Three for February 2016

Greetings Everybody,

Getting into the flow again, getting some knives done & shipped out to customers.

The top Camp/Kitchen FTTU is for a new member to the USN.
This one is CPM154 with rustic flats and Stabilized & Dyed Maple with Antique Ivory Inlay and some grippy carving right where it counts.

Joey came by the studio with his lovely wife Charmaine, to surprise her & buy her a knife....pretty risky to say the least, as she had no idea why they were stopping-by.
She looked at knives, and as wife's cas at times feel..... why spend the $...
......mostly because she did not see what she wanted, but liked different parts of different knives.

THEN, the reality of custom-made came in, and she asked:
"Can you make that knife, like this, with a purple handle on it?".... I said "It would be my pleasure."

AND Ultimately....

The best part was, meeting them both and feeling like they are family pretty-much within the first few moments of getting to know one another.

Again, the USN unites like-minded souls, around knives, friendship and life!

Next is a sweet version of my Classic European French Knife, the first on in CPM154.
Exhibiting Antique Ivory Micarta handles with Rare Westinghouse Blue Inlay and detail carving.
this one going out to s customer for his brother...I think.......oddly enough, someone with the same nickname as I had in high school.....
.......just try dragging that one out of me....
.............it'll take plenty of Cove Drinks at The Gathering to do that!

AND last but totally not least,
is one of my Personal Chef Models, with a slightly shorter blade by about .25"
Simply a Very cool knife, and Now Available on CCK Website.

This too, is the first of the Personal Chef models to be offered in CPM154,
and the special-part is that:
* This one is dressed in some very rare, and seldom seen Burgundy and Ivory Westinghouse Micarta.
With peened Bronze Pins and unique Mosiac pin over a blind pin, this knife just feels so totally amazing in the hand,
it's sure to be someones new most favorite kitchen knife for daily cooking!
OAl is just under 12" with a 6.75" blade.

I hope you enjoy the images

-DON:)

Utility Chef and Green Ultralight....3-Tribal Utility Knives for Your Kitchen

Greetings Everybody,

I have been enjoying creating these Tribal Wrapped Handled Knives lately.

Here we have two of my "Utility Chef" models and The Green Ultralight, being more of a Utility Slicer; I designed for a USN member last year.

All three have my "Tribal Wrap" which is a 1mm woven cotton line that has been registered into the handle and then epoxy-soaked to keep out water or foods & to toughen-up the whole construct.
All have fully hardened 52100 carbon steel blades running at an RC 59-60 with forced-patina-mustard-finish.

The Utility Chef Models feature a slight variation on the style of Wa handle I have been creating lately, and are created out of Black Curly Olive wood and feature Antique Ivory Westinghouse inlay. These two are headed to Eatingtools.com in Brooklyn.

The Green Ultralight has an octagonal handle of African Blackwood, with Stabilized and dyed Curly Maple inlay and contrasting natural and green woven cotton line for the wrap.

These are all lightweight knives for their size. The Green being an Ultralight....meaning that i have been pushing the envelope on the thinness of my blades over the past two years and these are the pinacle of that, and yet, I think that you can actually go too think, but this Green Ultralight is just about the thinnest blade i have created to date...and is still tough and will excel in the kitchen for many detailed slicing chores and even as a filet knife for smaller fishes.

The Utility Chef models are great all round daily use knives for creating meals in veggies or meats, just s solid go-to knife where a larger heavier knife is not needed.

All have blades with cutting edges of 6.25" and OAL's running around 12-12.25"...so not really small knives either.

Thanks for looking....there will be more Tribal Utility Knives coming out soon, and
>>> the Green Ultralight is now live and available on my website

OK, enough Gab.

Enjoy the images.

Blessings of Health and Goodness to You All 

-DON:)

 A little fun with the Green Ultralight....standing-paper-cut !!!

Some Press about my work in The Tribune Magazine January 29, 2015

 Well...I realized that I have to get back to Blogging a bit.

AND

I figured what better way than to share a fine bit of Press that was done about my work.

I hope you enjoy seeing this article, and the video and images that are all a part of my life and work.

_____________________________

 I was asked my Local Telegram Tribune about being featured in their online magazine....and of course I said YES

Best part is I got to meet a really nice guy names Joe who took images and shot video.

And they did a nice job on the article.

 

Thanks for taking a look.Just realized that you can scroll through past the video to see more images that Joe took...nice-ones too!

Blessings of Health and Goodness to you All

Massdrop Polling for USA Made Kitchen Knives

I have been working on a few models that I am considering creating a production line out of. Currently I have the Paring knives in production and thought these are pretty much still hand made knives, I will be shooting for a better price-point than some of the full customs with Hamon lines as in these images of the New Utility Paring Knife.
   The FTTU Full Tang Tribal Utility is a newly created design, Born out of the Tribal Utility knife that you can find in earlier posts, it is a sweet knife for daily use in any kitchen, and would make a fantastic line-knife for professional kitchen work as well.
   The Personal Chef is a creation that started life as a knife i made for myself some years ago. It gained in popularity among my visiting chef and avid cook friends who worked in my kitchen.....so I figured I would make it part of my line-up. Currently the thoughts on this knife are to make it our of 52100 carbon steel, but there may be a split on the number of pieces produced, some being in AEBL (13c26) stainless steel.

These are the prototypes, hand made versions of the knives I plan on creating in CMP-154 stainless steel. Slight variations on these will be that the pins and inlay will all be matching brown micarta, the handle material you see here is Antique Paper Micarta which will be the material of choice for the run of 50-pieces. 

The blades are 4" in length of cutting edge, and will be hollow-ground on the run of 50, the Overall Length is Just shy of 9" - giving plenty of handle for control and making this a wonderful little knife that will be handy in any kitchen.

These knives will essentially be hand made knives but will use some machines to accomplish the simple task of creating the actual outline of the knife, the rest is all hand ground and shaped, finished and sharpened.

Currently polling these for pre-order of a limited edition of 50-Knives in CPM-154

 Projected costs are still being worked out, but these are looking to be somewhere in the range of $285-310ea.

These are currently in production now, and are

Expected to be available: Fall 2015.

 

 

FTTU > Full Tang tribal Utility 

These are the prototypes, hand made versions of the knives I plan on creating in CMP-154 stainless steel or possibly CTS-XHP. Slight variations on these will be that the pins and inlay will all be matching brown micarta, the handle material you see here is Antique Paper Micarta which will be the material of choice for the run of 50-pieces. 

The blades are 5.25" in length of cutting edge and the Overall Length is Just shy of 10.25" - giving plenty of handle for control and making this a wonderful little knife that will be handy in any kitchen.

 The run of 50-knives will essentially be hand made knives but will use some machines to accomplish the simple task of creating the actual outline of the knife, the rest is all hand ground and shaped, finished and sharpened.

This is a knife that will fast become your favorite in the kitchen! The perfect knife for daily meal-prep. and a super sweet size for making small meals, detail tasks, or taking along for a picnic or camp-outing.

Currently polling these for pre-order of a limited edition of 50-Knives in CTS-XHP or CPM-154. 
Projected costs are still being worked out, but these are looking to be somewhere in the range of $475-525ea.

Personal Chef

This is one of the prototypes, hand made version of an excellent medium-full size kitchen knife. 

The plan is to create a imited edition of 25 of these in 52100 carbon tool steel and 25 in AEBL (13c26) Stainless Steel as pictured. 

Slight variations on these knives will be that the pins and inlay will all be matching brown micarta, the handle material you see here is Antique Paper Micarta which will be the material of choice for the run of 50-pieces. There will be no carving on the handles as seen either, but this may be an option of occur on a few in each edition. 

The blades are 7.25" in length of cutting edge and the Overall Length of 12.25". this will be that perfect main knife in any kitchen.

The run of 50-knives will essentially be hand made knives but will use some machines to accomplish the simple task of creating the actual outline of the knife, the rest is all hand ground and shaped, finished and sharpened.

Currently polling these for pre-order of a limited edition of 25-Knives in 52100 Carbon Steel, and 25 in AEBL (13c26) Stainless Steel. Projected costs are still being worked out, but these are looking to be somewhere in the range of $700-800ea.

5 For BLADE Show Atlanta 2015

Greetings All,
  I am so grateful for good friend and purveyor of my knives Duane Weikum of EDC Knives for offering my work at this years BLADE Show Atlanta. I will be there this year, but may not be at the table at all times:) See you All there!

You can visit and purchase any of these knives at table 16C at this years show.

Top to Bottom are: 

1. A Wonderful EDC Wharny, created out of 1095 with a fine Hamon and polished details & dressed in Vintage Turquoise and Black Micarta with stainless pins and lanyard-liner. This knife come with a custom Kydex Sheath.

2. A Sweet EDC Hunter, created out of 1095 with a fine Hamon and polished details & dressed in green linen Micarta, with Peened bronze pins and stainless lanyard liner. This knife come with a custom Kydex Sheath.

3. One of my new Bug-Out-Camp knives with polished blade and details. This knife come with a custom Kydex Sheath.

4. A very sweet Tribal French knife, forged out of 52100 and heat treated for optimal performance. this one with a mortised handle construct of Antique Ivory Micarta with matching inlay at the end of the handle and rosin-impregnated woven cotton line. Just finished this one yesterday and it is AWESOME! Comes with one of my trademark slip sheaths.

5. Last but not least is one of my New Paring/Utility Models dressed in Antique Ivory Micarta with rare Westinghouse Ivorite inlay over a blind pin, and two more peened bronze pins.

Comes with one of my trademark slip sheaths.

Two Camp Cleavers Underway

Sitting here in their freshly forged state, descaled and ready for some light stock-reduction and sub-critical thermal-cycles. Stay Tuned as I will be posting more images of the process on these two.

I have only made one other like these, and am excited to be making these two now! These are perfect compact Camp Knives for general camp tasks, when a large knife is not needed.

Seeking Perfection

Greetings Everybody,

Well, I thought I would title this Post in this way because of the time and experience it takes to get Exactly what one is after in the realms of the Differential Heat Treatment.

As many of you who have been following my work know, it is quite common to see knives with blades that have different tonal changes on them, some in patterns, some straight, some in between. This is generally termed as being differentially heat treated. Other names used are, Hamon
(meaning "Blade Pattern" in Japanese) and there are many many styles of Hamon.

What most people do not know, is that shooting for a perfectly defined hamon, or even getting a beautifully defined straight quench right where you would like it, with the exact look you are after, can be quite challenging. This is why you mostly see lots of satin finished knives (especially chef knives) with no etched surfaces.....it's just easier to harden the whole blade. AND is easier to finish too. nothing to really develop, polish, reveal, or fuss-over.

I recently finished a knife that I am very proud of and wanted to share it with you All.
This is a seemingly simple knife but it really has character.
Character you might ask, what's so special?

For-One: The position and depth of the quench line is very nice on this particular blade.
Of course it could be deeper (higher to the spine) resulting on more hard-zone, but in terms of aesthetics, I like how the quench-line lays half way between the machi and the heel, and flows so gracefully right where the kissaki make it's transition to the spine.
Also: The definition is very crisp, and the little bit of secondary plunge as the second ticked during the hardening stage, resulted in a bit of what my Mentor Tai Goo calls "Rainbow Quench".
Resulting in what In think is one of the most beautiful blades I have made to date.

This particular model is based on my Personal Chef Model, in a stick-tang configuration and with a rustic forged finish, with polished bevels and details for a striking contrast.

The Steel is 1095. The blade is 7.25" of cutting edge and the OAL is 13" The handle is African Blackwood with Antique Ivory Micarta inlay and mosaic pin.

I also attached a few process images of another knife I am extremely proud of that illustrates the Hamon Process in just a few images.
#1 the final part of the clay application.
#2 the initial trial etch.
#3 the finished knife.
Trust me, it's not as simple as 1,2,3 either!
For more information on the knife you see directly above: VISIT THIS POST

I was very happy with in terms of getting the definition of the Hamon just as I wished.
It seems as though I got about 90% of what I was after in terms of how I applied the clay on this one!

It's just not one of those things that happens in a perfectionistic way, but it is driven by perfectionism and fueled by some degree of program, related to how the clay is applied.
And then there is a ton of practice, experience and trial and error that fuel the passion for getting things just-so....
.......because the next step is all about time and temperature.
Every blade is different, every clay application slightly different,
every moment in time is different etc...

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed seeing these two knives that illustrate two styles of differential Heat treatments.

Blessings of Goodness and Health to you All

-DON:)