How long does it take you to make a knife? Fine custom knives are the result of years of study and effort, so I think it’s fair to say that it took over forty years to to make these knives.

Most knives are in my shop for at least a month working their way through all the little details that make handmade products special. I do not skimp the details. I use epoxy that takes 8 hours to cure, not because its more convenient, but because it is stronger and tougher. So just gluing the handle scales on takes 16 hours. Every step of my process is like that. I might soak the handle in oil for a week.

These knives are all made very much from scratch, not parts I purchased. The wood on the handles is not a commodity from far away, it was gathered locally, by me, and carefully selected, cut, dried, and stabilized over the course of years. To look at a piece of wood like this for it’s value in board feet is missing much of the picture.

Processes like these are not common these days and they are hard to summarize in terms of hours.

Do you make Damascus steel knives? Because I use entirely hand techniques, I do not often make forge welded blades. It takes a very long time and lot of effort to produce quality laminated steel and everybody else you have seen making it is doing it with power presses or hammers in a matter of a few minutes.

There was a time when forge welding added a lot of practical benefits to a blade as well as beauty. Fine (and hard to obtain) steel laminated to tough iron cores, or even braiding or twisting materials to mix their properties. The effort was put in because it made a positive difference in the functioning of the blade. However, in any forge weld, every single layer is an opportunity for error and disastrous separation. A 300 layer knife is 300 times more likely to have a flaw than a single layer. This is not to say it can’t be done well. It can. But the pattern welded material that you see so commonly these days has none of these practical benefits. It is purely decorative, yet it has all the liability of a welded blade. The metals used are usually simply different types of blade steel, often with a single steel core for the cutting edge. They are not stronger, tougher, or sharper than mono steel blades, in fact, usually much less so. Why take the chance of your knife failing just so you can have a gaudy pattern on it?

Forge welding got too easy. Reminds me a bit of the first word processors when people used 12 different fonts on their posters just because they could.

What’s so great about carbon steel? It’s sticky. High carbon low alloy steel has been used for centuries in the highest quality blades and is still chosen by most discerning users. It’s not necessarily for everyone. I usually tell people that if you are willing to maintain your knife you will prefer it, if you just want to dump your knife in your bag wet and don’t care too much about a razor edge, you may be better served by stainless blades. When I say sticky, I really mean tough and flexible at a fine level. An edge can be easily maintained and realigned without regrinding a burr because the metal doesn’t break off. Stainless steels, especially those with higher wear resistance tend to crumble at the finest levels and need to be reground and they are, well, really wear resistant and hard to maintain. For a refined edge and a better relationship with your steel, the carbon steel is the way to go.

More to Come…