Quintin Fawcett, Grant Fawcett and Eddie Fawcett (left to right) Photo: RNZ/ Samuel Rillstone
Rural New Zealand is home to many niche businesses brimming with Number 8 wire ingenuity and passion and if you poke your head in the door of a Wairarapa workshop, you'll find one.
For the past 40 years, three generations of the Fawcett family have been making racing axes and saws for competitive woodchoppers from their small factory on the outskirts of Masterton.
They have some flash new computer technology now, but the secret recipe remains essentially the same as when Eddie Fawcett started the business in 1982.
"Cheeky as," he told Country Life, describing how he started in business as a saw doctor.
Using an old shearing grinder he then began sharpening farmers' axes and moved into making them for competitive woodchoppers. Tuatahi Racing Axes and Saws developed from there.
Eddie, the son of an axeman, started chopping as a 15-year-old and, now in his 80s, received a Queen's Service Medal for services to the sport in 2019.
"I'm totally (into) woodchopping ... everything to do with woodchopping around the world."
His son Grant and grandson Quintin share his love of the sport - Grant representing New Zealand at one stage and Quintin coming up the ranks too.
Grant brought Quintin along to woodchopping competitions when he was a baby, and, as a small boy himself, Grant would also watch Eddie in the ring.
"We'd travel all around New Zealand going to the shows - little towns ... or little paddocks, that there'd be a chop at," Grant said.
"I managed to sit on the axe-box and I was told not to move."
The competitors are like a big family.
"You hate each other for that 30 seconds or whatever you're on the log but you know everyone. Ninety nine percent of them are good buggers, just like any sport." Quintin said.
Quintin Fawcett demonstrates his woodchopping skills Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
Tuatahi exports saws and axes to North America, Europe and Australia, importing its own recipe of steel from a small forge in Europe and handcrafting the tools in the rustic Masterton workshop, using some of Eddie's original processes.
"In Sydney, which is the Wimbledon of woodchopping, Tuatahi axes over the last 20 years would have won all the championship events except one," Eddie said.
Understanding the needs of competitors is imperative to being a successful axemaker and sawyer, Grant said.
"Unless you're competing and you've got a total love for it, it doesn't work. You've got to have that passion for it.
"A lot of the people, I know who they are, who I'm making that axe for, so I know that person and when I see them again they're going to tell me how that blade's gone."
Customers are prepared to wait up to four years for a Tuatahi saw, Quintin said.
Grant forges and finishes the axes. Like all three Fawcett axemen, he has chopped competitively. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
The business took a hit during Covid when competitions worldwide dried up, so the Fawcett family came up with a new axe for everyday use to keep afloat.
Competitions have started up again and their cutting edge and pricey tools are heading off around the world, as before, from their simple shed in Wairarapa.
Quintin beats an axe blade during the forging process Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
"Keeping those traditional roots but moving it into the 21st century," Quintin said.
Listening to others has been the key to success, according to Eddie.
"I'm a fella that listens, I watch and I listen. There's been lots of people that have given me advice and I haven't rubbished it.
"It's hard work making a top axe."
Photo: RNZ/ Samuel Rillstone
