“My first hammer. The one I started with. A 4lb. The one that did all the cold forging.”
First Contact
I went to Matt Sicard about the unlikeliest knife I’d ever set purchasing sights upon: a 215mm Nakiri that he WTS. I had never used one nearly that long, nor so much of them anyhow. It was a very laser grind where I had mosty prefered the Sanjo take for Nakiris, the neck was a bit on the short side, and the blade was rather narrow for that length, if exactly on par with the range I liked in 180mm ones.
SOLD - 215mm 52100 Nakiri
“This knife motivated me to get a press. It was a 1"x1.5"x6" billet. It's now a feather pattern paring knife. It was forged entirely by hand....it took about 14 hours just for the forging. And I lost 11/12ths of my starting material. Never finished it though...”
There was some give and take about it, but it had that... Gyuto-something I thought I could appreciate, and as a Nakiri still, the widest 215mm blade I’d have tried so far, even at heel and obviously more so moving forward. The pull was very strong, but I didn’t feel so confident about why exactly when something about it felt out of character where I stood to appreciate it. Yet the more off it seemed, the more I wanted to follow up with it.
“My first damascus knife. This carving knife was 27 layers of twist. All forged by hand. No press at the time. This thing must have taken at least 30 hours to make... Nickel and brass spacers. All hand cut fit. No power graver at the time.”
That’s about as far as it went: I asked Matt a couple things about it, we started talking a bit, and Matt soon enough was proposing that he could make a custom Nakiri to my satisfaction instead. I took a few days to think about it, and when I came back to greenlight the project, he suggested that I should fill the Form (the capitalization is from me).
“My forge, press, and anvil.”
Matt/MSC
Matt really is outstanding to deal with. He’s welcoming, genuinely interested, swift to provide the right insights into his workflow and getting the basics down so that the details can be fine tuned as he’s setting some things in motion already. There’s a truly warm and tranquille vibe to him, yet what I captured the most is his enthousiasm and dedication to the work. It was positively flowing in his words.
“My first gyuto and first knife with a stone spacer.”
We have the opportunity to see his work more closely here on KKF and he’ll share openly about his experience and experimentations regardless of the level of success he achieved, often putting out incredible stuff from that kind of work on top of his usual array of “regular” knives – all solid and interesting options like that Nakiri he talked me out of – or the one he made custom instead.
The Form
Custom Knife Order Form | MSicard Cutlery
It’s downright simple but quite extensive, fielding anything you’d want a custom maker to make special for you, and very possibly a few more things you didn’t even think about. It also paints a good picture of how Matt looks at making custom knives. It’s really satisfying to fill and Matt is at ease working with it.
“MagnaCut.... and a 1200 grit hand finish..... I only charged $30 for the upgrade from 320-1200 at the time..... it took about 6 hours.”
Specific Requests
Mostly a mild deviation to his regular production – offhand, my custom just seems like a regular MSC there and is perfect that way. I was personally very partial to three things: custom choil shape that’s nothing so special... over 3mm stock into corresponding thickness at heel... perhaps what would really raise eyebrows was that I specifically asked for a rather fine vertical belt grind - even against Matt’s best advice. Note that I’m still not introducing pictures of it, because there’s a stark difference between dreaming up a blade, and what a guy like Matt needs to do to have an orderly, appealing final product.
Of course you can’t care less about the useless stuff I asked for. However, I must provide insight into it enough as to illustrate Matt’s response to them, and the reason I need to do that is they are the things precisely that he would probably never advocate for of his own mind. It’s the “Custom Bind” of any reviewing of such a knife.
“...either a well executed first, or an interesting variation within its class...” (about a much larger grouping I elected those two from...)
In clear, the vertical finish was against Matt’s best not because he found it problematic of itself but because he felt he generally had greater control towards the thinnest edges if left to his own devices. Advice taken, still wanted the belt finish. In my experience a most effective one overall, especially for laser-like blades. And I can make edges thinner, but in fact with MSC I wasn’t worried at all, whatever the outcome, that I’d need to do any major work for at least a year onward.
Matt also didn’t think that the thicker 52100 stock he could order would significantly impact the final stance, while it would certainly impact lead time towards completion. A fair POV, but I still wanted the thicker stock. In fact it was probably the most crucial request, since I basically sent to BST every serious knife that was below 3mm, and once I knew what I wanted, stopped buying any. Statistically, it’s a 100% positive that it just won’t work for me. Matt was also essentially right, although he was again looking at it more from the cutting feel and performance . My beef was only with grip, and he got that.
“I can do other kinds of knives, but seldom do. Different markets are hard to break into. Here's an 8.5" harpoon point chopper.”
As for the special choil shape, Matt was willing to accomodate. His first thought when I explained it was “like a TF notch?”. I told him that while that would also work for me, what I essentially envisionned was based rather on his usual choil shape, except letting the heel go rather aggressively backwards, and amplifying just a tiny bit the finger rest curve inwards. He asked if I could send a schematic to make sure, and I basically sent what would mostly look like a “ 2 ” in italics – with the “neckline” straight obviously. In fact, rather than a TF notch, it is closer to many a higher-end Sakai, a bit more pronounced perhaps
The Form was more than apt enough to let me add some ballpark specs indeed , handle pref, and vibe. Bizarelly, specs were what took the longest to determine. I had the flash and the shape and I knew what I liked for Nakiris in general, but since the original one from Matt was so much longer, I was still toying with the idea of a 200mm+ edge and possibly 60mm width. But in the end I settled for just a modest bit of extra length compared with my favorite Nakiris so far, mostly to level off the backwards heel some.
“This is my dining room. On the table you see completed knives, a regulator for the furnace I'll be using for wootz, premade handles, a multimeter, unground blanks, and some gloves. In the corner you see the battery charger I use for electro etching, as well as reclaimed packing material and the boxes I use for shipping. By that same corner of the table you see the top of the pressure gauge for my vacuum chamber which is sitting near that corner. In the window you see a clayed honyaki drying for heat treat, my dwindling supply of boiled linseed oil, and my drying skewers for handles.”
This is basically Matt’s front store. I don’t know... I started to wonder what it would take to be invited for dinner at Matt’s place. And obiously the best grit I should sharpen my teeth at for the meal. But whatever the deal would be, I mean, Matt's stuff is just about ripe for publication into a roman where I'd be the hero... aaaah uh...
*All Matt’s comments as gathered back in April and unmodified except for slightly editing some out of their full context*
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