George’s Custom Knives
George VondriskaDescription
There are lots of things life is too short for to tolerate. For me, crappy knives in my kitchen are one of those things. I want good knives that take and hold an edge well. As an extra bonus if I make the knife handle myself I’ll have knives with distinct, custom handles made from a variety of materials. I love that.
Getting the knife blanks
Knife blanks are available in virtually any style you want, in a huge variety of price ranges. I’m a big fan of Damascus steel knives. From large chef’s knives to paring knives, and sizes in between, you can find great quality knife blanks. You can spend as much or as little as you want on knife blanks.
Getting a handle on it
Close-grained hardwood works great for knife handles. You can also create a mix of epoxy and wood by pouring epoxy over the small pieces of wood in an epoxy mold. Some of my knife handles are a hybrid mix of epoxy and wood. Making the handles is a straightforward process you can do with simple tools.
The knife block
I love my knife block because it holds the knives AND it displays the knives. You can see the cool handles, and you can see the great Damascus blades. The knife block is one of the projects in my live edge slab book.
Keep ‘em sharp
Dulls tools are no good. Same for kitchen knives. Keep those knives scary sharp with a good knife sharpener.
I've said a bunch of times, about half jokingly, life is too short for crappy coffee, crappy gin, crappy cheese, crappy kitchen knives. And it's not that I'm a huge cook, but I like having good tools in my shop. I like having good tools in my kitchen. So what I do to make that happen is I buy knife blanks, and you can spend as little as five or seven bucks on a knife blank. You can spend 150 bucks on a knife blank, depending on what you're gonna get. So where I go with this, as I buy the blank and then I make the handle for it. So one of the things I really like about this is that each of my kitchen knife handles has a little bit different look to it. Each knife has a little bit different look to it. These are all Damascus steel, as is the unhandled one I brought out. So they're really good quality knives. And I love the fact that they're personalized. In that vein, once I had these five really cool knives, I wanted a really cool place to put them, and you might say, how are they hanging on that block? And the answer to that is this is a magnetic knife block. Spalted maple, live edge. And in the back of it, it's kind of groovy. There's a groove. And in that groove, there are strip forms of rare Earth magnets. Rare Earth magnets are the strongest magnet, non-electromagnet that you can get. These are on Amazon. They're a five millimeter by 10 millimeter by 60 millimeter. So they were about three eights of an inch wide. I plowed a three-eighths inch groove and then put in a double layer of these rare Earth magnets from end-to-end in a bed of epoxy. So then when we have those on the knife block, so it's what I really like about this is that unlike a slotted knife block that just stick your knives into, I can see my knives and I'm happy to show those off 'cause I think they're pretty neat looking to keep these workin' as well as they possibly can, like my tools in the shop. I want these to be sharp and I'm doing that work with this sharpener. So that I can slice tomatoes or cucumbers or whatever like this. So it's just a little, I dunno, a little human interest look into my life. Good kitchen knives are a great thing to have, and whether you're making them for you or making them for somebody else, they're also a great gift and keeping them displayed, keeping them sharp, cool part of my kitchen.
Very cool idea for the display!