Two West Seattle residents opened a new edgy shop in downtown Ballard, Vulcan Knife. With 30 years of experience, Paul Inman, and partner, Thomas Gregory of Ballard, forge and sharpen custom knives, swords, axes, and tools while Inman’s wife, Dee Button, a longtime leather crafter, designs sheaths and helps run the business.

Gregory, who lives on his under-30-foot sailboat, mentored with Inman for 10 years. Inman learned from the late William F. Moran Jr., world-renowned bladesmith known as "the father of modern Damascus knife.”

“My parents originally settled on Alki Avenue in 1941, from Idaho,” said Button. “Then they moved to Alaska and returned in 1973 to retire. They are both in their 90’s and still live in the same house. We live with them. They have one of the few homes left that has not become a condo.

“Dad fed the family in Alaska by hunting outside Anchorage in the late 1940’s,” Button added, pointing to a mounted sheep head on the wall.

“This sheep head is the only thing he ever had mounted,” she recalled. “He would not shoot anything to brag. He shot to feed the family. I was raised on wild meat and when I first ate beef it tasted strange.”

This sense of authenticity seems to reverberate in the work her husband and Gregory proudly display.

“When you’re a knife maker, making a ‘pretty thing’ is great, but if it doesn’t cut it defeats the purpose,” said Inman, who pointed out that some prefer extremely ornate, but dull-edged knives.

“A knife that cuts immediately gives you respect,” he added. “We understand what the knife needs. It doesn’t matter what kind of knife walks through the door, from an extremely expensive one to one that they bought in the thrift store. We put an edge on it that will shave hair when they leave.”

“The more we become more technically advanced, the more we get away from the simplistic things that made us what we are today,” Inman said. “Having that sharp knife 150 years ago sometimes meant life and death and whether or not you were going to freeze to death or have a home.”

The Vulcan crew recommends that, instead of throwing an aging ax with a worn wooden handle into the landfill, clean it up, put an edge on it, and bring it back to life.

“We see axes that are 50 to100 years old,” said Inman, pointing to a display of shiny, newly sharpened vintage axes for sale. “People hate fiber glass and plastic handles. We pick up (worn axes) at yard sales and replace the handles, and sharpen the blades. You can use them again. It’s kind of cool.

“Everybody’s got something to cut with,” he added. “That’s the one tool our bodies don’t have. We can’t cut. For 15,000 years we’ve come up with flakes of obsidian to be able to cut. Everybody has something sharp, so technically everybody is our demographic as far as the sharpening goes.”

The 1800 square-foot Vulcan Knife shop, at 2419 Northwest Market St., occupies the former Vitality Chiropractic business that relocated in Ballard. The space was also once Ballard Kitchen & Bath, and a more than ample amount of modern kitchen cabinetry still hangs on half the walls. One needn’t be a sharp-eyed customer to first notice the over 70 shiny steel knives supported by magnet strips, including two-handed great swords, Japanese Katana blades, a Three Musketeer-like rapier sword blade, Bowie knives, and daggers.

“A lot of people walk in and see swords and things like that and it can be a little intimidating,” said Gregory. “But once they get passed that initial intimidation they find that they can learn things here, as far as the history of the blades, how they are made, regardless of cultures, time periods, and everything else. We’ve tried to dabble in all of them from Old-World bronze blades to modern technology.”

“Those knives that are not complete,” Button said of the shiny blades pressed against the wall. They are all steel with no handle.

“If you like the shape of one, we’ll choose the wood you want for the handle, and it will be finished specifically for you,” she said. “At a certain point before it is completely finished you can come back in and we make it fit perfectly for your hand.”

Gregory, who enjoys occasionally adorning himself in pirate gear while taking a stroll, said he spent years performing at Renaissance fairs.

“I put on shows of swordplay at the ‘Ren fairs’ which is what inspired me to get into making them,” he said. “Everything you could buy was crap. The swords looked pretty, but they weren’t any good. I wanted to make serviceable blades you could use and abuse and cut and do the things the sword was originally made to do.

“The shows were entertainment, but making a believable fight for the audience actually requires months of work with your partner,” he said. “You will lose fingers and maim people if you don’t practice enough. In the Pirates of the Caribbean movies they spend months working on sword fighting scenes. That’s how you get the real looking fight with the anger and intensity that goes with it, while still being safe for the participants. Johnny Depp is a fairly proficient swordsman. I look at the Pirate movies a lot differently than most people.”

Check out: www.vulcanknifeworks.com
(206) 805-2400

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