Behind the Black Label

Black Label came about while Eli and I were waiting for blades to be cut, heat-treated, and CNC pre-ground for our Greenfield series of knives. I sketched out a blade outline and Eli forged it in 52100 carbon steel. This is a steel Eli has worked with for many years, and I came to really like how he treated it in the knives he made under his Astral Works brand.

We briefly considered using 52100 for the carbon steel iteration of the Greenfield Gyuto—which is stamped, not forged—but thought we might as well forge it and focus on non-stainless steels, which would be more difficult to forge and heat treat ourselves.

D2 steel was the first choice for most of us from our cutting and sharpening trials we did with the BC crew.  Our version of hacking through two-by-fours, plastic water bottles, and Manila rope was making lots of mirepoix and cutting crusty sourdough to speed up the dulling and give us a sense of toughness, after which we examined the edges for deformation and chips. Ease of grinding on the kaiten wheel and sharpening on whetstones were also considerations.

Ultimately, D2 proved to be too obnoxious to grind, and we switched production to A2, another non-stainless tool steel. A2 has slightly shorter edge life than D2, but was far easier to grind and could be worked by the CNC facility that pre-grinds the geometry on our stamped knives. Actually, A2 was Lisa’s initial favorite, so it wasn’t totally out of left field to choose it for Greenfield.

Back to the Black Labels. After Eli forged and rough-ground a few gyutos, I finish-ground them on the kaiten wheel, bringing in more thinness and actually lessening the convexity on the faces of the blades a little. I handled them with some ho (magnolia) and bubinga (African rosewood) wood handles we had at the shop and, finally, sharpened the edges. The Black Labels had a much different cutting feel than the Greenfields, being a little thicker in the center of the blade, but they moved super smoothly through food and held an edge for a nice long time. When it was time to sharpen them again, the edge came back quite easily. I was super happy with them. 

When planning out our manufacturing processes, Eli and I leaned into the overlay of skilled hand labor and mechanical process, echoing back to this combination in 19th century American (and European, and, to a slightly lesser degree, British) manufacturing in the golden era of Western knife making: the 1840s to 1920s being a somewhat arbitrary time period of this. Hand-forging a lot of knives isn’t always our first choice for production, but it is an irresistible option when there’s a little down time. 


Eli and I did a few series of 52100 Black Label gyutos, later including a nakiri into the mix. We soon got too busy for Black Label with the addition of the Fineline series to our production, but it was still in the back of my mind.

As I started getting bogged down with other work and with an impending surgery for a torn rotator cuff (not sharpening related!) in June of 2026, SF knifemaker Nick Rolin started working with us on grinding our Fineline Wa-Gyuto blades, an easy evolution, as we had been carrying his knives and he was open to working with us once our manufacturing space gets finished.

Naturally, it made sense to fold Nick in on the Black Label knives and have him forge some blades as we had finished up our last batch of Fineline blades. Being again able to sharpen and work with the kaiten wheel after my surgery, I was excited to get back to it and Nick and Eli forged out half a dozen each of their iterations of a 210 mm gyuto in 52100 steel. 

Nick and Eli have very similar approaches to heat treatment, from my perspective as the user / sharpener of their knives. They each have slightly different techniques, and it’s interesting hearing them discuss. While at a certain point I feel like 1990s Phil Hartman’s Caveman Lawyer character; “I’m a simple sharpener, your centigrade heat cycles scare and confuse me...”, I am nonetheless super happy for the Bernal Cutlery bug and SF Works poppy stamp to share space with Eli’s Astral Works lantern and Nick Rolin’s anvil. My shoulder still needs a bit more rehab, but it felt like a pivot point in my recovery to get to grind these knives and release this new edition of Bernal Cutlery Black Label knives.