That’s Not a Knife!

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Day 123
6th January

Well as I’m sure you avid readers have guessed by now I hate having to get up early however exceptions can be made when it is to do something as cool as making my own knife!

We were somewhat hung over after our random night in Barrytown and had breakfast with the sweet old couple whose house we stayed in, they went on about how noisy it was last night and how they are campaigning to have the pub shut down and the bus to stop visiting, Liz and I kept quiet and just exchanged sheepish looks across the table, finished our yummy brekkie and drove to the knifemaking place.

The chap who runs it Steven has a great sense of humour and his wife Robyn is lovely too they had us all laughing before we’d even begun, he had the furnace already hot and handed out bits of steel to us all and we took turns in heating our bits of steel up then bashing it with a massive hammer to make it into a vaguely knife shaped mess, he told us not to heat the metal up more than twice and the hammer really was a heavy lump so this bit was rather tricky.
Once we’d done that we started to make the handles by putting some brass on either side “mine was a bit wonky” and putting wood next to that. Then we started to grind the knives into shape and polish them, by lunch time they really were taking shape. We made toasties and went for a walk around the farm with Robyn as Steven had to do a little work on the knives because grinding the handles with the lacquer we had applied is toxic and it as easier for him to do it. When we returned from lunch we spent the afternoon finalising the shape of our knives I gave mine a groove at the point to give it a hunting knife shape which didn’t occur to anyone else and I got lots of compliments on it then we polished them all and posed for photos as Steven wanted to update his brochure and in return he gave us some barrypagne which is apparently cheap white wine put through a soda stream... but it was very nice anyway.

Liz and I are very pleased with our knives, Liz wants to use hers for the kitchen and I want to get mine engraved and perhaps get a saddler to make a sheath for it.

We drove to Greymouth from Barrytown “Greymouth is sadly not the prettiest of places” and the motel we stayed in according to Liz smelled of sour milk. We went and got a manky Chinese and watched avatar then went to sleep cuddling our knives.

Love Ellz x

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