Irongull Knives

Living on the Edge

THE PRECISION AND BEAUTY OF IRONGULL KNIVES

By Lola Augustine Brown
Photos Michelle Doucette

Japanese chef knives are considered the ultimate kitchen tool. Made from the hardest steel beaten exceptionally thin, Japanese knives are lighter and better balanced, hold their edge longer and offer extraordinary precision. These highly coveted tools are a financial investment and objects of beauty and function. You may be surprised that we have an artisanal culinary knifemaker right here in Nova Scotia.

“Out of his workshop in Prospect, Jeremy Hockin operates Irongull Knives, where he crafts knives in the Japanese style. His work graces the kitchens of top chefs, NBA All-Stars and NFL players, and plenty of passionate home cooks.“

Every knife is a work of art. Some blades are shot with streaks of colour, their wooden handles handcrafted from exotic woods. The process of making them is intricate. For knives with colour, nickel and copper are among many layers of steel hammered into a fine blade. “When you hit that with a hammer, you distort those layers, and that’s what creates that kind of topography in the blade, “ Hockin explains. “There’s a lot of trial and error figuring out where your hammer hits the steel and what that’s going to look like when you grind it down.”

While local chefs like Renée Lavallée at the Canteen are proud to have an Irongull knife in their kit, most of Hockin’s knives end up with buyers in the US. Around half of all his knives were commissioned as gifts. “Obviously, a custom kitchen knife makes a killer wedding gift, right? Everybody cooks, and I love hearing back how well those knives were received or seeing people create all these meals and pictures of the knife on the board; that feels pretty good,” he says.

Selling to locals is way more fun than shipping the knives off somewhere. “The first few times I sent knives to the States, it was a novelty, but I love seeing how excited people are when they come and pick up their chosen knives. That’s always a fun experience,” he says, “Plus, if they’re local, then they can bring the knives back, and I’ll give them a little spa day and buff them up like new.“

From hobby to going all-in

Born in Nova Scotia, Hockin lived in the province most of his life—outside a few elementary-school years in Toronto. He spent 23 years working in tech, most recently as director of cybersecurity for a big private auto conglomerate. When he started making knives, Hockin figured this was just another of his many deep but brief obsessions. “I've always had pretty horrendous ADHD, and my brain kind of gets caught on anything that seems novel. So usually, I'll do a hobby for a year or two, obsess over it and completely neglect everything else in my life to get good at it. Then suddenly, I’ll decide to move on to the next thing,” he explains. Previous hobbies included landscape photography, fly fishing, sea kayaking, competitive video gaming, and bow hunting.

Why did a tech guy living in Prospect decide to start making knives? Hockin found inspiration through an outdoorsy buddy who’d gotten into leatherwork and made sheaves for his hunting knife collection. “I just thought it was so cool seeing him make something. After working in tech for so long, you build products, you build technology, you build networks, but then there’s nothing tangible at the end,” explains Hockin. “I thought it was so remarkable that this guy I had known for so long, just with some YouTubing, buying supplies and screwing around, had made some wallets and belts and all sorts of stuff. I thought, geez, well, maybe I'll make knives if you're making the sheaves.”

Entirely self-taught, Hocking forged an education by tumbling down a YouTube rabbit hole, listening to “hundreds and hundreds of hours of knifemaking podcasts,” and a lot of trial and error. “With something this physical, it’s easy to see your mistakes, and that’s a natural way to learn,” he says, “It was a very millennial way of learning things.”

In early 2018, Hockin made his first knife, and by year’s end, he had sold one to Rob MacQuarrie, who owns Shaw’s Landing restaurant in Peggy’s Cove. “That gave me the spark to keep going,” he says, “And then as I sold more knives to chefs and celebrities, it just felt surreal. You’re making something out of a shed in your yard that they want.”

Having come to a point where he had lost interest in tech, and it seemed like knifemaking might be a viable business, Hockin decided to make a huge career change. “Leaving the security of my tech job to make knives was financial suicide, but I was pretty unhappy. I didn’t feel like what I was doing was contributing anything to the world, and I couldn’t go on pretending that wasn’t a big problem for me.” Fortunately, he had the support of his wife and an incredible group of friends to make this leap.

The love of precision cutting

Before knifemaking, Hockin confesses to having very little interest in food prep or food in general. “When that Soylent drink came out that was going to replace food, I was like “sign me up” because I viewed eating as a hassle,” he explains. Making knives exposed Hockin to a foodie culture he’d never known before, and he loves that it is such a deep point of interest that you can truly get into. “At this point, I’ll cook every night, and I lean towards dishes that require lots of chopping, like Mexican food. Anytime I can make salsa by hand, I’m happy,” he laughs.

Becoming a home cook allows Hockin to truly appreciate how pleasurable it is to prep food with one of his knives. “Sometimes I’ll go to a friend’s house and use a regular store knife and remember what a contrast it is. You get a little spoilt having all these sharp knives in your kitchen all the time,” he says.

Honing his craft

Both creatively and business-wise, Hockin is still on a pretty steep learning curve and admits to being filled with self-doubt some days. “When you don’t think your stuff doesn’t suck a little bit, then I think you’re too comfortable,” he laughs. Given that his knives sell the moment they post to Instagram and he has plenty of commissions, he has mastered the art of making knives, whatever doubts he still has.

Committing his life to knifemaking has changed his practice. “It has been an adjustment taking this from a passion to making it my nine-to-five now,” he admits. “When you're doing it for fun, you just make whatever the hell you want, and when you are doing it for a job, you kind of have to take the work you get, which might involve making an ugly knife that someone has requested.” One commission that Hockin didn’t love was to make a handle with the colours of the Puerto Rican flag, but that’s what the client wanted, so that’s what he did.

Hockin still gets a kick out of making knives, even the “ugly” ones, “It’s still a lot of fun. And I know I'm so lucky to even have the option to do this.” Luck is essential—there’s a genuine risk of bodily harm in this line of work, with the balls of flame in the forge and all those sharp edges. “I’m nursing a pretty bad rotator cuff injury right now, and I’ve cut myself a million times and lost little bits off the tips of my fingers,” Hockin says. The most dangerous tool in Hockin’s shop is the buffing wheel. “When you’ve got that wheel spinning at high speed, if you turn the knife on it the wrong way, the wheel will grab it and throw it, so I’ve had near misses where the knife ended up stuck in the floor an inch from my foot. Most of my injuries are minor cuts that I can patch up with super glue.”

Right now, Irongull is a one-man show. Still, Hockin is thinking ahead to how his business could operate and potentially sell knives at a lower price point, in addition to the more exquisite, expensive ones. (A custom Irongull knife sells for between $600-700, and the most costly, so far, sold for $1400.) When you buy a knife from a renowned knifemaker in Japan, the actual blacksmith whose name is on the knife may not have made it. “They are the founder and design the knives, but he might have 10-15 apprentices doing most of the work,” Hockin explains, “I’d love to operate a Maritime-based small hand-made knife factory like that at some point down the road.” Even if Irongull grew to that point, Hockin would still work on custom commissions, never wanting to stop creating and feeling the satisfaction of a finished, perfectly balanced knife in his hands.