Custom Knives

I made my first knife in 1979. I've loved knives ever since, which is why I got in the Damascus making business. While the damascus business has often left me too busy to make many knives over the years, I have learned how to make time for a full offering of custom knives in the past few years. I have dreamed of knives too often to let everyone else have all the fun!

My focus with knives is to offer quality workmanship, the best damascus I can produce, and to make it into a comfortable knife with a thin edge and precise heat treatment. I feel that thick edges are for factory knives. A thin edge cuts longer, better, and is easier to sharpen. I think the best combination of durability and cutting ability is with a shallow, thin convex grind. The convex grind gives strength to the thin edge and pushes material away as it's cutting. My favorite stainless steel, AEB-L, offers many performance characteristics of carbon steels through it's extremely fine grain and carbide size, it is sometimes called "stainless 52100." These properties include: great ease of sharpening, edge retention, and toughness, while offering excellent stain resistance (See FAQ for more information on AEB-L). The study of metallurgy and heat treatment has been an important pursuit for me. I have discovered which steels to use and what heat treatments for different knives and customers, but there is always more to learn. I use a multiple austenititizing technique with my stainless and carbon steels for a very small grain size. Cryogenic processing helps give the blades their maximum potential.

Custom made knives allow the customer to get exactly what he is looking for, not a one-size-fits-all. I can produce a blade that doesn't have to be unbreakable and dishwasher safe, I can make a knife for someone who knows how to use and care for a knife correctly, and will appreciate the performance a finely crafted tool brings to the table. After the journey the blade goes through to become a finished knife, the journey of the user begins. Learning the characteristics of how the knife cuts, feels, and how it sharpens culminates this journey into a partnership of man and knife. This is what I try to deliver to the customer.

Click here for the Custom Knives section of the Photo Gallery.