History
Dan Eastland did his apprenticeship in GA and has credited the support he received from the GA Custom Knifemakers Guild for much of his success. After moving to SC, he struggled to find local suppliers and felt his growth as a maker was stunted by the lack of community and shared knowledge he had in GA. After attempting to find a similar organization active in SC, he decided to use the pattern he learned in GA to start an SC guild.
With the GA guild’s support, he put out the call for local makers and enthusiasts and quickly got Jason Knight’s support. Dan hosted the first meeting at his shop, where Ben Secrist and John Medlin offered their help and their shops to host future meetings.
What is the GA Pattern?
The GA pattern is a teaching guild. There are no masters and apprentices, only members (anyone that can attend meetings and pay the dues) and voting members (members that have been juried in). The focus is on improving the industry as a whole with the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. This is primarily done through teaching anyone that wants to learn and learning from anyone that has something to teach. One of the key concepts of the GA model is routine meetings held at different shops around the state. This does two things: the first is it makes it easier for members to make it to several meetings a year as there will be some nearby. The second thing is that it allows for people to see how different shops are run and how they solve different problems or use different setups. Dan is fond of saying, “I have never been in someone else's shop and not learned something new.”
How do meetings work?
Meetings are usually held on Saturday. For larger meetings, there is usually a social Friday night for the people driving in the day before the meeting. Saturday morning usually starts with coffee and doughnuts and a little meet and greet time. There are usually 3-5 demos/talks with breaks in between for Q&A and for people to talk about things unrelated to the demos.
There is usually a long lunch break to give people a chance to talk and enjoy lunch. The host provides both food and the facility with tables, chairs, etc., so it is important to RSVP.
“Iron in the hat” is a drawing held at the end of each meeting and is a traditional way to help offset the cost to the cost shop for food, facilities, and lost work time from clean up and break down. Everyone is asked to bring something to donate—some steel, handle material, anything shop or knife related, something from around the shop—some of the bigger shops may bring blade blanks and several of something. Everything is placed on a table, and numbers are drawn. If your number is called, you get to pick something off the table. We will keep drawing numbers until everything on the table is gone.
Membership
There are two types of memberships, regular and voting. We want to benefit from the shared knowledge from many skills, and therefore anyone that can attend meetings and pay the dues can join as a member. However, as that we are a knifemakers’ guild, voting members (members who can vote on and have input on the guild’s function) must be knife makers that have been juried in. To be juried in, one must first be a member of the guild and present three knives made entirely by them. The knives will then be judged for basic competency as a knife maker on grind quality, basic design knowledge, fit, and finish. If one is judged to have competence, they are invited to become a voting member.
Where do my $40 a year go?
Initially, dues will go to a lawyer to set up an LLC so that we can exist legally and open a bank account, sign contracts, Etc. Dues also go to setting up the website, as well as promoting and helping fund the first meetings. Once the guild is fully operational, dues will be used to purchase tables and chairs —to save on the long-term cost of renting such items for meetings— as well as road signs to make it easier to find meetings. Eventually, dues will be used to get tables at shows to give some of the new members a chance to show their work, gain exposure, and maybe even sell something. Dues will also be used to create an emergency fund.
Once the guild becomes well-established, we plan to either add an additional drawing to meetings or use excess funds from dues to create a scholarship fund. The scholarship fund would help members with the cost of education, be it room and board or the actual cost of classes.
In the end, $40 gets you access to countless mentors, classes, and opportunities to learn everything from shop set up to inlays and helps you help yourself by giving back to the industry.