Smoky Mountain Knife Works

This store is huge. Huge and weird and practically swimming in a very southern American masculine aesthetic with a big side of nerd thrown in.

Here’s the story of how I ended up here during my visit to Tennessee – I have a favorite knife. It’s got a metal handle where the blade and handle are so solidly welded together that I never have to worry about the handle breaking or rotting. It’s just a medium-to-small sized paring knife but I use it more than anything else while cooking. My husband ended up buying a set of knives with metal handles, but they’re all steak knives with serrated edges.

So when I noticed a knife at my dad’s that looked a lot like the metal handled knife I had at home, I wistfully commented how it was sad I could never find knives like that any more. And then I was informed by my sister J that actually, there was a store where you could buy those, and that’s how she had more of them herself. So later in the week my dad and I went to Knife Works and wended our way through the enormous building down to the lower level where they keep the kitchen items. And now I have four more straight edged knives and a metal peeler to replace my favorite peeler that bit the dust a few years back.

Afterward, we browsed the Relic Room for a while, which had all sorts of cool stuff, including some beautiful rocks with fossils that had been polished into beautiful display pieces, but sadly I am not a wealthy person with a disposable income and a beautiful home in which to display said pieces, so I did not purchase any.