Doug Clegg keen on his work

It can be said that Doug Clegg brings a certain sharpness, or perhaps a much-appreciated acuity and keenness, to his many clients.

Clegg, you see, operates a one-man business known as the Cutting Edge Mobile Sharpening Service, and he demonstrates his well-honed skills at several locations in the area.

He sharpens knives and scissors mostly, and he describes a great many of his customers as “commercial,” although he deals with some residential customers, too.

In the beginning, “going on 11 years” ago, Clegg focused on customers in the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene area, but he has branched out, with more mobility if you will. He spends three days each month serving customers in Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow and Pullman and has established routes.

The “commercial” category includes numerous and varied clients from hospital and school kitchens to restaurants, supermarkets and delis to meat markets, fabric stores, florists and beauty salons.

Those customers are the on-the-road variety. Clegg also sharpens electric clippers, but those jobs require larger and more sophisticated equipment, which he keeps at his home.

Customers for those services are mostly barbers and dog groomers, he said.

Residential customers he serves from home include pickup-and-delivery business or mail-to-mail service, he said.

Clegg, who originally is from the Vancouver, B.C. area, began to develop his business after he took early retirement as a Presbyterian pastor and was looking for something to occupy himself.

He became interested through a “fellow sharpener” in the Spokane Valley and then trained with equipment marketers and through videos and manuals.

Professionally, he got off to a good start in July 1996.

“Within two months, a friend took me to a retirement home for a job, and it went from there,” he said.

Clegg obviously enjoys the relative simplicity of his work and the low overhead. He has just three pieces of equipment, including the one generally left at home.

“I can travel in any kind of vehicle, and I don’t need anything that can’t be put into a couple of boxes in the car trunk,” he said.

He’s “in his retirement years,” Clegg said, “so, I’m working at about three-quarter time.”