Vintage Ed Wusthof 11″ Bullnose Scimitar Carbon Steel Ebony Solingen Germany 1890’s-1920’s

 Ed Wusthof (est 1814) 11″ butcher’s scimitar with 1894 Trident logo on hand forged carbon steel blade (tapered tang) with ebony handle riveted with old style steel pin and nickel washer pin and disc rivets. Blade is fairly full but had a fair amount of pitting from rust which required a thinning and re-facing. 

Anecdotally for every 500 old carbon steel Henckels I have come across only one old carbon Wusthof is found, they were not directly imported into the USA until the late 50’s although some found the way here undoubtably through travel and immigration. 

Wusthof’s model of automation replacing hand work began in the Marshal Plan era re-tooling of post WW2 Solingen. Lots of Solingen’s industrial equipment was either destroyed or to taken by the British after the war so a lot of industry was re-imagined. Mr Wusthof imagined having as few employees as possible and hence this era of German knife making begins.  

 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.