California Custom Knives: Finally Back at the Forge!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Finally Back at the Forge!

Well after taking a long break I am getting some work done:)

I had the preforms sitting around for over a year now...and have been meaning to get them forged....and finally did. I forged one each day for the past 3-days.

My initial thought with these was to do three different finishes to the blades to have as an example of the different levels of possibilities for my knives. Now I am not 100% sure what I will do, it's just the artist in me. At this time, I think I will do two with Honyaki clay heat treatments, and one just a straight edge quench with possibly a simple satin finish.

Stay tuned & I will add in images and comments to this post as I go along on these.

-DON:)

2 comments:

UnknownFebruary 10, 2014 at 3:43 AM
may i know how to order your custom made knife? the middle one looks fit to my needs. please email me at you_share@yahoo.com so i can ask more. thanks
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Henrik PopowskiFebruary 24, 2014 at 12:29 AM
Hi, These custom knifes are beautiful and as solid as rock. This is a hardworking tools that are easy on the hand. See Handcrafted knives
Thanks
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Perfection and Beauty

What is a Hand Made Knife?

I specialize in making Heirloom Quality Knives.
They are made by hand.
This means that, while I do now own a few power tools compared to the first 7-years when I had virtually little to speak of, other than a hand drill and then a drill press; I now own a grinder and a power hammer; and yet, the knives are still created with hand-held practices, using fairly simple tools for the most part.
All of my knives are designed and created by me. I am creating some stock reduction knives, but other than that....
Each blade is forged hot on an anvil to 90% of the shape that it will be when finished. This takes Skill and lots of attention to accomplish. Adding in a TW-90 grinder helped with post stock reduction heat treatment, a process that has allowed me to refine the edge geometry on my chef knives to a place where I am very pleased with the results.
Then each knife is tested for edge-flex and toughness. Some of the testing phase can be seen in the banner image above, where after the edge-flex test I chop on very hard wood.
If the knives still shave hair after this testing then they are good to go!
Both of the two chef knives in that banner image passed with flying colors and will be cleaned-up and have handles placed on them. And eventually go into the kitchens or campsites of the new owners.
Knives made my hand are beautiful!