Mudd Sharrigan

Mudd Sharrigan at his Maine Boat Builders Show booth in March 2018. Fishermen’s Voice photo

Mudd Sharrigan makes handmade knives that include seamen’s knives and sheaths, woodworking knives, wood-carving knives, Native American craft knives and the special curved blade knives that have been used by birch bark canoe builders for 400 years. He’s been making knives for 40 years. An interest kindled when he was a kid.

“An article about my knives in WoodenBoat Magazine in April 2011 had the phone ringing constantly,” said Mudd. He sells knives by word of mouth and does just one trade show a year, the Maine Boat Builders Show in Portland. For the last 20 years he has specialized in rigging knives with a Wharncliff edge.

Mudd also built houses for 40 years, an occupation which to some extent has overlapped his knife-making. Sharrigan joined the merchant marine in 1945. When he got out he began building houses in the late 1940s. After joining the army (1950-1952) during the Korean War he was sent to France to build airstrips where the Cold War was heating up. He continued building houses when he got out of the army. “Me and my building partner built houses for 40 years on a handshake,” said Mudd.

Mudd said he remembers seeing President Franklin Roosevelt pass by in his 1935 Ford Touring car in what was Mudd’s hometown of Watertown, MA. Yes, Mudd has been around a while. Now 90 years of age, he recently recalled the early years when he built houses in Massachusetts and had a camp in Maine. “It got too crowded in Massachusetts so we moved permanently to Maine.” His wife has been a spinner and weaver who has sold her wares at trade shows.

The water had always appealed to Mudd and being a self-described “tool junkie,” he naturally got into boat building – sailboats, kayaks, class boats and power boats. In his seventies Mudd got into competitive swimming and joined the Maine Masters Swim Team. Mudd Knives, 207-882-9820