Sydney Knife Show 2023 - Photos & Winners

• What is it like going to a knife show? 
• How is it exhibiting at a knife show? 
• Who won at the Sydney Knife Show?

Largest Knife Show in Australia

The Sydney Knife Show is the largest show of the year for the Australian knife maker and collector community. As every year it is held at the Rosehill Gardens racecourse in Western Sydney in August.  

People travel from far and wide to attend the show, both exhibitors and attendees. 

Show Trophy Winners

Before the show opens to the public on Saturday morning, the knife making competition is judged and winners announced. This year was a big year with many entries and so many good ones that Riley Burns and Kevin Slattery from the KAA also gave out some honourable mentions in addition to the actual trophies to winners.

*Photo credit Rob Fraser.

The winners of the Sydney Knife Show 2023 are:

• Best Folding Knife Bruce Barnett 
• Tobias Bockholt Best Forged Knife
• Will Newham Best Chefs Knife
• Best Hunting Knife Ryan Simon 
• Best Damascus Knife Ryan Simon
• Best New Maker Ambrose Volkofsky
• Best of the Rest Kieran McNeilly
• Best utility Knife Shane Partridge
• Best Art Knife Wayne Barrett
• Best in Show Bruce Barnett

Best Utility Knife 2023 - Shane Partridge 

Kev Slattery the president of the Knife Art association presented the prizes to the winners with the help of Riley Burns, and Shane Partridge from Blacks Blades took the top spot for Best Utility Knife. Well done!

*Photo credit Rod Hoare Knife Images and Rob Fraser

Sausages and Swords

On the Facebook page for the Sydney Knife Show there are lots of great photos from the weekend, both across makers, knives and the blacksmiting demonstrations outside: LINK

Here are a couple of photos of makers, both new and experienced. 

Jamie Bishop from Sausage Man Forge managed to not only run his own table and talk to lots of people but also fry up some kransky and run around spreading pork love to other makers. How good is Sausage Man!

Julian Azzopardi had as a centrepiece of his table an amazing piece of working art - a sword any knight would have given an arm and a leg for.. with distal taper and tempered to take a bend he also has this cool trick of showing how vibrations run up the blade in wave form.

First time exhibitors

Dylan from Trilobite Customs and Julian from Roche Cutlery are new exhibitors at the Sydney Knife Show this year. It was great to see both of them each with a table full of great looking knives, putting themselves out there on display and giving other makers a chance to look at their work in person. Well done, guys! 

And how cool was it to see the trophies from the Australian Knife Making Awards on the table!

Exhibiting at a knife show can be an intimidating thought. Some makers worry about how customers will react to their knives. Love them, NOT love them or even worse just ignore them? Makers are a supportive group, recognising that we share a lot of common interests and it is generally not a competitor perspective between makers at shows. You will usually find the opposite, the makers around you will welcome you, give you advice if you ask about how to interact with people looking at your work. And you are pretty much guaranteed - if open to it - making some new connections and probably even learning a thing or two from the other makers around you.

Busy weekend exhibiting

Saturday is the first day of the show and this year there was a horse race on at the same time, so it was pretty busy getting parking and getting into the venue. But the crowds handled this with patience and before long the big hall was teeming with people as keen to talk about knives as we were!

We had Laurie Sykes at his first knife show and he did a great job helping lots of makers, as well as Chris Neale who in all fairness has done most of the work for this year's show. It takes a lot of work to get ready for a show like this, and Chris has tried to make sure we have a little bit of -if not everything - then pretty close to everything.

*Photo credit Rob Fraser & author

Broyce Hill spent the weekend talking to lots of people about the hands-on workshops we run at Nordic Edge in spoon carving, blacksmithing and his favourite - knife making.

Bryoce was showing how we take people who have often never done any knife making before through a one-day experience where they not only get to try some new things, but also take home their very own forged chef knive - made by them.

Riley Burns is as always the person in charge at events, running around making sure it all works on the day while this year I got to hang back more and spent as much time talking to makers outside of our stand as I did in the stand. 

Lachlan Scowcroft deserves special mention for being an all-around good guy. He showed up on Saturday with a big tray of smoked meats, rolls, homemade coleslaw and home made BBQ sauce for us! Talk about being pampered!

Sunil and 3M

New for us at Nordic Edge this year was having some real expertise around abrasives at our stand. Sunil Lal from Austech Supplies spent the whole weekend with us helping new and experienced makers with information about 3M abrasives. Belt engineering in cubitron vs ceramic belts, why Trizact is a better choice than alu oxide for many makers and lot of other abrasive related questions was thrown at him over the weekend and he took it all with a smile. Big thank you also to 3M who took time out to come help at the show and field lots of questions with Sunil!

Chris Coorie from 3M spent all Saturday with us and Nic Lee helped out on Sunday, a big Thank You for taking the time to helping makers get more out of their abrasives.

*Photos by author

Mates and Knives

Both Rod Hoare and Robert Fraser took a lot of great photos from the weekend, we have shown only a few of them here. Follow Sydney Knife Show and the KAA on Facebook to see more.

In the end it takes a lot of work exhibiting at a show. If you are a maker you need to make enough to have on the table to make it worth the travel and the time invested. Part of hanging out with other makers for the weekend is that you tend to make new mates though, which we probably all agree is a positive. So the next show is easier, and then after that it is like meeting old mates again! A major part for many of us who have been going to the shows for a few years now is catching up with mates we have made through the maker community.

In the end it is all about mates and knives, and the Sydney knife show is a great way to catch up on both. 

A big thank you to Andrew Smith and the others of the KAA who put in all the work needed to organise such a well-run event.

*Photo credit Robert Fraser.