Vintage Russell Green River Works 10″ Scimitar Carbon Steel & Rosewood 1920’s-40’s

 1920’s to 40’s era Russell Green River butcher’s scimitar with refurbished, reground carbon steel blade and rosewood handle. 

Previously this blade had been sharpened down enough to leave it thick behind the edge making smooth cutting difficult. This will happen even with the best sharpening over time, a thick blade is plough like and even with a sharp edge will not move smoothly through food. 

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.