Beautiful Blades
The art of knife-making requires time and patience.
By Kelly Westhoff
Photo by Eric Moore
For Goff, the cutlery hobby is a family tradition of sorts—he inherited the tools of the trade from his father, Bud. “When my father passed, I went to clean up his affairs and I found a box of his tools,” says Goff, who knew his father had been making knives for years, a pastime that had developed from a fascination with the Civil War. (Bud actually made black powder rifles for reenactments and competitive shooting. Knife-making was an extension of that interest.) Over the years, Goff had received a few of his father’s knives as gifts. Unwilling to drop the tools in the give-away bin, Goff brought them home and started to “fool around with them.”
Lacking his father’s advice and guidance, however, Goff was forced to seek knife-making know-how from other sources. “I’m curious,” he explains. “I always want to know how something works and how it is made. A lot of what I’ve learned about knife-making, I’ve learned on the Internet and through trial and error—mostly trial and error.” Persistence proved to be a good teacher. After just one year, he had more knives than he knew what to do with. He decided to try his luck at an art fair—an undertaking he has found to be both exciting and exhausting. “You have to be on all the time,” says Goff, who calls his business Harborg Custom Cutlery and sells his work at the Powderhorn, Edina, and Wayzata art fairs, to name a few. “You have to be attentive. You have to like talking to people.” Manning his booth has also taught him a thing or two about the finicky art of retail. “You can’t judge a customer by appearance,” he says. “Some people just walk into the tent and say, ‘I’ll take that one.’ Others bend your ear for 30 minutes then walk off without a thing.”
After four summers on the art-fair circuit, Goff has started to see repeat customers, which is rewarding, he says. Sometimes his knives—ranging in price from $45 to $500—sell as gifts, but most of his customers are seeking a functional piece of art to use in their own kitchens. “Most of my knives are bought by people who like the idea of having a knife that is handcrafted, unique, and one-of-a-kind,” he says. “Some people say my knives are too pretty to use, but I say, ‘No. My knives are meant to be used. They are functional. They don’t have the standard black handle, they have something better—a handle that fits you.’”
While Goff makes knives with beauty in mind, he admits that his personal cutlery collection is woefully under-stocked and unattractive. “The knives in my kitchen are the ones that weren’t good enough to sell,” he laughs. “They all have defects. Aesthetically, they’re not perfect.” However, he does have a favorite among the bunch. “Most people lean toward knives of a certain size. I like the big ones,” he says. “I have one knife that I use for just about everything. It’s a 10-inch chef’s knife and I do everything with it, from slicing onions to cutting pizza.”
Though he never intended to turn this hobby into an entrepreneurial venture, Goff says he has found a life-long love. “It’s evolved, but I’m going to continue doing it because I like it,” he says. “I’m having fun and learning a lot, and I like making something that’s functional.”
Kelly Westhoff is a Plymouth freelance writer.
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