Joe Steel, The Steel Mindset: The Knife Junkie Podcast (Episode 669)

Joe Steel, The Steel Mindset: The Knife Junkie Podcast (Episode 669)

From The Knife Junkie Podcast by Bob "The Knife Junkie" DeMarco

May 3, 2026

About this episode

Joe Steel discusses his journey from a lifelong passion for blades to creating a successful YouTube channel focused on swords and knives.

What does it take to turn a 40-plus-year obsession with blades into a YouTube channel worth watching? Joe Steel of The Steel Mindset can answer that question. In Episode 669 of The Knife Junkie Podcast, host Bob DeMarco sits down with Joe for a conversation that covers the origins of a lifelong passion, the craft and culture behind the katana, top production sword brands, and what it is like to build a knife and sword channel from the ground up while living in one of the least collector-friendly states in the country. Joe Steel traces his love of blades to May 14, 1982, the opening day of Conan the Barbarian. The forge scene at the start of that film hooked him at age nine, and the obsession never let go. He grew up collecting flea-market swords, bringing blades back from travels abroad, and absorbing everything he could find about bladecraft long before the internet made that easy. When the 2020 shutdown ended his career in live event production overnight, he discovered the YouTube sword-review community and made a decision: he had the production skills, equipment, and knowledge. He was going to make his own videos. The Steel Mindset channel was born from that decision. Much of…

People in this episode

Host: Bob DeMarco

Guest: Joe Steel

Topics covered

  • YouTube channel
  • blade obsession
  • katana culture
  • sword brands
  • knife collecting

Keywords

  • YouTube
  • katana
  • bladecraft
  • sword review
  • collecting swords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Steel Mindset

Books & works: Conan the Barbarian

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