Friday, August 24, 2012

Falcon's Eye Chef & Grand Hamon Chef Knives

These represent two of my favorite medium & full-size chef knives coming to G4 with me.

On the top: "Falcon's Eye" Chef Knife
is forged to shape out of Aldo's W2 & features a snazzy differential quench with a bit of a visual-talon in it, some Antique Ivory Linen Micarta w/ gem-grade serpentine inlay and detail carving.

On the bottom:
"Grand Hamon" Chef Knife
forged to shape out of Aldo's 1095 with clay heat treatment & nice hamon, exquisite desert ironwood handles.

I hope you enjoy the images.

-DON



Monday, August 13, 2012

Paring Knives for 2012

I have made quite a few smaller knives over the years & have made knives I considered to be paring knives...but were really more like small utility sized blades in the end.
Being that I am 6'6" tall and have large hands, a small knife to me can be a larger knife to someone else.
A friend and collector who uses my chef knives in his kitchen every day order a paring knife & knowing that he already had what I considered to be a paring knife in his using collection I really had to come up with a "Real Paring Knife".  I am grateful for Scott, for his support of my work, and for inspiring me to create these fine little knives.

Using an existing paring knife design, I morphed it into what I considered a classic paring knife style. Originally I thought of doing some inlay on these to hide the center pin, but decided against it.

These are all made out of 3/32" thick 1095 and are among the very first stock reduction knives I have made to date. Not much material to bother forging on these  & I was able to make a more consistently repeatable design as a result. Overall length is approximately 8.25" with the blades being about 4.25" of cutting edge.

Scott is getting the one with the beautiful Spalted Desert Ironwood, the one in the vintage Orange paper Micarta is coming to The Gathering with me & the other two (one in Ebony and the other in vintage black-stripe Micarta) will be coming to the California Custom Knife Show.

Below are images going backwards in time to the beginning of the concept drawing I did for these paring knives, to a shot of them just after the hardening process, to the finished knives.

I hope you enjoy the images.

-DON:)








Sunday, August 5, 2012

A Few New Ones out of the Studio

I hope you enjoy the image of my latest work.

___________________

The center slicer was the last order I had to complete before I could totally dedicate all my time to knives for G4 and the California Custom Knife Show in So. Cal.

I think it is one of the most beautiful knives I have made to date and represents some of the first of Aldo's W2 bar stock I have worked with so far. I hope my customer will be happy with it!

Top to bottom:
Little Camp Cleaver, forged to shape 1065 African Blackwood with Lemonwood inlay & rosin impregnated woven cotton wrapping.

Slicer, forged to shape W2 with nice no-clay hamon & composite handle of Mesquite and rosewood with matching inlay.

Integral Utility Hunter, forged to shape Don Hanson's .75" W2 round bar, featuring some nice desert ironwood with detail caving and ebony inlay.


 Another shot of the slicer.
This also represents the first time I adapted a handle style designed for a full tang knife (the Shallot Knife in this case) to a stick tang configuration.