My hope is that the three elements of design, great build quality, and a name with some meaning behind it will make the Yonder Knife not just a great tool for those who pick it up but a trusted companion for wherever the road may take them.

Design Story:

In the Fall of 2023 I was on a trip with some good friends of mine helping with the product launch for my knife designer friend Ben of KNAFS. We have both worked in the knife industry for years and Ben had been encouraging me to design a knife for a long time but I had been hesitant because I did not want to create a knife design just to create a knife design. I have had some success with an EDC (Every Day Carry) YouTube channel and I didn’t want to put out a design just because I had an audience, if I was going to create something I wanted it to mean something. After a day of working on Ben’s product launch in the woods of Montana we all ended up going back to Ben’s family cabin. That evening Ben said I could not leave and we were not going to bed until I had a knife design and concept sketched out. In essence my friends kidnapped me and held me hostage in a cabin so the Yonder could be born. It was a great night of talking about what knives I really loved and what elements I was not currently seeing in the knife industry. We landed on something medium sized, tough, ergonomic and useful that could fit any budget.

After the first sketches it was time to find a partner to help me make the knife. At the top of the list was CIVIVI knives. I have had a great working relationship with that whole team for years that has grown into a good friendship. Having worked in the industry for so long I knew that they make some of the best production knives in the world. The CIVIVI team was immediately excited to work together on the project and we started work right away. After a few emails back and forth on my sketch and the engineering of how knives actually go together we landed on the final version of the Yonder and unsurprising to me the first prototype was a perfect fit for exactly what I was trying to create. The knife debuted at Blade Show in Atlanta Georgia, the show for the whole knife industry and community to come together every year. At its debut the Yonder was awarded “Best Budget Buy Of The Year”!

Why It is Named Yonder?

I come from a long line of pioneers, cowboys, and truck drivers so hearing the use of the word “Yonder” was not a novelty but fairly normal. It however was not my cowboy roots that initially made me think to use Yonder for my first knife design. As a kid I split equal time in the year between living in the city and living on a farm, ranch, or freight line. During the school year I lived with my mom and dad in Las Vegas NV a few blocks from the strip and in the summers I would be sent out to work with one of my three grandpas on the ranges and open roads of rural NV. Early on my wanderlust set in and I first moved out when I was 15 years old and started couch surfing, hitchhiking, and train hopping around the Western USA. Ever since then it feels like I have always been moving around and exploring where and when I can. Now it takes the form of backpacking, motorcycle riding, and midnight trips led only by my internal compass and my headlights.

In my travels I bumped into a book by Western author Louis L’ Amour called “Education of a Wandering Man”. I knew who Louis L’ Amour was because all of my family read his western’s but I am not a big fiction reader so I never picked up one of his books. Education of a Wandering Man is a part autobiography and part bibliography of much of Louis L’ Amour’s younger years. The title and back cover intrigued me and the contents of the book captivated me. I felt I had found a kindred spirit in Louis L’ Amour. He also moved out at 15, traveled rough, took on a ton of odd jobs, and loved reading/learning. In his book he talks about using the word Yonder not only as a location but as an action, as going ‘Yondering’. There was something about that usage and the source that it was coming from that really resonated with me and seemed a perfect way to capture a sense of romance and adventure in the very direction I live my life.