Exploring Life & Business with Bill Hoffman of Old Knives Tale LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bill Hoffman.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Yeah, so before I started Old Knive’s Tale, my background was in food service; primarily sushi. I have about eight years total experience working in sushi (2011-2019) in various cities, four of which were high-end fine dining. That’s the setting where I learned to sharpen knives. I learned mostly on traditional single bevel Japanese knives. As I became more experienced and my knife collection grew, I expanded to more common western style double bevel knives, understanding how different steel qualities sharpen differently on different stones, and the results they would yield. By the end of my sushi career I even trained new staff every now and then on how to sharpen.

Anyways, fast-forward to 2018. My wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first kid, our son Billy. By now I’ve been clocking 72 hour weeks for most of that eight year tenure, and knew I didn’t want to be working that much with a kid at home. Since my wife was more in the corporate world and had better benefits and a higher ladder than culinary would usually ever offer, it was an easy choice for me to volunteer to be the at home parent when our son made it onto the scene. At least the early years. So in 2019 we packed up and moved from Dallas, TX to Rochester, MN where we split a big house with some friends and awaited Billy’s arrival.

Once he was born and my wife’s maternity leave was over, I found myself kind of bored when I realized a newborn sleeps most of the time, at least compared to the hustle and bustle of a high end kitchen. As I was racking my brain on how to occupy my time, I came up with Old Knive’s Tale. It was actually supposed to be me sharpening onsite at most places, but it turned out a week after officially opening for business, COVID struck and Rochester was on lock down haha. So the model pivoted to contactless pick-up and delivery, where you fill out a form, I come on the date selected and grab your knives, and then come back a day or so later and leave them on your doorstep. Since people were cooking at home more, it really took off for the year we lived there.

After a while, we relocated to Columbus, Ohio, for my parents live in Mount Vernon and were asking us to move closer to spend more time with their grandson. During the time it took to rebuild out clientele here, I took on some part time jobs at establishments like Pistacia Vera, Hiraeth, and Chapmans, which was great for making industry contacts (and most importantly just meeting some great people), to introduce my services to.

Present day, I’m back to juggling being full time cutler and at-home parent as we watch our children (up to three now. Had twins this January). I still work out of the home but since relocating here in 2020 we’ve expanded our services a little, offering commercial services to local restaurants, as well as – unintentionally – restoration and repair services for vintage knives. We’ve got big plans for the future and with any luck we’ll make them happen sooner rather than later!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There has definitely been some challenges. The logistics of running a repair workshop out of a two bedroom apartment is one, but we get by. Eventually I would like some kind of shop or storefront situation, but with the two new babies, our mobile set up is still the most optimal structure.

I think a big one though is juggling the kids and the work is definitely one that I feel I don’t get quite right all the time, but have made a lot of strides with. Early on after relocating here we learned our son was on the autism spectrum, and despite being such an easy going kid, it was more of a mental stressor for us – him being our first kid and just not knowing much about autism in general. I just didn’t want to mishandle any of his needs, you know? So I was really distracted from the work at that time.

In the four years since though, I’ve come to learn it’s really not a big deal. He has his challenges like anyone else and excels at a lot of things, and having just recently gotten diagnosed with ADHD myself, it’s become pretty apparent there’s maybe a reason as to why – personality wise – he’s my little mini-me haha.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Old Knive’s Tale is a mobile sharpening service here in Columbus, Ohio. We serve commercial and residential clients, and sharpen anything from cutlery, swords, hairstyling equipment, gardening/farming tools, woodworking tools, etc. If it has an edge, we can sharpen it. We’ve recently branched out into repair and restoration work. That includes handle construction, pocket knife repair, blade restorations, and more.

There are a couple things that set us apart. One is the way we describe ourselves as mobile. Where as a lot of mobile outfits act more like a food truck, where they post up at markets, outside of shops, etc, we are more of a delivery operation. How it works is you fill out a form on the site, we come on the date selected to pick up your items, and return them within a one to two day turn around depending on the order queue ahead of you. Old Knive’s Tale was established right when COVID struck funny enough, so the only way to operate was a no contact delivery fashion, and it’s worked so well for us that there has been no need to change it – except for the no contact part. I love meeting new people.

Another thing that sets us apart is attention to detail. Not in some generic way, but in a material kind of way. Different knives and tools are made with different steels, different steels have different qualities, and those qualities determine how we proceed. Got a nice Japanese carbon steel? We’ll go up a gradual grit progression on hand stones. Maybe an adequate Victorinox chef knife? I’ll take it to my Tormek water wheel and give it a slight concave grind versus a flat grind, effectively thinning the edge out a little to slice cleaner since a western style blade has a thicker spine as it tapers to the edge, finishing it off on the stropping wheel. What if the knife is a low quality 440 stainless steel and just never seemed to cut well from the get go? Depending on the knife I’d consider giving it an asymmetric grind on a belt sander to give it more of a slicing quality (and I’ve noticed 440 doesn’t cut well on water stones so something more aggressive like a sander would be in order). The examples can go on and on, but the point is that’s what I mean by attention to detail. There are a lot of sharpeners that just set an angle and run it through a belt sander regardless of the needs of the knife, and there are others who treat it as a quick supplementary service to a bigger business model, and that’s fine for a lot of people. I prefer to refine my craft – I’m proud of it- and my business is for people who enjoy theirs and want their tools to work accordingly.

What I want the readers to know is the aim of Old Knives’ Tale is to serve and educate our community on the significance of maintenance. We live our lives through the tools we use and their quality improves more than just its performance; it improves the quality of the work we do, the meals we prepare, the time we save, and the time we spend. Through proper maintenance, it improves quality of life, and for that, you have us.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
A tie between troubleshooting and honesty haha. I’m always trying to grow, and as far as I’ve come with this, I still make plenty of mistakes. But the trick is knowing, or learning, how to fix them. That’s not even just referring to just sharpening. Sometimes a repair isn’t going as intended and I’ve got to start over. Other times it’s from the business side of things; as a first time business owner I feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants all the time. With any and all problems I may run into, I try to be ethical and transparent with my customer base, and face any situation with a problem solving mentality. I feel those qualities alone have gotten me pretty far.

Pricing:

• Western double bevel knives – $1.50 per inch
• Japanese double bevel knives – $2.00 per inch
• Traditional Japanese single bevel – $3.25 per inch
• Serrated blades – $2.50 per inch
• $5 minimum per blade *repair rates are case by case basis * full pricing sheet on website

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oldknivestaleohio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oldknivestale_oh
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1c5ec4qhz7/