About Us

With the original Harrison brothers, Stanley and Sherman — fourth-generation North Idahoans — who went after two very different kinds of work. After serving in the Navy in World War II on the USS New Jersey, including time in San Diego, Stanley came home to log Idaho timber and work the mountains, keeping his equipment alive in his machine shop. Sherman went into the Army with the 1st Infantry Division in Europe. He came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart, then put his hands to horses and leatherwork on his farm on Moscow Mountain.

The heritage didn’t stop there. Stanley married a beautiful schoolteacher from the Silver Valley, and their son Joa grew up on stories of Navy Frogmen and easy days, making knives and sharp projectiles out of whatever he could find (and get away with at school). He got deep into hunting and archery and also fell hard for airplanes—especially Burt Rutan’s EZ series. Maker’s hands and a creative technical eye: the right mix for crafting knives.

After college Joa put the family maker-habit into airplanes. He trained as a mechanical engineer, married a beautiful schoolteacher like his father, started a family, worked aerospace certification as an FAA designee, built his own plane, and stayed close to light, efficient structure—the kind of design where every ounce has a job. When Burt Rutan retired to Coeur d’Alene from his Scaled Composites legacy, they became friends. When Joa decided to make knives, Burt gave him permission to use the EZ name, and that moniker is on the first line of HBK fixed-blade knives today. The CNC shop started as job-shop work and turned toward premium knives when he needed the creative side fed: efficient structure and materials, clean elegant shape.

The Harrison family of eight is starting a manufacturing company in Idaho—not a catalog brand without deep roots. The shop already knows job work, CNC, and what a part costs when you have to stand behind it. Joa has been selling CNC-made aerospace products online for almost thirty years and keeps first principles first: design, material, manufacturability. The knives are the launch commercial product, with the longer aim to hire Americans, put food on their tables, and make premium tools people keep long enough to hand to the next hunter.