FIFTY YEARS AT THE FORGE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 121, 15 February 1935, Page 18

FIFTY YEARS AT THE FORGE

Man Who Makes Swords Sixty-five-year-old Tom Beazley knows more a_bout swords than almost any other man, although he has never so much as pinkyd a rabbit. Warriors all over the world, from Persia to Abyssinia, from India to Turkes-, tan, would walk less haughtily if it had not been for Tom Beazley’s handiwork. He forges the swords they use. For the last fifty years Mr. Beazley has' stood at his forge and anvil in the famous Wilkinson sword and razor factory in Chiswick, London, and fashioned swords for every nationality. He is proud "of his work.- He is one of the few men left in the world who forge swords by hand. Mr. Beazley is one of the last in an industry that flourished in an age of chivalry and midnight duels. He is a warlikelooking little man. His bristling moustache's and bonnet rouge, hanging jauntily over one ear, give him the air of a sansculotte of the French Revolution.

But Mr. Beazley is a man of peace in spitd of his calling. “I’ve made thousands of swords, but never seen <uie of them used. Not that I want to, mind you. Some of them are nasty-looking things. We had some not long ago for the Shah of Persia. They were as round as a sickle and as sharp as a razor. Then we made some curved ones —kris,-tbey’re called —for the Malay people. “Nowadays, we make them mostly for the British cavalry in India —quite straightforward work once you get the temperature all right. Machines can do the work in one heating. I give my swords as many as twenty heatings before -I them right-” . -