Welcome to our ebay store!
Hi to all our visitors. We think we should let you know that to increase our local reputation and increase our sales in our weak economy, we will be attending rendezvous through out the summer. This means that we will be gone and unavailable to answer emails most weeks Thurs or Fri-Sun. The last thing we do before we leave is check and reply to email and it's the first thing we do when we get back, before unpacking is done.
Another important thing to know is the merger between our two eBay stores; Fire Pistons R Us and D&B Primitive Forgeworks. We will merger fire pistons back to our D&B store and name it Primal Connection, a super eBay store, unifying our business name and our growing product line with our growing eBay reputation. We’ll be having all kind of new stuff for camping, home and rendezvousing added leading up to this date. This change will be effective on September 1st, 2009. All emails and orders through this date will be handled as usual.
Thank you all for your support!
Darrel & Becky
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Darrel headed outside one morning at the age of 7. There had been a party the night before and a brawl outside. He noticed something glint in the yard. It was a pocket knife. Darrel’s mother, concerned about his safety took it from him…and kept taking it from him, until she saw that even if she took this knife, there would be another. She was happy that he had an interest to keep him out of trouble. Darrel began carving with this knife. He started off making gifts for his family. At the age of 10, his skills were catching the eyes of adults who would ask him to hand carve salad sets and crochet hook sets, among other things. The time spent doing this though, did not quell his curiosity for adventure of the primitive kind. With the money he made from selling his items locally, he bought items to fill his need for primitive knowledge including his first flint & steel kit. Also as a young lad, he made bows and arrows for himself and a friends to play with in a nearby park. In this park, he practiced and refined his skills. He continued to refine his skills, adding new ones, thorugh his teens. In his twenty’s he built willow furniture full time for nine years.
Throughout Darrel's life, he has acquired many skills including making bows, arrows, quivers, carving, flint knapping, carving, lathing, blacksmithing, bladesmithing, making atlatals, calligraphy and many others. It is hard for some to believe that he has such a wide range of skills, each being something he does very well with. Most of Darrel's skills were used for fun for most of his life. That all changed in 2001, when our first child, Willow was born, followed closely by Aiden in 2004 and Glen in 2005. Since then, whatever it is inside that has made him need to learn these skills is making sense to him and he has been putting the ideas all into one. We have been together now over 6 years and it is fun to watch him learn more and teach our children, as well as myself and others. | | | |
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The following as Darrel describes himself.
"I live in central Minnesota and am a full time blacksmith, bladesmith and primitive/survival tool maker and enthusiast. Ever since childhood, as long as I can remember, I have had some internal primal need to recreate and use primitive knowledge. I have been making primitive survival tools, along with many other things, for 30 years. I spent the first 21 years of my life surrounded by concrete, steel and brick in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At that point, I moved to central Minnesota to an area that had lots of woods to play in and time to practice my skills. The first thing I did when I got here was to brain tan and smoke some deer hides and made a pair of knee high, plains style, lace up the front, moccasins to run around with in the woods. Its really weird to look back and see how one thing has lead to another, where I am now, and where I would like to go."
Although I have been making primitive and survival things for 30 years, I have only been making them to supplement our income for a few years, and have only been full time since the spring of 2006. My wife and I are a team of two. I do the metal and wood work, she does the online work. Our biggest dream is for both of us to be able to do this full time with our three children surrounded by, living and breathing, natural skills. Nothing makes me more proud then to watch my children identity plants in the yard or ask for yet another fire piston to play with." | |  | | | |
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"I have no idea why I wanted to know all this, but now all the information and skills are coming together into something much bigger than I would have ever dreamed. This is still fun for me, and it gives me the ability to create new things and get better at what I'm doing everyday. When I make something, I always start off thinking "I'm going to keep this one.." But I don't keep anything I make because, before I'm finished, I'm already thinking of something different and better. It works well for everyone else because they know that they are getting the best of my ability each time that I make something."
Now that need inside has grown to a stronger need to begin passing on the knowledge and skills. That is the only real useful reason for having the information, that it may be used somewhere along the way in the future, if not in my life, in my children's, or whomever may be in need or want of the information. But most of all, so that it may not be forgotten." | | | |
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