J.A. Henckels 8.75” Nogent Style Chef Knife Solingen Germany 1910-1920s

Antique J A Henckels 8.75" carbon steel French style chef knife, hand forged after drop forged and hand ground carbon steel with French style cuisine massive / Nogent style handle.

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. 

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. 

8 3/4" blade, a little over 1 3/4" wide at heel, 14" overall length 5.42 oz