Everyone has a different process when creating.
We wanted to provide you a quick look at how our knives are made so you can see the progression from start to finish.
For us, it starts with an idea put to paper. We try to draw the knife to scale to get a sense of proportion and size.
Using the drawing as inspiration, we design the knife on our computer.
Sometimes the knife looks similar to our drawing but often it morphs into something entirely different.
Example A...notice how what was up top turned into what is below.
Once the knife has been completely designed, we send out for the blade to be cut by our steel supplier.
We use different steel depending on the knife being made, but the majority of our knives are made with AEB-L steel, a Swedish razor steel with excellent edge retention and stability.
Our blanks arrive without an edge, we grind those at a later time.
The raw cut steel needs to be hardened in order to function optimally as a kitchen knife. As such, each knife blank will undergo a heat treat process which will bring the knife to optimal hardness for its intended purpose.
For most of our knives, we heat treat to a Rockwell hardness between 60-62.
Once the blades have been heat treated, they are taken to the grinder where the first stages of the blade finishing begin.
Alongside the progression of our knife blank, we also work on the knife handle.
Some of our designs are done by hand and others, like this one, are designed on the computer.
We translate the design into G code for use on our CNC machine.
Once the file is loaded the machine goes to work cutting our handles.
It never gets old watching this amazing machine bring our ideas to life.
Once the handle has been cut from the wood and the knife blank properly hardened then the final task of fitting and finishing the knife begin.
Read more about our process in the upcoming PART 2 of this post.