Australian Blade Ed 3 Dec 2017

somewhere.” Well we’re pleased to advise we’ve tracked him down
Phil Edwards
A quest for precision
Editor - On the back cover of the last edition of Australian Blade we
the photo below with the invitation “We'd love to hear
published
from the maker of this knife, Phil Edwards. There's a story there
to Central Queensland and this is his knife making story.
I met a bloke by the name of Eddie Danko who was a
retired engineer in Cairns. I met him when I answered a
newspaper ad. Eddie was selling a bandsaw which I still
have today. He’d built a two man submersible
submarine and he was making model steam engines,
knives and pretty much everything engineering. That
was his hobby, you name it he could make it. Eddie was
an Austrian, living in Austria when the Second World
War broke out. Austria was part of the German army as
well, you know. He told me some stories about that too.
You know with the kids playing in the old tanks,
cannons, and transport vehicles when the war was over.
They would go play around in the storage yards and
everything that was left when the war was over. So I
was this young bloke looking for knowledge, I would go
to his place and he would come around to mine and we
would have a coffee. I didn’t do much talking, I did all
the listening. Even when we had phone conversation,
once you get started talking to him you shut up and he
just talks, you'd be on the phone about two hours easy,
you know and all I’d do is just listen.
Well Eddie Danko introduced me to Peter Span and we went around and there obviously Eddie was
telling me about forging steels, you know. Laminating steels. So we went around there and Peter Span
was forging, he wasn't laminating, he was just forging steels you know, making knives out of rasp
files and all sorts of crap you know? We made all different types of knives. Since I’m talking about
these two blokes, I’ll give you the run down on the first Damascus knife I made. So I went around to
Peter’s place and Peter helped me make a stacked block of spring steel and nickel. You wouldn’t
guess where the spring steel came from (laughs) about seven layers. I used his coke forge. He had
built his own power hammer and it worked a treat. It was the first time I used a power hammer. I
forged the stack into a billet of steel and then drew it out at Peter’s. The actual knife I made in the
photo I forged at home including the guard and pommel. I haven’t used a power hammer since but I
wish I had one sometimes, I think I’m starting to look like a Soldier crab.