Editor’s Note: Our new feature, Anything But Ordinary, spotlights people with unusual or unique jobs in the Cape Cod and Plymouth/South Shore area. If you would like to be considered for a future feature, email carol@capeplymouthbusiness.com
Cape Cod Cutlery, Marstons Mills
Owner: Fred Carpenter
Established: 2015
The Business: Custom-made kitchen knives, oyster shuckers, hunting knives, bushcraft knives, custom cutlery and golf divot tools crafted from high carbon steel. Custom work and knife sharpening also offered.
Inspiration: I was interested in blacksmithing about 15 years ago and I had a forge and grinder and the tools used in making knives. I had been in the medieval armor business a bit before the knives developed. My friend (and business partner) Tom had been watching bushcraft videos on YouTube and decided he wanted a custom knife, but they sold for $500 and up. He looked around at my tools and said we could make a knife. I said OK. So began hundreds of hours of how-to-make-knives videos on YouTube. Our goal was to make a high quality knife with an attractive handle that you would be proud to display but not worried to use.
Early Days: After we felt confident enough in our comprehension of the process we went out and gave it a shot. We muddled around for two years learning and applying what we had learned and went to our first local Christmas event run by Love Live Local when it was up in Dennis at the cable access building. We sold over a dozen knives in two days and looked at one another and said maybe this could be a thing. We have been pursuing it full time ever since.
What Makes Our Products Unique: We embrace the Turkish rugmakers theory that only God is perfect. Our knives don’t look like anything else out there available commercially. It would be easy to pick ours out of a line up. “Shabby chic,” I guess you could call it, or rough from the forge. The pro shuckers and farmers around Wellfleet were instrumental in developing our shucker design to where it is today.
Where To Find It: Our website; Love Local and Cape Gun Works and Cape Cod Beer in Hyannis; Lexaco, Harwich Port; Newcomb Hollow Shop, Wellfleet; Arcadia in Provincetown.
More information at www.capecodcutlery.com
