About Us
Brent Stubblefield is the founder and owner of Join or Die Knives. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Brent has lived with his family in Richmond Virginia since 2009. He started as a hobbyist knife maker in the early 2000’s and founded Join or Die Knives in 2014. The team includes Jamie Sneed and Jack Bauer.
History + Community + Faith
History
Ben Franklin's original woodcut was published in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. The message was simple: unite against a common foe or fail. We are bringing back traditional skill, lore, and craft as the foundation for a new economy. The disjointed image of a snake represented the thirteen colonies as it also represents us as individuals. Each piece is unique and essential to form the whole.
Community
The independent craftsman movement signifies a need for something more than can be found in a factory or big box store. That something more is to own fewer but higher quality possessions and to shake the hand of the one who made them. Community is the difference between life and death for small makers.
Community can support people when functional or leave people lost when it fails. It takes effort and purpose to have community but it is essential. We are proud to offer a place where knife makers can work side by side to build skills and character at the Hardway Workshop.
“One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
Faith
"And all that believed were together, and had all things common" Acts 2:44
“What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” Ecclesiastes 2:22-25
