Hammering out a hobby

Tim Jamison loves creating with his hands, but he doesn’t stop at the food he creates as a chef at Beverly’s.

He started his own company, Wonky Dog Artistic Iron, to sell handmade knives and items he creates from steel and metal with his newly learned blacksmithing skills.

The business is named after his dog, Coral.

“We call her the wonky dog because she has a birth defect,” he said. “Her back legs didn’t develop right.”

Jamison can trace his interest in knife-making back to a specific moment in time – when he saw the 2003 movie “The Hunted.” There was a knife in the movie that he thought was cool looking and wanted to buy, but didn’t want to pay the $400 price tag.

“I wanted this knife really bad,” he said.

At the time his wife Readah worked at Barnes and Noble and when Jamison was early to pick her up from work one day he browsed the books on sailing, which is one of his hobbies. Right next to the sailing books was a book on knife-making.

“I realized I had half the tools,” he said.

He bought the book and got to work making knives. He said his first one wasn’t very good, but he kept going. As he showed off his creations to friends and family, they would offer to buy them. Since then Jamison estimates he has had made nearly 500 knives, mostly hunting knives. He also makes the leather sheaths for them.

“They just go,” he said. “Friends of friends started asking for stuff.”

He made the knives he uses at work in the kitchen at Beverly’s but the one knife he never made was the one he coveted in “The Hunted.”

“I bought the steel to make that knife, and it’s still sitting in the back shop in its original form,” he said.

Knives can take between three and hundreds of hours to make, depending on the design and level of detail.

“I’ve made some knives that are super detailed,” he said. “It’s really hard to make money making knives.”

But Jamison kept at it anyway. While he has a passion for cooking and loves his work, he wanted something tangible to show for his efforts.

“I have to make things,” he said. “Cooking is not enough. People are using knives I made to clean deer or do woodworking. It gives you a sense of accomplishment.”

Jamison grew up in small towns all over Eastern Washington and North Idaho, graduating from high school in Colville. He attended DeVry University to learn electrical engineering.

“When I was a kid I liked to tinker with things,” he said. “I was cooking to get myself through college and it just stuck.”

He spent time working for various restaurants, including 17 years at Olive Garden, before landing at Beverly’s two years ago.

While looking for ways to make things easier and quicker than knives, Jamison considered blacksmithing. He met a blacksmith who wanted to learn to make knives and the two taught each other their trade. Jamison has been hammering metal in his garage ever since.

He makes gates, stair railings, plant hangers, spoons, garden tools, bottle openers – pretty much anything that can be made out of metal. He fashions old horseshoes into hearts.

He scrounges scrap metal for his creations whenever he can to lower his costs. He goes “magnet fishing” in Lake Coeur d’Alene, using a magnet to pull up pieces of metal off the bottom.

He doesn’t have fancy blacksmithing equipment, using a hand-held hammer to do all his work.

“You have to love it,” he said. “It’s hot. It’s dangerous. It’s very loud. This isn’t an easy hobby.”

His favorite thing to create is fireplace pokers with lots of twists and turns.

“There’s something about them,” he said. “There are so many ways to make them.”

But decades of doing hard work with his hands has taken its toll. Jamison just had carpal tunnel surgery on his left and will have surgery on his right in October.

“The 30 years of cooking didn’t help,” he said.

He can’t wield a hammer or operate his knife-making machine. The only thing he can do is make cribbage pieces for boards a friend makes out of driftwood.

“That gives me my make stuff fix,” he said.

Jamison estimates that he won’t be back in his shop until at least February, but he still has things on hand that he can sell. He has a Facebook page and also sells his creations at craft fairs, including the upcoming Coeur d’Alene Makers Market on Oct. 14 at the Coeur d’Alene Resort.