I met Jonah Cain in June of 2022 at Friendship, IN at the NMLRA Education Building.  Jonah was one of the lucky 15 year olds that won the free Horn and Pouch Class offered by Henry Bowman and Jeff Luke last year.  I also took both the pouch and horn classes that Summer, but not with the youth class.  Jonah is a fine young man that lives in Hope, Indiana and primarily spends his creative time forging knives.  You can see some of Jonah’s work on Facebook here.

Jonah has plans to build his first muzzleloader with Hershel House.  What a wonderful opportunity!  As anyone knows that has built a muzzleloader before, they are not an inexpensive project.  Jonah has the barrel and stock, but he is still needing to buy a lock, trigger and other miscellaneous parts, as well as some of the tools required for the build.  Rather than just ask someone for money, Jonah decided to forge a real nice knife, and he also got a mentor/friend, Travis Bauer with A Second Chance at History, to make a sheath for that knife, to sell and raise money to meet his goal.

I’ve been amazed at the generosity of this community of craftsmen.  People are eager to share their knowledge and resources to help someone interested in learning.  Jonah came to me to see if I could help him raise money to meet his goal so that he could continue his education in the art of gun building.  I believe there are many others out there that would love to help Jonah out and make this opportunity happen for him.  Plus, you will have the chance to win a Jonah Cain forged knife and a Travis Bauer sheath to carry that beautiful knife.

We want to keep the raffle simple and straightforward.  There will be a maximum of 25 tickets sold.  Each tickets is $50.  Once the 25 tickets are sold, the raffle will end and we will announce the drawing date and time.  It will be a few days after the last tickets sells.  The winning ticket will be drawn on Facebook Live so that everyone that participated can watch the process of the winning ticket randomly being selected.  We had to put a date and time for the raffle to end, but once the last ticket sells, that is when we will end the raffle and announce the drawing date and time.

This is a great chance to help a young artist out so that he can expand their skills and build that first muzzleloader under the direction of Hershel House!

I asked Jonah to share with me his story as how he started in making knives and now muzzleloaders.  Here is his response:  “I started blacksmithing when I was 12 I quickly took a interest in 18th century blacksmithing I started with a broke washer as a work bench and a free 1x30 belt sander set on top of it. Eventually I went to a joe Seabolt and Frank house knife class and many lessons with Hershel in Woodbury. Many othered including Travis Bauer, Verlin Cossel, Eric Vanalstine, Henry bowman, Daniel Boehringer, Alan Hunter, and Shawn Shafer have always been around for me to ask questions and get help when I ask for it.”