One of my favorite things we do at Schiwerks is patriotic cerakote donation guns with the help of our awesome customers. We’ve donated to a lot of causes, but the main one we do is right here in Kingsley. We’re a small town of just under 1400 people in rural northwest Iowa. Everyone knows everyone and we’re a patriotic bunch. Back in 2008, a solider from here in town, Chad Groepper, was killed in Iraq, leaving behind a wife and a daughter.
His family put together a memorial benefit to help out his wife and child and that since has grown into a big deal here in town. Every year now the benefit happens in August, with a golf tournament followed by an auction, full of donated items from the community. Everything raised from that is then donated to worthy causes around the community.
Back in 2017, shortly after Schiwerks was founded, we started donating to this. It started off with an AR we raffled off. That went very well, so the next year we did another. But we asked our customers to help out with it; they donated money to help cover the gun, then we donate all the work on customizing it.
That has since become a tradition here every summer. We ask customers for help, they always turn out amazing, and we end up with a beautiful firearm to donate to a great cause.
This year, 2025, was the 1911 below. We did this one in 2 sides. One side, the American flag, to show his civilian side: husband, son, father, friend. And the other in multicam, to show his solider side: warrior, patriot, and defender. American Brothers in Arms donated the optic for it, and they’ve donated a lot over the years for this. Including an AR last year for us to customize.
All but the last 3 of these photos were done by Ballistic Imagery, who help us out every year with their amazing photography as well.
Below are a few other other pieces we’ve done over the years with the help of our awesome customers.
2024 saw some unbelievable flooding here in NW Iowa. Many communities were affected massively, one of them being very close to us, Correctionville. A large section of the community was under water and a ton of houses were flooded. Since this wasn’t technically in a “flood plane” most, if not all, weren’t carrying flood insurance, so these people were left in a dire situation. We did our usual donation to the Groepper benefit, but American Brothers in Arms ended up donating another AR to us which we customized in an Iowa flag. Groeppers were kind enough to let this one be auctioned off at their benefit, and 100% of those proceeds went directly to Correctionville to help with rebuilding. All because of our amazing customers.
Thanks for stopping by and checking out Schiwerks. Check out more posts below, or contact us to get your project started!
~Sam