They say that necessity is the mother of all invention and that certainly was the case in the birth of Cape Cod Cutlery. Thomas Davenport was looking for a knife and couldn’t find exactly what he wanted. So he thought, “Why not make my own?” Along with his friend, Fred Carpenter, Davenport scoured the internet watching lots of instructional videos on YouTube and together began making knives.
They are both involved in historical reenactment and began making knives for friends who wanted something true to a specific time period. After having a stall at the Cape Cod Beer Farmers Market, the business took off.
“I think people really crave that sense of locality. They want things that are well crafted and well made. It goes hand in hand with the slow food movement. People are moving away from that faceless big box store,” says Carpenter. “And if they have any questions,” chimes Davenport, “I mean I know everything about that knife they’re buying. They can ask me anything from cleaning, care, how it’s made, the process. You don’t get that when you walk into a store. There’s nothing I don’t know about that product. I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into that.”
And he means it.
The gentlemen laughingly showed off their scars and current wounds to me. “You don’t work around sharp things all day and not walk away with scratches,” says Carpenter. Blisters, burns, cuts, scrapes it’s all literally in a day’s work.
Each knife is painstakingly created in a process that takes around 6-9 hours all done by hand. The reward is the quality. “Everyone remembers their grandfather having really great knives,” says Carpenter, “that’s because they were made the old way. If you take care of these knives: don’t leave them at the bottom of the sink, don’t throw them on the counter, don’t leave them at the bottom of the dishwasher they’ll last generations.”
At the moment, they are both working part time jobs in addition to Cape Cod Cutlery. A true start up business, working out of their garage, the profits are going straight back into the business. Davenport proudly points out equipment remembering at which point they were able to buy each item, affectionately referring to them as his babies.
Carpenter and Davenport were joined in the garage studio by Marwin Schiltz, a young helper there to learn the craft. “We were self taught. We had to make so many mistakes and play around with things. Have epiphanies while sitting in traffic and think maybe that will fix the problem, but now he gets to learn from us,” says Davenport. Schiltz moved to the Cape when his father retired here and wanted to learn knife making. He plans to open his own shop in Minnesota. “They’re really great. They’ve taught me so much. When I mess up it’s no big deal,” says Schiltz. “That’s because we made all those same mistakes,” laughs Davenport.
Cape Cod Cutlery sell via their website and on amazon. They encourage you to come to one of the many markets they attend to meet them and ask questions.
By Rebecca Romo, Lifestyle Reporter CapeCod.com
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