Treeman Knives

Treeman Knives is the lifework of Jim "Treeman" Behring, a Michigan maker who has been building custom knives since 1998. Behring forges every blade himself, one at a time, the old-school way, hand-hammering American steel and hand-finishing each knife into a piece meant to be handed down for generations.

His style is rooted in the great American makers. Treeman knives carry a strong Scagel influence, with touches of Ruana, Morseth, Richtig, and Randall, expressed in classic hunters, bowies, camp knives, and forged camp axes dressed in stag, leather, and other natural materials. Behring earned the craft the hard way, from grinding his first blade out of a leaf spring at age 11, to thirteen years in a forging die shop, to a tour as an Army Recon Scout, before the timber and land-clearing work that gave him the Treeman name.

That hard-use pedigree is real. In 2009, a Navy SEAL request led to the Ultra Phalanx and the Treeman Combat line, and his knives have gone into the field with law enforcement, Special Forces, and outdoorsmen worldwide. Working from his Michigan home shop, often alongside his wife Deanna, Behring has made several thousand knives and built a reputation that sells most of them out as fast as they post.