By Marcus Uhe
For as long as he can remember, Ajax Fitton has always been fascinated with knives.
The Master Bladesmith at Cranbourne’s Freehand Creations received his first pocketknife when he was nine-years-old and the next year his Grandfather was teaching him how to sharpen it.
He turned a passion into a profession, starting as a trainee making Japanese hairstyle scissors before coming back to his primary focus of knife-making.
On Thursday March 24 Freehand Creations was recognised at the Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce ‘Love Your Local’ Awards, winning Initiative Business of the Year for actioning change and investing in themselves.
“We were looking at hiring a couple of people just as Covid-19 hit,” Mr Fitton said. “We decided that instead of hiring people, we would invest in equipment and machinery.
“It’s all relatively technical stuff but we’ve changed the processes and created a higher-volume that we can produce at similar quality, for less money.
“It’s been all about technical advancements and delivering more bang for buck.”
Along with making his life “a lot easier” customers have proven to be the big winners of the technical investments at their Cranbourne workshop, according to Mr Fitton.
“To start with we were very much a craft thing where we would pay $400-500 for a knife.
“We’ve got that down to only $200-300 for a knife but we still maintain the same quality for our range.”
To learn more about Freehand Creations head to freehandcreations.com
