I was too young to grasp the sense of satisfaction he felt locking up the shop that night, all work for the week completed in record time, with his son pretending to be asleep on his shoulder as he carried him to the car. Everyone in my life system sharpened knives. My immediate household was just my father and I...

In the world of high quality knives, honyaki has earned a reputation as something special — a bit elusive, often admired, and occasionally misunderstood. The term means “true-forged,” referring to a blade made from a single piece of carbon steel, hardened using a method adapted from traditional sword-making. There’s no layering, no laminated core — just one material, shaped by...

The latest knives I’ve been saving and feel a little guilty about not letting run free are some prototypes from the last few years: especially a few dozen of the first runs of the Invictus butcher knife designed by butcher extraordinaire Dylan Carasco and made for us by K Sabatier in Thiers and some of the first trial steel Greenfield gyutos made by Eli Sideris and finish ground...