Nick Rossi Knives
I headed over to Vasselboro, Maine to interview blade-smith, Nick Rossi in his studio. It was amazing to be right in the studio and see the variety of equipment he had & learn what they are used for.
Nick was born in Connecticut and moved to Maine around age 4 or 5. He has been a Mainer ever since. At Greely High School, he had an Industrial Art teacher who saw his passion and pushed him to work with his hands.
Photos by: Erin Little
“My folks were really, really encouraging, especially for something that might seem a little bit ominous. They were very, very supportive. Eventually when I got my first belt sander, which is a really important tool, it was this big, nasty machine and they let me put it in the basement,” Nick shared with me.
Nick starts his creative process with raw materials and forges them plastically to shape. He compares it to how a potter would work with clay. As a blade-smith, he primarily uses this process to make knives.
When he was starting to learn in the late 90s, early 2000s, there were not a lot of places around that you could go and learn how to do this, there were only a few seminars. He said especially in Maine, there was not a lot to help move you along through the craft. The luckiest part of his journey, was meeting knife makers when he got a job in a retail cutlery store. These coworkers offered to show him mistakes he was making and examine what he was working on.
Photo by: Erin Little
I’ve learned that's what a lot of crafters do, go through trial and error and sometimes you teach yourself how to do it. Nick was lucky enough to have mentors right from the start. When he was 15 years old, he got his first job at a knife store in Freeport, just wanting to help out.
“I have always been knife obsessed. I grew up in the 90s and there were a lot of action movies. These action movies had these knives that were kind of like stars in and of themselves. Right? For like an eight year old kid, it was like, oh my god, that is just so cool!” - Nick Rossi shares.
The very first knife he had made had a cord wrapped handle and then he later got into the woodworking aspect of knife making. He saw a few people do woodworking before, picked up a few books, but felt like he was on his own. Again, it was trial and error for him. He loves uses wood sourced right from Maine for this portion of the knife.
Photo by: Erin Little
I wondered how Nick felt prior to starting his own business. Was he nervous?
“Well, I kind of held off on that for a long time. I'm kind of conservative in that sense that before I went off on my own, I really wanted to make sure that that that it was going to work. This is the first time I've been I've been self employed and it is scary.”
Luckily, Nick had retail and marketing experience previous to starting the business. He knew that being able to sell his work and talk about his work would be the most important, but was surprised how much he had to learn about code enforcement and town governments.
Photo by: Erin Little
Nick feels super lucky that his parents moved him to Maine when he was young. He believes that being in Maine has helped his business. He told me, “Maine has some of the best craftspeople in the world. All the the jewelers, the metal-smiths and the potters and the good fiber artists out there, it’s kind of overwhelming. Being a part of that scene has really, really helped me and it's inspired me to reach for more. I'd say that that would be the big thing about about me is just being surrounded by by super talented people.”
Thank you to Nick Rossi for joining me on this episode & tune in to hear more about his business and his blade-smith process from start to finish.
View Nick’s website here: https://nickrossiknives.com/