RAZOR SHARP
Blacksmith Josh Timmins plies his trade in a large shed on his family lifestyle block in Eketahuna. Behind the shed a large vegetable garden flourishes, chooks roam freely, and a cock’s crow punctuates the clang, clang of metal on metal as Josh demonstrates the stages of forging a blacksmith’s Viking knife. The knife, also known as a ‘woman’s’ knife, is made with handle and blade in one piece, and it is razor sharp.
“It’s a general-purpose utility knife, useful when you are ripping apart a rabbit,” Josh says. “It’s got quite a thick spine — around 5mm. A normal kitchen knife today is around 2mm. The business end is as sharp as hell and just slices through, but then it creates a wedge because of the width of the blade and feels like it’s binding in there. If you are cutting a carrot it pops it open rather than cutting, and it slices through meat easy as.”
Josh says that he has made quite a few blades but adds, “Just for the record I’m not a knife maker; I’m a blacksmith who makes knives.” A feature of his current work is the medieval-style axes that he has been playing around with.
