Known locally as "Maestro Wu," this master blacksmith admitted Sept. 20 that he was the family perfectionist when it came to forging knives. "I'm pickier than my brothers when it comes to making a knife," he said. "That's why the knives I make sell out very quickly." Taking over the blacksmith business from his father--a man who also enjoyed a similar reputation for high-quality workmanship--Wu's skills and slavish devotion to the concept of quality have contributed to the success of a local industry that now enjoys a worldwide reputation with customers coming from Australia, Japan and the United States.
Born in 1957 in Kinmen, Wu studied blacksmithing under his father who in turn learned the trade from his father, a metalworker trained in Xiamen in China's Fujian Province. In the beginning, Wu's father carried a tool kit between villages, helping farmers fix their broken farming implements, such as reaping hooks. Then, his father opened a shop making butchers knives, and the business went so well that most of the butchers in Kinmen became his customers. Wu said that his father liked making something different, so he branched out and tried his hand at kitchen knives. Fortunately, he was successful and the family prospered. When business was at its busiest, his brothers and sisters were all required to help operate the business.
Wu said that before his father actually allowed him to strike the iron, he had to develop his strength to the point that he was able to hold the near-molten metal firmly with an extremely heavy long clamp. One hand was used to hold the clamp that removed the hot steel from the furnace, with the other striking the iron while it was hot.
According to Wu, it was the time he spent working beside his father as an iron striker that laid the foundations for his future success as a blacksmith. These days, he is able to determine whether a piece of metal being heated in the furnace is ready to be hammered into shape just by looking at its color. This precise judgment was accumulated over 34 years of working with metal.
"I began by pulling the iron out of the blast furnace and then holding the triphammer," Wu said. After learning to control the hammer with one hand, he started polishing. Only when he mastered the fundamental skills could he begin to strike the iron; thus, the knives made in his store went through every blacksmithing procedure and an exhaustive series of checks. In order to let more people understand the forging process and appreciate the historical development of the trade, Wu even refurbished his shop to include areas where visitors can watch live demonstrations and peruse displays.
Stepping into Wu's shop, a visitor can immediately soak up the sounds and atmosphere of the world of a blacksmith from the live demonstration area designed to simulate the forging process. Hard at work, "the maestro" cut a small piece from a collected waste artillery shell with an acetylene-and-oxygen gun while wearing goggles to protect his eyes from the furnace's blazing glare. The fragment was then put into the furnace to let the high temperature soften the hard metal, making it possible to reshape. After a short period, Wu used a clamp to take the metal, now a golden-reddish color, out of the furnace and put it in the beating machine to forge the knife. As he was grinding the knife, Wu dipped it into a vat of oil in a procedure called thermal processing. He stressed that this step is necessary to increase the stiffness and durability of the steel.
"Depending on the use of the knife, it might require different temperature controls," he said. "We make sure the knife will not crack in room temperature, but the ones used to cut frozen goods have to resist temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius."
After the condition of the steel was solidified, Wu continued the first phase of polishing to smoothen surface impurities. Meanwhile, he constantly had the knife immersed in cold water so as to preserve the blade's hardness. After two rounds of honing and polishing, a gleaming knife was almost ready to have its handle installed. The two-centimeter artillery shell had been turned into a thin four-millimeter cutting knife. The final challenge was to choose a comfortable and attractive handle to put on the end. From a professional's perspective, even the quality of the handle varies considerably.
"Wood is the normal material we use, but Bakelite is the best because it resists acid and alkaline, not to mention static electricity," Wu said, adding that the price between wood and Bakelite plastic could vary up to US$15.
Wu not only makes different types of knives but also specializes in creating user-friendly handles. "Like my father, I always think about creating something different," Wu said as he pointed at a newly designed Bakelite-handle that was exported to Japan and received a favorable response in that market. "In addition to the appearance and quality of the metal, we design our products to make them more user-friendly."
Wu said with modesty that the customers who used his knives were also his teachers; thus he always considered the purpose of a knife when forging one. "A knife needs to feel good in the hand and be suitable for its owner."
Thanks to this knife-making philosophy, Wu's designs are produced with different uses in mind. The handle of a chopping knife angles downward, while a cutting knife's handle is horizontal because it allows a chef to employ his strength easily. Additionally, Wu said a chef requires different types of knives when cooking dishes from different regions. For instance, Cantonese food often contains ham, and chopping ham requires a short, wide and thick knife. On the other hand, a thinner and longer knife is more suitable for slicing meat into small strips.
Believing that selecting a knife that matches its owner's physical requirements and needs is important, Wu offered the following words of wisdom for those trying to select a good knife. First, the knife must be ground smoothly with its natural curve absent of protruding angles and corners. Second, the knife's handle should be comfortable to grasp. He joked that the meaty hand of a grandmother might be able to hold a thick handle, but fairer ladies could only manage light and delicate utensils.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, grinding metal until it was sharp enough to hold an edge and adding a steel handle were the extent of knife development. But eventually, appearance and practicality were stressed equally. Wu recalled that the raw material of early knives came from artillery shells fired on Kinmen during a propaganda war waged in the 1960s. The Communists rolled up printed tracts, inserted them into shells and then fired them onto the island group every other day. A complete shell could make up to 50 knives, including 40 from the base and 10 on the side.
Even though Kinmen has not been shelled in some time, Wu smiled and said that he did not worry about running out of material to make knives. On the contrary, he was optimistic about his industry's future and said that preserving knife-making skills was his main focus these days.
"Any artillery shell can be made into knives of varying shapes and sizes," he said. "As long as we preserve a solid skill base, there is no need to worry about where the materials come from." Implying a possible decline in the traditional industry, he added, "I am grateful for people's support and encouragement, especially as some even consider my work as a form of art. Some visitors have said, 'what a pity we do not have a camera with us,' when touring my shop."
Write to Sandra Shih at sandrashih@mail.gio.gov.tw