All the way back in 2009, Tim Baker would do his first knife course at Tharwa Valley Forge, with immediate results. "I got the bug, and started making knives". Tim had already been an experienced woodworker, making furniture and all sorts of stuff for his home. With his father being into classic car restoration, Tim had plenty of access to the tools he needed to get started. 13 years of bladesmithing later, Tim would find his way back to where he'd started his blademaking journey, now as an instructor.
Within 3 weeks of starting at TVF, Tim learned sculpture as his first course to teach. Soon afterwards, he set himself a tough personal challenge - learn to teach ALL of the courses at TVF within 12 months. While his optimisitc goals didn't work out as fast as he'd like, Tim remained undeterred and now teaches nearly all of our blademaking/blacksmithing courses on the regular.
Though he might teach tons of different courses, he's pretty confident about which one is his favorite. "It's gotta be Asado BBQ, I like cooking and I like knives" he says, "It's something different, and it attracts people who like the same stuff as me". Knives and BBQ are pretty great, but Tim says above that, his favorite part of teaching is the sense of accomplishment that students feel. "People walk away with something and go 'Wow, I can't believe I made that!', like I did when I first did my class". Tim says that he ends up seeing quite a lot of return students coming back to learn more/further their own skills.
What advice would you offer to new knifemakers?
"Do a course. You can't learn everything through watching youtube, you've gotta get some hands on experience too."