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A 71-year-old former Tasmanian fisherman is selling off his last Damascus knives before closing his workshop for good

After 40 years at sea and 12 years forging the knife he'd always wanted to own, Ray Hollister can no longer hold a hammer. We looked into the story of the knife no storm has ever broken.

A letter from Ray Hollister, blacksmith and former fisherman, Strahan

In an 18 square metre workshop overlooking the harbour, a few dozen knives are still lined up on the bench he built himself. Damascus knives with ocean-made handles, each one unique, each one the last of its kind.

The reason he's stopping? His hands. Forty years at sea have left their mark: severe arthritis in both wrists, fingers that tremble at the wrong moment, a precision that fades blade after blade. "My doctor told me to stop the forge two years ago," he confides. "I held on as long as I could. Now, it's over."

Before closing the workshop for good, the old fisherman is selling off his last pieces at $149 instead of $299. This isn't a marketing play. It's the end of a story that began in the middle of a Bass Strait storm more than forty years ago.

Our investigation reveals how a knife forged to survive the ocean became the toughest kitchen knife ever made in Tasmania.

The knife that survived forty years at sea

Strahan, winter 1983. Ray Hollister is 29 years old. His trawler is three days into a run when a gale gets up off Cape Sorell. Six metre waves. The deck disappearing under water. Nets tangled in the prop, the engine coughing.

"I needed to cut a 28mm rope, fast, in the dark, with a sea throwing me every which way," he tells us. "My knife snapped halfway through. We nearly copped it."

That night, back in port, he made a decision: he'd forge the knife no shop sold. A knife built for the sea. Not for shop windows.

He spent his winters learning. Books on forging, an old knifemaker in Hobart who taught him the basics, failed attempts, burns, blades binned. He wasn't chasing beauty. He was chasing reliability.

Damascus came naturally. Not for the look of the wavy patterns, even if they're there. For what the folded layers do to the steel: a resistance to twisting a solid-bar blade will never have. "A solid blade snaps. Damascus bends, then comes back." He forged his first real knife in 1987. He slipped it into his oilskin pocket. He never put it down again.

For the next twenty years, that knife was everywhere. It opened thousands of fish: flathead, snapper, kingfish, tuna. It cut nylon nets, mooring lines, salt-glazed ropes. It sliced bread on deck when they were two days from port. His wife Margaret would borrow it when they cooked together, and she couldn't understand how a knife could feel that right in the hand.

"It never let me down," Ray says simply. "In forty years, it never needed replacing. Just sharpening."

The handle the ocean spent forty years making

When Ray retired from fishing in 2012, something shifted. The ocean wasn't under his feet anymore, but he couldn't bring himself to walk away from it. He started walking the beaches instead. And picking things up.

Not polished glass. Heavier things. Fragments of fossil coral that storms sometimes tear off the reefs along the Tasmanian coast and throw up on the sand around Macquarie Harbour. Dense as stone, streaked with red and ochre. And wood, but not any wood.

"There's a wreck in the harbour. The Black Marlin, a trawler that went down in the 60s," he explains. "The timber that washes up from that wreck now and again, it isn't normal wood. Forty years under the water, the salt has soaked into every fibre. It's become something else, harder than oak, rot proof, with a colour you won't find anywhere else."

He started pairing these two materials on the handles of his knives. Fossil coral for the guard. Shipwreck timber for the body of the grip. Every piece is unique because every fragment is. No two handles alike. No two knives the same.

The result grips beautifully in the hand: the natural weight of the coral, the dry roughness of salt-soaked wood. Even with wet hands. Even with fish blood on them. Even in the cold of July.

"People who hold this knife for the first time, they don't put it down," says Margaret, his wife. "They turn it in every direction. They're looking for the seam, for the plastic. There isn't any."

Why he can never make more

It's the question everyone asks. And the answer is simple, and final.

The materials don't exist anymore.

The fossil coral Ray used to find on the beach is gone. The storms of the last few years have shifted the reefs. What used to wash up doesn't wash up anymore. His last proper haul goes back to the winter of 2021. He reckons he salvaged, in ten years, enough for about two hundred handles. He's used almost all of them.

The timber from the Black Marlin is the same story. "The wreck is breaking up. What was still recoverable, I picked up piece by piece over years. There won't be any more." The few pieces left in his workshop, that's everything there will ever be.

And his hands. The arthritis is progressing. Forging Damascus demands hundreds of controlled hammer blows, millimetric precision at the quenching stage, a sensitivity in the fingers you don't get back. "I tried to start again three months ago," he admits. "I made two blades. They weren't any good. I put the tools down."

What's left on the bench is everything that will ever exist of this knife.

Margaret and Ray use one every day

What surprised Ray himself is that this knife made for the sea has become the best kitchen knife he's ever owned.

"Once I retired, I really got into cooking. And the same knife I had at sea, it's perfect in the kitchen. It slides along the bones, it goes through joints, it cuts vegetables without crushing them. A normal chef's knife next to it is scrap metal."

Margaret confirms with a smile. "I pinched it off him three times to do my fish in the oven. Now it's officially mine as well." She uses it for abalone in season, for crayfish, for the Sunday roast. "It never slips in your hand. Even with fingers slick with butter, it stays put."

The Damascus blade holds its edge far longer than a classic blade. Ray hones it roughly every three months. "Once a season, that's all. A normal blade, you'd need to do it every week if you want it to actually cut."

The last pieces of a life between two worlds

On the workbench, the knives are waiting. Not hundreds. A few dozen, forged this autumn while he still had it in him. Each one with a small handwritten slip noting the blade number and the materials in the handle.

"I wanted every knife to have an identity," he says. "So the person who buys it knows where the timber comes from, where the coral comes from. These are pieces of the ocean. They deserve that."

The orders coming in since word spread around Strahan, then across Tasmania, come from everywhere. Retired fishermen who recognise something. Cooks looking for a knife for life. Children looking for a gift for a 60 year old father who loves the coast. People who can't quite say why, but who know this knife is different.

"A bloke from Launceston wrote to me: I just wanted to own something that actually came from the sea," Ray says. "That's exactly it."

When these knives are gone, there won't be any more. The workshop closes. The coral isn't coming back. The timber of the Black Marlin already belongs to the past.

Click here to claim Ray Hollister's knife >>

How to order before it's too late

Ray Hollister doesn't do restocks. He can't. Every knife you see on the page is literally one of the last that will ever exist. Not a marketing line, physical reality.

The price has been cut in half: $149 instead of $299. A discount that reflects one thing: he wants these knives to go into hands that will actually use them, not sleep in a drawer. "I'd rather they cost you half a dinner out than end up in a box."

Each knife ships with its handwritten care instructions and its blade identification number. Ray guarantees every knife: satisfied or refunded within 30 days. "If someone gets one and isn't convinced, they send it back. It's never happened, but the offer stands."

The first feedback from local buyers speaks for itself: "You can feel this is a real tool, not a decoration", "The handle is unbelievable, it's like it was made for my hand", "This is the first knife I've ever wanted to keep for the rest of my life".

Stock is going fast. In a few weeks, there won't be any left.

CLICK HERE TO CLAIM RAY'S KNIFE AND GET 50% OFF

Ray Hollister, Forge Workshop, Strahan, Tasmania

Marine Knife

✅ Damascus blade, 67 layers, hand-forged

✅ Three times sharper than an ordinary knife

✅ Unique handle, shipwreck timber and marine resin

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