Australian Blade Ed 1

From then on, every single day I
had off, I spent it with James in his
workshop, - an old stone cow shed -
he rents off a farmer for almost no
money and it's bloody gorgeous. In
about two weeks James helped me
build a knife grinder - a 2X72
following the plans of Dan
Comeau's blog. Dan helped me
massively with the electric part,
from choosing the motor and
inverter and also on how to wire it
correctly, my eternal gratitude
towards Dan, awesome bloke.
Once it was finished me and James were crapping ourselves to switch it on, James brave as ever had
the honour to push that button........ he didn't get zapped and the "thing" was running beautifully.
Yay! The next thing was grabbing the momentum and keep it going. I wanted a forge so badly, spent
a small fortune buying all the components, even a bottle of gas, built it and never used it, it still sits
on the floor of my workshop. What a waste of time and money! All because while doing the research
on how to build burners I've got "acquainted" with some info on how to make an oven! Man they are
so nice, so I've built an oven, and all this without even making a knife.
From then on its history. I became a craftsman, proud of my wares and absolutely love it. If you
want to check out James’ work go to James Portsmouth Ironwork.
Tiago De Matos was born in Africa in the former Portuguese colony that was Angola. His parents
moved back to Portugal when he was two years old to avoid the civil war that ravaged that country
for nearly three decades. Tiago was raised in the north of Portugal. At the age of 30 and fed up of
the Portuguese sunny weather and corrupt football referees, he decided to start afresh in the
southwest of the rainy England, land of crap lager but amazing ale. To get away from his daily
constraints and gain some head space and time away from his wife he decided to take on knife
making. He will be in big trouble when his wife reads this! Knives and photos of knives by Tiago.