My name is Tim Erik Ehmke, but everyone calls me Tim Klinge. I am 17 years old, I do my Abitur at the sports school in Cottbus, play handball in the Oberliga Ostsee-Spree and have a passion besides handball: knife-forging.
When I first entered my workshop, it wasn’t like today. There was nothing. No forging fire, no anvil, no machines. Nothing. Except for a little sanding buck, which had already passed its best days and which I was to turn to the ground by weeks of grinding.
In the workshop I built my first knives from everything I could find in my parents’ yard. Nothing was safe from me. Old saw blades, files and worn-out parts of my father’s agricultural machinery fell victim to me. I started to educate myself on the Internet and improve my skills. Because I had to teach myself everything, I also had to pay a lot of tuition.
Through Easter, Christmas and birthday money I was able to finance my first machines and thus lay the foundation for my current workshop. When I sold my first knives, I started reinvesting everything to make better knives. And now I have my own company, the “Tim Klinge Messermanufaktur”, a “hammer” workshop and do what I enjoy.