Did you know that many of our tools – especially the fancier ones that come in limited batches – are handmade in small family workshops? Very often that means the whole family working together, with the continuation of the business depending on one or more of the next generation being apprenticed and then – hopefully – gaining the necessary skills to take over, like their fathers and grandfathers before them. It’s an increasingly rare situation, and it always warms our hearts to find families like the Tanakas (pictured) working in harmony to create fantastic tools like the Niwaki Pro Secateurs range.

Your father might not have taught you to forge carbon steel or laminate a blade, but no doubt he passed on something useful that qualifies him for a little fanfare on Father’s Day (15 June).

In Japan (and perhaps in the UK), alcohol is the most popular gift for 父の日 (“chichi no hi”) / Father’s Day, but if you need help thinking of something a touch healthier, check out our Father’s Day gift edit (below):