Unique knife-crafting operation attracting tourists to small West Coast community

September 2, 2020

The unique prospect has been a big drawcard for Barrytown.

While many tourism operators are struggling at the moment, one is certainly not - and it's not what, or where, you would expect at all.

People are continuing to make their way to Barrytown, a small community on the West Coast between Greymouth and Punakaiki, to make knives.

But Barrytown wasn't always known for its knives.

'We started off making spoons [but] no one came," Steve Martin told TVNZ1's Seven Sharp.

"There's no market for spoons. In fact, one of my neighbours said, 'Everyone is laughing at you.' I felt awful.

"They weren't very good spoons because they didn't have a dip in them."

Everyone makes their knives slightly differently, Steve says.

"Guys make useful knives, girls make weapons. They always say they're going to make kitchen knives, then around about lunchtime a pink haze comes over them."

Steve's been doing this for 30 years but before then, he worked in women's lingerie in Wellington.

They've got a surprising amount in common.

"They both have to be sharp and good in the hands. Also with lingerie, of course, the smaller the item, the more you charge for it," he says. 

"I wanted to sell an empty packet and charge a fortune for it. I think we would have done really well." 

The rimu for the handles comes from the old Seaview Psychiatric Hospital up the Coast; he calls it "mad women's wood".

There are all sorts of knives being crafted, ranging from hunting knives to "your basic psychopath".

"It's important to make them shiny so when you hold them up in court, you don't want to be embarrassed. We've got our reputation to think of," Steve says.

The place has exceptional online reviews, with people travelling from around the country - and internationally.

Steve spins a yarn about a man that once worked on a weather station at the North Pole.

"He came to New Zealand and I said, 'What are you going to do with the rest of your holidays?' He said, 'It'll take me four days to get back to the North Pole,'" Steve recalls.

"He came here, made a knife, went back to the North Pole. 

"This guy spent the whole time telling us how much he hated the guy he'd been wintering over with. I said this guy is obviously a nutcase but we forgot about it, never got round to it, but for weeks we watched the news to see if someone had been murdered at the North Pole."

More than 28,000 people from 108 countries have been through the Barrytown attraction; the next plan is creating a T-shirt.

"I'll be holding up a big knife and on the T-shirt it'll say, 'Don't f*** with me, I've got 28,000 friends and they've all got knives,'" Steve jokes.

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