03 Nov The pointy end
Tucked away in a small lean-to in Omakau is the workshop of Ophir resident Peter Lorimer, knife maker (and gate maker).
A rustic wooden sandwich board on the pavement on your way out of Omakau is the only indication that Peter Lorimer’s workshop is nearby.
If the old yellow concertina doors are open, Lorimer, in a battered leather apron, will be found inside the narrow workshop at work on his latest steel or iron pieces.
A Lorimer knife will last a life time and are used daily by cooks around the world, including some of New Zealand’s top chefs.
Bearing more than a passing resemblance to a blacksmith’s smithy, it houses Lorimer’s tools of trade – industrial-sised hammers for beating steel, the small gas forge for heating iron, belt sanders and grinders to shape and sharpen, a kiln to harden and of course an anvil to hammer the iron into shape on.
The blacksmith likeness is not surprising; Lorimer was first introduced to working with metal by his landlord, a blacksmith.
He started out learning the trade from him by working with wrought iron.
”He helped me out, showed me lots of skills.”
But it was not until after he gave up his job in the IT industry in the 1990s and spent a year ”doing very little” in Queenstown, that a suggestion from the blacksmith and an engineer friend that he make a chef’s knife hinted at a new direction.
He took up the challenge, thinking he knew what a chef’s knife looked like, so it could not be that hard.
”It was very awkward, clumsy. So I went and talked to chefs, looked at knifes.”
Lorimer likes that the kitchen knife is an everyday tool that everyone uses.
lorimer.co.nz
Link to the 2019 ODT article here
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