Arno Basson - Custom knifemaker from South Africa

With Arno Basson, I am adding another young knife maker from South Africa to our shop. Arno was born in 1996 and is currently making his knives as a part-time knife maker. But his goal is for him to be able to do this full-time at some point.

In September 2019 he started making knives because he had the hunger to create something by hand. In the same year he built his own belt grinder according to his needs and was the first to produce fixed knives. But he quickly realized that this was not a challenge for him and he worked intensively on the production of linerlock knives.

In March 2020 he met the knife maker Riaan Manser, who is also his mentor. He learned many details about the production of folders from him, so that the A7 and G8 models were created together. In December 2021 he attended an IKBS knife making course with Andre Thorburn where he received his accreditation to manufacture knives using the patented IKBS bearing system.

For the manufacture of his knives, he uses CNC machining for the basic shapes of the blades, liners, handles and backspacers to be able to guarantee optimal and repeatable accuracy. However, all other work is carried out purely by hand. Its blades are ground hollow with a 300 contact wheel and finished manually. Arno also lends a hand with the grips and backspacers. He carries out all this work, as well as the heat treatment, in an 18 square meter workshop.

His goal for 2023 is to be inducted into the South African Knife Guild and I'm sure nothing will stand in the way of that.