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Who Will Hold the Wheel? Sheffield's Cutlery Succession Problem

Who Will Hold the Wheel? Sheffield's Cutlery Succession Problem

Sheffield's knife workshops are losing the people who know how steel behaves under a grinding wheel. Training schemes exist, and young makers are coming through, but the barriers to passing on hand skills are practical rather than romantic — and they will not be solved by nostalgia.

The Humble Offcut: A Modest Proposal for Sheffield's Knife Workshops

The Humble Offcut: A Modest Proposal for Sheffield's Knife Workshops

Sheffield's small knife makers already produce useful steel in the form of offcuts and seconds. This opinion piece argues that grading, branding and selling those pieces deliberately — as practice parers, garden blades, sharpening steels and starter tools — is better business than treating them as waste.