Inspiration.

When I was living in Brooklyn in 2010-2012, one day I heard some bell ding dinging in the street. (This is in Cobble Hill, on Wyckoff between Court and Smith.) I look out and it's not the ice cream man, it's a knife sharpening van! I'd never heard of such a thing but the idea immediately made sense, and I washed my two Henckels chef knives real quick and ran out after him. I was delighted by the experience and told several people about it back in my hometown of Seattle.

Years later I'm at my friend's shop in Tacoma, Washington and see that the owners of the building have a 1961 Grumman Olson Kurbside van that they're putting out feelers for maybe selling. Eventually I realized — buy the van and be a knife sharpener, obviously!

About John.

I went to the University of Washington for Computer Engineering and I've spent most of my vocational energy on software development. But office work does get dull after awhile and I crave something more physical from time to time, such as knife sharpening or house painting. Before that I graduated from Kent-Meridian High School class of '95, uh, Go Royals.

Knife truck history.

Late nineties? — Rick and Jory acquire the 1961 Olson Grumman Kurbside short wheelbase version. They strip the paint and re-chassis it onto a 1982 P30 FedEx truck chassis, which they had to cut and weld the frame of to fit the short wheelbase. They put in a Chevy 305 small block V8 and they gut the interior which they finished with a camper conversion that sleeps two, complete with clean and gray water plumbing and propane burners.

2023 — I buy it and start polishing. You polish it just like an Airstream trailer, these days they use an edge-on buffing wheel going through two or three different grits of compound. There's a photo of that process on the Instagram.

2024 — The 305 engine suffers a catastrophic failure, completely disassembling itself and leaving rods and valves all over the road on I-5 going through Federal Way. I order a brand new 350 engine from Blueprint Engines in Nebraska. Brand spanking new, including all the castings. Runs smooth!