About

Kitchen Knife 2025

Project: Early 2025

Writeup: April 20205

Dark n' stormy

I've been wanting to make some more kitchen knives ever since my first fooling around a few years ago. Since then I've learned a lot, and have finally got a proper grinder etc. to make it actually viable. So I put together this design which is relatively simple but has a couple of unique touches for some flair, and combines a few techniques I'd been working on for a while. We've got:

The steel is absolutely insane, and really does perform well. Hard to compare apples to apples, but it holds that sticky sharp edge for longer than anything else I've got in the kitchen (including modern SG2), and responds really well to stropping. It's not stainless, but doesn't get that gross orange rust you get if you abuse carbon steel blades. Instead it takes on a lovely dark grey patina with use, which I bring out from the beginning with an acid etch and stonewash. I find it very pretty, and much less fussy than a fancy mirror-polished stainless knife: it feels like a tool. I <3 high-alloy tool steels.

And yes, The Hot Log does get up to 1150°C and hold accurately for 15 minutes. I <3 hot log.

Here I was experimenting with printing out the profile on acetate to draw around, rather than gluing a paper cutout to the steel. It worked ok. I still haven't found a way of marking out I like...

I went through a few design revisions here. Originally I had a stick-tang design with a pin and matching spacer between the two handle scales. It would have been ok, and used less steel. But I was never really happy with the looks, and I HATED the actual process of gluing everything up with epoxy (I made at least 4 of them trying to get it perfect). So I moved on to this full-tang design where the handle can flow right into the blade (chef's kiss), and I can use hardware to attach the scales, which gives me lots more options for different looks and finishes.

I've now become allergic to making a full-tang without a taper...

Here you can see the tapered tang, with the scales tapered to match. Theoretically it removes as much mass from the back of the handle to keep the balance forwards, but I haven't worked out how much of a difference it makes. Mostly it's just because it's cool.

By some combination of luck and judgement, the balance of the final piece is absolutely perfect. Totally balanced on your front fingers when you're nestled into the little cutout. I could probably fine-tune it a little more by hollowing out the scales or even skeletonising the tang, but I'm more than happy as it is.

Hard part done...

You quickly come to realise that kitchen knives are in another league of difficulty than the kinda nice easy thick general purpose knives I've made before. You have to go thin for good slicing performance, and you need a good amount of length. Which just means you've got a whole load more edge to manage, and big flat sides to make look perfect, AND it's all super thin so is just dying to overheat and ruin your day. I did a few in 1095 before eventually moving to the ASP-2053 to make it even more difficult for myself. I was actually pleasantly surprised though, I was expecting the high wear-resistant steel to put up significantly more of a fight than my usual carbon steel, but it was only slightly slower. It's actually potentially slightly more forgiving in grinding since you don't lose all your hardness as soon as you go over 200°C with a little burn mark like you do with 1095. I still went very slow and kept everything cold though.

The photo above is when I've finally finished the blade profiling and can move on to the scales and finishing. Getting here always felt like a victory: plenty of blades didn't make it this far while I dialed in my process!

This is ugly I know, it was just an experiment

I was also experimenting with a few different looks and finishes with my prototypes. This one is a Cerakote blade, which makes a lot of sense on 1095 in the kitchen. I was pleasantly surprised with the durability, but I think it's better suited for scales and handles than for blades themselves. This is also some different hardware which doesn't work quite as well as the final ones I went for: a little too industrial.

Prepare for every metal object I own to have my initials on it soon...

Because you have to do so much grinding after hardening on these, I couldn't just bang in a set of initials with my normal punches like I'd usually do. So I eventually sorted out ordering a set of tiny stencils and got a simple electro-etching process working pretty well! I was really pleased with how these came out. You get some really beautifully crisp lines, even with tiny 3mm tall letters, and great depth with a very controllable process. Definitely going to be doing more of these! Sourcing stencils is the only slightly annoying part. I used the single-use sticky vinyl stencils, but I've seen people use multi-use ones too. But I'm not sure if those put constraints on your stencil design: I've got disconnected sections here which I like.