The Holley Manufacturing Company History
The Holley Manufacturing Company has been a family business since 1844 when Alexander Hamilton Holley started making hand-forged pocket knives (a Swiss army knife is a pocket knife) in Lakeville, CT. Ours was the first Company in the U.S. to make pocket knives.
Those knives are highly collectible today and may be found on eBay. While we no longer make pocket knives, high quality knives have been a passion for generations in my family. We have developed a proprietary process for sharpening knives that will make your knives as sharp or sharper than when they were new.
The original mission of the Holley Manufacturing Company was to hammer out carbon steel by hand for blades to be used in pocket knives. You can imagine the noise it must have made to hear a dozen men with their hammers and anvils, pounding out pocket knife blades right in the center of town!
The region of the State where Lakeville sits was rich in iron ore which lay close to the surface. Back in the 1700s almost every town from south and west of the Berkshires to the Eastern bank of the Hudson River had a furnace where it smelted iron ore to be used for plows, boat anchors, cannons, cannon balls, etc. By the time the Holley Manufacturing Company was started, iron ore smelting was in decline in the region. With newer technology, and a firmer understanding of the complex chemical reactions that took place in the furnace were replacing it. The decline was further fueled by the nearly complete deforestation of the region in order to meet the demand for charcoal to run the furnaces. The market for high quality pocket knives slowly shrank and was replaced by demand for inexpensive, mass produced pocket knives.
Today
We offer the best consumer knife sharpening service in the world. Not only is the process completely unique, but we have made it easy for customers to take advantage of the service.
The Holley Manufacturing Company is run by Theodore Rudd O'Neill, the great-great-great grandson of the founder, Alexander Hamilton Holley. Mr. O'Neill began his metalworking career at age 14 and worked his way up from machinist to tool-and-die maker prior to attending college. Before taking over The Holley Mfg. Co., he was a successful Wall Street stock analyst winning multiple Wall Street Journal stock picking awards.
As an amatuer cook, and an expert tool maker, he was frustrated with the equipment sold as "knife sharpeners." Over a six year period, he bought and tried every type of sharpening equipment sold for home use. Nothing he tried gave him an edge that was as good as new. Two years ago, he discovered a Swedish made industrial tool that he bought and adapted to knife sharpening. He theorized that combining several of these machines with a unique honing technique would yield excellent results. After a year of test marketing and product development, it was clear from customer feedback, that he had developed a superior process. But the process lacked a measurement system to objectively evaluate sharpness. So, drawing on knowledge from the semiconductor industry, he found that under high power magnification, all sharp knife edges have the same distinctive optical signature. Now the process was complete. The system he developed produced superior edges, and those edges could be checked against a standard to ensure all knives came out factory sharp.
Mr. O'Neill holds undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Finance and an MBA.
Our 1844 Factory in Lakeville, Conn
We are currently located about 200
feet north of the original structure.
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