Vintage American 12″ Flexible Ham / Salmon Slicer Carbon Steel Antler Re-Handle

A very unusual American made flexible ham / salmon slicer 
re-handled with a stag handle. A set of American made knives with stag re-handles was found in a large collection recently, they are a little bit of a mystery but are nicely done and are excellent late 19th to early 20th century blades. Certainly not factory production handles however. 

This blade is unmarked but is a drop forged and hand ground blade, refurbished and thinned for a second life.

This knife is made to provide very little drag during cutting with the narrow blade, often time this type of blade will get secondary ‘granton’ or ‘kullen’ grinds to reduce sticking during cutting but this is more a remedy for flatter faced blades, a convex hand ground faced blade like this does not need that for good food release. 

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. Check out Bernal Cutlery co founder Josh Donald’s book Sharp to see these wheels in use and more about their history in Europe and Japan.