"The Special Ladies" ~ French Knives

 I forged and Heat Treated these blades about 18-months ago & they have been waiting to be finished all that time! I stared out to make two sets of three knives, a paring, this medium size French/Utility Knife and a full-size Chef knife.........well as I was making the others they just kept getting bought out of the studio before I could ever finalize a whole set...but these two blades remained.

So here they are & I am glad I waited as I adapted a different style handle to these borrowed from the Shallot Knife design. I created two beautiful slicing knives recently with a similar style handle & these were the follow up to those two knives. I think they came out really nice.

These Special Lady French knives are 11" OAL with 6.25" blades of 1095 with beautifully polished blades revealing Gunome Hamon.

Both are desert ironwood with ironwood inlay and detail carving.

I hope you enjoy the images.

-DON

California Custom Knife Show

Greetings All,

  I just wanted to announce that I will be exhibiting the knives in the images below and also some that are not posted here at the:

California Custom knife Show

October 6 & 7 2012

I invite you to come out and see what is available and meet many other makers, 

and have a great time!

I hope to see you there. -DON:) 

 

Modern French Knife

Forged out of 1095 high carbon tool steel and featuring a new finish for me I am calling "rustic". The finish though called rustic is actually quite refined. I did a mustard finish, polished it back and then re-etched the blade to show the temper-line than polished the entire blade. A long process that resulted in a very beautiful blade surface.

OAL is 13" with a 8" blade.

This knife features a composite handle in a traditional Japanese styling utilizing golden desert ironwood and very nice birds eye maple, with matching ironwood inlay.

This Camp Knife is perfect for the culinary enthusiast or professional chef!

Perfect for all your culinary adventures:)

A knife for me....!

Well It only took me 6-years to finally make myself a knife!...one to keep for reals!

Anyhow, this knife was a journey, that headed was intended to be a large integral chef knife.

I started with a 1" square bar that I forged down at my buddy Jerry's shop. Jerry has a hydrolic press.....so i figured it would be great to diminish this large bar down a biut there first, then finish the forging back at my shop.

Well.....since I am not used to using a press, I got what was to be the Bolster-part too thin.

This piece of steel...intended to be a knife, out of that 1" square 1095 bar, sat in my studio for over a year. Finally I cut off the handle and integral bolster, leaving a blade-shaped piece of steel. This to sat for another 6-months..... I finally said what the heck, I will make myself a knife out of it. So I cut the handle shape into the blade, and forged-in the taper to the tang. And it sat again for 4-months, because I was not sure I would like the foat bottom to the handle. I thought it would be uncomfortable, and was reluctant to finisht eh knfei at all.

BUT I figured why not just heat treat it, and finish it anyhow....since I was going to keep it, no one would see it and I would have a perfectly fine knife of my own to use in my kitchen, a place where I spend lots of time.

So I finished it.

Time goes by and I love this knife! I have many friends that are avid cooks and some professional chef friends that visited my kitchen when I would have food events, All fo them loved that knife!

...I I made it part of my regular line-up.

I have added in some more recent images of knives I have made, patterened after the original forged blade. Only a few have been forged sice then, and none out of 1" square bar.

This new Model is called The Personal Chef.

Ehibits a blade with 7" of cutting edge
and the OAL is 12.25"
Plenty of clearance for knuckles over the cutingboard for detail cuts, and is weighted just for me:)
Featuring some side-cut Westinghouse Linen Micarta with peened bronze pins and detail carving.

I hope you enjoy seeing it.

More will be made and mostly all will be stock reduction and be in stainless steel.
>>> See the new images blow this original posting to see some of the new ones, that were stock reduction 52100, the next generation will all by as I said, in stainless steel.

Thanks for looking.

Blessings of Health and Goodness to You All

-DON:)

And...because this started as an integral, I posed this shot with one the largest integral knives I have forgd to date. 1 16.5" long slicer I made for s customer:) You can read more about the journey in making that big slicer HERE.

 

A Few Shots of the Personal Chef Model in it's new incarnation. Stay Tuned for more to come!

Top image is a father and son set I made for my massage therapist (who is also a chef) and his son who he is teaching to cook. The smaller knife is my Tribal Utility Model.

And here is the only XL Personal Chef Made to date with an 8.25" blade. 

 

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

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:)

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.