Nate Mansfield popped open the trunk of his car in the driveway of a customer’s home in Milton. Tucked away in the spacious rear compartment was a neatly contained setup for his mobile knife sharpening business, SimplySharp — his “business in a box,” as he sometimes calls it.
Mansfield, 46, pulled out a small red dust collector that sucks metal shavings out of the air, a belt sander and three belts made for sharpening knives, all of which he placed on the workbench folded into his car.
It’s a system that takes just a few minutes to unpack, and one that he’s been perfecting ever since Mansfield left his corporate job to become a mobile knife sharpener about two years ago. He and his small team of sharpeners make a few house calls each week in addition to setting up at farmers markets around metro Atlanta.
Mansfield isn’t the only person in metro Atlanta to discover a later-in-life love of knife sharpening; in East Atlanta, Richard “Spike” Fullerton of Sweet Hone Atlanta also travels door to door and market to market with his own sharpening setup.
“I never wanted to have a business,” Fullerton said late one recent afternoon at the East Atlanta Village Farmers Market. “I feel like I got drafted into this.”
The 63-year-old Ormewood Park resident found his way to knife sharpening about three years ago after he lost a job in software sales. He first enjoyed a stint as a chef working for a private meal service and, in the meantime, he used a sharpening stone to turn busted knives into fresh pieces as a hobby.
Word got around that Fullerton could sharpen knives, and soon the chef he worked for asked whether he wanted to try his hand at fixing up their knives. Then, a few neighbors asked him to sharpen knives as well.
By Thanksgiving, he had decided to put the word out on social media and the requests for his knife-sharpening services started pouring in. Not long after that, Fullerton left his job as a chef.
In addition to house calls, he sets up his small folding table and belt sander at the East Atlanta Village market, the Grant Park market, the Freedom market and the Decatur market.
He and Mansfield use similar machines. While they might be small, they certainly get the job done and aren’t as hard on a knife as the industrial machines that tend to strip off more metal, Fullerton said.
Credit: Olivia Wakim
Credit: Olivia Wakim
The job keeps him fairly busy, Fullerton said, and he doesn’t have a huge desire to grow it far beyond the neighborhoods he already is servicing. The current amount of business gives him a chance to spend time with the farmers market crowd, and most importantly, he said, he “just likes making people happy.”
Speaking of making customers happy, Mansfield has noticed people are extra pleased that he can show up right at their door without charging an extra delivery fee.
Mansfield doesn’t have a culinary background, having worked in tech prior to becoming a cutler. He already sharpened knives for his own household, and when one of his friends mentioned how great it would be if he could go house-to-house doing it, he decided to give it a try.
In his early days of knife sharpening, Mansfield reached out to Fullerton to ask for advice, and he continued learning the trade from YouTube videos, knife sharpening forums and Facebook groups.
Now, he has become something of a knife doctor himself — he can tell what kind of treatment the knives need and in what condition the home cook has left them.
Credit: Natrice Miller
Credit: Natrice Miller
Both cutlers rely on their bare hands to get a sense of how sharp the knife is and what’s left for them to do, which means the most difficult season to sharpen knives in is the winter, because their hands can go numb.
When they feel along the blade, they’re looking for the burr, both Mansfield and Fullerton said, which is a little edge that raises on one side of the knife after a few passes on the sanding belt.
The next step is to refine the edge, which helps make a smoother cut and ends up removing most of the burr, Mansfield said. And, finally, he uses a leather belt with a compound rubbed on it to polish the blade, also called stropping.
The cutlers have a few tricks for checking whether a knife is sufficiently sharp. During the final step, Mansfield slides the blade over a microfiber cloth to see whether it will pass through without snagging.
And both sharpeners bring an extra sheaf of paper to run the knife through. Fullerton said that practice is particularly useful in catching shoppers’ attention at markets.
Credit: Olivia Wakim
Credit: Olivia Wakim
Getting a knife routinely sharpened makes it safer to use, Fullerton said. When a knife is dull, the cook has to put extra force into cutting something, and it’s more difficult to know which way the blade will go.
In between sharpenings, Mansfield suggested that home cooks keep their knives healthy by honing them, never putting them in a dishwasher and storing them properly in something like a sheath or a knife block, rather than floating around in a drawer.
If a home cook follows that upkeep regimen, he said, it shouldn’t be necessary to call SimplySharp or Sweet Hone Atlanta more than about once a year.
Without taking those steps, he said, it’s more likely knives will need sharpening every two to four months.
SimplySharp. simplysharpatl.com
Sweet Hone Atlanta. facebook.com/p/Sweet-Hone-Atlanta-100082894794484
Sign up for the AJC Food and Dining Newsletter
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on X and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
