One for a buddy. >>> One for G4

Well it's just a quick shot of the two.

The top Shallot Knife is for a very good friend of mine that I consider to be my brother.
We lived in the same home and cooked 100's of meals together for over 7-years; he is an amazing chef and person.
He now lives in Los Angeles and had ordered a knife from me, so this one will be going off to him tomorrow.

The bottom is a Camp-Chef-Fighter.
I did one similar to this sometime back and had another blade forged and hanging around the studio begging to be finished.
Part of my flow on the road to G4 was a promise to myself to clear my bench of older projects first..
....not sure that was the best idea, but I feel like I am getting organized & less cluttered in the shop of older ideas.....still...., I have always liked this design & is a sweet knife that can certainly take care of business!
I hope you enjoy the image.

Two Petite Gyuto Chef Knives

Two new ones of the bench. Both of these came out really nice.
The top knife with the walnut handle & rosewood inlay has a singing blade... Awesome!

The little petite gyuto exhibits some tulip wood w/ bloodwood inlay.
This is the first time using tulip wood and boy is it neat stuff.

Both are forged to shape out of 1084-m with satin finish.
the medium-small gyuto is 11.50" OAl
the petite gyuto is is 10.50" OAL.
...& now that I see them side-by-side, I wish I had done the blind pin on the small one as well.

I hope you enjoy the image.

-DON:)

Deluxe Shallot Knife

This Shallot Knife is a real beauty. It was created as a special order for a customer who liked the looks of a blade I created with a mustard finish that had been polished back and re-etched, so this was done applied to this knife. The customer also wanted their initials engraved into the blade and custom carved handle....so they got the whole works.

This particular Shallot knife is actually a Jumbo Shallot. This means that it was forged out of 3/16" thick material rather than the 1/8" material that the original Shallot Knives were designed to be created out of. This makes this a robust and yet compact chef knife. The blade steel is 1084-m and the handle material is Kingwood. OAL of this knife is 11.5" with a 6.5" blade.

Thanks for taking a look:)

Wet Forging Blowing the Scale Off

 Even though I make my chef knives in an entirely different way than the Japanese do, there is still much to learn from them! I was watching some videos of modern Japanese smiths creating chef knives and saw them near the end of the forging cycle placing some water on the anvil.

I realized that this was nothing new and has been done for centuries, but for me it was a real leap forward in that I forge all of my blades to about 90% of their final geometry and remove the scale by means of a hand stone and water, then draw-file the final geometry. 

Having less scale formulated throughout the forging process is a real bonus. 

I shot this video of myself "Blowing the Scale Off" of a large 10"+ Chef Knife Blade. 

This video represents a beginning for me in presenting information about my approach as a bladesmith specializing in chef knives.

Below the video a shot of the first two blades out of my new furnace which shows some fairly-clean, freshly forged blades, that represent this process of "Blowing the Scale Off" using water on the anvil. And another shot of how I descale by blades...pretty simple and yet effective. 

And finally a comparative shots: the top blade where I used no water on the anvil and progressing down to the bottom blade that came out practically scale-free!

Enjoy!  -DON:)

Bloodwood Chef Knife

This one is fresh out of the shop and is one of the few blades I have done with a fully hardened blade & satin finish.

OAL is 11,3/8" with a forged-to-shape 6" blade out of Aldo's 1095.
The handle is some nice Bloodwood with tulip-wood inlay, a blind-pin hiding under the small inlay.

This knife is light and quick in the hand & would certainly be a wonderful addition to any kitchen.
The classic French Knife Blade Pattern can do plenty of amazing cutting and detail work too. A cool size for daily meals for sure.

As with all my knives it comes with one of my trademark slip sheaths and makers certificate.

Thanks for looking. -DON:)       This knife is currently available.

Forge Building: Custom Forge Floor, AKA> "The Chanel"

Greetings everybody.

I feel compelled to talk about aspects of propane forges and how to possibly increase the plyability of your furnace and to protect the work-piece as well.

I forge all of my knives knives very close-to-shape.
This skill was passed down to me by my mentor Tai Goo. This means that about 90% of the blades geometry & shapes are created by the forging process while the steel is hot, using hammer and anvil.

Since I make lots of chef knives, the resulting work-piece can get quite thin at the edges, especially near the end of the forging process. Forging such a blade is a challenge and there are some aspects of creating cutlery like this using a propane powered forge that can be negatives.

I have developed a style that perhaps is all my own in terms of how I create my knives.
The equipment I use is not all that different than what others use, however, in my forge have created something that I think may really be of use to other smiths. I call it the channel.

In my old forge one was created and in my new forge it was a must have.
Basically it is a recess in the floor of the forge that you can either place the blades edge or the spine into, all depending on where you are in the forging process.

The benefits are really apparent when you start forging thin blades very close to shape.

#1 You can "hide" the edge from the main flame-source as you got close to finishing the blade.

#2 You can heat just the spine when a wooden baton is needed to get the tip back in it's proper alignment. Heating just the spine makes it possible to do this without buckling the thin edge.

#3 It work amazingly well for the final normalizing cycle

#4 Since there is an edge to "the channel" you can prop the blade up to selectively heat the area near the choil...which on chef knives (and other blades as well) is one area that takes careful attention since this is where the blade transitions to the handle.

A new refinement to my existing program was gifted to me by David Star of Chile Forge , it was a piece of kiln shelving. David knows his forges very well & had some good intuition about how this  would relate to my idea of "the channel" and the new forge's burner set-up and .

I have included a few images of the forge just coming up to temp with the strip of kiln shelving in place and away from the side of "the channel" so you can see how this helps.

Next I have included two shots of knives in process with the forge up to temp.
In the first image a stick-tang chef knife in a position where I am drawing out the bevels about mid-way down the blade.
In the second image, a full tang chef knife in position to draw out the material near the choil.
Notice how even the heat is in this second image. 
The strip of kind shelving is really doing it's job in conjunction with "the channel".

And finally a quick shot of a small blade being normalized after final forging was done. A small bit of hardwood was placed in the furnace to help keep a very rich atmosphere for this part of the process.

I will continue to take images that illustrate more about this feature in my furnace so please come back and visit!

Thanks for looking:) & do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about "the channel".

A New Forge for My Studio

I have been in the process of building two new furnaces for the last 3-4-months. All has been going well doing much of the work here and there, when I could, at a fellow knifemakers shop that has all the welders and that larger space for lay-out.
However, with my work-flow I just found it difficult to get them finished & I have two shows coming up this year G4 being the first of them, CaliforniaCuston Knife Show being the second.
SO I really had to stay focused on my orders and show schedule.
My custom forge & HT furnace would have to wait until a later date!
Since I generally put anywhere from 40-60-hours in each one of my chef or camp knives I need all the time I can get just creating! Yes I am crazy!

So >>>> I talked to Dave and Stacie Starr of Chile Forge and they did some custom work for me on one of their models.
I have to say that Stacie and Dave are among the best people I have ever worked with.
They are both highly skilled at communication and really delivered AAA+service and built an amazing forge that is performing really well so far!

I will have more images to follow,
but here is a shot of the forge being set up and another one with it with the burners in and waiting to be rolled out to the apron of my studio for firing;
you can see my old forge to the left that I still am using for sub-critical heat treatments.One last shot of the custom floor I had them do for me with a full tang chef knife blade in process.

Other than the custom floor, I had them add a Needle Valve just after the main psi valve.
....and I will most likely make an entirely new post about the performance characteristics possible with amazingly well designed burners (like they create at Chile Forge), and how to optimize performance using a simple valve like this!

So far I am stoked !!! and am now off to my studio to do some more work....
.....but I just had to share this with you all. It represents a pretty big $-investment in my bladesmithing practice and I am really happy with this beauty!
It is much longer than my old forge and has more capacity for creating camp knives and full size chef knives as well.

A BIG THANKS to all of you out there that bought knives & helped make this happen for me!
enjoy the images..more to come.

-DON:)

 

Second installment of how the forge is doing:

 I have been having fun with the New one though. Slowly working on the adjustments, but I am happy with the few pieces I have forged and heat treated out of it so far.

Below is a quick shot of the first two blades forged in it. You can see that I can get it running pretty clean with minimal scale happening.

 Like I said, I am working on two of my own furnace designs for my shop. one will be a muffle furnace for doing heat treatment, the other will be another main forge.

SO, the cool thing about this new Chilli Forge, is that it's size allows for a muffle-tube to be place into the chamber on stickers to let heat get all the way around it. The advantages are three-fold.
#1 It can isolate the work-piece from the primary flame-source thus diminishing the resulting decarb that is often associated with soaking & final escalation before quench.
#2 Creates a significantly more even heat; which is a must for myself in that I am making lots of chef knives that are forged to shape and are quite thin at time of hardening.
#3 A very rich atmosphere can be obtained by placing a piece of hardwood on the tube to get burning, then slide to the back of the tube. This really rich atmosphere just steps-up the anti-decarb-program to a level that is really amazing and works wonderfully.

A Shot of the tube just place into the forge to see how it fits.
And the very first test-run of the muffle tube to see what is what in terms of length of heat.
Below, running a bit HOT for HT, but I had this large Persian bowie I already had forged & decided to use it to see what was possible..... AND as a result, the blade just got one more normalizing cycle....just for kicks.

 And the first two blades I heat treated came out really clean with no dacarb and arrow-straight!
I Heat treated a few more blades this evening and they all came out amazingly well.
>> Straight and nice.
Thanks for letting me share my excitement with you all.