One-of-a-kind ‘Guitar Knife’ to be Raffled to Fund new Cockpit Bursary

QEST makers Daisy Tempest and Holly Loftus have collaborated to create a one-of-a-kind knife that is being raffled to raise money for a new bursary at Cockpit, the Grant-Turnstone Award, named after their respective female mentors.

Guitar-maker Daisy and knife-maker Holly both joined Cockpit studios as recipients of the Newby Award, which gave them one year of business support, subsidised studio space at Cockpit, and a grant to support craft skill development. Now both extremely successful in their own fields, the pair have decided to raise funds to ‘pay it forward’ and create an opportunity for a future craftsperson who may benefit in the way that they have done.

They collaborated to create a chef’s knife featuring a one-of-a-kind ‘Damascus,’ or pattern-welded steel blade made from nickel guitar strings. The handle is made of Koa wood from the Acacia tree, which is favoured by guitarists for its resonant sound. She also included a detail of laminated ebony and maple, which is an intricate nod to the ‘perfling’ or binding used in guitar-making. Tempest guitars take many months to make and cost up to £28,000, but you’ll have to wait a while as her waiting list is currently seven years.

Loftus knives are equally sought-after, with limited batches selling out in as little as six minutes. The blades are typically forged by hand, but for this project they had to enlist specialist equipment at Holly’s old workplace, Blenheim Forge. Using the heat of the forge (1200°c) and the pressure of the hammer (20 tonnes/the weight of three adult elephants) they successfully created their guitar string Damascus steel. The temperature had to be just right, so the metals would fuse together but not melt, otherwise the visible lines of the guitar strings would have been lost. In the finished blade you can clearly recognise the guitar strings, like lines in a thousand-year-old fossil.

The process is being documented in a series of YouTube videos and the knife will be the prize in a raffle, designed to raise funds for the new Cockpit bursary.

Daisy says “The opportunity we received was massive. It meant that I could completely focus on my business, which is literally twice what it would be without winning that award. I want to pay it forward because it was so significant for me.”

As two women in male-dominated fields, the pair decided to name the new award after each of their female mentors who had a significant influence on them earlier in their careers. The Grant-Turnstone Award, as it will be called, is named after Holly’s first blacksmithing teacher, Juliet Grant of SRUC, and Daisy’s mentor and the only other self-employed female luthier in the UK, Rosie Heindrych of Turnstone.

The raffle starts on 22 February 2023 and runs until Wednesday 15 March. Tickets will be priced at £1 each with no limit on how many you can purchase. To enter visit: www.loftusknives.com