Griffin Moon
Pladra In The Wild
Griffin Moon, Knifemaker at Moonman Knives
Walking into Griffin Moon’s knife workshop in Petaluma, we were immediately taken aback by how much fit inside. This is not your typical backyard shed. Among the hanging hand tools and stacks of koa and mango wood waiting to become handles, you’ll find a kiln, a belt grinder, a metal-cutting bandsaw, and a laser engraver. Every inch of the space has a job, and we were lucky enough to spend an afternoon watching Griffin put all of it to work.
It doesn’t get much more handmade than Griffin’s process. He starts by tracing each design onto a sheet of steel and cutting out the blade. Then comes the heat treatment, which he calls the most important step in making a good knife. The blade goes into the kiln for hours at close to 2,000 degrees. Then it’s quenched between aluminum plates, soaked overnight in liquid nitrogen, and tempered twice in an oven. None of that shows on the finished knife, but it’s what makes the edge last. “A lot of people can make a nice knife that looks pretty,” he told us. “But if it doesn’t function, what a waste.”
Next, he grinds the blade on his belt grinder. He colors the steel with a Sharpie first, so he can see exactly where the bevels land and keep both sides even. His chef’s knives get an S-grind, two subtle curves along the blade that keep food from sticking. He then hand-sands the steel smooth, engraves his maker’s mark, and fits the handle. Every blade carries his signature, a flowing, snake-like pattern ground into the spine. Each step takes time to do right, and Griffin doesn’t rush any of them. “I would never put a knife out into this world if I wasn’t 110% stoked on every detail,” he says.
Knifemaking is one of the oldest trades there is, and few people still do it by hand. “Everybody needed swords back in the day,” Griffin says. “The fact that it’s still alive is cool.”
Griffin’s interest in knives goes back to his grandfather, who came home from World War II with a handful of small slip joint pocketknives and kept them in a change jar on his dresser. “I always remember just gravitating to those knives,” Griffin says. Years later, Griffin was working as a carpenter and bartender on the Big Island of Hawaii when COVID shut the restaurants down, and he decided to try making knives. He set up a shop in a garage in Honoka’a and made his first three blades from old rasps he got from a local farrier. He fit them with handles of koa, a native Hawaiian hardwood, and posted them online. Before long, orders were coming in. Five years later, knifemaking is still a central part of his life, even after he moved his family back home to the Bay Area.
He still sources nearly all of his wood from his friend Tyler at Hawaiian Tropical Hardwoods. Most of Tyler’s wood goes to guitar and ukulele makers, but in Griffin’s hands it becomes beautiful knife handles. Griffin also makes his own leather sheaths, cutting and hand-stitching each one, often late into the night. And recently, he finally built a slip joint folder like the ones in his grandfather’s jar. The mechanism took several attempts to get right, and it’s now one of the pieces he’s proudest of.
What moves Griffin most is where his knives end up. He has made chef’s knives as gifts celebrating the birth of a grandchild. He has set a grandfather’s wood into a handle. He once inlaid the ivory from a hunter’s first archery elk. These knives are meant to be used for a lifetime and then handed down. His own kids already help out in the shop by tracing sheath templates, and he plans to make a knife with each of them when they’re old enough.
Griffin is a true craftsman who cares about every detail and makes things built to last for generations. That’s the kind of work we strive for at Pladra, and we came away truly impressed by what he’s building. To see more of Griffin’s work, or better yet, to commission a custom knife of your own, visit Moonman Knives.
