After spending around 20 years as a chef, Garrett Lorton became skilled with handling knives.
While he enjoyed being a chef, arthritis made it difficult for Lorton to stand on his feet all day, so he turned the knowledge he gleaned from the kitchen into a blade sharpening business called Garrett’s Knives.
Lorton, who lives in Brush Prairie, started the business around the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic began. As a chef, he worked for the DoubleTree Hotel in Portland, started his own pizza restaurant called Pizza Mia in Delta Park, worked at Portland City Grill, and was an executive chef for the farmstead at the Arrowhead Country Club in Molalla, Oregon. At his last post as a chef, Lorton worked at ilani in Ridgefield.
Lorton, who now sharpens a multitude of different blades for a living, said there are three ways to do the job. He sometimes utilizes a belt sander, which he said is the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to do it.
“It does a great job,” Lorton said, before elaborating on the other two techniques. “I have a guided system that clamps the knife into place, and then I can do the exact dimensions, the exact angles on each side of the blade, and I have a water wheel that I can sharpen with.”
He said customers either call, email or contact him over Facebook Messenger before they drop off whatever blade they need sharpened at his house. Depending on the weather, Lorton also has the ability to pick up the knives on his own and is able to sharpen them in the back of his truck. When he gets whatever instrument needs to be sharpened, he usually is done with the job by the next day.
Lorton said the method used to sharpen various blades on hunting and kitchen knives is the same. Other items, like Japanese sushi knives, are harder to sharpen because they have to be done in a special way.
“Most knives are the same. It’s all metal,” Lorton said. “It’s metal but it’s soft. Anything can be sharpened. Most knives are sharpened the exact same way, same on each side. Hunting knives, obviously I’ll sharpen it to a wider degree than a chef knife, just so it doesn’t go dull right away. Kitchen knives, they’re sharpened anywhere between 14 to 20 degrees.”
Items like swords or those with long blades must be handled by professional swordsmiths, he said.
“Some of those can get expensive, just ridiculously expensive, and I don’t want to mess up somebody’s sword. Like a family heirloom, I wouldn’t want to touch that. Usually (if) people ask to sharpen swords, I’ll try and discourage that,” he said. “If it’s just a sword they bought at a store in the mall, I’ll try to discourage it. For one, they don’t need to sharpen a sword, and two, the metal is just too soft.”
Oftentimes swords become dull after the first use, he said.
Lorton said he plans to turn his business into a fully mobile venture based out of the back of his truck. He also hopes to one day make his own knives.
“I just want to continue to sharpen knives (and) make everybody’s kitchen a bit safer,” Lorton said. “My slogan has always been ‘a sharp knife is a safe knife,’ and a lot of people don’t realize that.”
More information on Garrett’s Knives can be found online at facebook.com/Garrettsknife sharpening.
