Vintage J A Henckels 12″ Hand Forged Carbon Steel Chef Knife Model 108 1920’s-30’s

Drop forged and then hand forged (tapered tang, lots of taper in blade thickness) hand ground J A Henckels model 108 chef knife made in Solingen Germany in the late 20’s or 1930’s. The Henckels markings of this general period are very similar and a lot of marks are gone (did it say “Grand Prize Paris 1900 St Louis 1904”?) but judging from the hand forged dramatically tapering spine thick at the bolster, very narrow bolsters, square inside corner of handle and heel this would definitly be Pre War early 20th c production. 

Hand forged and ground carbon steel knives like this largely ended in the mid 1960’s in Solingen Germany being supplanted first by the removal of hand forging after drop forging and later by stainless steel and less hand grinding. As the older skilled workers retired and the cost of labor rose hand grinding on carbon steel was no longer the norm in Solingen. Stainless steel became very popular and the bigger names in Solingen began to produce larger quantities of knives with less hand work in the 1970’s onward. This knife represents a previous era where hand work was a pillar of Solingen production.  

This knife will work great for large ingredients like melons, large batches of veggies or as a slicer for boneless meat. Large chef knives like this were often used to prepare a roulade; a thin sheet of meat cut from a larger tougher section that was rolled up and trussed with different ingredients, there are old French or German recipies, see our book Sharp to see chef Chris Kronner’s take on this classic.

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.