About me

 

I'm Dave Baker, they call me the "Mind-Aker" and I create high end custom knives. I grew up in a small Midwestern suburb just north of Chicago, Illinois called Mundelein. I began my love for working with my hands in a very unique high school class. Mundelein High School had an aircraft construction class where we, the students, actually built a real airplane, with proper instruction of course. This launched me into a career as an Aircraft Mechanic/Avionics Technician and shortly after high school I went away to college to get certified.

College served me well and I've had a great career in my field and continue to contribute to the aviation community in my full time job as an Avionics Technician. But I realized there is something missing, I needed more...

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
                                                 - St Francis of Assisi

Aviation is great but there's just not enough heart involved. Not enough creativity. Deep down i'm an artist and I strive for that creative outlet. I've been searching a long time for something more and came across the knife community in 2012 and just knew it was something I wanted to do. So, the journey began...

I slowly but surely built my workshop and practiced and practiced my knife making skills to bring to life my very first model, the Mind-Aker, which is currently discontinued as it was difficult to build, there are only a handful out there. Every day is a new learning experience and I enjoy learning about all that is involved in making the knives I want to create as well as learning the business end as well.

I do absolutely everything in house and on my own but only in my spare time. I dream to make knives full time one day and eventually grow Mind-Aker Knives large enough to employ a great team and become a great American company.

As a tribute to my roots as an Avionics Technician, I will be using electrical terms for all of the names of my knife models.

"When you buy something from an artist you're buying more than an object.
You're buying hundreds of hours of errors and experimentation.
You are buying years of frustration and moments of pure joy.
You are not buying just one thing, you are buying a piece of heart,
a piece of soul... a small piece of someone else's life"