Magic of Making - Knives & Forks

Here at the silverworks you might hear all sorts of strange new words. Words like gadroon, spokeshave, horsin, stiddy, thwittle, dewberry or jesmond. These are all the special names that silversmiths and cutlers give to the patterns they create to decorate our knives, forks and spoons. Hot from the furnace a length of silver has been drawn from the melt. It is sliced and sampled to be sure that the silver is pure. The men and women of the silverworks will squeeze it, cut it, squash, shape and polish it into a fine canteen of glistening cutlery. After rolling comes blanking, feeding a sheet of metal into a press. You might think that the pressings made here are for knives, but you're actually looking at the spoons of the future. Spoons feel better in the mouth when the metal at the bowl end is thinner than the handle. So you have to start with a knife-like width because after cross-rolling to make the end thinner we also make it broader. The handle end is under the shanking press. Dies crash down and imprint one of those patterns we were talking about earlier. This one is called bead. The gentlemen in the spooning department have a lot of banging to do in their efforts to make the perfect spoon. And with each one of these thuds the outer edge of the bowl is defined and the excess kept back for recycling. The bowling press gives the spoon its characteristic cream-scooping shape. But all this rough treatment must now be polished away by the knee polisher. On the other side of the polishing room a fork handle is under attack. The forks come out of their presses with a protective strip called a gate across the top. Well you couldn't stab a jelly with that and the gate is removed so the prongs can be individually sharpened. Forking or forcating from the latin word furca is the act of dividing something into branches. This chap has been forcating in his cloth cap for over 20 years and is one of the finest forcators in the business. One lump or two very posh handles are not simply punched from one piece of metal they're made from a couple. Once the excess has been trimmed the halves are paired up with cord and a strip of metal called solder is popped in between. Inside this tiny oven the handles are heated to melt the solder and so weld the halves together as partners for life. Now what's this chap waiting for? The handles and there goes the gloved hand of the handle handler. Meanwhile the blade has moved on and here is a chap mounting it onto a holding tool. His job is to give the blade its first sharp edge. The man next door takes the sharpened blade and gives it a mirror-like finish. What a treat to see your reflection so many times in one day. This is plaster of Paris. It's used to stick the blade to the handle using a method that simply could not be more elaborate if it tried. The plaster of Paris is spun so centrifugal forces push it into the hollow handles. The blades are popped in by the little bit on the end which is called the tang. Left like this the blade would simply fall out of the handle during dinner and splash your trousers with gravy or worse still gash your leg. The hot water merry-go-round averts such disasters by setting the plaster firmly. Silver is a precious metal so a laser may be used to burn ancient symbols onto the surface. The symbols are hallmarks and tell us what the metal is, when and where it was made and by whom. And then it's back to the polishing room to get all that soot off. They're a cheerful lot in here but what have they done to Woody? I wonder what he did to upset everybody. With the helping hand of our old friend electricity the finished knives are etched with acid. An electric current passes through a membrane. It's pierced with thousands of tiny holes to make up the writing. After a gentle rub in this lady's careful hands the knives are ready to join the highly polished spoons and forks. This looks so much better than the old rubbish in my cutlery drawer. I really don't think I can bring myself to eat from it. I expect the Queen uses something like this though. But only for special occasions and royal banquets. Why isn't that our cameraman in the spoon? Hello! It's about time your work had a shine to it.