Nordik Sweden 10" Chef Knife Carbon Steel

Vintage carbon steel chef knife marked only Nordik Sweden. I have found a dozen or so of these over the years and only in 10" chef, never any other sizes. I have been able to find little about them but they always are of a good quality steel (definitley a good amount of carbon judging from sparks and sharpening feel) and with a good medium heavy hand grind. Going along with a Swedish approach to knives the quality always outpaces the appearance as a boastful type of tool is not typically appreciated in Sweden. Then again I have little information on these aside from the anecdotal good marks they have received from customers who got them and from testing one myself years ago. They could be the Haagen Dazs of knives and be made in New Jersey with nothing to do with Sweden in all honesty. 

Swedish iron deposits are especially plentiful and make a high purity steel, Sweden has supplied much of Europe's iron and many places that are famous for their steel (hello Sheffield) relied on Swedish iron. 

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. Check out Bernal Cutlery co founder Josh Donald's book Sharp to see these wheels in use and more about their history in Europe and Japan.