These Marble-Patterned Steel Knives Are Created in the Victorian Rainforest, With Handles Made From Fallen Trees

Not many people can say that a flip of a coin determined both their future partner and their career path. Belgian-born knifemaker Mathieu Dechamps can.

Dechamps trained as a furniture maker, getting his start at just 13 years old in his home city of Brussels. At 18, he turned down a promising job and took time off to travel the world.

A year later he found himself in the Scottish Highlands, where he met a retired toolmaker creating hand planes, wood chisels and hammers. He ended up spending three weeks camping outside the toolmaker’s shed, learning how the Scotsman worked.

“It’s not like I left there and thought I was going to make tools,” Dechamps says. “I just kept on traveling and put it on the backburner.”

Later in the trip, unable to decide between stopping in Australia or Canada next, he flipped a coin: Australia. It was here that Dechamps met his now-wife, Julia, and decided to settle down in Mount Dandenong, Victoria.

Frustrated with trying to find a decent knife that met his standards (for his other passion, cooking), Dechamps looked into knifemaking. “I had a little bit of knowledge from the toolmaker, and then I started doing my own research,” he says. “There was a lot of trial and error.”

Years later, Dechamps forges high-performance knives for both chefs and home cooks. He has customers in Australia – including top restaurants Vue de Monde and Oakridge Wines – and around the world.

Despite becoming a bladesmith only three years ago, Dechamps already has a wait list of six to eight months. Everything is made to order – you’ll discuss what your knife will be used for, and the style and materials you like, then he’ll craft it by hand, spending between 10 and 50 hours on each creation.

Adjacent to the couple's home and surrounded by lush, ferny rainforest, his workshop is ordered chaos. One side is home to a large pneumatic hammer (which had to be lowered through the roof by crane), a blazing wood heater, and a gas forge that looks like a mini pizza oven. The rest of the space is taken up by work benches, clamps, and stacks of wood and metal.

It’s here that Dechamps produces both “workhorse” knives, as well as more high-end Damascus blades.

“The workhorse knives are like a ute – your everyday knife,” he says. “The Damascus knives are more like your Bentleigh.”

The Damascus blades have a feathered, marbled pattern which is the result of layers of steel forged together. “The name comes from Damascus city in Syria – for many centuries, Damascus was an important trading centre – [but] the technique to make the steel never came from there,” Dechamps says. “The technique I use is forge-welded Damascus, the technique used in the Europe region circa 350BC.”

For the wooden handles, he had to get used to using new materials. “It opened my eyes quite a bit to how vast and diverse Australian timbers are. There’s a huge amount, and they’re perfectly suited to knife making. A lot of the timber here in the bush isn’t commercially viable because it’s quite small, dense, and not straight. For knife making it’s perfect because I only use small bits.”

For each creation, he uses one (or more) of up to 80 different types of wood, all fallen or recycled. Among them is wodjil, which is native to Western Australia, as well as white cypress, river red gum, elm, chestnut, ash and maple.

“I’m lucky to know local people who call me if a tree needs to be taken down or has suffered storm damage,” Dechamps says.

The end product is always unique, whether it’s a French chef’s knife with a broad blade and red gum handle; an all-purpose Gyuto, with a handle made from gidgee (from the Acacia family); or a Nakiri, a tall blade used for chopping vegetables, with an octagonal birch and red gum handle and brass detailing.

“Since I was very young, I wanted to be an artisan and I made my own way towards it, I suppose,” he says. “I’m very grateful.”

Knives cost between $40 and $150 per centimetre, plus $25 shipping within Australia. You can bring your knives back to Dechamps for free sharpening, or he’ll teach you how to do it yourself.

mdknives.com.au