Blonde, French and Horny !!!

No, not Amelie Honore, the missus wouldn't let me play with that in the shed!

I've had this knife blank knocking about for ages and have got as far as cutting out the scale blanks in various materials but always changed my mind.

Anyhow, the tuit finally rolled around and I decided to clad it in some lovely translucent French cowhorn.

I cut and filed the bases as accurately as possible to give a neat fit against the bolsters and ensure that the handle would all fit within the scale blanks. A quick trim around with a Jewellers saw brought everything to within a few mm.

I decided to conceal the pins within the scales, giving the strength benefit but still retaining a cleaner look. The holes were drilled to half the thickness of the scales using the tang as a guide.

After glue up it was on to the rasps to refine and develop the shape.

Then a fair bit of coarse sanding to smooth out the transitions and fine tune the shape.

Before moving on to finer papers and finally mops and compound.

Off with the tape, a quick clean up and it's job done. I'm not sure why the bolster looks so scratched, it's not perfect but it's nowhere near as bad as it looks. Apart from being a bit smelly at the rasping stage the horn was a lovely material to work with. Now that it's all polished up you can just make out the brass pins through the handle scales.

New Mora 2010MG

Just in, news from Mora of Sweden that the military green version of the new 2010 is going into production. The 2010 uses the same stainless steel blade as the popular Mora 2000 but has a more ergonomic handle with a finger guard and small ridged areas for extra grip with a variety of holds. The handle is made from a similar material to our Gyokucho Eva grip saws - a hard plastic that feels soft to the touch and is amazingly grippy, even with wet hands.

As a general purpose knife I reckon they have got these just about spot on, the scalloped tip means you have a strong blade for heavier work but a fine, slightly flexible tip. We are be among the first companies in the world to stock the civilian version of this knife and will have the military version in stock as soon as the first batch are finished.

Custom Mora Kitchen Knives

Most knifemakers tend to focus on outdoor knives so this really is a stab in the dark (if you'll pardon the expression), but I've just taken a punt and ordered some food industry knife blades from Mora of Sweden.

I've tried out a sample set of the complete knives and my first impression was 'not really sure about these', I think it was the green handles that caused me to waver - those Swedes and their handles again! But after a week or so I got used to them and gradually started to use them more and more and leave the Wusthofs in the block.

They were designed by a famous Swedish Chef, and I must admit the ergonomics and blade shapes are absolutely spot on.

(OK you can get that image of Bork from the Muppets out of your mind now!!!)

The blades are made of 12C27 high carbon stainless which they carefully heat treat to avoid the formation of large carbides. The end product takes and holds an edge like carbon steel and yet still has high corrosion resistance.

In the end, my wife and I decided to give the Moras to my mother in law as her kitchen knives had seen better days, but by the time it came to actually hand them over we were both a little hesitant to part with them.

We will be getting some of the complete knives over in the next few months, but in the meantime it will be interesting to see whether the knifemaking fraternity show an interest in the blades.