I have been making custom knives full time since 1989. I am a protegee of  the late William F. Moran and received my Mastersmith Rating in the American Bladesmith Society in 1994.  I am also a voting member of the Knifemakers Guild and member of the Italian Knifemakers Guild (Corprazione Italiana Coltellinai). I have also had the pleasure of being trained by Errett Callahan PhD. in the Art of making flintnapped tools. It is an honor to not only have recieved training from these two men but to have come to know then as friends. Each is a pioneer in their respective fields of cuting tools. Among my numerous awards that I have been honored to recieve I am most honored to have received "The Blade Magazine Award for Best New Maker in 1990" and The American Bladesmith Society "Moran Award for best knife of 2001". my most recent honor came in Milan,Italy in November of 2005, from the Italian Knife Makers Guild (Corporazione Italiana Coltellinai) by being the first A.B.S. Mastersmith to be given the title "Maestro". I consider this to be a great honor as the City of Milan is well know as a center of Fine Art and for the "Famous Design" houses that are located there as well as a cultural center which represent some of the finest examples of Old World craftmanship in Italy. 

   I make all my knives based on time honored designs and with "Old World " craftmanship. I have worked as a custom gunsmith and as a machinist and tool builder and craftmanship of the highest order has always been important to me. This is no doubt a result of my being raised in the values of a traditional "Pennsylvania Dutch" family in the farmlands of central Maryland near the foot hills of the Appalachian mountains. Being rasied "Dutch", I learned early the value of a well made tool and have been given the "Old World View" that whatever it is you make it should be as well made as one can possibly do. Since my early ......some would say mispent youth, I have been an avid hunter and outdoorsman who spent too many hours in the fields with a gun and a dog or a fishing rod and I have come to know the value of well designed and well made equipment. It would be in the works of Nature made by God's own Hand where I would first be lead to many things. It would be there where I would be lead to Christ. It would be in Nature where I would find most things of beauty and goodness and where I would find much of my inspiration in my work. It was there in the simple things of nature I first came to understand the principle concept of "form follows function" although it would be Bill Moran who would put the concept into words for me,and as such even the most artistic blade should be first a well designed tool or weapon that employs the concept of "Simplicity, Elegance and Power" in it's design and execution. I have always had a great interest in  old things, from the music of Mozart and the Great European Masters to the the Bluegrass music of the Appalachians. Naturally I have an interest in all forms of weapons,especially antique weapons for hunting. Colonial and tradtional Pennsylvania Dutch foods are certainly some of my favorites. 

      Living and growing up in Northern Carroll County, Maryland, just across the Mason Dixon line from Mt. Joy Township, Adams County, PA. as a kid, I would find myself doing a variety of work even helpng on a saw mill or two. Much later I would go on to work with Lasers and build laser machine tools as well as non laser machine tools before returning to gunsmithing and later becoming a fulltime Bladesmith. But before learning to build high tech laser machine tools it would be those early impressionable years that would make the strongest and longest lasting impressions on me. I would come in contact with a Master Boat builder by the name of Maynard Lowery at the early age of nine, when my father had a custom wooden hauled boat built on Tillmans Island, Maryland. As a child I was amazed at how this man could take an oak beam and steam it into the shape of a rib for a boat and how he could build and move a boat that weighed ten tons at completion by himself with very little modern machinery. Ironically it would be another son of Tillmans Island that would much later teach me to make knives.....that being Bill Moran. Bill's family had come from Tillmans Island before settling in Frederick County, Maryland to be dairy farmers. I would also come to spend much time on the dairy farm of my father's cousin Dorothy Strickhouser and her husband Leroy. The farm nearly becoming a second home to me. It is on the farm where I honed my skills as a hunter and outdoorsman, learning  also about animal husbandry, planting and harvesting. I would also come to know the Amish people and gain an understanding into their way of life when my family built  a house using Amish carpenters and being then old enough I helped build the house I now live in. It would be too that I would grow from boy into a young man and learn the essential lessons of life as well. To lose your family members and still finding faith to go on. The lesson of hard work, honesty and fair play. The hardest lesson perhaps being that of love found and love lost. But like most young love all too soon I would know the pain of lost love. In retrospect, due in equal part a desire to cure a broken heart and in part to study a field of natural interest for me, I would leave my home, family, the people and land that I loved to go off into the Appalachian mountains to study Forestry at Allegany College. I returned home two years later a full grown man with an A.A. Degree in Forestry, but I also returned with the knowledge of how to build a rifle from scratch, which would lead me into gunsmithing as a living. I also returned with the knowledge of being more than able to sustain myself from the land using hunting and fishing and the woodsman skills from my boyhood. During those two years a sharp knife was a constant companion both for my study of Forestry but also in the field when hunting or fishing to help put food on the table. I further learned the value of good friendships and  gained further appreciation of the music and the traditions of self reliance of the people of the Appalachians. It is these combined experiences from boyhood, to coming of age and my marriage to my wife and greatest supporter Linda that has been a great influence on me. Coming to fully understand my family history and the way generations of my family before me have worked and lived, some becoming Masters themselves in thier own trade. My father, Francis B. an early aviator and printer for most of his life and his father before him, Harry Sentz, a farmer and then later a caretaker of the Edgar Allen Poe estate in Baltimore County, Maryland. And all those of my family going back to 1800 and to a maker of Conestoga wagons all have contributed to this country in their own way. At times I wonder what a positive impact not only upon history, but also on the lives of unknown peoples my ancestors may have had, helps to keep me grounded as a gunsmith, Bladesmith,Toolmaker/Machist and Husband. I can't help but wonder what early families that went South into the Carolinas or West to the Arkansas Territory and points beyond passing through the Cumberland Gap or through Ohio and Kentucky to find their fortunes made the trip in a Sentz wagon. Daniel Boone moved from his birth place in Berks County, Pennsylvania in a Conestoga made in Lancaster County and before Joseph Sentz built wagons. But how many more followed the trail Daniel laid afterwards. My family past and my own experiences have proved to be the stepping stones of life for me and is the inspiration that still drives me and that which has brought me to my work as a Master Bladesmith

     I believe only by learning the lessons of History can we see how we got to where we are and hopefully prevent us from stumbling over our own past mistakes. I think this is one of the main driving forces that have brought me to forging blades. Forging a blade rather than grinding a blade brings one very much in touch with those that have labored before you and makes you feel part of the chain of history in a sense. I have been blessed to not only have the counsel and friendship of Bill Moran and Errett Callahan but also a whole host of senior men that has helped me in my carrer. But the most impact has come from these two men in my knifemaking. What Bill Moran is to the modern forged blade, Errett Callahan is to the modern napped blade in my opinion. And if it had not been for the napped blades we would never have made such fine steel blades of today.  

    My home and "Fox on the Run" Forge is located just up the hill from where my Great Grand father,  David Peter Sentz owned and operated a grist mill on the Monacacy River during the late 1800's and into the early 1900's near Taneytown, MD. where he supplied feed and flour to the community, and where my grandfather Harry was born.  And it was in Mt. Joy Township, PA.where David's father William, first born son of Joesph was apparently a farmer and possibly also a wagon maker and was certainly in the Pennsylvania Militia during the Civil War.  David's mill was only a few short miles from where my great great  great grand father Joseph Sentz worked as a wagon maker in Mount Joy Township,Adams County,Pennsylvania in the early to mid 1800's, more than likely building Conestoga Wagons that were the standard frieght and farm wagon, that were first made in Lancaster County in the early to mid 1700's. By 1800, due to the high demand and because the general style of the Conestoga was a slight variation of an earlier German wagon design, most German makers would have followed that general design all over Central and Southern PA and Northern Maryland during that time. Conestaga wagons were used all over the East Coast of the United States as well as in settling the westward expansion during the era of 1750's to the 1850's before the building of rail lines west. So as you see, the traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch runs very deep in me as does the love of tradtional ways of making something to be used. I simply don't know a better way.