Who am I?

My name is Evan Davis. I make knives at my childhood home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I grew up here before moving to Chico California at 18 to get a college degree and get a real job. It took quite a bit longer than the 4 years I was expecting, I was there for 15 years. I didn’t have a knack for school and then deciding on a major was difficult for me. There were so many things that interested me and I bounced around before taking a “year” off to work. That year turned into 5 and I eventually went back to school and found I loved geology. I threw myself into it and did honors research projects studying geologic processes on other planets and the formation of rocks in the mantle. I earned my bachelors degree in 2019 and my masters in 2023 before finally moving back home to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Enceladus Cutlery is my passion project, I make one of a kind kitchen cutlery with a never ending drive to increase the performance. My passion for cooking and making things have combined into this pursuit for the unattainable perfect knife. I make knives for anyone that cooks or wants to cook more. There is just something about having a good knife that makes you WANT to cut more veggies and find any excuse to use that nice knife.

How did I get into making knives?

For as long as I can remember, I have had a passion and drive to make one thing or another. As a young child all I had were Ideas and as I got older, I started using the tools in my Dad’s shop space on the property. It started out with projects built from materials salvaged from the pile destined for the dump. Lawn chairs and 2x4’s with some skateboard trucks to make a luge and other dangerous things like that.

Eventually I messed around pressing some skateboards and guitars with no other goal except for thinking “once I make the tool I will learn the skill”. I never learned to skate or play music. Eventually I started to like coffee and the woodworking focused on complimenting that hobby. I made cups, espresso tampers, countertops for my espresso station, and things like that. I’ve always loved food and been okay at cooking and eventually made a cutting board. Then I was exposed to the world of custom knives on the internet and I thought “I could make one of those”.

The love of food and the pursuit of a better knife has given me a drive. I think so much of my enjoyment in the kitchen comes from having these nice tools and I want to share that joy with others. Having a nice knife takes cooking dinner from a chore to a task that I look forward to all day.

What’s with the name “Enceladus Cutlery”?

Enceladus one of Saturn’s moons and I named me company after it. When I started my geology degree, I was interested in planetary geology and came across Enceladus for a research project. It fascinated me because it is one of the few places in our solar system with the potential to support life outside of Earth. It has a liquid water ocean beneath an ice crust. The heat to keep this water liquid comes from the massive gravitational forces acting on the tiny moon. Saturn is so large in comparison that when the moon is closer or farther away from Saturn at different points in its orbit, it stretches and compresses and heats up its core. Sort of like kneading bread dough or squishing a marshmallow in your fingers until it melts. It gets so hot that pressure builds up and water erupts from a few distinct fissures on its south pole. A stylized depiction of these is where my logo comes from. This phenomena is called cryovolcanism. NASA flew the Cassini satellite through these eruption plumes and found it had nearly all the elements needed for the fundamental amino acids to support life. With water, heat/energy, and possibly amino acids, there could be undersea aliens swimming around orbiting Saturn.

I also feel my design style is reflected by Enceladus. It is one of the most reflective objects in the solar system because it is covered in ice and there is something captivating about this bright white object in a sea of black space that captures me. A lot of the music, movies, and art I like are big and expansive and a lot of times science fiction themed. The opening scene in Alien, the slow building riffs in Sleep’s “Dopesmoker”, the landscape illustrations by Arik Roper, and so on. These all have an expansive slow building feel to them done with intentionality. Enceladus gives me that same feeling in a weird way. I could imagine it being the centerpiece to a Dune type of sci-fi story where the world itself and the different dynamics of are integral to the story. Not to mention there could be aliens there.

Plus Evan Davis Knives sounded boring to me…