Life & Work with Nicholas Nichols

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicholas Nichols.

Hi Nicholas, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
A few years ago well at a family member’s house after my grandmother’s death, I overheard someone say you know that’s where your great grandfather’s blacksmith shop was. That led me on this journey to find out as much as I could about my grandfather and about blacksmithing. I had always been interested in craft but I have never been able to purchase my attention and my resources on it. I began to acquire tools and I began to sell these tools to other people. On a delivery, I met this gentleman that was banging out railroad spike knives with his son and he asked if I wanted to join them. I tried making out in the past but I never could quite get the hang of it. But I think it is a hammer and started to hit the hot metal instantly I was hooked. That was at the end of 2014 how many things that happened in between now and then a lot of blood, sweat and tears a little something that I like to call the bucket of knives I will never be.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I laugh and joke and tell people that I’m an overnight success it was just a long, long night. I have been doing this for almost eight years now and there’s so much more that I need to learn it is definitely not been a sweet road. Cuts burns And my family asking me if I was crazy my friends wondering well I wanted to do was make knives. Oh yeah and all the long, long night out my garage trying to finish up orders.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a knife maker and I use a method called stock removal. This means that I start with a piece of steel and I shape it into what will become a knife and then I create what is called the bevels. Then attach handles for the knife and sharpened. Now there’s a whole lot more that goes into that but that is the simple answer. I would say that my work is best known for making kitchen knives. As a chef and a graduate of Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte kitchen knives have always been something that I’ve been around and I feel like that, I have an intimate relationship with them and I know how they should feel in your hand and how they could work. Within this, my specialty has become using wood handles from historical sources. It started with and I am most known for using the wood from the deck of the USS North Carolina that sits about 2 miles from my home. What I ask him to call the people’s battleship, I took that from someone else and I’m sure she won’t mind. Has an attachment to everyone in the state in some form or fashion. In addition to the tea from the North Carolina, I have also branched out into seats from old baseball stadiums that I’ve been torn down across the country basketball courts from some of your favorite schools and I have even used a gentleman‘s mothers china cabinet and turned it into my candles for a surprise Christmas present For. Him. A kitchen knife is the most used knife in the world, and by attaching a story to the knives, they become treasures and family will hold on too for generations.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I believe that a handmade knife movement will continue to grow I also believe that others will get into this and change it for the better. I am not sure how much longer he’s forged in fire show will last but it has done the same thing that the food Network did for the culinary world. Yes, I was on forged in fire season seven episode 33, lol.

Pricing:

• $150
• $2500

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.NicholasNicholsknives.com
• Instagram: @Nicholas_Nichols_knives
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/nicholasnicholsknives/