CRKT Stories
Content marketing | Devise Agency
- Content writing
- Interviewing
Columbia River Knife and Tool is known for its prolific product portfolio, often with dozens of new SKUs released every year. The company achieves this by partnering with a multitude of independent designers from every corner of the country. From Southern California to the woods of rural New Hampshire, the western edge of Idaho to a small town in Alabama, I traveled to meet these designers and tell their stories (as well as those of a few high-profile customers).
Our small Devise Agency away party was joined by the nimble Mighty Creature Company, who put together beautiful photos and videos to accompany the long-form blog articles.
Designing from the Driver’s Seat
Get to know Princeton Wong
There’s something special going on inside an old auto shop in Houston, Texas. Step inside the front office of Prince Customs and you find a melange of desktop hardware, including a tool presetter and two 3D printers with their associated curing and cleaning chambers. An inline-six cylinder head sits on a shelf in the corner. Framed prints of comic-book-style street race scenes and Blade Magazine covers adorn the walls. It’s an eclectic mix, but there’s a palpable sense of purpose to everything.
Where the Metal Takes You
Get to know Kaila Cumings
Inspiration can be found in many places. The town dump isn’t usually one of them. Yet that’s exactly where Kaila Cumings, as a child tagging along with her father, first discovered her passion for knifemaking. The waste transfer facility had a “free table” where residents could discard items that were no longer needed but weren’t quite ready to be tossed onto the garbage heap. On one visit, a small metal object caught her eye.
Finding the Line
On the water with Trevor Sheehan
About 10 miles up Washington’s White Salmon River from where it meets the Columbia, you’ll find BZ Corner, a popular rafting destination where turbid green waters rush through a collapsed lava tube. A particularly technical waterfall there has earned the moniker “BZ beatdown” (most people skip it). It is here, on a 100-degree August day, that we met whitewater kayaker Trevor Sheehan. With over 20 years of experience on rivers from California to Africa, Trevor is somewhat of a legend around these parts.
Putting Art to Work
Meet saddlemaker Ben Geisler
It’s five in the morning on a ranch in Opp, Alabama. The sun has yet to rise, but a sliver of a crescent moon casts just enough light to make out the silhouettes of horses in their stables. As the chorus of crickets fades into the waking songs of birds, a pickup turns onto the driveway, its headlights cutting through air so humid you’d be forgiven for calling it fog. The truck pulls to a stop. Ben Geisler steps out and opens the tailgate, revealing a special payload: a one-of-a-kind, custom made Western saddle.
Heroes of Mt. Hood
On the trail with the Crag Rats
Right below the treeline, at the end of an 11-mile dirt road snaking its way up the north side of Oregon’s Mount Hood, sits Cloud Cap Inn. The historic cabin, built in 1889, is now a staging point for the Crag Rats, the nation’s oldest search and rescue organization. Founded in 1926, the Crag Rats are a volunteer group of highly-experienced mountaineers who perform upwards of 50 rescue missions a year on Mount Hood and in the nearby Columbia River Gorge.
Keeping the Spirit Alive
Get to know Alan Folts
WWalking into Alan Folts’ shop is a bit like stepping into some kind of wormhole, a causally distinct pocket of the universe where time loses meaning. It’s also small, perhaps impressively so, but very purposeful. The floorplan is crowded but not claustrophobic, with every piece of equipment positioned with intention. One look is all it takes to realize this place was put together by someone who definitely knew what they were doing.
Weathering the Storm
Meet muralist Jeremy Nichols
As a tropical storm rolled in on Saint Pete Beach, Florida, muralist Jeremy Nichols (@PlasticBirdie) found himself 50 feet above the ground on a metal scissor lift. The blank wall in front of him was soaked with rain running down it like a waterfall, carrying every drop of paint with it. As the wind gusted and lightning began to flash all around him, Jeremy had just one thought: “I am going to die.”
Designing the Journey
Get to know T.J. Schwarz
Whether in his shop or behind the wheel of his Jeep, there’s a quiet precision to how T.J. Schwarz approaches life. He speaks softly but purposefully, choosing his words like an architect selects materials. At first, this seems at odds with his love for overlanding — the vehicle-based equivalent of backpacking, where built-up 4x4s leave the comfort of the road for open-world adventure on rough, potentially hazardous terrain — but it is exactly this environment where attention to detail matters most.
Of Motherhood and Mushrooms
In the field with Yellow Elanor
In the online enclave of fungi fanatics, Rachel Zoller made a name for herself—literally. She assumed the moniker Yellow Elanor, a reference to Tolkien lore, when she started an Instagram account dedicated to mushroom foraging in the Pacific Northwest. Since then, the nom de ‘shroom has grown into a brand with fans of its own, and Rachel now balances the demands of running a small business with her job as an elementary school teacher.
Launching the Starship Hirin
Slicing through the final frontier with knifemaker Dew Hara and stop-motion animator Tucker Barrie
Some knives are tools. Rugged and worn, not unimportant but often forgotten until they’re needed. But like any form of functional design, knifemaking has always been about creating something more. It’s a craft that, when mastered, becomes an art: stylistic, subjective, and story-driven. At the extreme, such a knife may cease to be a tool altogether—not for lack of ability, but merely because it’s more powerful for what it is than what it can do.
Communicating through Design
Get to know Joe Caswell
Spend five minutes with Joe Caswell and you’ll learn to see the world differently. “What’s more impressive?” he asks rhetorically. “A chess master, or someone who can beat anyone at tic-tac-toe?” Joe finds opportunities for improvement everywhere he looks. You see this philosophy expressed in his groundbreaking designs that combine complex functionality with utterly simple ease of use.