ODC (Old Dirty Carbon)

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Now this is a pair worth having:

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Again, I'm crammed for time, but these are available. The scimitar is 12" long, and the cleaver is approx 7". Both have tight, secure handles and a good working edge will be put on them at time of sale. My site is taking a little too long to load up on my end, thus the items on here.

Scimitar price: $55
Cleaver price: $45

$12 shipping for you guys. We'll split the difference :)
PM if interested.
 
Why is there so much affection for ForgeCraft blades? Nostalgia? Good steel/geometry? Fashion?
 
a little of all of them, maybe not fashion,.I like it because that 1095 can take a razor edge and is easy to maintain. It doesn't have the best edge retention, but that is mainly do to the fact that they are not heat treated to their full potential. The blade geometry is pretty sweet. The knife is fairly thin under 2mm I believe , so you have a potential laser here. Fully one half of the height of the blade is hollow ground on a very large diameter wheel and the remaining half of the blade is flat ground and contains divots formed during the cold rolled forge process. This combination on a properly polished and maintained blade actually provides exceptional food release. It is the exact opposite of the convex grind that everyone is playing with now. They both get the job done, but go about it in different ways. This is the old school way of doing it. On This grind the food pushes itself into the concave surface of the blade, as it travels up the face and reaches the outward facing edge of the curve the food naturally falls away from the blade. Anything that gets past this will hit the divots which provide an air break to weaken the surface tension caused by the moisture in the food. The key to all of this working properly is the use of large diameter wheels. Most of today's hollow ground kitchen knives do not perform as well because small diameter wheels are used, mostly by guys who sharpen on grinders in the back of trucks.( sorry , Dave) ( I said "mostly"). The small diameter wheel gives you a hollow ground that is too small and a radius that is too tight. The food wants to curl up on itself and a lot of wedging occurs or because of the small hollow the food just bypasses it all together and gets stuck on the flat ground face of the blade.

Plus these are very comfortable to use. I prep about 4 to 8 hours of solid knife work everyday, 7 days a week with my forgecraft, no problems. a few strokes on the 1k king and I'm back in business.
 
by the way, that cleaver is as thin as the chef knife. A tad under 2mm I believe. That cleaver wasn't made for bones it is very much like a Chinese slicing cleaver. Think about it. I have something in the works, you'll love this.lol
 
I have a minute (shouldn't I be sleeping?).

Son nailed it. He knows these blades better than any of us, but for the cleaver, you could use it a couple of ways: Chinese cleaver style, or like a thin deba, and put a nice obtuse microbevel on the back. These are tough as nails, and would easily bounce back from spine crunching (with the blended microbevel). I don't have my calipers or the cleaver next to me, but I'd guess it is 2-2.4mm max, at the spine.

Oh, and it's now spoken for :)

As for Forgecrafts, in general, again, Son said it all. Hair-popping sharpness, 1095 steel (I'm a fan), and the grind is deceptively thin. I actually was asking a maker about a huge hollow ground chef knife (about 4-5' platen hollow ground blades), because they can get so nice and thin, and have excellent food release properties. For fun, someone should measure the spine, middle of the face and 1cm down from the middle of the face thickness on a Takeda. Essentially, he does something similar with his hammer blows.
 
A couple dumb little update/notes:

The cleaver is 2.1mm at the spine, while the chef knives vary from 1.8-2.1mm, depending o who was running the press that day, likely.

I just sharpened both the cleaver and my personal Forgecraft Chef knife, settin the cleaver bevels wit a Chinese waterstone that is about 600-800 grit (they don't say), 1k king, and 6k Suehiro and they are dreamy! Of course, I pushed the edge on the chef knife, because of its geometry, and it is perhaps the sharpest I've gotten a knife...ever!

The cleaver, I gave a convex bevel, but finished with a slightly less ridiculous angle and it's a hair popper, and the weight makes you not want to do the three finger test...or the thumb test. Luckily, I felt it go in before it drew blood :)

I'm going to contact a few people to see if I can manage something cool (maybe what Son has in mind), and if it comes to fruition, I'll be setting up a passaround. Hell, I might just set up a Forgecraft, as is passaround.
 
If the sides are convexed, how does that affect maintenance? Thinning behind the edge?
 
Lefty said:
A couple dumb little update/notes:

The cleaver is 2.1mm at the spine, while the chef knives vary from 1.8-2.1mm, depending o who was running the press that day, likely.

I just sharpened both the cleaver and my personal Forgecraft Chef knife, settin the cleaver bevels wit a Chinese waterstone that is about 600-800 grit (they don't say), 1k king, and 6k Suehiro and they are dreamy! Of course, I pushed the edge on the chef knife, because of its geometry, and it is perhaps the sharpest I've gotten a knife...ever!

The cleaver, I gave a convex bevel, but finished with a slightly less ridiculous angle and it's a hair popper, and the weight makes you not want to do the three finger test...or the thumb test. Luckily, I felt it go in before it drew blood :)

I'm going to contact a few people to see if I can manage something cool (maybe what Son has in mind), and if it comes to fruition, I'll be setting up a passaround. Hell, I might just set up a Forgecraft, as is passaround.
Click to expand...

I have one almost complete.
 
Gotcha! I still might do it for fun. Haha

I'm in!
 
I love this thread simply because there is something about vintage carbon cutlery, a feeling, that I simply don't get when I pick up something new. It makes me imagine being back in a tiny kitchen in France cooking with Escoffier. It's silly seeing as I've never been to france, but I do fantasize about working over there at least a few years. I figured a couple pics of the vintage sab that dave restored for me belong here. I have to put one in the favorite knife I own thread too. This thing is the only knife I baby.

p1010001-29.jpg


P1010002-17.jpg
 
That's a beauty!!! Wow, I see why it's a favourite of yours!
 
Scimitar is spoken for, but there's plenty of great vintage and newer stuff coming up soon.
 
Got a bunch here now. Some dirty, some NOS and a convert. I love these knives

IMG_2522.jpg
 
I love how the wa handle looks like it belongs on the forgecraft. A true east meets west.
 
Wow, I just removed all of the chips, and reset the bevel on the scimitar, with my crap Chinese 600-800, and man, is this knife ever SWEET! Next up, 1k, 6k and newspaper strop. Lucky new owner... :D

On a side note, this crap stone was the best $5 I've ever spent!
 
I'll send you one :)

Very similar in construction, but I believe that is more a result of era and stylistic trends (Takeda versus Moritaka is an example of this). However, I'm not as into the history as Son, or Steeley. However, Washington Forge produced Forgecraft, and old Hickory was Ontario Knife Company, I believe.

Cool question...now I want to double check.
 
old hickory knives are made by Ontario Knife company and Forgecraft was made by Washington Forge. The pattern is cold rolled forged and usually 1095. Around this time frame, a lot of companies had very similar patterns such as Case xx, Cattaugurus, Shapliegh's hammer forge, Winchester, Remington and a handful of others. Of all of these I like the Forgecraft the best, The grind and heat treatment tend to be a bit better than the others I've used. I really think if I could find someone willing to re- heat treat a blade to its optimal , then I would have a truly exceptional knife with better edge retention.
 
I'm working on it, Son. :)

The issue is 1095 and its love of warping....
 
The story was that the original pattern was from Band saw blades used in lumber mills. The cold rolled forge allowed long continuous sheets of steel to be made and the ridges left over from the rollers actually proved to be beneficial in that they allowed the blade to run cooler by reducing friction from contact with the wood. Like many early knife makers, they were always looking for cheap sources of steel. When the band saw blades would snap or dull they would throw them on a scrap pile. In the early days they would just give the stuff away to get it out of there space. The knife makers found out it was good steel and they could make good inexpensive blades and sell them at a reasonably affordable price. During the Depression, There were a lot of public work projects and a lot of lumber mills were set up an a lot of surplus and used steel laying around. In the twenties all the way up to WW2 you see a lot of companies using this type of steel. During the War that sort of stopped as all that scrap went to the war effort. When the war ended you again had a surplus of steel lying around and this pattern went on for about 20 more years. Old Hickory continues with thie pattern today more for nostalgia's stake than anything else. Old Hickory really made their company what it is today. Unfortunately The origi8nal Forgecraft was bought up by Washington Forge and the brand was retired in 1968. Washington forge had over 40 plus individual brands and lines of cutlery and just over extended them selves and then The Japanese came to knife prominence in the 70's and things have never been the same for the American knife industry.
 
Half of what I just said, is myth and legend by the way. Very little is really known as to how all this came about. records were destroyed in fires, floods, abandoned factories and were often looted by former employees and receivership companies. But this story exist with the old timers and I think there is alot of truth to them
 
Seems like it would be a lot of risky work to try to re-harden the knives, especially if not 100% if its 1095. Plus, they're already ground thin and everything.

I am interested in trying to restore/pimp one out though... :O
 
These two are off to their new homes. I hope the new owners love them!

I had to go DMT 220 to get 98% of the ding out of the Pre Forgecraft chef knife. It turned out pretty well. I hope this piece of knife history gets some good use, and I'm pretty sure it will!

C4CF14A3-094B-4EE9-9EAA-548B67D82B97-15225-00001563EC283AB8.jpg
 
Round 2. I can't PM with my account for some reason and had to re-register under a different username to comply with the forum rules and until I did my posts got pulled and I can't PM to get them back though that's what I was told to do, so, her I am. The just of my last post was that if anyone has an old Forgecraft in rough enough shape to warrant going all the way back to a rehardening I'm up for trying it for the heck of it.

~L
 
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[/IMG]

These are my chef au ritz. I love the idea of who used these and where they were. I love using vintage.
 
Luke.Snyder said:
Round 2. I can't PM with my account for some reason and had to re-register under a different username to comply with the forum rules and until I did my posts got pulled and I can't PM to get them back though that's what I was told to do, so, her I am. The just of my last post was that if anyone has an old Forgecraft in rough enough shape to warrant going all the way back to a rehardening I'm up for trying it for the heck of it.

~L
Click to expand...

let me check to see what I have. It might be a week or two.
 
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My new ODC. Not sure the maker, no mark. Cleaned it up after the pic was taken, got the green off the rivets, used 600 grit on the blade, but still has a nice patina. Put an edge on it and it cuts nice. Super super flexy
 
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