21st knife and left handed gift
My brother Peter gave me a beautiful French style chefs knife for my 21st birthday that I still use to this day. for over 40 years it has been the main knife in my kitchen, and a few years ago I was able to replace the handle which had seen better days. I have used it as a guide on how to design a functional cooking knife, and have made a few with similar dimensions. A few years ago Peter was retiring a carbon steel knife that he had used from the start of his career as a very successful chef and he gave it to me with the proviso that if I couldn’t use it I would give it back to him rather than dispose of it some other way. Turns out that after so many years of being used by someone that was left handed, the knife just didn’t work for me and my right handedness. It was impossible for me to cut straight with it and while it looked like every other knife that I owned, I had no control over the way it cut. This is not a knife that has been specifically designed for a left hander, like the Japanese do, this was a French chef style knife that had just been used, and sharpened left handed for long enough for it to have a bias. I am sure I could have got it reground and got it back to centre but it seemed like a shame to wipe out all that history so I returned it to Pete and went back to using my own knife and our own shared history.
Tech specs:
Steel: AEB-L stainless steel
Guard: Stainless Steel with G10 spacers
Pins: Stainless Steel and brass mosaic pin
Handle: Stablised Tasmanian Blackwood
Custom box
Hardness: 55 HRC (Approx )
Total length: 340mm
Length of cutting edge: 210mm
Blade height at heel: 45mm
Handle length: 115mm
Spine thickness : 2mm
Weight: Knife 222g