Transforming skateboard wood into art
Kickflip to backside three, straight into a butcher’s knife and paring blade – Christchurch man Wayne Walsh loves street culture and knives.
From a graffiti-covered garage studio in Spreydon, the 35-year-old crafts custom blades with handles made from recycled skateboards under the company name CW Works.
‘‘I finished the refurbishment of this house in about 2016 and I was looking for stuff to do,’’ Walsh said.
He had made furniture from scrap wood, tables from pallets, and was then inspired by Haroshi, an artist he saw on Instagram, who sculpted disused skateboards.
‘‘I’m an active relaxer, you know, and I saw Haroshi’s piece and thought it was awesome, I wonder what he made that out of.’’
A classic skateboard was made up of six two-millimetre layers of Canadian hardwood maple, Walsh said.
‘‘Every manufacturer will have a different coding system they use, so you get some that have no colour whatsoever, some that just have the top and bottom layers and then the really good ones to use have colours throughout.’’
He credited his success with the generosity of Kiwi skateboard shops Def, Boardertown, Cheapskates and Curb, the last a Christchurch-based store.
Working with the warped wood was tough. Walsh’s first step was to get the grip tape off, which involved a blow torch, gas mask and scraping blade.
‘‘Every board is curved in two directions, so it’s not like getting a standard piece of wood. Any straight line in the handles isn’t actually straight, and a lot of the boards I work with are broken too,’’ he said.
Walsh moved to Christchurch from Ireland in 2011 for work as a quantity surveyor. While the work paid well, he hoped to go full time with his creative craft eventually.
Each knife took between six and eight hours to make and involved stripping, cutting, gluing and pressing, carving, sanding and polishing.
‘‘I never did any DIY in Ireland, never, and when I came to New Zealand I thought I would give it a go, and I found that I naturally had a bit of a talent for it, although I don’t want to sound like a douchebag,’’ he said.
Walsh used only high-quality chef knives and sourced the blades from the United States and Japan. He recently ordered a large number of higher quality blades, 12C27 steel specifically, from Scandinavia.
‘‘Most of the knives I make now are about $180, but the new ones will be $500 plus. The blades alone are over $300.’’
"I never did any DIY in Ireland, never, and when I came to New Zealand I thought I would give it a go, and I found that I naturally had a bit of a talent for it ...''
Wayne Walsh