Mobile Knife Sharpening Booth vrs Weather Mobile Knife 0, Weather 1

Being a mobile knife sharpener and setting up your knife sharpening booth outside year around — you tend to fight the weather!

Here in Northern California, San Francisco Bay Area the weather is generally quite mild — but that is comparing our weather to the areas of the country. Compared to indoors it's wild out there!

My stop at Lunardi's San Bruno is probably the most challenging weather-wise.

Windblown Mobile Knife Sharpening Booth @ Lunardi's San Bruno

Here is a what's left of my booth at Lunardi's San Bruno last March 30th. The wind was relentless, blowing constantly, a big gust every now and then.

This canopy was already weather worn, with a couple of bent struts from days past. It was probably time for it to go.

My View from My Windblown Knife Sharpening Canopy

Normally I am rather prepared for the wind. When it starts gusting I start taking down non-essicentiels. I started to do so here — my sign banners are down — but the wind picked up faster than I could react.

I still had knives on display that I did not want damaged. I did not want the canopy to take off, taking out the tables holding the knives on display, hitting my truck or somebody or something! Being alone increases the challenges.

What I did first is cut out what ever canvas I could reach so that the wind had less to catch, then added bungie cords and whatever weights I had on hand to stabilize the canopy.

Next step was to pack up the knives on display and get them save, then I started working on the canopy. 

Canopy Frame Now Scrap Aluminum

At the end of the day everything was OK. The canopy was toast — but I survived to knife sharpen another day. I cleaned up the aluminum parts of the canopy and gave them away via craigslist, and stopped at Costco the next day and bought another canopy.