A Sheffield collection established by Ken Hawley at Kelham Island Museum has gone viral and is playing a key role in keeping interest in Sheffield Heritage skills alive .

The Trust has more than 100,000 objects including tools, cutlery, photographs, paper archives and ephemera related to Sheffield light trades.

As a result of two successful Heritage Lottery Projects, “Name on a Knife Blade” and "Sheffield Treasures“, the collection is close to cataloguing over 50,000 items. This includes probably the largest collection of planes, saws, micrometers and table knives in the world .

One of Ken Hawley`s legacies was that he captured on film many of the last craftspeople in Sheffield, and also tried to recreate some of the craft skills himself.

The Trust created a You Tube channel that now has over 80 videos and talks on Sheffield skills and companies. The average visits to the site were about 8,000 a month and at the start of October and had amassed a total of 450,000 hits.

The last six weeks has seen an explosion of activity with the site sometimes receiving 20,000 hits a day and the number of visits now has exceeded 1.1 million. The two most popular videos are of Ken Hawley recreating making a metal file (357,000 views) industry and a video of Footprint Tools (157,000 views).

File making was a massive Industry in the city and the good news is that footprint tools are still going strong. New videos are constantly being added to the site and recent talks about George Bishop, John Watts, Allen and Darwin, the Atkin Brothers, Martin and Hall and Stanley Tools are all proving popular. To access just search Ken Hawley You Tube Channel

The other digital tool, “Name on a Knife Blade “ from the Hawley Collection, allows people to search to see if their family surname is on a Sheffield knife blade and also enable people to read about the history of any Sheffield Cutlery Company.

The site gets over 250 visits a day from all over the world and has exceeded over half a million visits . Recent addition have seen all the scissor and razor manufacturers added. This work has been made possible by the generous donation of the history of many of the companies by Geoffrey Tweedale author of the Directory of Sheffield Cutlery Manufacturers .To access visit www.hawleyknives.com

The collection continues to grow recently we had a gold plated James Neil hacksaw donated , acquired some Graham Clayton pocket knives and a large two handled saw. The Gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday and volunteers are available Tuesday to Friday to answer enquiries and accept donations.