Tribal Utility and Paring Set

A Big Thanks to Mike C. for inspiring the creation of my very first "Tribal Paring Knife"!

Mike requested to have one made to match the "Tribal Utility Knife" that I bought, and I think the results are pretty awesome!

So..... This being a first, I had to take a some nice images of the two knives. I may actually make another set similar to these someday soon, but for now, these are it, and they will be heading out tomorrow to their new home.

This paring knife has a very keen geometry and nimble-tip, thin and flexible at the tip for detail cuts of all sorts, on-par with what I believe a traditional paring knife blade should be like. Just see the detail shots of the tip of these two beauties to see what I mean....these two are all business, but dressed for success:)

If you want more details about the sized of the Tribal Utility and to see other models of Utility Knives I have created and can create, just click on the link and read-on:)

These two are created out of 1095 high carbon tool steel and a dressed in African Blackwood with Mesquite Inlay and rosin-impregnated 1mm woven cotton line. Each has a fine differential heat treatment and resulting Hamon.

I hope you enjoy seeing these images!

-DON:)

A Recreation of a Classic French Utility

I am So Very excited about this project!
This being the first knife in a series of recreations of classic French Cutlery.

This whole idea started when I was lucky enough to purchase an older Sabatier utility knife dating from the early 1940's.
I got it from a good friend who knows more about classic chef knives than anyone I have ever known.
He has been collecting & buying out old department store inventory-stock etc... for over 60-years.
I have learned so much from him about French, German, Spanish and American Cutlery.

Here in the USA there is little to no documentation about chef knife and butcher knife industry & history. Sure there are bits and pieces, but no one has ever created a solid historical-record to speak of.... (if anyone knows of such a thing, please message me the links and info)
...so Ralph G. is my go-to-guy for historical information at this time, and I will pick his brain for as long as I can!

Ralph told me that, "in over 60-years of collecting, this was the first Sabatier he had seen with a pointy blade in this size and handle configuration!" So I feel honored to own such a fine knife.
These knives with this old Alsastian-style handle were produced in the early part of last century.
Mostly distributed in region and rarely made it into the USA,
.....so as a result, not that many people have ever even seen one in person, however this style handle, if you look in old French Cook Books, is what you will see!

Hoping to be the first of Many......
......I was inspired to forge a recreation of this knife.... my version so to speak.

My thoughts are that,
.....these knives are so iconic, almost no-body even remembers them.
Our modern day take on Culinary-Arts in the USA is almost silly,..... and I feel is sorely-misguided by programs such as Hell's-Kitchen and Top-Chef, Beat Bobby Flay etc...
Modern Fine Cutlery for the kitchen has also taken a turn for towards the mundane and Mediocre.
And the majority of these knives not being made in the USA, and certainly not by hand.
ALL, and I mean ALL of the classic culinary knives of the past were hand-made! Most of them forged. Once-upon-a-time in the USA, we had hundreds of cutlery companies that mostly made chef and butcher knives! People have been asking for "hand-made-American steel" again......

So I figured what the heck,
I'll take a chance and make some of the old style knives,
the styles and patterns that have been used for a long, long time, and used hard, have proven themselves, and deserve to come to light again.
AND I hope to make my versions interesting! A tribute to the "glory-days" of Culinary Arts, When no-one really had TV ...because there was no such thing!

Over the next year or so.
Using modern materials and embellishing these knives with engraving and non-ferrous-inlay,
My plan is to do just that, re-create some beautifully embellished versions of some old French, Spanish and German Classics.

This is the first of them, and if this is any indication of how things will progress.....I am very excited!

I included some process images, because I was pretty stoked on how lucky I was to get a very accurate Hamon on this one, pretty-much about 95% of how the clay layed-up, which....
....for any who HT this way, you know all too well, it's a bit of a change/gamble to get "exactly what you want" and certainly not a precise thing much of the time.

I had this sweet piece of Old Westinghouse Micarta I chose to use.
Forged the blade out of some nice W2.
Spent a silly amount of time thinking........
The Handle-Fit to the tang was the best I had ever done on just about any knife! I was proud of that part on this one.
You can see it is registered into the front just a bit in the shot of the spine.
AND finally!
I had my good Friend Bill Rice do a beautiful Engraved Flower Motif on both sides with fine silver inlay in the center.
to accent the little-bit of my own simple carving around the pins.

Originally I had thought of doing the whole washer & peened-pin deal like the original, but decided that not only was it needed since this was not a slotted-tang like the original knife, but a stick-tang,
and since it was in Micarta, there really was almost no need for pins at all, but I wanted to remain faithful to the concept and did the little detail carvings to balance the pins aesthetically & I think it worked!

The overall Length of the knife I created is 11" with a 6 & 1/8" blade

I hope you enjoy seeing these process and final images of this beautiful knife!

-DON:)

Starting with a quick shot of the Original knife next to it's inspirational-Great-Grandpa, and a shot of the Rare Sabatier,
...that actually was unused for all these years and came with it's original protective retail blade covering!.... then a few WIP shots to follow!

Two Tribal Frenchies in 52100 and Green Maple

These two came out really sweet!

I was excited about getting some of the Maple I have had for a long time dyed and stabilized.
...Did I mention that>>> I LOVE GREEN!

And thought that the "Tribal Wrap" with the Translucent G10 would look pretty darn cool.
The first handle I did out of the green I did not have the heart to cover any of it up as it was stunning...
..but finally I decided to see what this handle color & build with the G10 would be like with the "Tribal Wrap"
...and I think it looks AWESOME!

These are sweet mid-size chef knives with forged-to-shape 52100 carbon tool steel blade with clay differential heat treatment.

OAl is 12 & 1/8" and the blades are 6.5". A great size for daily use.

I hope you enjoy seeing these images.

-DON:)

Forged Four Frenchies in Fiftytwo-Onehundred on a Full Moon :)

....just trying saying that five-times fast after eating a packet of saltine-crackers!


Well I always love to forge blades on a Full Moon. As Brian Fellhoelter says...I'm "everybody's favorite hippie":)....not entirely sure if that fit's me, but I do like to keep certain rituals alive and well in my bladesmithing practice.

These littel French Knives are modeled on a Japanese Paradigm in terms of the handle construction-style, being stick-tang kichen knives.  A wonderful size for every day use for quick meal preparation, or for those who just do not like large knives. The blades on all four of these is just a hair over 5.5".

52100 is a high carbon tool steel that has tremendous cutting potential when forged and heat treted properly. Though these littel blades look simple, they took time to forge as I used a technique of forging at lower temps..... which is more work, but sets the steel up for a higher possibility of an amazing heat treatment. As they sit in their forged-state with the profiles cleaned up, they are now ready to be descaled and stress-relieved; and then some pre-heat-treatment stock-reduction.

Stay tuned and please do take a look at the two knives I recently finished at the bottom of the post that are similar to what these four will be like. I am not sue about the handle materials I will choose yet, but two might be in the Mesquite similar to the ones at the bottom, and two in African Blackwood......
.......but let me not get ahead of myself.
Still lots of work to be done on these before it's time for handles:)

I hope you enjoy the images & Stay tuned to see more on how these go!

-DON:)

I'm not sure if I'm getting better at this whole forging practice or if I'm just impatient....but today I had as many as 3-irons-in-the-fire...so to speak....
This could only be sustained while I forged in the distal taper though....then it was just one at a time:)

Three Different Kitchen Utility Knife Models

 It pleases me to see how things progress in my own creational-realm. While this may sound borderline narsicistic, I think it is just a matter of time until certain designs start to feel like "keepers".

As an artist, I tend to always push on to new ideas and new territories. This makes the creation of things more slow and methodical...which is honestly how I enjoy to work, 

and yet, after a few years of trying out new styles of smaller kitchen knives, 

These three models of "Utility knives" seem to stand-out.

.....and I just happened to  have all three of them at one time and took an image that I really liked:)

________________________

So, on top you see my latest design the....

New Utility Model: 
This knife was influenced by the Japanese Honesuki, but with a more "compressed" blade-shape. Overall Length (OAL) on this model is 11 & 7/8" with a blade that is 6 &1/8" long and 1 & 3/8" wide at the heel.
This particular knife is out of 1095 with differential clay heat treatment and etched & polished surfaces revealing a fine Hamon, and features a dyed and stabilized Maple Burl with Translucent G-10 inlay and rosin-impregnated (sealing out moisture and food and making it totally cleanable while providing a sweet grippy-ness right where it counts)
1mm woven cotton line that has been registered into the handle over a blind-pin.

In the Middle is the...

Tribal Utility Model:
This knife was created as that go-to knife for every-day cutting of smaller meals.
The OAL is 11.5" and with a blade that is 5.25" long and 1.5" wide at the heel.

This particular knife is out of 1095 with differential clay heat treatment and etched & polished surfaces, revealing a fine Hamon, and features African Blackwood handle with Black Mesquite inlay and rosin-impregnated (sealing out moisture and food and making it totally cleanable while providing a sweet grippy-ness right where it counts)
1mm woven cotton line that has been registered into the handle over a blind-pin.

On the bottom is the...

Classic French Utility Model:
This is a classic Kitchen Utility created in a  timeless blade-shape with a very fine tip for detail cuts. An overall fantastic knife for any kitchen!
OAL on this knife is 11.5" and with a blade that is 5.25" long and 1 & 5/16" wide at the heel.

This particular knife is out of 1095 with differential clay heat treatment and etched & polished surfaces, revealing a fine Hamon, and features African Blackwood handle with beautiful and very rare Arkansas Chittam Wood inlay and single bronze pin.

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Of course keeping in mind that all my knives are all one-of-a-kind, the measurements may vary slightly. But I am certainly getting better at repeating these patterns that I have been inspired adapt and create from my own experiences of being a chef, artist, and bladesmith.

I welcome any of you who are interested in getting a similar knife 

(as of this writing, the top and middle knife are available) 

to contact me via the phone or email information on my website 

and I would be happy to make one special just for you:)

Thanks for taking a look and as always...

Many Blessings of Health and Goodness to You and Yours

 

Forged Four on A Full-Moon !

Well this Full Moon was a special-one for so many reasons, Vesak Full Moon, Full-Moon in Scorpio to name just two biggies that many of you know about already.

So I decided to do something that I rarely ever do,
 I forged 4-blades in a row today! It was about 3.25-hours at the forge to do this.
Temps outside today were a sweet 86-degrees-F, and I drank about 1.5-gal. of H2O:)

Each one is out of 52100 carbon tool steel and I am very pleased with the results so far.
I have only done once before when I challenged myself to create 4-chef knives in 3-days!

I can tell you this though....I will not be completing these four knives in two more days! That experiment I did last year to see what was possible, and although that challenge was fun, it seriously pushed the envelope on what is physically possible for me to do and still maintain sacred space and sanity while producing a very fine chef knife! You can click the link above if you feel like reading about that little adventure on a previous post!

For now I share this one image with you of the blades with the profiles cleaned-up and scale still intact! More to come so stay tuned!

Blessings of Health and Goodness to You All! :)

-DON:)

I thought I would ad in some more images on this post so you can see how the two smaller knives came out. The larger-ones are still in process and I will post some images of those as well very soon.

Tribal Utility Pair with Tribal Wrap details

This is a beautiful pair of knives I recently finished. 

I love this model and will be making more of these for sure.

These two have very nice hamon activity and wonderful African Blackwood Handles with Mesquite Inlay. Each features a 1mm woven cotton line that has been registered into the handle, meaning that, the 1mm line is actually counter-sunk into the wooden handle, which also conceals a pin that sets the tang of the blade into the handle. The blades are stock-removal out of 1095. I am doing a few stock removal blades these days to see how I like it. So far, the results have been excellent and the feedback is also very positive.....

And, speaking of feedback:

This Tribal Wrap is something I was trying out last year. I liked the idea of having the extra grip right where you would like it on a kitchen knife. This is a process that takes WAY more time than even I initially anticipated to do, but there has been so much excellent feedback from those who have knives with this seemingly simple detail. People like Artist & Blademith David Broadwell (who makes some excellent culinary knives himself among other amazing creations) that has one of my fine Veggie Cleavers with a similar handle design and remarked that it was a joy in the kitchen and that he likes it very much and encouraged me to continue doing this one some of my knives. I considered not continuing to do it because of the perception that water or food would get into the wrapping>>>BUT, I do seal the entire area with epoxy, so actually mo water or food would be stick in this wrapping.

These knives are small-ish, but not tiny at 11.5" OAL (overall length) and with 5.25" long blades that are 1.5"-wide at the heel; They are Very comfortable, very useful for making daily meals and detail-work as well:)

There is a quick shot at the bottom of what the recess looks like for the Tribal Wrap. This is a shot of the handle from the first pair fo these I made last year. The recess is created all by hand with fine Italian Riffler-files. Removing .5mm of material all by hand with my eyes to see is fun, but exacting work!

 I hope you enjoy the images.

-DON:)