What is a Handcrafted Knife?

Our knives are very labour intensive and involve many steps in the creation of each unique piece.

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Blades: Steel is sourced from several places, including the purchase of billets of regular Damascus, high carbon stainless steel Damascus, as well as whenever possible, the upcycling of old materials such as vintage farm equipment, leaf springs on cars, chainsaw bars, and saw blades.

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Three type of Blade patterns are possible:

• Damascus steel, which is pre-made off site, is a mixture of high carbon steel and nickel steel folded many times to create many different intricate designs.

• A natural vintage pitted look from old recycled high carbon steel parts

• Unique one-of-a-kind etching/patterns on vintage and high carbon steel for a variety of designs by David Maclean.

 

Shaping the steel is the next step which involves heating it up in the forge and then cooling it down (annealing) to make the steel more malleable. After this, the steel is formed and shaped, before being tempered. After tempering, the newly formed blade is very hard, but brittle, so it then needs to be heat treated in an oven at 460 degrees for 5 hours.

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Handles: This is where a lot of the artist’s creativity gets to play out with his ever growing collection of USED materials including many types of woods, brass, ebony, mother of pearl, horn, antler, leather, stone, artifacts, even incorporating personal items such as coins or rings. Each piece is laid out, shaped, and bonded together before many hours of filing, sanding, oiling and polishing.