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The very talented Adam Fromholtz has been hard at work perfecting a range of Gentleman’s folding knives.

Adam has created compact slipjoint folding knives with a focus on an extreme level of fit and finish. They incorporate premium materials, such as tropical hardwoods and antler, and sit comfortably in your pocket.

Asides from running Tharwa Valley Forge, we are lucky to be the current custodians of the historic Cuppacumbalong Homestead. We’re hard at work restoring Cuppa which means we’re constantly unearthing pieces of history dating back to the 1850’s.

A little while back we unearthed some old fence posts which turned out to be beautifully figured pieces of Blakely’s Red Gum. Based on their location, they are around 150 years old. As a critically endangered species, this timber is hard to come by these days.

The message to everyone is very clear: Stay at home.

In line with Government advice, we are postponing course delivery on a rolling basis.

Students on all courses up until the present date have been transferred to a course date later in the year.

Our plan is to transfer people whose courses are affected by social distancing restrictions to courses later in the year. We’ll be doing this on a rolling basis and will always give at least two weeks notice.

We are still taking enrollments, so if you’d like to lock in a place on a course you can check what’s available here.

All valid gift certificates have been extended by 6 months.

We want you to know that everyone who has booked a course will get to do that course. Our business is resilient and we’re set to resume teaching on the other side of this.

In the meantime, we are keeping our ten full-time staff employed. They are making production cutlery at home or onsite in line with social distancing rules. By making and selling beautiful handmade cutlery we’re making an investment in our people and their skills.

This means that we’ll be opening our order books for custom work. We’ll be making an announcement about this over the next few days.

There’s no way we could keep our people employed if it weren’t for the kindness and understanding we’ve experienced so far.

On behalf of everyone at Tharwa Valley Forge, thank you so much.

Regards,

Karim

Thank you for your interest in MV Krait commemorative items. We have passed all expressions of interest to the Australian War Memorial. If you missed out on the Expression of Interest, further information will be available from the Australian War Memorial in September 2018.

Forging a Viking Seax

All the knives that students make at Tharwa Valley Forge are made to be used, as well as to look good. The father and son who recently attended a custom one-day one-knife course had one of the more interesting uses in mind for their knives that we've seen for a while.

longpig1I have had a recent run of orders for large items, much larger than my 35cm long forge. So I built a longer 65cm version. I kept the diameter smaller so it would still only use one burner and keep the steel hot. I tried a different option tried with the back door that allows a future extension to be attached on later. It fired up nice and hot with not much effort. I think it will run at a similar pressure than the larger, shorter forge.

I tried a new idea for the handle - welding on some chain. It has a good feel when carrying the forge.

The forge has be affectionately dubbed "long pig" to go with the existing "little pig" and "fat pig".

 

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