We had spent the night in the car park of the only hotel in Barrytown. This is pretty much the only building in Barrytown too!

It was nice and cheap and meant that we were a short 5 minute drive away from Steve and Robyns house. These were the couple who were going to show us how to had forge our own knives. Steve used to be a ladies underwear designer many years ago before him and his second wife bought an 80 acre plot of land on the West Coast. He now spends his days doing what he like to do best, that is, making knives, meeting people, telling terribly bad jokes and throwing axes!

We arrived and introduced ourselves to the other couple that were there and after a brief chat about safety and not setting fire to yourself when heating up the metal we were shown the raw materials that we would (with a bit of guidance) turn into a fine knife by the end of the day. We had a strip of steel about half a meter in length some brass and some reclaimed rimu (native and now protected) wood that was apparently felled in the 1880's.

First thing was to shape and harden the blade. We took the metal to the forge and heated it to a glowing orange and beat it with a lump hammer on the anvil. It was up to us what size and shape we wanted to make the blade. Apparently some people go mad and make huge machetes. All very nice looking but not as practical as a hunting size knife. We decided to go with practical. After repeated heating, beating and shaping and once we were happy with the rough shape of our blades it was time to plunge them in the water to harden them. With this done we started the initial clean up of the blades and then marked them out to start to shape them. Once the excess material had been removed from the handle end it was back to the grinder to clean up the surfaces again. With the blanks cut for the handles we mounted them on the non pointy end of the blade and added the brass trims. All this was held on by brass rivets. It was then time to start shaping the handles carefully so as not to put any unwanted scratches and scrapes in the decorative brass parts of the handles. With filler added to all the joint surfaces it was time to quit for food.

As we tucked into our included lunch Steve took our knives and started to shape the cutting surface of the blades in order for us to be able hone, grind and polish them to the finished articles. We had the opportunity to try some axe throwing at this point too if we wanted to. Let me tell you its not as easy as it looks and after 15 or so attempts and having the axe either miss the board completely or bounce off we decided to leave it to the expert.

By the afternoon our knives were really taking shape and we got busy grinding the handles, then the blades down to a fine grit and satisfying shape. It was tricky work and we would have made a real hash of it if it wasn't for Steves careful guidance. The job of wet sanding came and we sat working our blades from a 1000 up to a 2000 grit finish for as long as we could, which was about 10 minutes. All this gave Paul and I terrible flashbacks to certain brass portholes on a certain yacht! Robyn also took this opportunity to show off her two miniature (but feisty) ponies who were really cute. The final thing to be done was cover the entire knife with wax, wipe it off and we had two lovely knives!

All day Steve had kept mentioning how at the end of the day we would be having champagne, but since we never knew when he was joking we weren't counting on it. (We hadn't paid that much for the day!). However once the knives were finished, sure enough we were invited inside for a glass of so-called "Barrypagne" since they had made it themselves. Grateful but dubious we sipped at the sparkling wine. It tasted great! Katie managed two glasses in fairly short succession whilst singing praises and saying how it tasted just like Cava before Steve eventually gave his secret away. They bought bulk super cheap, boxed white wine, and put it through the Soda Stream! Made it really drinkable, and we vowed to get ourselves one to fool other unsuspecting guests! Luckily Paul hadn't had much to drink so he was free to drive us the 4 hours back to Christchurch. The route takes you through the valleys and up over the mountains at Arthur's Pass. It's supposed to be a really beautiful drive, however we were doing it in the dark and with high winds. It was fairly painless though, we'll just have to do it again some other time for the views!