All knives have stories, and at Kiwi Blade Knives, Willie van Niekerk is restoring some of humanity’s oldest tools back into their rightful place in family histories.
Knives aren’t just objects or tools according to Willie; they are tangible reminders of people who have left us and places that we have left. “That’s why they are so special,” he adds.
“People often tell us about Granddad and his days on the farm and how he would carve the Sunday roast, or about Grandma whacking the back of her knife with whatever she could find to hew through a meaty bone. It’s all those stories that make knives remarkable because they are so much a part of every day life.”
At Kiwi Blade Knives a swathe of knives have been lovingly restored and given a second life. The list of renovations is lengthy: from a WWI cavalry officer’s parade sword and, French kitchen knives from the mid 1800s, to Japanese knives mistakenly used by a well-meaning daughter to slice open a coconut. “Obviously that wasn’t going to work,” adds Willie with a smile. “We love the stories attached to the repairs we get asked to do.”
Willie’s partner, Angela, adds another story to the conversation - about a young couple who brought a knife in Japan while on honeymoon.
“It was a significant knife and it was intended to be loved and revered as a memento of their nuptials until it was used to chop a frozen blueberry and didn’t look quite the same afterwards. It was a bit of a sore point from that time forward. Willie repaired it, thankfully. Together we are saving marriages, one knife at a time,” she adds playfully.
Other repairs that have been previously destroyed in dishwashers or have been found lodged down the back of something, have also found their way to them. They get cleavers delivered to them, with a degree of glee, by customers who have managed to find an old sturdy blade in the back of a dusty workshop or in a second-hand store.
“We get knives to repair that have been used for the wrong applications and knives that have been ruined by a generous friend who offered to sharpen the blade with an angle grinder. There’s
a real variety. It’s a bit like a knife version of ‘Antiques Roadshow’ here sometimes, and we love it.”
Then again, they also get knives that have been well loved and well cared for, and that simply need a bit of a rebevelling or blade thinning.
“All knives need a bit of edge alignment over long periods of time. It certainly helps their cutting ability, which of course is what you want them for,” offers Willie.
Old knives are definite treasures to be valued, so before you abandon all hope for an old knife and consign it to the back of a dark and dingy drawer for the rest of its life, give Willie or Angela at Kiwi Blade Knives a call. There might be life in the old gal yet!
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Published 6 August 2021