First Chef's Knife

I took the plunge and tried my first chef's knife.  I think chef's knives are some of the hardest knives to make correctly because they need to be so thin.  It makes forging, heat treat, and grinding that much harder - you've got almost zero room for mistakes.

It's made from 1084 with brass bolsters and pins, and the handle is caramelized stabilized maple from a tree I cut.  The blade is 8", and despite my best efforts it's a little too thick (d'oh!).  I ground the edge down to 0.5mm before sharpening, but it really needed to be more like 0.3mm.  The pine is about 2.8mm in the middle, but again it needed to be more like 2 mm (or less).  As small as these differences are, they make a big difference in the performance of the knife.  We've been using it for a week now in the kitchen, and it tends to get stuck cutting raw sweet potatoes and other root vegetables.  This leads to pushing a bit harder, which is what leads to accidents.  It's great for meat and it chopped peppers  & onions last night with no effort.  But as a professional chef friend who played with it said "it's not for fine work."

So, not a failure, but not really what I wanted.  The next attempt will be a 6" chef from O-1 tool steel.  O-1 has a much longer window for getting it into the quench from the kiln, so super thin blades are easier to heat treat because you don't have to worry nearly as much  about heat loss.