“Carvers have a gift that I can’t teach them.”

George Roberts has gone from making knives as tools for his old career as a fishing guide to a master of the craft whose pieces can fetch thousands of dollars each.

The Whitehorse-based knife maker was in Iqaluit late last month for the Nunavut Arts and Crafts festival, giving a knife making workshop for seasoned carvers.

"The next phase of my career is teaching this trade," Roberts said. "Carvers have a special place in this because they have a gift that I can't teach them."

Roberts brought blades, tools and pieces of wood, bone, metal and antler for handles and let the five carvers who took part in his workshop develop their own designs.

Thomas Suvissak from Rankin Inlet made a beautiful hunting knife with brass and red- and black-stained wood.

Annie Petaulassie, a teacher at Nakasuk School in Iqaluit who learned to make uluit during an in-service day, was trying to decide whether to use caribou antler or muskox bone for her ulu. She has a collection of uluit from Greenland, Nunavik, and the Western Arctic, to go along with five she's made herself.

She said she likes making uluit for the challenge, and working with Roberts exposed her to using different materials for her knife.

"I never used brass for the stem [before]," she said.

Roberts started making knives in 1984 while working as a fishing guide near the town of Wawa in northern Ontario.

After making knives on the side while working factory jobs, he moved to the Yukon and started life as a full-time knife maker. By 1989, he was producing 600 knives a year.

He started working with Inuit carvers he met at the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Roberts said it took time at first to convince Inuit craftsmen to trade ideas and materials with him: he attributes this to the experience of receiving "junk" when trading with Qallunaat.

But once Roberts proved his knives were good quality tools, carvers started supplying him with their local designs and materials. He said he won't make traditional Inuit knives himself, but will put buyers in touch with ­people who will.

"I try not to copy their traditional ways" for knives he makes himself, Roberts said. "I put my own flavour on the design."

For Roberts, his next project is to develop a knife-making kit that weighs in at around 200 kilograms so he can get it on small airplanes and travel to small Arctic communities.

If it all goes according to plan, he'll have a box full of drill presses, lathes, and belt sanders that are light weight and collapsible.

That might sound like a lot of work, but Roberts doesn't consider it so.

"It's always been hard for me to think of what I do as a job."