J A Henckels 12.25" Nogent Style Chef Knife Carbon Steel 1870s-1900??

Rare Antique 19th century J A Henckels 12" French style chef knife, hand forged after drop forged and hand ground. This knife is lightweight but with old style thick heel and thin tip and French style cuisine massive / Nogent style handle. Ferrule is a brazed iron or mild steel and the ebony handle has a brass cap over the exposed end of the rat tail tang. A great example of Solingen's adoption of the professional French Chef knife. 

Thin light and super nimble, this is from when Henckels was at the top of their game quality wise and shows the wide influence from French knives in professional cutlery. 

The twins mark is an older, wider mark used in the late 19th and early 20th century. This Henckles is either from pre-1891 or made for domestic use only as they lack the 'Germany' marking, Henckels sold a lot of knives to outside of the United States but the US was a large market for them and the 1891 Tariff Act which demanded all items imported into the USA marked with country of origin. 

This knife has been re-ground and thinned behind the edge on a large 3 foot diameter Japanese water stone wheel (kaiten mizu toishi) and then resurfaced with a medium fine finish, our take on an old style grinding and finishing technique. While the particular wheel used to refurbish this knife is typically used in Japanese knife making it is very similar to the old grinding wheels used to shape European and American hand ground cutlery. A convex face to a blade greatly increases a knife's performance as there is less sticking as there is on a flat face and the blade does not get thick behind the edge nearly as fast as with a flat faced blade. Being that we are often working with old blades that need re-shaping and might have been rusted expect some minor imperfections, we try to give a fresh start to our re-ground blades with an eye towards their original grind style and keeping as much metal is needed on a blade when ever possible. 

12.25" blade, 18" overall length 9.4 oz