A project that I’ve been wanting to do for a long-long time – make few kitchen knives for myself. I got really tired of the cheap crap knives that needed to be sharpened every other day and they would still be dull after cutting only sausage and butter.

So I looked up which was best steel locally available and it turned out to be Uddeholm Elmax. High purity powder steel with good wear resistance and other nice properties. I ordered steel at the beginning of 2011, but turned out that factory was going to make thin enough sheets in a few months. So I waited… and waited. Finally received the steel sometime in summer.

Actually I finished the knives quite a while ago and been using them ever since. They are just a joy to use, but as these are my first kitchen knives, they’re not without flaws. Many of them. But it’s a start. I wanted to get practical experience with them, before doing any others. Also it turned out, that I need to make some changes to grinder, because right now I can’t get really good flat grinds.

Anyway, here are the knives:

Kitchen knives

Knives are 24cm and 13 long, blades are 13cm and 7cm respectively. Handle is of stabilized burl. Blade is heat treated to 60 HRC.

Long kitchen knife

Short kitchen knife

Third day of the trip was promising to be fun, because I’ve seen the works of 2 studios we were going to visit and like usually with Italians, they were top notch. Pedretti and Torcoli.

• GS Pedretti

Pedretti is actually also a family business. Gianfranco and Stefano Pedretti – father and son, plus quite a few more engravers at their studio. About a year ago I bought a book about them, so I kind of knew what to expect and was familiar with their style. They are probably most famous for their hunting scenes with very realistic dogs. My guess is, that in their book more than 50% was dedicated to dog engravings. As is the case with majority of Italian engravers, most of the work is done on hunting guns and both Pedrettis are avid hunters, so their hunting scenes are very realistic. They’ve been there and done that, know what hunt is like. So this gives a good opportunity for nice scenes.

Pedretti engraving

Perdretti work in progress engraving

 

• Zoli factory

Next visit was to a proper gun factory – Zoli. So far I’ve never been to a fun factory before and it was really exciting. I’ve wondered many times how do they do some parts, like barrels. How do they tune, make them precise etc. Find out these things I did.

In Zoli factory a lot of work is done by CNC machines. For example gun frames are first hot-forged to rough size and dimensions and after that CNC takes over. I think there were around 20-30 big CNC mills doing all kinds of different parts. All of the parts are made from one solid piece of steel and nothing is cast, so this gives better reliability and strength to the gun.

Here’s an example of before and after, how one detail is made:

At Zoli factory

Here are the guns ready to be sent out:

President Paolo Zoli explaining how barrels are made and soldered together.

Paolo Zoli explaining barrel making

Zoli double rifle

And on to visit out next host

• Manrico Torcoli

Torcoli is famous because of his fantasy engravings. A style where usually women, animals and plants are kind of fused together, creating beautiful fantasy scenes. Fortunately a lot of his work is done on knives and when the knives are made for US customers, they are more likely to appear on internet. So I knew some of his work.

His workplace was typical for Italians – huge window with a vise in front of it and a bulino tool. That was all, again. His small studio was filled with art and reference books from floor to ceiling. We were fortunate enough to see his knife engraving project in progress:

Torcoli engraving in progress

Here’s a close up shot through his Zeiss loupe.

Torcoli engraving close up

I did try to take photos of the engravings as close as possible for study material. This one was most successful.

• Fratelli Dassa studio

Our last visit for the day was Dassa studio. Again family business, but this time they were brothers. They are most known for their enamel work, or color engraving. The results are quite striking and very detailed, unfortunately they didn’t have any works to show in real life, only photos.

After all this fun, we went to have dinner by the lake, where I got to eat the best seafood risotto ever:

Lake panorama

A while ago one bushcraft knife was ordered from me, a woodlore clone. So I was told. This was the first time I heard about these knives and of course I accepted the challenge. This type of knives use flat grind blades and I’ve never made one before, except when doing the katanas. But it was still a first time on a knife.

I used CPM S30V steel for the blade and desert ironwood handles. Sheath was from natural leather with place for firesteel. I did have to make 2 of these knives, as on the first one the grind didn’t work out as well as needed – that will stay for personal use.

Overall the knife came out OK. But like always, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Bushcraft knife

Bushcraft knife with sheath

Here are few knives I’ve done lately.

This tactical knife is quite a beast – 12cm blade and 25cm overall length. Steel is L-6.

Tactical knife

This one is slimmer, but with same length. Blade 14cm, overall length 25cm. D2 steel.

Handmade knife

This knife has been in the making for quite some time now. Actually, it’s been waiting queue for engraving most of that time. The knife itself was finished about a month ago, but different and more urgent projects had to be completed before I could engrave it.

The blade is made of damasteel, which is kind of stainless damascus made in Sweden. This knife was the first one where I’ve used that steel and I really-really like how it came out. The pattern on the steel is very fine and extremely beautiful. Now I want to make all knives from that steel, just need to find customers who can afford it . Any takers?

Engraving itself took 10 hours, design was about 3-4h.

Engraved damasteel knife

Engraving close-up

Little while ago we finished our last order. Brass bolsters, blade steel is D2. First time we used stabilized wood for handle and it came out really nice.

We haven’t been slacking for the past month. Oh no, far from that! Besides ordering a heat treatment oven, which should arrive in few weeks, we also made 3 new knives out of which 2 are already engraved and 1 sold. Plus little doodling with engraving.

Anyways, here are the 3 knives.

A little closeup of engraving:

Handles on that knife were made of cocobolo. I really-really like its pattern. Now one of my favourite woods.

Here are 2 others. The dark wood you see on one knife is wenge and the reddish one is mahogany.