It’s official – my first two customers have received their new knives!!
One was a 6" utility knife with cherry handle and personalized with the owner’s initials on the back of the blade.
The other was a 170mm santoku with curly maple handle, and the buyer requested red detail along the tang and around the rear pin.
The pictures don’t do justice to the iridescent quality of the curly maple – after five coats of tung oil, the shimmery “curls” appear to move in the wood as you turn the knife in the light, like looking at a polished tiger-eye stone.
Thanks! Each one takes a total of about 15 hours (roughly – I haven’t tracked the specific hours spent on each step so far). Right now I’ve got another seven blades ready for handles, so each of those have maybe 10 hours apiece invested. Besides the cherry and curly maple, I’ll be using black walnut, African mahogany, and rosewood for handles. I also have a few odd pieces of golden oak, hickory, ipe, cocobolo, and olive that I’ll try to coax handle-sized pieces from.
Besides those two styles, I’m making 155mm santoku, 8" chef, and 210mm & 240mm gyutos.
Simply beautiful! I like the little symbol you put on the handle.
Walnut will be my choice! Olive is lovely too.
What is the criteria for the quality of the wood chosen to make the handles?
For example if someone has a beloved tree, they chop a piece to send and ask you to make them a knife, what quality will you accept and reject?
The wood has to be “stablized” in the woodworking sense, meaning that it has to be completely free of moisture. Depending on the thickness of the piece(s), that can take as long as a year after cutting.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. So 10 knives would take a total of about 150 hrs. It’s all hand-work, so, for example, each handle takes about 3 hrs to shape from rough block to ergonomic contours.
Hi Salsailsa, I stumbled across the concept about 10 yrs ago, and it didn’t take long to realize that it was a great meshing of my artistic design creativity and manufacturing engineering career history. No, I don’t forge my blades, I order the alloy in sheets/strips and hand cut each blade to my own pattern.
I’ve been watching you inch forward for the past few years. It’s great to see you go beyond your prototype to finished products. Great project. BTW, I hope you’ve kept your “day job.”
Hi Gourmanda, thanks! The curly maple, rosewood, and African mahogany all came from Woodcraft. I’m using D2 for the steel, and having it hardened to 61 HRC.
Each one takes a total of about 15 hours (roughly – I haven’t tracked the specific hours spent on each step so far). Right now I’ve got another seven blades ready for handles, so each of those have maybe 10 hours apiece invested. Besides the cherry and curly maple, I’ll be using black walnut, African mahogany, and rosewood for handles. I also have a few odd pieces of golden oak, hickory, ipe, cocobolo, and olive that I’ll try to coax handle-sized pieces from.
