Burly Burr Knife Sharpening

About John

Hello, I'm John Simons, and I was born at Swedish Hospital on Pill Hill in 1977.

After 20 years of working as a software engineer I decided to make a sharp left turn towards something else. People ask me why I'm passionate about knife sharpening I tell them I'm really just passionate about working with my hands and not being at the mercy of corporate America. Also knife sharpening dovetails nicely with my newfound interest in fitness and nutrition. Doing something that requires physical precision is easier if you're strong. And these days I eat almost all my food in home cooked form, so I take this opportunity to use my knives as much as possible and get a feel for what people need and want in a knife. It all fits together harmoniously.

About Burly Burr

It's really hard to name a business like this that offers a novel service. I settled on Burly Burr because:

  1. It's a little weird. I didn't just phone it in with something generic like "Seattle Sharpening."
  2. I thought of it, it wasn't GPT or a brainstorming session with friends, it was just a small act of creativity.
  3. It's sarcastic, because the goal is to reduce and minimize the burr not have a "burly" one. Maybe in the same way as Burnt Coffee Company.
  4. It has alliteration.
  5. The domain was available.
  6. It's a small nod to our late Fremont friend Jerry "Burly Bastard" Ellingson.

When I was living in NYC 2010–2012 and working at Google, this one day (must have been a weekend, no WFH then) I heard a bell ringing in the street on Wyckoff. I look out and see a truck with "Knife Sharpening" signage and even though I'd never seen or heard of such a thing I immediately get it. I run out with two Henckels and he sharpens them while I wait. Can't remember how much it cost, how long it took, or how sharp they actually got, but I do remember being surprised and delighted by the experience, and coming back to Seattle and telling everyone about it. Just one of those cool things about New York I guess.

Fast forward to 2023 and I'm a little burned out by the tech world, and my friend's landlord is selling an old 1961 Grumman Olson step van, and I think "maybe I could be that knife truck guy."