- #Cut thinner to be a winner cut deeper to when cutting cards professional
- #Cut thinner to be a winner cut deeper to when cutting cards series
To earn this title (which is conferred by the American Bladesmith Society, of Texarkana, Texas), he underwent five years of practice and study, culminating in the manufacture, through hand-forging, of six knives. Like a mad alchemist, Kramer cannot stop tinkering with steel recipes, forging together different metal blocks and powders to ennoble iron with just the right blend of nickel, vanadium or some other selection of chemistry’s basic elements.Īt the time of this conversation, Kramer was one of 113 people in the world, and the only former chef, to be certified as a Master Bladesmith.
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High-speed steel does that.” “PROCEED AS THE WAY OPENS” This blade just sent out a dull spark, kind of orange, and in just a couple of directions. “When you put high-carbon steel on the grinder, it really crackles, like a sparkler, almost in a three-sixty. “Because of the way it sparked,” he said. But I wanted to know, since the blade carried no tell-tale markings, how he had determined it was made from a World War One drill bit.
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He now spent a good five minutes explaining his steps so that I could duplicate the process myself. That’s why they don’t use it much anymore.” Nevertheless, Kramer had managed to sharpen the knife-in fact, he gave it a razor edge. “That stuff was made for drills during World War One to be extremely wear-resistant. A week later I got a phone call: “It’s old, high-speed tool steel,” he said.
#Cut thinner to be a winner cut deeper to when cutting cards professional
Kramer used to be a professional knife-sharpener, so the boning knife’s challenges captured his curiosity, and he asked me to put it in the mail. “If the steel was heated too much, it won’t take an edge.” “It depends on how the blade was tempered,” Kramer said. The next evening, after returning from the dive, I called Bob Kramer, a culinary knifemaker from Olympia, Washington, I had once met at a knife show, and asked what was going on with the boning knife. Discouraged and mystified, I packed up the four good knives and headed for bed. Finally, the blade’s edge shone like a wedding ring-but it still wouldn’t cut.
#Cut thinner to be a winner cut deeper to when cutting cards series
Frustrated and eager for sleep, I re-soaked my series of wet-stones and tried the boning knife one last time, with more pressure.
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But the fifth, a small, custom-made boning knife, couldn’t slice a sheet of newspaper. Without a sharp knife, the task of cleaning and trimming abalone becomes an act of crude carpentry, and a potentially bloody one.ĭown in my basement workshop, thirty-five minutes after I had first put steel to stone, four of my five knives were shaving the hair off my arm. I took on this task because the meat of an abalone, a kind of giant sea snail found in only a few areas of the world, is slimy and dense, like a flexed muscle, so it must be sliced thin and hammered mercilessly before being cooked and served. One fall evening in 2007, I headed down to my basement to sharpen a collection of kitchen knives, in preparation for a dawn outing to dive for abalone on the Northern California coast. It also includes photographs, videos, and a new sidebar on Kramer’s recent quest to make a knife out of a meteorite.