Bentonville, Arkansas. August 2018. Joseph and I have an interesting history, as prior to crafting beautiful custom knives, I worked on the design side for Lands' End. While I was focussing on Home Goods Joseph was on the logistics side keeping the goods flowing, but being the massive company that Lands' End is, our paths never crossed until now.
"I have a passion for cooking and all things food related. I came across Chef Knives To Go by accident when I started becoming interested in Japanese knives and the metallurgy used in making them.", says Joseph.
We worked together on the materials for this beaut. Joseph was very interested in getting some polished copper, but the fun tie here is the cocobolo. As Joseph was once heavily into billiards and the majority of his custom cues have either bird's eye maple or cocobolo in them. So I definitely wanted to incorporate some of those details into his Konosuke Keiai NT 210mm Gyuto, as it will likely be Joseph's main work horse in the kitchen.
"I’ve started getting in to hand sharpening but have a long way to go, but a lot of the handles on the Japanese knives really don’t do the blade justice. So after seeing your work, I wanted something that was a real show stopper.", says Joseph.
From an artist's perspective, I'm pretty speechless for how amazing this custom turned out. Seriously I'm drooling over here.
Handle materials include: cocobolo ferrule - black fiberboard, copper, red acrylic, cocobolo, and black dyed black ash burl collar spacers - redwood burl body - black fiberboard, copper, black dyed black ash burl end spacers - and a polished copper end cap!
Saya materials include: Leopardwood.
“A lot of the handles on the Japanese knives really don’t do the blade justice. So after seeing your work, I wanted something that was a real show stopper." - Joseph Curry