NORA 10" Chef #1076 - XHP Stainless Steel
$ 454.00
Our take on the classic Chef knife. This is an extremely versatile knife that is a jack-of-all-trades worker and one of the single most important knives in a kitchen.
Every one of our knives is numbered and unique. This particular NORA knife, number #1076, is a special one. This knife represents some of our best work to date and has all the bells and whistles you would want while being simple and elegant in design.
To start, we added a full distal taper to this blade to help balance out the weight of the blade in comparison to the handle. This keeps the knife from feeling overly top heavy. The blade is also ground thin both for performance and also to keep the weight manageable for a long use work environment. This combo is well suited for the CTS XHP stainless steel which is an excellent stainless that can take being thin but is also is very durable at that thinness which is hard to find in other stainless steels. Truly, this one is meant to be a workhorse.
The knife has been handled with a beautiful dyed box elder wood that has hues of both silvery gray and dark blue. The wood was dyed and stabilized by the best in the business, K & G in Arizona, so you can be assured you will have a beautiful, durable handle for year and years to come. Wood stabilization is an added feature that we offer with our knives. Wood that is stabilized has been injected with a clear acrylic resin under a vacuum process. Stabilization helps to minimize, if not eliminate, any cracking, warping, shrinkage and/or expanding of the material. Stabilized wood will not absorb water and is generally impervious to oils. The process helps to ensure your knife has a long lifespan in the kitchen.
Also note the subtle design in the handle which is accented with very thin stripes of black g10 and coppper. The details are subtle but a lot of thought was put into the design. The cut of the accent piece, for instance, was cut at a radius as opposed to a straight line to curve more gracefully with the knife and the handle shape. The very thin stripes of black and copper are also carried through the liner next to the blade. To bring it all together we used copper pins to match the small accent stripes.
Our Chef knife design can easily accommodate both a pinch grip and a full hold. It is a good choice for those with larger hands or those who prefer a full hold on the handle. Our design is also excellent for those who like a rocking motion while cutting. Note that this handle was hand shaped with care and formed into a classic "coke bottle" shape that helps position your hand comfortably around the handle both with a full grip and a pinch grip. You can reference the attached pictures to get a better idea of what we are talking about.
In regards to the steel, this blade is composed of CTS-XHP stainless steel which is a premium stainless steel that we rarely offer because it is fairly hard to source. This steel has excellent durability for a stainless steel, even when ground thin as mentioned above. It also can be taken to a fairly high hardness at 62 HRC which helps with edge retention and sharpness. Besides this, the actual stain resistance on this steel is high compared to some of the other stainless steels we use. This may sound almost silly to someone reading this but we deal with many stainless steels which are stainless but just barely and sometimes have a tendency to form small rust spots. This is not the case with XHP which is nice in regards to the lower maintenance. In general, this is an excellent steel choice that combines great performance with heightened durability.
{ Knife Details }
Metal: CTS XHP Stainless Steel
Blade Length: 10 inches
Total Length: 15.25 inches
Handle Material(s): Dyed Box Elder Burl, Copper Pins, Black G10 Liners, Black G10 & Copper Stripes
Rockwell Hardness: 62
Grind Type: Full Flat Hybrid
Weight: .68 lbs. / 10.8 oz