Nick Rossi's Fascination With Swords At A Young Age Inspired Him To Become A Custom Knifemaker

When Nick Rossi was starting to learn the craft behind knife making 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 the mistakes he was making and examine what he was working on. 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. 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 jewelers, the metalsmiths 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 me is just being surrounded by super talented people.”To view Nick's work visit his website, Instagram and Facebook.Also, stay until the end of the episode to listen to The Ghost of Paul Revere's track We Were Born Wild.Big thanks to Erin Little for capturing Nick Rossi's wonderful craft.  If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.