Josh Gore – Artist of Material Culture

Early Foundations

I grew up in a tool-and-die and injection molding environment, spending my early teens on lathes, Bridgeports and Arburgs, in the family shop. After school I would modify friends’ paintball markers, milling and chopping bodies, doing 8hole mods, and tuning autocockers. That mix of hands-on manufacturing and creative problem-solving became the backbone of my design career.

2001–2004

My professional path began when my brother and I turned our paintball hobby into a company called Off The Break (OTB). I was studying film at Columbia College Chicago, but when our first pre-orders sold out, I left school to pursue design full time. The design language and aesthetic understanding from art school have remained in my toolkit ever since.

Our first products were ergonomic grip frames, followed by improved bolts and ultimately a complete marker. We had a year of solid sales and began to grew beyond our ability to manage. We took our existing product and prototypes to distributors, we were offered a buyout and joined the acquiring company—my first formal engineering role as Jr. Mechanical Engineer at Pursuit Marking Incorporated.

As the paintball industry consolidated in the early 2000s, I began looking for new challenges that would broaden my technical range. My goal during this period was simple: take on projects that pushed me beyond comfort and deepened my command of both design and production.

Extracurriculars: First car track day; built my first heavily modified car; missions work in Costa Rica teaching English; organized BMW club events; competed in Division III Paintball at Disney’s Wide World of Sports.

2004–2009 — Cutting My Teeth

These years formed the foundation of my professional discipline. I freelanced on diverse projects; an Tollway Pass holder, an ATM biometric fingerprint reader that achieved IP67 certification, and various medical and construction-related devices. Seeing my designs pass validation testing firsthand was a defining moment.

Seeking steady experience, I accepted a Jr. Engineer role at a sheet-metal fabrication company. I spent time on the shop floor before designing for production, which taught me that effective design must serve manufacturing realities, not just intent. I developed a pneumatic truck-seat lift and drop boxes for convenience-store safes.

I then joined Liquid Container (now Graham Packaging) in the HDPE extrusion-blow-molding division. My first months were a trial by fire, rebuilding legacy 2D packaging drawings into modern 3D CAD for future tooling. That project proved my understanding of Class-A surfacing, draft, and labeling. I went on to lead designs from concept through production, including the Windex 5L refill bottle and Arm & Hammer detergent containers. The complex surfacing of consumer packaging honed my modeling skills and solidified a lifelong interest in surface design.

Extracurriculars: Volunteered at a Honduran orphanage; launched Simple Coffee brand; learned welding and fabrication; restored my first classic car including paint and suspension design.

2009–2013 — Full-Time Freelancing

When I left Liquid Container, I already had contracts lined up—most notably styling for a paintball manufacturer that resulted in the MacDev Droid marker. That project let me integrate aesthetic styling with ergonomic engineering in a field I knew intimately. I also developed goggles and a trap-door feed system that later became a standard in paintball.

To sustain a robust design practice, I diversified beyond paintball through direct outreach. Major clients during this time included Hu-Friedy, Continental Packaging Solutions, and Transparent Container and several paintball companies.

At Hu-Friedy, the “Cadillac” of surgical instruments, I designed dental and surgical tools and led an R&D project validating carbon-fiber instruments for steam and ethylene-oxide sterilization—turning a personal composite hobby into a professional application.

At Continental Packaging, a fast-paced, sales-driven environment, I supported multiple reps by rapidly producing concept suites and samples, often with minimal brief. The experience sharpened my ability to create viable designs quickly under pressure. The contract ended when Continental was acquired by a competitor with an in-house team.

At Transparent Container, a high-volume thermoformer for brands like BIC and Duracell, I specialized in reverse engineering and 3D scanning of blister packaging. I also created internal training curriculum to streamline production design for new engineers.

Extracurriculars: Built a ground-up open-wheel race car; attended MotoGP and road-racing events; sold Simple Coffee; had a car featured on Bring a Trailer.

2011–2013 — Kettle Cycles

While maintaining freelance contracts, a former supervisor and I co-founded Kettle Cycles to apply advanced composites to cycling components. I experimented with carbon-ceramic matrix rotors and forged composites, raising capital to build our own processing equipment and producing small test batches. Our Kickstarter campaign was a breakout success but scaling production exposed material and process limitations. I developed a plan for expanded validation and product upgrades, but when shareholders chose a different direction, I exited.

The experience was humbling and formative; it reinforced the importance of validation and scale-readiness in manufacturing. The forged-composite work, however, proved successful and remains in my process repertoire.

Extracurriculars: Race-team data logging and pit work; off-season car builds; backpacked across Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand; met my fiancée.

2014–2019

I returned to freelance design, balancing client work with self-directed experimentation. My personal R&D project, the “Funny Fork”, served as a technical thesis, combining analytical design, simulation, and hands-on engineering. It restored my creative rhythm and deepened my multidisciplinary approach.

During this period I delivered some of my most successful products:

The Induction Innovations Venom induction-heating tool, winner of a PTEN design award and holder of utility and design patents.
The Onsen Labs Vaporizer, which helped a client bring a product line to life.
Wireless VR Headset Composite Housing, specifically tooling and part molding.
Extensive in-house 3D-printing capability, logging over 10,000 hours of additive manufacturing experience and publicly released cad database.

Extracurriculars: Developed a halo e-bike project exploring future transportation; volunteered teaching product design to students; traveled to Cuba and the UAE.

2019–Present

In 2019 I began consulting with Venue Arts, producing engineered assemblies and PE-stamped drawings for large-scale artistic installations including Guinness-record works and complex composite rigging structures.

In 2021 I joined 2nd Amendment Wholesale to develop multiple in-house brands including Wraithworks Firearms and XM42 Flamethrowers.

I led the XM42-X through production, building a team capable of 500–1,000 units per month and creating a supply chain supporting 10,000 units annually. I later developed a blow-molded backpack tank to complement the premium aluminum version. The XM42 line has now been in production for three years and holds a U.S. utility patent.

At Wraithworks, I oversaw validation of the Warscorp9 and WARP15 Upper. For the Warscorp9, I built a custom firearms data-logger to diagnose bolt-catch dynamics, leading to a redesigned over-molded catch that improved assembly pass rates from roughly 20–30% to 80–90%. For the WARP15 polymer clamshell upper, I managed iterative refinements that optimized performance and manufacturability.

My broader directive at Wraithworks was to reduce AR-15 platform costs through polymer packaging. That initiative produced two concept architectures:

CarbonMax – a low-volume, high-margin composite showcase
PolyMax – a polymer-optimized, high-throughput platform

Both re-house the AR-15 operating system in modern materials while simplifying production. My day to day activities involve managing 5 production BOM’s, a handful of in process beta prototypes and ongoing lifecycle improvements to existing products.