Sick of your crumby and boring job? This is your chance to become a professional sword maker.
Arms and Armor is a Minneapolis-based workshop where we hand-make a full range of historically accurate European swords and other weapons from the past thousand years. For over four decades we have worked with museums, collectors, and scholars to develop a deep understanding of European weapons; knowledge we use to make products that exemplify the finest qualities of the very best historic pieces.
Arms and Armor Black Prince Sword
We are searching for a new team member who is hard working, diligent, and has some applicable skills. We will train the successful candidate as needed to craft our swords, daggers, spears, and other medieval and Renaissance weapons. Duties will include grinding blades and parts, welding, fitting components, woodworking, and finishing items. We use modern tools, but the skills of a fine furniture maker are probably more useful here than those of a precision machinist. Our process is primarily hand work and it is frequently hot, dirty, and loud.
This is a full-time, 9-5ish, permanent position. It takes years to teach someone all the skills required for this job, so you should be interested in working here for the long haul. This is not Forged In Fire, it’s a real job and we aren’t looking for any prima donnas or jerks. The pay isn’t that great and the benefits are meager, but this is your chance to be a professional weapons smith, with a fun team of expert craftsmen. You should be efficient, detail oriented, and enthusiastic about history and historical swords.
Arms and Armor Highland Claymore Sword
Check out our website for examples of our products and more information about our expert team at https://www.arms-n-armor.com
Applications should be sent to armornews@arms-n-armor.com and should include a current resume, a cover letter explaining why you want to work here and how your prior experience makes you a good fit. You may also include a portfolio of your work if relevant. We are a small company and we are very interested in finding a colleague who will complement our friendly and hard working culture. We plan to be diligent and thoughtful in our review of applications so it will take us a couple of weeks to process everything. Once our decision has been made we will introduce our new team member. We have never done an open call for a position before so we regret we will not be able to respond to all communications individually if the turn out is great.
Now back to work.
Nathan Clough, Ph.D. is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. He is a historical martial artist and a former university professor of cultural geography. He has given presentations on historical arms at events including Longpoint and Combatcon, and presented scholarly papers at, among others, The International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Craig Johnson is the Production Manager of Arms and Armor and Secretary of The Oakeshott Institute. He has taught and published on the history of arms, armor and western martial arts for over 30 years. He has lectured at several schools and Universities, WMAW, HEMAC, 4W, and ICMS at Kalamazoo. His experiences include iron smelting, jousting, theatrical combat instruction and choreography, historical research, European martial arts and crafting weapons and armor since 1985