Designed with purpose, built on principle, & made by hand.

My dad was a park ranger, and I grew up outside National Parks in California, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. I spent my summers camping, hiking, and canoeing, both for fun and as a guide on the Delaware River. I was a Boy Scout, president of my college Outdoors Club, and for years the de-facto organizer of wilderness trips  for my friends and family.

I've tried just about every form of outdoor adventure there is — climbing, caving, van life, bushcraft, fishing, handlining, foraging, biking, and boating. I love the wilderness, and I believe that being outdoors is critical for our well-being as humans.

I started Daggerfish in 2018, after spending a few years volunteering at a makerspace in Pittsburgh. I developed the first Daggerfish Handline, began selling them at a local outdoors store, and was soon able to focus on Daggerfish as my full-time job. 

In 2020, I moved into a micro-factory I helped build inside an repurposed Ukrainian church, where I continue to make virtually everything myself. Over the years I’ve made thousands of pieces of gear, all with the intent of building high-quality, sustainable, and functional craft products for people who love the outdoors.

Daggerfish is the name under which I design and craft products for a variety of outdoor adventures. It’s a personal business built on principles for good design, ethical operations, and more-sustainable products and manufacturing processes. Everything I make is built to last, and Guaranteed for a Lifetime.

I make almost everything myself, by hand as well as with machines like CNCs. Once in a while, I’ll bring in assistants to help me out, but virtually everything is designed, built, packaged, and shipped by me. When you email with a question, I'm the one who reads it and writes back. And when you purchase something from the site, you’re directly supporting me and my ability to keep making things for you. 

As people who love the wilderness, the things we use to explore the natural world should do as little harm as possible to it. Through Daggerfish, I’m working to shift the outdoor gear industry away from non-renewable and synthetic materials, cheaply-made and disposable products, and trends that insulate us from the natural world rather than integrating us into it. I’m also trying to run a business that balances the well-being of me, my customers, the environment, and the business itself. I think that’s the way all businesses should be run.

I've written out the full set of design and business principles that guide everything I make. You can read them here.

Besides building better gear, it’s also Daggerfish’s mission to support a style of exploration I call deep outdooring. This is a term coined by my friend, the composer and outdoorsman Nicholas Daly, to describe the way he and I like to go out into the wilderness – quiet, contemplative, low tech, high skill. Not struggling to survive or straining to achieve anything. Just being present in the natural world with enough skill and comfort to enjoy it.

Deep outdooring fosters calm, connection, consideration, and conservation through limited technology, rudimentary comforts, and taking heed of where you place your attention.  It’s a simple term for a complex-yet-familiar idea; one that is rooted in traditions of outdoor exploration that stretch back hundreds of years. 

I’m still working out exactly how to describe it, but deep outdooring shapes everything that I make –  humble products that work simply and reliably, crafted to connect you with the natural world. 

If you’d like to learn more, I write about my design process, what's happening in the workshop, and topics related to the outdoors on my blog. I don’t post on social media anymore, so this is the best place to find what I’m thinking about and see what I'm working on.

If you want to hear about new products, educational resources, and the occasional sale, you can join the email list at the bottom of this page.

I don't send a lot of email, I won't spam you with sales offers, and you can always unsubscribe. If you ever want to reach me directly, the contact page comes straight to my inbox.

Thanks for reading. Now get out there!

- Adam Nelson
Founder & Craftsman, Daggerfish
Pittsburgh, PA