We work with local blacksmiths, foundries, artists, knife makers, welders and craftspeople. Many of them are instructors for the courses offered by DMC. We also plan to arrange courses taught by visiting national and international experts.
Logan Hemingway Lichtenhan
Logan Lichtenhan is a Bladesmith based out of Tucson Arizona. He focuses on hand-forging and designing unique artisan pieces including blades, spoons, ladles, culinary and household tools and items.
Pokabu Forge
Pokabu Forge is owned and run by Rich Greenwood, a bladesmith and one of the founding members of DMC. He leads knife-making classes at the school and sets the blacksmithing curriculum, which features classes at all levels by prominent local, regional, national and international blacksmiths.
Pablo Martinez
Pablo was born and raised in Tucson. A true Tucsonan at heart, with a natural ability to make something from nothing. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 2005 with a BA in Psychology, but his heart is in the arts. Knowing this, his wife enrolled him in a course at DMC in 2018 and his love for bladesmithing began. In December of 2020 Pablo appeared in Season 8 episode 6 of the History Channels Forged in Fire where he was a finalist in making George Washington’s battle sword. He is a survival and camping enthusiast and mainly focuses his knife making in camp knives and utensils.
Sonoran Glass School
Sonoran Glass School is a nonprofit glass art school available for classes, studio rentals, collaborations and custom work. Founded in 2001 by glass artists Tom Philabaum and Dave Klein, the school is at the heart of Tucson’s glass art community and takes pride in connecting and collaborating with other visual arts organizations.
Don Nguyen
Don Nguyen couldn’t decide between being a physicist, chiropractor, musician or car designer, but he knew he loved taking an idea and making it a real, physical thing. Chopping onions with a small knife provided his “eureka!” moment, so he started making his own knives, studied at Pima Community College, graduated in materials science and engineering from the University of Arizona, and launched his knife-making business in 2017.
Clayton Cowart
Clayton Cowart started bladesmithing in 2009, and spent all his free time reading about the craft or forging blades. In 2010, he began studying steel making and metallurgy, and started making tamahagane. By 2011, his love of the craft had passed the point of no return, so he gave in to being a full-time bladesmith. He dedicated himself to learning ancient smelting techniques and quickly became proficient in bloom iron, bloom steel, and cast iron. In 2012, Clayton began teaching tamahagane at workshops all over Arizona. In 2015, he was experimenting with decarbing cast iron back into steel and found some amazing looking dendrites in one of the cakes. He soon figured out a repeatable process and began producing wootz. In 2016, Clayton competed on the show Forged in Fire and finished as runner up. In 2017, he began touring the west coast teaching workshops in bladesmithing, blacksmithing and steel making.
Keli Beth Smith
Keli Beth Smith graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She has worked with metal at the Baltimore New Arts bronze foundry and at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. She says she gets inspiration from the artists she admires, and motivation from her desire to emulate their achievements. In addition to being a welder, she is interested in figurative sculpture, working with bronze, furniture making, and custom motorcycle parts — she designs and fabricates metal gas tanks and handlebars and is thinking about making a tank entirely from copper.
Tedd McDonah
Tedd comes from a small Wisconsin town and brings with him an appetite for creativity and a passion for teaching. He got his BA in art in 1996 from the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, where he was introduced to Damascus steel and mokume-gane, which he has been making since 1994. He earned his master’s in fine arts from Arizona State University in 2001, and has taught at Wayne State, University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, Toledo Museum of Art School of Art & Design, and Pima Community College in Tucson. He is currently on the faculty at ASU, where he teaches jewelry and blacksmithing classes, as well as a class dedicated solely to the mokume-gane process. He has conducted mokume-gane workshops nationally and been a faculty member at numerous universities, teaching beginning and advanced classes in jewelry, metalsmithing, blacksmithing, 3D design, sculpture, and art appreciation. His ingenuity, love of art and appreciation of the creative spirit direct him in his pursuits, though he’s happy to get distracted by fishing, hockey and draft horses, especially Clydesdales.
Dylan Cook
Dylan Cook, an AABA vice president who owns Oso Blanco Iron Works in Prescott, Arizona, bases his teaching methods on his own on-the-job training and life experiences. He has 15 years of metalwork experience and concentrates on the practical and functional aspects of ornamental and decorative smithing. In his classes he encourages information sharing and focuses on tool safety and care, familiarity with the material, creativity through basic forging techniques and concepts, and promoting stewardship of the blacksmithing craft.
Tom Ward
Tom Ward has been making metal art for 10 years, focusing on bladesmithing and ancient weaponry. He has worked on reproduction pieces, ornamental iron, and interior architectural metalwork. He was a Fulbright research scholar and is a journeyman bladesmith in the American Bladesmithing Society. He is pursuing his MFA in blacksmithing at SIU Carbondale, home to the nation’s only master’s-level blacksmithing program and widely regarded as the birthplace of modern American metalsmithing.
Steven Fisher
Steven Fisher has been working metal for more than 30 years and blacksmithing since 2005. He has studied under world-class smiths Gordon Williams and Mark Aspery, and performed demonstrations at antique tractor shows and the Arizona Renaissance Festival, and for the Arizona Artist Blacksmith Association and countless Arizona school children. His great grandfather, whose tools he still uses, took up the trade in Texas sometime in the 1910s.
Dennis Johnson
Dennis Johnson has been a welder for 25 years and holds the American Welding Society’s challenging D1.1 certification for flux-cored arc welding, as well as certifications for shielded metal, gas metal and gas tungsten arc welding, and for layout and fabrication. He specializes in structural welding, and you can see his work in Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo, where he built the enclosures and climbing structures for the zoo’s gibbons. He comes from a family of hotrod-loving welders, among them a few race car builders. When he’s not working on structural welding, he pursues his own designs and fabricates everything from barbecue grills to furniture to weightlifting equipment.
Michael Seronde
Michael started blacksmithing in the fall of 2009 when he signed up for a blacksmithing class at pima community college.
Immediately falling In love with the craft, he continued to take the class for a total of 8 or 9 semesters to further his education in the art. One semester early on, Tucson bladesmith Tom McClain was enrolled as a fellow student and introduced Michael to Damascus and bladesmithing. Michael’s first Damascus knife was a 1000+ layer Bowie.
Michael continued to learn from fellow smith’s and personal research. Along the way he met Rich Greenwood at a mutual friends shop, and has enjoyed learning from and with Greenwood.
In March 2019, Michael appeared in episode 6 or season 6 of the history channel’s show Forged in Fire, the Barbarian Sword episode! He placed 2nd.
Now Michael makes knives in his spare time for the love of the craft and takes on commissions here and there. He teaches periodically at desert metal craft.
Matt Marzolf
My name is Matthew Marzolf and I am a student/teacher of Blacksmithing for the last 7 years. I was first introduced to Blacksmithing when I was a kid in Boy Scouts and I did the Metalworking merit badge and I had always wanted to pursue it as a hobby after that. I was a student at Pima Community College for 5 years taking the Metalworking/Tool making class and honing in on what I wanted to do with it. I’ve done a wide variety of projects from bottle openers to pattern welded steel making. I am now a beginners blacksmithing teacher at Desert Metal Craft but I will still always be a student of the craft.
Mario Hernandez
Mario Hernandez has been forging knives for the last 6-7 years. He Started his metalworking journey at Pima Community college under Jason Butler. When Rich Greenwood started teaching the class at PCC he learned the proper technique to make knives he has never stopped making them. After taking the class with Rich Greenwood for 6-7 semesters he started becoming a teachers assistant. So when Desert metal craft opened he didn’t hesitate to offer his help with the classes so Rich could get more done. Soon he started teaching the beginner knife making course and continues to do so.
Nick Rossi
Nick’s interest in metalworking began with a boyhood fascination of knives and swords. At the age of 15, he started working at one of the state’s largest cutlery shops and was introduced to the world of custom knifemaking by local craftspeople. With the combination of books, advice and seminars, Nick developed his skills as a bladesmith and began selling his work under the “Rossi Knives” name.
“From the time I knew that there was such a thing as a custom knifemaker, I was sure that I wanted to be one. Not growing up in a terribly mechanical family, I was sort of left alone to figure it out for myself. I assumed that metallurgy, machining and woodworking would be the knowledge base required, but it was the peripheral knowledge that solidified my decision. Sociology, history, material science and industry became equally important to me. It became readily apparent that this ‘hobby’ would provide me with several lifetimes’ worth of study and research. There was no turning back…”
In 2003 Nick’s work was featured in Downeast Magazine’s “10 Cool Gifts from Maine,” and in 2006 he began teaching bladesmithing at the New England School of Metalwork. Nick continued to operate Rossi Knives on a part-time basis while employed as a sales engineer for a local technical fabrics company until he was offered a full-time position at NESM in 2011.
Momoko Okada
Momoko Okada was born and raised on a dairy farm in Hokkaido, Japan.
She began studying metals and glasswork in the U.S. and the U.K. and received B.F.A. from Southern Illinois University. Then she started to realize that the importance of her Japanese heritage and began studying traditional Japanese metals techniques at Kanazawa College of Art. After receiving M.F.A. in Japan, she continued her graduate study on differences of Eastern and Western aesthetics and metals techniques at Bowling Green State University. Momoko also studied under Kazuo Kashima, a 5th generation master of Kashima-style Nunome inlay. Momoko has been showing her work around the world and has won various awards. Her work can be seen in 500 Metal Vessels.
Salem Straub
I’m Salem Straub, the owner-operator of Promethean Knives. I’m located in beautiful Tonasket, Washington, in the heart of scenic Okanogan County. I’ve been forging knives since 2003, when an off-grid building project first got me into blacksmithing. A lot has changed since those simple days with a hand-cranked charcoal forge and a dirt floor… but my love of the craft and my commitment to turning out the best work possible have only increased. I make a wide range of cutlery, from folding knives to swords. I’ve always loved to cook, and I’ve worked in cafe/restaurant/catering businesses as well, so making kitchen cutlery is a natural direction for my work. As a practitioner of sword arts, I also greatly enjoy making longer bladed weapons for practice and display.
Jonathan Wick
Creative metal artist Jonathan Wick of Hereford, Az. began his career with a one-year apprenticeship to a French trained Goldsmith and training at the Revere Academy of jewelry arts SF, CA, followed by 12 years as a bench jeweler at Abbott Taylor jewelers in Tucson Arizona, Studied blade smithing at the American bladesmithing society school in Washington Arkansas and holds a rating of journeyman smith with the ABS. Jonathan was a finalist on the History channel’s “Forged in Fire” S2E3 “The Claymore”. Most recently Jonathan has been studying sword making with world renowned sword maker and author Peter Johnsson.
Sean Lindsay
Arizona Artist Blacksmith Association member who is self taught through literature, videos, and trail & error. With a background in fabrication and a hands on artist for over 20 years, Sean has been blacksmithing for the last 7 years. Started his own forge Voodoo Kustom Ironworks in 2019 and sells locally and online with worldwide sales.