Mike Petersen Knife Maker

An article by Kieth Spencer taken from Edgemaster 1997
Near a place best known for Bega brand cheese lives a bladesmith who's mastered the art of hand crafting bladeware from the ground up. Mike Petersen, the New South Wales delegate for the Australian Knifemakers Guild, and his wife, Debbie, live and work on a rural property tucked in the mountains at Candelo.
Mike got started seriously forging working knives in the early nineties and we yarned a lot on the telephone about knifemaking and swapped some correspondence before getting together at the First Sydney Knife Show in 1995.
Meeting Mike for the first time, and never having seen a photograph of him, I was quite surprised to find this softly spoken man to be very tall and fit and possessing a presence that commands attention, even in a room full of people. We've spent time together at interstate knife shows since then and become pretty good mates. Mike's been around a bit. A polite, fair dinkum Aussie who doesn't suffer fools too gladly, he tells some great stories.

Photo by Kieth Spencer from Edgemaster 1997

From the beginning Mike only made knives to his own designs from forged steel, but was driven by a compulsion to "make his own metal" - such is his purist mentality as a knifemaker. In addition, Mike tans hides to fashion sheaths, sometimes from the game he hunts in the surrounding hills.
The mostly guardless grips (ergonomically styled for comfort and safety) are usually crafted from locally harvested hardwoods. Also factored into a Petersen knife is his vast experience as a knife user in a life spent on the land in many parts of the continent.
There are some darn good bladesmiths in the nation who turn out fantastic items of cutlery, a good deal of it pattern-welded (forged) damascus. However, I know of no one who has gone to the same extent of research and experimentation as Mike to produce and refine the process of "making the metal" from which knives are forged.