From CNC Lathes to Custom Blades: How Marine Veteran Connor Toor Built Toor Knives

Toor Knives started with a Marine, a machinist's eye for tolerances, and a backyard, and today it anchors a whole family of American-made blade brands. It is one of the cleaner case studies in action sports and lifestyle manufacturing of how a maker becomes a brand builder, and how a brand builder becomes an employer. If you care about craftsmanship, veteran entrepreneurship, and the unglamorous mechanics of how a company and a team actually get built, Connor Toor's path is worth studying closely.

The machinist before the maker

Before there was a knife company, there was a guy learning to run machines. According to Malakye's own 3x3 interview with Connor Toor, he served in the Marines for seven years, and during that time went to school at San Diego City College where he learned how to operate CNC lathes and founded his namesake company, Toor Knives. That detail matters more than it looks. Plenty of founders fall in love with a product first and scramble to learn how to make it later. Toor did it the other way around. He learned to hold tight tolerances on real equipment, then pointed that skill at a problem he understood from the inside.

His manufacturing instincts actually trace back even further, to the board world. As Smoky Mountain Knife Works documents in its brand history, Toor started his manufacturing career in the skateboard industry, where he ran various machines including CNC machines to build 7 and 8-ply skateboards, before joining the Marine Corps and seeing firsthand the demand for good fixed blade duty knives (smkw.com). For anyone who reads Malakye because they love how action sports products get made, that is a satisfying throughline. The same CNC discipline that shapes a skateboard mold can shape a knife blank. The material changes. The mindset does not.

A backyard, a hammer, and a real problem

The origin story is refreshingly small. Per eKnives' brand spotlight, Toor Knives was founded by Connor Toor in his hometown of San Diego, California, and his humble beginnings included crafting knives in his backyard with just a hammer and anvil, driven by a goal of improving military-issued tactical knives (eknives.com). As a Marine himself, he used his own experiences and sought wisdom and advice from his teammates to create pieces that would meet the demands of the job.

That is the part aspiring founders in any lifestyle industry should underline. Toor did not invent a market. He was the market. He knew what a duty knife needed to survive because he had carried one, and he had a network of teammates who could tell him exactly where the existing options fell short. Product-market fit was not a spreadsheet exercise. It was a conversation with the people standing next to him.

Turning a skill into a company

The leap from making things to running a company is where most makers stall, and it is the most instructive stretch of the Toor story. The company was founded in 2014, and eKnives notes that in its telling the operation was started by brothers Connor and Cameron Toor in San Diego, with their shared military service giving the company firsthand insight into the challenges service members face (eknives.com). From a backyard anvil, the business grew into a real factory. Toor Corporation's own site describes an expansion into a full-service operation with advanced 3, 4, and 5-axis machining capabilities (toor-corp.com).

Made in the USA is not a slogan here, it is the operating model. As eKnives puts it, unlike many manufacturers that outsource production, Toor Knives maintains complete control over its manufacturing process, with a facility equipped with state-of-the-art CNC machines, heat-treating ovens, and precision grinding equipment (eknives.com). Smoky Mountain Knife Works adds a nice production-floor detail, noting the company uses a CNC waterjet to cut each blade into its mission-specific shape (smkw.com). Keeping the whole process in house is expensive and hard, and it is also exactly what lets a maker-founder keep the quality he built the brand on.

From one brand to a portfolio

Here is where the case study gets genuinely interesting for anyone thinking about careers, not just products. Toor did not stop at one label. Malakye's interview notes that Connor founded Toor Knives, and per Malakye also went on to build Sangin Knives and Skallywag Tactical (malakye.com). Those brands now sit under Toor Corporation, which its own site describes as a niche brand-building powerhouse running a good, better, best product lineup (toor-corp.com).

The structure is worth walking through, because it shows how one manufacturing engine can feed several brands. Per the Toor Corporation about page, Skallywag Tactical was acquired in 2024 and positioned as the more economical tactical brand, while Sangin Knives came together as a partnership with the founder of Sangin Instruments to reach the ultra premium, handmade end of the market (toor-corp.com). You can see the full lineup laid out on the company's brands page. Connor sits at the top of it as founder, chairman, and CEO (toor-corp.com).

Nerd out on this for a second, because it is the whole game. One shared factory, one deep bench of machining knowledge, and three price tiers pointed at three different customers. The waterjet, the heat-treat ovens, and the grinders do not care which logo ends up on the blade. That is how a single maker's skill set turns into a durable business with room to hire.

Craftsmanship is a team sport

The best part of the Toor story, and the part most relevant to a jobs and networking community, is that it stopped being a solo act. The brand that began with one man and an anvil now employs over 30 talented craftsmen and women, and a large percentage of Toor Knives employees are veterans (eknives.com). A founder who learned the trade in uniform built a shop that keeps hiring from that same community. That is a hiring philosophy and a culture, not an accident.

This is the exact pattern Malakye has watched play out across action sports, outdoor, and lifestyle brands since 2002. A maker solves a real problem with their own hands, keeps production close, and then the hard, rewarding work becomes building the team that keeps the quality alive as volume grows. Every tight tolerance still needs a person who cares about it.

What this means if you want in

If Toor's path lights something up for you, the takeaways are concrete. Learn a real skill on real equipment, the way Toor learned CNC work before he ever sold a blade. Solve a problem you personally understand, the way he built for the job he had carried. And treat manufacturing craft as a career, not a hobby, because brands like this are staffed by machinists, grinders, designers, and operators who take pride in American-made work.

You can follow Toor Knives on Malakye directly at its company page, and when the shop is hiring, that is where the action-sports and outdoor community will see it first. For the wider hunt, keep an eye on Malakye jobs and browse the brands building things worth making over on Malakye companies. The next maker-turned-brand-builder is out there running a lathe right now. Go be one of them.