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Nate Bonner. Photograph by Elizabeth Jochum
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Stainless steel chef knife with handmade cactus wood and electric green resin handle with two handmade mosaic pins. Photograph by Elizabeth Jochum
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Stainless steel chef knife with maple handle with two handmade mosaic pins. Photograph by Elizabeth Jochum
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Stainless steel utility knife with handmade dyed lilac figured maple and orange resin handle with two handmade mosaic pins. Photograph by Elizabeth Jochum
When Nate Bonner was 5, his grandpa gave him a pocketknife. “It was an Imperial,” says Bonner, “a knockoff of a Swiss Army knife. It had a spoon and a fork in it, and a really nice blade. I used it to eat every meal for two weeks. It was always in my hand.” He started collecting utility knives. Whenever the family went shopping and Bonner disappeared, they always knew where to find him: the knife case.
In the second grade “I got my first sharpening setup, and that is the intro to knife-making,” Bonner says. “Grinding the one edge, in theory, is the same as grinding all five angles that make up a knife, so learning that opened the door for me to use a wheel and figure out what grinding was and start learning about metal.”
After working for years as a chef, he decided to start making his own “dream knives.” That meant stalking older knife makers to learn the trade, including one at Silver Dollar City’s Harvest Festival. “He wouldn’t really talk to me at first, but then I’d buy a knife and he’d be, like, ‘Oh, OK,’” Bonner says. “Then he’d get sick of me. Finally, by the end, he was going through the whole thing with me.”
NHB KnifeWorks has been lauded by Epicurious and Vogue, and its products sell nationwide; Bonner designs and makes the knives, and his stepmom, Melody Noel, handles the business side. The day we visited, he had plans for a new product: a wedding cake cutter whose handle has orchids inside it. “It’s acrylic with pearl,” he says. “If you catch it with light, it has all these crazy hues.”
Bonner is known not just for his top-notch hand-finished blades but also for those unusual handles. Though some are made from more traditional materials, such as burled oak, most are amalgams of resin and natural materials, including pinecones, flowers, figured maple, and cactus wood; often the wood is dyed a bright hue, such as blue or orange.
