![]() The first track was the collaboration with Andreas Güldenberg and Timm Bredohl. They have everything to do with, more or less, casual encounters. His development as a blacksmith and knife maker has progressed along three paths, Achim explains. I learned to forge in a couple of months, but free-handed grinding with a belt grinder cost me 7 years to master". Really good grinding without conductor or aid, was the most difficult to learn. "I started like everyone else, with a fat and badly grinded blade. But even for him, the start was difficult. If you were to tell Achim that something is impossible, or, make the mistake of telling him: "you can’t", he would start nonetheless. Undeterred by nay-sayers he began anyway. Achim bought a hammer and an old file at the flea market, and head out to the forge with the intention to craft a knife. A colleague with an interest in weapons had a brother, who was a member of an association in Cologne with a small hobby forge. The idea to make knives himself somehow never materialized - until 1995. Both gave him a particular insight into art and crafts. ![]() He also built dragonflies for 10 years, according to the classical Japanese or Korean examples. Later, he would start other hobbies like motorcycling. I bought it for 550 Mark, my entire salary".Īchim began collecting knives in his early teens. I always wanted to have a Damask knife, and they had a Malaysian Keris. "When I was 19 I received my first pay cheque. For most people, steel is something rigid - and yet, you can shape it into something so beautiful." In the museum you had a separate showcase in which all steps are demonstrated. I said to my father: ‘that is beautifully engraved!’ My father explained to me then that it was not engraved, but damask steel. "I was seven years old and I saw a shotgun with damask barrels. Where his mother and sister would visit the flea market, his father and he would visit the weapons museum. He read the German Waffen Journal and during Achim's childhood the family often went to Liège. So, let's just keep to what he has to say about it.Īchim's father had an interest in weapons. Where does such an interest come from? With Achim we suspect a ‘steel-gene’, but that has not yet been demonstrated. His damask steel is known worldwide, and yet he is always discovering something new. The rest of the time he works with steel, at all levels: scientific metallurgy, historically, as a blacksmith and steel trader, knife maker, and as a board member of the Belgian Knife Society. During regular working hours he is a part-time policy officer at the municipality of Würselen, near Aachen. The English expression: "Mind over matter", certainly applies to the German blacksmith and knife maker Achim Wirtz (born 1961).
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