Florentine Three FS Wood & Leather

These are the folded steel versions of our 3rd cook's knife design, Florentine Three. For this one we got NJ Steel Baron to make us a special run just for us of their 52100/410 steel, a combination of a 52100 carbon steel core and AISI 410 stainless steel exterior welded together. The exterior steel provides protection from corrosion as well as being a shock absorber for the harder 52100 steel core. The result is a beautiful and extremely functional blade. Being a partly carbon steel knife it still requires maintenance to keep it from developing corrosion on it's edge. We have added and initial layer of protection by forcing a patina on the blade which will darken and develop over time.

About the design process: This time I went back to my original thoughts about what a western cook's knife should be, which in my eyes is as versatile as possible, has a good weight and balance with a grip that fills your hand and with a nice "rocking" curve on the edge. This is basically a take on my first knife using the tools I now have. This knife sits pretty high on the cutting board and you might find it especially comfortable at first or it might take a few days of getting used to, it's about 3-7mm wider than most chef knives which doesn't sound like much but it changes the angle of your wrist quite a bit and is mostly designed for pinch grippers like myself. This time we used steels which are much easier to sharpen but as hard as the Florentine One with great edge retention. We ground the blade flat from top to bottom as opposed to the original version and we made it much thinner, especially behind the edge. The result is a beautifully balanced knife which is both aggressive and agile and i'm sure you would enjoy it very much.