Steve Fisher CAD Designer, CNC Programmer

"Born and raised in Wisconsin, I didn't have much exposure to swords. My Father hunted so I was always around guns, bow and arrows and knives. My only early exposure to swords were in the movies. After seeing a movie with swashbuckling action, my brothers and I would go outside and find some long, pointed sticks and "the war would begin". I thought early on how nice it would be to something protecting my sword hand as it was repeatally beaten by my brothers "swords" (a guard, who knew?).

Growing up in Wisconsin my attention was always on sports. I played football, I lived football, I loved football. Upon graduation from West High School in Madison, I moved to San Jose California. After spending a wonderful summer being "free" from school, I came to the conclusion that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My friend across the street had to go back to High School after the summer, leaving his Dad's machine shop business shorthanded. Tom asked me if I wanted to work for him and he would pay me $4.00 an hour. I jumped at that having no idea what machining was.

I took to it like a fish to water and was soon making parts for the computer giants and the aerospace industry. Five years later, I had enough of California and moved back to Wisconsin. I got a job in a tool and die shop in Wisconsin Dells. This is the one job that really gave me the "vision". I learned to look at a two dimensional print and picture the whole three dimensional part in my head. I had been programming computers since 1980 and I was able to use "Basic" programming language to program these three dimensional shapes with the output being in the form of a machine language program for the CNC's (Computer Numeric Control).

I had been an artist for several years before going into machining in 1981. I've had several machining jobs as well as Industrial / Manufacturing Engineer, Kaizen Leader and other supervisory positions. This is the first job that I've had that utilizes all the skills that I have acquired over my life.

After meeting Peter Johnsson in February of 2003, I knew that I wanted to do the same thing he did, only with American swords. I plan on documenting American swords by traveling to museums and homes of private collectors. It is quite a thrill to have a chance to bring American history back to life with these sword recreations from our past.

I worked with Peter when he documented the M1913 Patton Sabre. I studied his technique and took careful notes of every detail. I will work with him more in February of 2004 when he is here again and have him watch me document a sword from the Revolutionary War. "