Dappled Saturday sunlight spills over the Bonita Springs Farmers Market as artisans set up under starched white tents. At the center, master knife sharpener Ronnie Taylor works beneath a low hum of conversation and grinding belts, a long Japanese chef’s knife held steady in his hands. Sparks lift and disappear as he sharpens a blade belonging to private chef Sebastian Mazzotta—one of many cooks and home chefs who stop by each week. Nearby, Ronnie’s wife, Colleen, greets customers and manages the steady flow of knives arriving at Cowboy Sharp, the business they’ve built together over four decades. “Every knife carries a lineage—be it Western or Japanese, thick-forged or whisper-thin,” he says.
A native Texan, he works farmers markets across Southwest Florida and maintains a small home workshop where clients can use secure drop-off lockers or mail knives in. Cowboy Sharp’s customers span professional chefs, hunters, home cooks and woodworkers—people who rely on him for precise edge work, light restoration and the occasional bolster repair.
Many of the region’s top chefs bypass machine sharpeners entirely. Blossom & Brie and Sage on 47th’s teams won’t use anyone else. A Blossom & Brie chef stops by monthly with a canvas roll of Japanese blades, including a Gyuto forged from white paper steel, known for its exceptional sharpness and the exacting, frequent maintenance its hard carbon steel requires.
For Sebastian’s Japanese knife, Ronnie begins with a 400-grit belt to correct nicks and set the angle. He works through progressively finer grits—1,000, then 6,000—each step refining scratches left by the last while removing as little steel as possible. Ronnie finishes the job with leather and compound for a mirror polish, then tests sharpness by letting a piece of paper float and slicing it cleanly in two. “There’s a rhythm to it,” he says. “It becomes meditative for me.”
Because steels, bevels and geometries vary widely, he says, sharpening for special knives can’t be left to machines. Hardware store devices grind away steel indiscriminately, flattening the maker’s intended shape. Ronnie works to restore a blade’s profile and preserve the patina that matters to the owner. “Every lemon cut leaves a spot, and every spot tells a story,” he says. Some customers bring in tools whose surfaces record years of use; others want their kitchen showpieces or heirloom hunting knives polished to look new. Ronnie respects both approaches.
After tens of thousands of sharpenings, the work has become muscle memory. He knows that Japanese knives demand the most patience. Western knives, with their softer German steel, allow for a quicker passage: three steps to a sharp edge. When working with layered Damascus, he uses gentle strokes to keep the etched pattern intact. “It starts with learning the knife, its steel,” he says. “That’s what keeps things interesting. And it’s what no machine can account for. This craft takes a person who can look at a blade, consider its qualities and make decisions.”
Ronnie’s reverence for well-made knives began on his family’s Texas ranch. “I grew up with a blade on my hip, and a big part of that was learning how to tend to it. How to treat it with care,” he says. Early on, he learned to work a blade against worn stones with a slow, steady rhythm, finishing with a leather strop the way he’d seen it done by those before him.
Later, when he discovered woodcarving in the late ’80s, the need for ultra-sharp tools pulled him deeper into the craft. He joined a guild of seasoned craftsmen, the youngest member by decades, and devoted himself to the mindful ritual of sharpening. Soon, the old-timers started coming to him for his edge work. “The knives told a story, same as the wood,” he says. “What they were used for, who made them, where they’ve been and where they’re going.”
Then came his kitchen knives—tools for his growing love of cooking. At gatherings, loved ones began to ask, “Could you, while you’re here?” There were trades: fish for filet knives, stories for sharpened steel, but more than anything, he found joy in giving an old knife renewed purpose. The work evolved from a pastime to a livelihood.
The traditional stone-and-water methods he first learned were precise but too time-intensive. Ronnie adapted, teaching himself to use mechanical belts without compromising the craftsmanship. The process still relies on his eye: choosing the right grit, reading a blade’s history and deciding whether a knife needs a rougher correction or a gentler touch.
Back at the farmers market, the hum of his sharpening belt creates a steady counterpoint to the morning bustle. Market shoppers pause to watch the sparks arc from the tips of worn blades. “We chose this mobile market life for its real connections,” Colleen says. The market is like their front porch. A fixed shop, she adds, would separate them from the community rhythm and the serendipitous encounters.
On a recent morning, an elderly man approached Ronnie with a 40-year-old worn pocket knife. When he returned it sharp and restored an hour later, the man pressed his thumb to its tip and replied—“Bubba, you did good.” These exchanges, Ronnie says, linger. They are the center of Cowboy Sharp: the tools, the trust and the stories that pass between them.