Ed Wusthof Dreizackwerk 10.25" Narrow Stiff Slicer Carbon Steel Solingen 1950s 60s

Ed Wusthof (est 1814) narrow slicer with 1894 Trident logo on forged carbon steel blade with walnut or pear wood handle and post war late 50s or 60s solid brass compression rivets.

Blade was a little thick from previous sharpenings and needed a thinning to bring it back to it's original geometry behind the edge, it has been thinned and re-ground to its original convex thin behind the edge geometry.

Anecdotally for every 500 old carbon steel Henckels I have come across only one old carbon Wusthof is found, they were not directly imported into the USA until the late 50's although some found the way here undoubtably through travel and immigration.

Wusthof's model of automation replacing hand work began in the Marshal Plan era re-tooling of post WW2 Solingen. Lots of Solingen's industrial equipment was either destroyed or to taken by the British after the war so a lot of industry was re-imagined. Mr Wusthof imagined having as few employees as possible and eventually became very good at automating as much of production as possible in the 1970s and 80s, this knife pre-dates that era. 

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.