Learning to Make a Chef's KnifeThis class is particularly for professional cooks who'd like to develop the skills necessary to make their own knives.
We'll be starting with no blacksmithing skills, and aiming the practice toward the skills needed to produce a reasonable-length cooking knife with a full-tang, pinned wooden slab handle.
In the first few meetings, we'll work on basic skills; fire lighting and tending, swinging the hammer effectively, and developing a sense of how the metal flows under the hammer.
When it comes to the making of the knife, we'll be upcycling readily available high-carbon steel, cutting out the rough shape with an abrasive saw, forging the tapers for the point and the edge, filing and grinding the blade, drilling the tang and slabs, hardening, differential-tempering, assembling and gluing-up the handle, shaping the handle, and sharpening.
Gift Certificates for Learning to Make a Chef's Knife are available.
6 three-hour meetings dates×
Instructor: Carl West
Tuition: $590 per student
Maximum 4 students, one per forge
Please wear proper clothing for visiting or working in the forge:
closed toe shoes (preferably leather, preferably high-topped. Sneakers are sufficient, sandals, crocs, pumps, mules... are not), natural fiber clothing, long pants that cover the tops of the shoes.
Click here for more safety information.
This class is either: If you're interested in taking Learning to Make a Chef's Knife and it's not on the calendar, please tell us using our Notification-List Page.
Dates and Times:
If none of the dates below work for you (or are already full), we suggest you
Add yourself to the Notification List for this class.
(The notification list gets emailed soon after classes are put on the schedule.)
- not upcoming on our schedule,
- or we've fallen behind in our clerical duties and not entered it in the database.
If you found it on our calendar page, we are planning to offer it on that date.