Custom knives take time and heart
By his hand, to your hand
BY SCOTT HADDOW
Wild Northerner Staff
Guillaume Cote looks down at his hands.
They are calloused, cracked and cut up. There are burns on his knuckles. They are even a bit dirty.
It’s for good reason.
Cote makes knives for a living in the basement shop of his house in Elliot Lake. Each one crafted by his two hands from their start, as raw materials, to their end, when they are polished works of functional art.
This crafting style takes a toll. His hands pay that price. Cote takes his time. He will not rush. The end result is worth it.
“Having sore hands from time to time is part of the job,” Cote said. “I work with gloves with the fingers cut off. I have to feel the blade while I work. Sometimes I get a cut. It’s the burning from grinding that gets me. Once you start a pass on the grinder, you have to finish it. My hands cramp from time-to-time. It has to be done. The pain is worth it to make a knife because that is what I love to do.”
Cote learned the trade of knife- making the hard way - he taught himself. Through extensive trial and error and time, Cote gave himself the skills and mindset to become proficient in the trade.
It started in 1982. Cote was working as a heavy equipment operator on a radar base in the Arctic on the Distant Early Warning Line. Cote put in 10 years on the DEW Line. There wasn’t much to do during down time on the base. One day, a co-worker showed Cote a knife he had made out of scrap steel and plexiglass for the handle. That was it.
Cote learned the trade of knife- making the hard way - he taught himself. Through extensive trial and error and time, Cote gave himself the skills and mindset to become proficient in the trade.
It started in 1982. Cote was working as a heavy equipment operator on a radar base in the Arctic on the Distant Early Warning Line. Cote put in 10 years on the DEW Line. There wasn’t much to do during down time on the base. One day, a co-worker showed Cote a knife he had made out of scrap steel and plexiglass for the handle. That was it.
“It got my juices flowing,” the 61-year-old said. “I thought it was neat and I wanted to make my own. I hammered out spring steel and started making knives out of that. The first ones were not great. Most snapped in half. It was all guess work and hit and miss with heat-treating the steel. It was a hobby for me. I didn’t take it seriously.”
In 1987, Cote resigned from the DEW Line. He didn’t make a knife after that for more than a decade. He started a family and worked all over the province as a heavy equipment operator until 1990. He then began doing flooring work and started his own flooring business.