcraft world, we often talk about lineage—the passing of skills from one generation to the next. Finding that magazine in my loft felt like finding a map that I had been following without even knowing it.
Working as an apprentice for Woodland Ways is a dream in itself, but doing so alongside the person who unknowingly inspired me through a magazine page over a decade ago is something else entirely. To Ian, it was likely just another article. To me, it was the start of something. I look at both the article and the knife now and wonder if one day, maybe a decade in the future, I may meet someone I have unknowingly influenced. Could there be someone out there who may read one of my blogs and be inspired to try something? I hope so, even if our paths never cross. I get a profound sense of joy from teaching these skills, it's why I do what I do. And if in some way I get to inspire someone the way Ian did with me, I'll be a very happy man.
It’s funny how life works; sometimes you have to dig through the loft to realize exactly how far you’ve come.