Leland man’s one-of-a-kind handmade knives have tales to tell
You can’t tell from the street, but behind a garage door at the end of a cul-de-sac in Leland is a knife workshop.
We use knives every day, whether to cook, fish, butcher, open boxes, whittle, sculpt or work lines on a sailboat; they are a tool. We now can order them online and have access to fantastic knives to stock a kitchen drawer or put to work on the line of a busy restaurant. But like any other tool, knives were initially made from scraps, chipped from flint, quartz or obsidian, or designed and forged by a community blacksmith who had the motivation and patience to make something really sharp.
Sharp, according to knife maker Nic Nichols, is really cool. So is the way a knife can look, how it will feel in your hand and the way it can connect you to the past, when scraps become heirlooms. It’s his garage, and it mirrors his life as a cook and a father: Spices rest on a small table, a roast’s in a slow cooker; kids’ bikes rest against a wall of storage bins. All manner of knife materials and tools, parts and products cover the workbenches and tables. Knife patterns hang from peg boards. Titanium is in the tumbler. Handles made from hard plastics in bright colors or from all manner of wood wait in different stages of shaping. A project for the day, pocketknives, take shape at his belt sander, where Nichols hones the edges as sparks fly.
Nichols started off as a cook after having graduated as a member of the first class at the Charlotte campus of Johnson & Wales University culinary arts program. He spent time behind the line, before moving on to a job in sales in the food service industry.
One day at a family gathering he overheard that one of his great-great-granddies was a blacksmith. He started researching family history and blacksmith tools. He found a teacher in Hampstead, who made knives from old railroad spikes. After many trials, a few errors and other teachers, Nichols became a master certified by the American Bladesmith Society.
A hobby was born, which became a passion, which became a business. Nichols became a full-time knife maker this spring after 10 years of doing it as a side hustle while keeping his day job in sales.
The knives themselves have evolved in shape and design. He now makes santoku and paring knives, in addition to chef’s knives. “Think about how many times a day you use a chef’s knife,” he asks. “How many times a week? And how long have you had them? I want to make something that’s comfortable as well as something you can pass on to family.”
The design has been tweaked to make the knives higher from edge to spine, so you don’t hit the cutting board with your knuckles. The handle is the “Coke bottle” design; it’s wider and rounder in the middle, giving it a palm swell. They are also best used with a pinch grip where you hold the knife at the neck between your thumb and index finger.
“There’s also a trick I learned from other artisans,” he says. “If you close your eyes while you’re shaping the knife, you can feel things you can’t see.”
Nichols has fans in the local restaurant community. Zack Comis, executive chef and partner at Tarantelli’s restaurant in downtown Wilmington, has used Nichols’s knives for years. “His knives have nuances that a pre-manufactured knife doesn’t,” he says. “They are formed for a thinner slice. They are lighter weight and made of higher-quality steel than any I have used.”
Comis adds, “I’ve used a lot of different knives over the years and his are the best. Besides, he has the best customer service. If I need anything, I can drop by his shop on my way home.” (See recipe, page xx.)
For some the knives are personal as well as useful. After Nichols saw a tool whose handle was made from reclaimed teak from the battleship USS North Carolina Battleship, he started using the same to make his knives.
“In the ’60s, so many people from all over North Carolina raised money to bring the ship to Wilmington, so we’re very proud of it,” he says. “People who helped save it, or served on it, want to have a piece of it.”
Soon he was buying scrap from other renovations. There are knives made with wood from the floor of the Boston Garden. Old seats from Yankee Stadium were turned into plastic handles.
Then people started to ask him to make knives from mementos. “One woman’s family’s hutch was destroyed during [Hurricane] Florence,” he says. “She brought me a piece of it, so I made her a knife.”
He made a knife from a piece of a Hercules tree under which a couple got married. He was once asked to make a knife out of the titanium from a replacement hip. He passed on that.
“The older I get, the more sentimental I get,” he says. “The knives become more than tools. They take memories and put them right in your hand. And then that knife with that story gets passed down to the next generation, and somehow I’m lucky enough to be a part of that.”
The story was originally published in the Fall 2024 issue.
