In Adam Balkovic’s work, there’s never a dull moment

Adam Balkovic’s career as a knife maker started on a negative note when a respected friend told him nobody did that sort of thing.

“That was all the inspiration I needed to tackle the challenge,” he recalls. “After the first one, I was bitten and never looked back.”

Now, he’s the owner of Biltsharp Manufacturing, a Philadelphia-based company crafting handmade knives of all sorts — kitchen knives, hunting knives and shaving razors, to name a few. He talked about his work week, making a dent in a 16-month backlog of orders and planning to introduce a new cutting implement into kitchen arsenals.