Tim Harty, The Business Times

Spend an hour with Corbin MacLeod, and be prepared to walk away impressed.

Because he makes an impression.

Ask him a simple question, and be prepared for a complex answer that could veer into family, philosophy and faith. He’ll talk about soul and connection, brotherhood, community and charity.

MacLeod is 20 years old, and of all things he’s a blacksmith. Not the kind that showed up in Old West cowboy movies making horseshoes or farm implements and repairing wagon wheels. Rather, he’s a modern-day, metal-working artist who started his own business, MacLeod Lux, in mid-April and soon after was adorning the railings at the Western Slope Vietnam War Memorial in Fruita with some of his handiwork.

The Lux in the business name stands for luxury, and that’s an important distinction, one MacLeod made clear in a text message to ensure an accurate description of his business. It read as follows:

“MacLeod Lux is a luxury blacksmithing brand based in Grand Junction, Colorado. We craft legacy tools — forged steel products that reflect timeless values, discipline and generational excellence. Every piece is handcrafted with a focus on honor, heritage and purpose — blending historical craftsmanship with modern luxury. While our brand is rooted in Christian values, we lead with quality, not slogans — letting the work speak for itself.”

Clearly, if he wasn’t so good at shaping metal into knives, swords, tools, utensils and art, he could have gone into marketing.

He comes by his career choice via family and fascination with the work, which he views as an adventure that is difficult and therefore rewarding, fulfilling.

MacLeod said his generation gets viewed as one that spends all of its time on smart phones and fails to see the world around it. MacLeod will dispute that.

“So, big thing about our generation, you know, we watch you,” he said. “And I did at an early age learn a lot about being constructive and building through my dad, and getting to make things from scratch. So, fixing the fence out back or fixing something that’s broken on the house, if that’s irrigation or a sprinkler head or a little stuff like that, those small mechanics and getting to fix or build things was really fun as a young kid.”

Then, he thinks it was about age 12 or 13 that he went to Cross Orchards Historic Site, part of Grand Junction’s Museums of the West, and another encounter further embedded blacksmithing in his mind.

“I had watched some blacksmithing on YouTube a little bit here, and so I knew kind of what it was at the time,” he said. “But at the Cross Orchards, they actually have a little blacksmith shop there on site, and there were some guys working in it on one of the festivals that they were having. And it just lit me up, and I guess God kind of pushed me towards it. One of them invited me in without even asking to do some blacksmithing, and I still have the pictures, which is great to look back to.”

A lot of skill has been honed since that day, he said, “but it definitely fired off the journey for learning from people and then going forward with my own adventures, doing stuff that I’m not comfortable with. And it’s a hard thing to do sometimes, you know, swinging a heavy hammer and getting burnt once in a while. So, I guess in that way, too, it also gives me a pretty good challenge to look forward to all the time.”

Getting to where he is now also involved loss and being lost. MacLeod’s dad, Lenard MacLeod, died about two years ago, and that led to introspection and realization. And no reporter is going to say it any better than MacLeod did himself, when he spoke the following:

“I ended up in this position of being lost. My dad was a bagpiper and he led a band here in town, the Rocky Mountain Scots, and I was a part of that. And so a lot of my life was oriented towards wanting to make my dad proud, if it was the blacksmithing or the bagpiping or helping out at the house.

“So, I felt relatively lost after his passing, and I found myself in the position of a lot of young men, not having a purpose, not having that want to go out and do things anymore. And so in my off time when I came back home from my studies at school and got done with my homework or whatever else, there was definitely a missing part. And so I filled in that part a lot with adventuring, you know, if it was hiking around town and that.

“But something about blacksmithing dug deep and was different to everything. It just, it couldn’t be replaced with games or with friends, and so it really spoke to me in the want to do something that was hard, that was challenging … getting to do something that was hard, that was really hard to do. There wasn’t a lot of people teaching it. There wasn’t a lot of information on it.

“I guess as all young men kind of want to have, I had an adventure ahead of me, so I’ve been on that adventure ever since. And so I decided if this was something that was speaking so closely to me and was, you know, making me a better man and making me stronger and was growing that adventure, that I would go forward.

“And I guess one of the biggest reasons why I started a company out of it was while I was doing my hobby, I met these other young men that were struggling, same with me, struggling to find a passion, to find a career in all of the 9 to 5 world we live in now. You know, we’re working at McDonald’s or whatever … it doesn’t fill that passion to be a better man, to help people, to make things and fill that art part of you.

“And so I got to bring them into the forge and teach them how to blacksmith. … I was posting online at the time, getting to talk to people in the DMs or in the little chats and stuff, and getting to learn about their adventure with it. And getting to inspire them to adventure with it definitely led me to stop being a hobbyist, stop focusing on how it kind of fulfilled myself and learned that I can really help people through this. And I can help bring people into a community and help young men and women, bring them to something that’s hard to do, but through that struggle, it helps create character.

“And so that’s, I kind of just felt this calling, definitely through my faith with the Lord to build a business out of it. And so it’s been a good adventure. It’s been scary at times, but it’s definitely been fulfilling.”

Remember the first few paragraphs of this story: Be prepared to be impressed. Be prepared for a complex answer to a simple question.

That’s your modern-day blacksmith in Grand Junction, a 20-year-old who sees his work with deeper meaning than anyone would expect. Thus, who he is pervades his work. So, when a customer comes to him to make a knife or a set of utensils for grilling, they’re going to have a conversation, because MacLeod wants to understand you, then make you something that you will find deeply meaningful.

That’s why he speaks about a preciousness to the work he does and the items he makes, and it’s what separates his products from those a machine can make.

What MacLeod makes, “It can’t be done with machines,” he said. “As much as I would like to, I can’t fully reproduce an item. Like, if I have a knife, sure I can make the other knife look pretty much just like that one. But there’s little nuances. There’s a soul to it. There’s a beauty and an art to every hammer strike into it, every file I’ve used on it and then every little whittle on the handle or the holes that I’ve drilled, and so that also brings a beauty.

“That brings that luxury to it, that idea of we’re turning away from this modern entity that we’re slowly going towards with all these (Artificial Intelligence) making pictures and, you know, kind of turning this idea that, ‘Do we really need artists anymore?’ And so I think blacksmithing definitely is one of those things that says, ‘Yes, we do.’

“Machines can’t do this, and this is something that requires you to give a part of your life to. I’ve been doing it for nine years, and I’m definitely still learning every day. And so it definitely takes that life. It gives that soul to the items you’re making. And so it speaks to that part of the soul that needs art, that needs to tell a story, that needs to create.”

Nearly two months into MacLeod Lux’s existence, MacLeod remains the company’s sole blacksmith, working from home, but he expects both to change. He anticipates having a large shop and employees who share his vision about blacksmithing, and he doesn’t think he’ll be waiting long for either.”

“Here in the future, when that shop is up, and we can build that environment for people to come into, we definitely want to have people that want to make their life a part of this, come to a shop that they can do it,” he said. “We’re not planning to be small for very long. I want to take this as far as possible, which I guess is why I’m sacrificing so much of that adventurous young life for this.”

MacLeod said he doesn’t want MacLeod Lux to be a “little company in town,” because through his business he wants to help as many people as possible.

“I want to spread this as far as possible,” he said.

MacLeod knows he can’t do it alone; he needs other people, a community working together. Then, watch out.

“I completely believe,” he said, “that this can be something that grows into something completely amazing.”

IN NEED OF LUXURY BLACKSMITHING?

Call MacLeod Lux owner Corbin MacLeod at 970-812-7122. A website, macleodlux.com, is coming soon.

WHAT HE REALLY LOVES TO MAKE? KNIVES!

When asked what items are the most common for him to make, MacLeod Lux founder/owner/operator Corbin MacLeod said he really liked that question, because “there’s not a lot of common” in blacksmithing. That’s because “you can make so much stuff.”

He then took his answer in a different direction and offered the following about knives:

“Something I love and enjoy to do is definitely knives. It’s such an expansive art. It’s stuff that it takes so much time, and it takes so much love and compassion to make a knife for somebody.

“And it’s this turn away from all of these milled knives, all of these machine-made knives and these knives that, you know, are going to dull tomorrow or are going to get rusted and break in a few days. But to take that time and know that what I’m making is going to last a generation or more, we definitely want to make knives that last generations. 

“We want to go beyond this new consumer diet of, ‘Well, this thing’s going to break in a little bit. It better be cheap. It better be able to be replaced really easy.’ And we turn away from that. We say, ‘No.’ We say, ‘We want to make something that’s going to create a story for you.’

“I think one of the biggest things was getting knives from my dad. He was a blacksmith, of course, too, but he also had this knife collection, and there was always a story with each of the knives he had. And it was because it was passed from generations, and we don’t want to see that lost amongst people. 

We definitely want to make stuff that is going to last a long time.”