Why a Tech Worker Started Making Wooden Spatulas in Burlington

I've worked in technology for most of my career, other than a stint in the snowboard industry (that's for a future post) after I graduated. I love the problem solving, the prototyping, the creativity and the possibility of taking a complex solution and making it simple. After all the hard work and versions, when your product solves the problem it's amazing to see how it can change how someone goes about their day.

But a few years ago I started noticing something was missing.

Nothing I built at work had any weight to it. No product I shipped could be picked up, held, smelled, or worn out through use. Everything existed on a screen. And while that's fine and I know screens are where a lot of life happens now but I found myself craving something different. Something physical. Something I could make with my hands and hold in my hands when it was done.

So I started woodworking.

The bookshelf that started everything

The first project was a bookshelf for our house. Nothing special, just something we needed and something my hands wanted to build. But that first project did something to me. The smell of the wood, the endless problem solving — most of it fixing mistakes I made along the way, and the feeling of accomplishment when it was done, was something I was missing.

I was hooked.

I started collecting tools. Then confidence. Then more ambitious ideas, making my kids' beds, an indoor jungle gym and a learning tower for my kids. I worked my way from furniture down to smaller, more tactile objects. Wooden spoons. Kitchen tools. Things you actually touch every day. The first was actually a hand carved walnut spoon I gave to my dad on Father's Day.

And then I hit the problem that changed everything.

I couldn't find a spatula I actually liked

I know how that sounds. But think about it — how many spatulas have you tried over the years? How many have melted slightly on a hot pan, or felt wrong in your hand, or bent when you needed them to hold firm? 

I'd gone through so many spatulas. None of them felt right. And as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how people interact with the things they use (and a lot of time in the kitchen), that bothered me more than it probably should have.

So I made one.

I studied the pots and pans in our kitchen — how they curve, how the angles work, where a spatula actually makes contact. I thought about how a wrist moves when you're scraping a pan versus folding batter. I made a design. Then I made a better one. Then another.

I tested them for years in our own kitchen. Not weeks — years. And somewhere along the way, the wooden spatula became the only one my wife and I reach for. Every single time.

Eventually I gave the out as gifts and friends started asking if they could buy one. That's when The Good Knot became something more than a hobby.

That spatula is now the foundation of The Good Knot.

Why Burlington?

Because that's where we live, and that's where the workshop is.

There's something that matters to me about making things in the place where you live. The wood comes from here. The ideas come from cooking in a real kitchen here. When someone in Burlington, or anywhere in Canada, buys one of our spatulas, it was made a few kilometres away by one person who genuinely cares whether it works.

That's not a marketing line. That's just what it is.

Why "The Good Knot"?

A knot in wood is usually treated as a flaw — but in the right piece, it's the most beautiful part. That's what I build around.

Not perfection. Character. Wood that has lived, that shows its history, that will develop more of it in your kitchen over the years.

I started this as a hobby. I still think of it that way, honestly — as the thing I do when I want to make something real with my hands. The difference now is that other people are using these things in their kitchens, and that means everything.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. And if you're curious about what we make — start in the kitchen. That's where it all began.

— Sascha, Burlington, Ontario