Onur Caglar is the founder of Diesineveryfilm Customs, in his Youtube channel you can find how he builds all sort of knives or axes from scratch, sharp, tough and unique. But apart from being a blacksmith, Onur, has also been many other things. We had the chance of talking to Onur about his career and we found out a little bit more about this human hero.

You were deployed as part of the British Army, can you tell us a little bit more about this time?

I was in the army for 7 years, during this time I served in Bosnia and two tours of Afghanistan as bad as it was I feel it made me the man I am today, altho I’m not perfect, I feel I grew up to be a better man. I have many stories but the one that stands out is when our section was hit with an IED attack on patrol killing my commander and badly injuring the interpreter leaving me the only British soldier and no way of communicating with the afghan soldiers. I had to run a mile to our base camp to notify other soldiers and organise the rescue of our lost troops. This story is in a book called “Operation Snakebite” by Stephen Grey in a lot more detail.

Once I got back home I went for an assessment after a big change in the way I was acting and they diagnosed me with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in 2008. I ever since have my ups and downs and I don’t think it will ever get better but you get used to having it and learn ways of coping with it.

You hold the title for the most tattooed person in Scarborough. Did you make any tattoos during your service time in the army? What was your first and last tattoo? Have you ever tattooed yourself?

Most of my tattoos were done while I served in the army. My first one was on my 18th birthday a present from my parents, a tribal on my upper arm. My last one was a egg timer on the back of my neck done by my personal tattoo artist Mrs about three months ago. And yes, unfortunately I did go through a phase of tattooing myself and my legs have lots of random tattoos to the horror of my Mrs.

You were also a professional MMA fighter, did you ever had a bad injury when fighting, in the army or in your workshop?

Probably the worst injury I’ve had was in the knife shop when I slipped sanding a knife handle and the blade cut into my knuckles quite deeply but other than that I did get elbowed in my head in Thailand fighting which left a nasty cut.

Tell us a bit about your origins and your branding.

My name is Turkish and was given by my grandad after a footballer scoring a goal! My channel ’s name is just something I randomly came up with to catch people’s attention and my thumbs up came by accident as I kept doing it in videos without realising but everyone seemed to love it.

How do you know how the furnace, welding and everything else work? Are you self taught?

I am far from being an expert but I like to give things a try and then sharing the process to help others and show that if you put your mind to it, it can be done. I started doing this just over a year ago now and I feel like I’m getting better every day. Its taken me at least two years to gather all my tools but since my grandfather was a machinist, I had the chance of growing up playing in his shed making my own stuff. When it comes to gathering materials, I receive some thanks to my subscribers which is awesome but I mostly get my scrap from a local garage scrap pile, from  machine shops junk offcut pile and a local second hand tool shop. I am nevertheless always alert keeping my eyes peeled for stuff.

You customize weapons, axes, tools, knives per order via FB, what is the weirdest thing someone ordered from you?

I customise anything at all but the most popular being weapons and probably what I enjoy the most but i build anything from shelves, tables and cabinets to knives, axes and hammers all orders are taken via Facebook and everything is a custom item. I don’t have a mass produced design at the moment. The strangest thing I’ve made so far was a kettlebell for a guy I know and despite it was fun to do it didn’t turn out to be very popular with weapon fans.

Tell us three of your favourite youtube channels.

At the moment my favourite channels are:

1. Ichiban Moto, been subscribed to it since before I even had a channel myself.
2. Green Beetle, I learn a lot from his knife making videos.
3. NZ woodturning, altho it’s a woodturning channel I like to take his ideas to try input it into knife handles trying to give my stuff an extra edge and hopefully something unique.

After this interview Diesineveryfilm Customs made a build specially designed for Gentleman’s Pride, Check it out here and don’t forget to subscribe to his channel!!

DIESINEVERYFILM