A tale of two Forschners

sanmateo · Sep 17, 2023

Were there different lines of Victorinox/Forschners with different grinds, or did they gradually improve the design over the years?
Is there a blade difference between the Fibrox and Rosewood generally, or would the two lines, if produced in the same year, have similar measurements?

I recently picked up an old Rosewood Forschner 8" Chef and was comparing it to a newer Victorinox Fibrox. I was surprised to find that the older Rosewood handle knife has almost no distal taper, but the newer Fibrox is quite nicely tapered heel to tip. I know Forschner was an importer; perhaps they had different specification or price-point they were trying to hit, or perhaps this is a case of continuous improvement.

	Rosewood (mm)	Fibrox (mm)
spine at heel	2.54	2.41
spine halfway	2.51	1.91
1cm from tip	1.27	1.14

Knives are marked:
Victorinox Fibrox 5.2063.20
Forschner Rosewood 40020 5.2060.20

More photos https://imgur.com/gallery/6DkquXs

sanmateo · Sep 17, 2023

I seem to have dropped this in the wrong section. Mods can move

sanmateo · Sep 18, 2023

I found a reddit post from 2020 about the Victorinox Modern, describing minimal distal taper

2.25mm spine thickness out of the handle
2mm half way down
1mm 2 to 3cm from the tip (it does not have a great taper, it very slowly decreases, then decreases rapidly near the tip, but the spine is rather thin anyway).

I found an eBay listing for an older Forschner Rosewood, and asked the seller for dimensions:

About 0.097 inch at the handle and 0.091 inch halfway to the tip. Thanks

he also provided a photo, which shows the blade starts tapering nicely after the midpoint, unlike my example.

So now I have four data points:
• one tapered the entire length,
• two tapered only in the front half, and
• one tapered mostly near the tip.

So either Victorinox recently changed their design, or there's significant process variation depending on who was working the grinder that day.

sanmateo · Sep 19, 2023

Another ebay seller got back to me saying it was about 2.5 at the handle and 2.4mm at the midway point.

does anyone here have one of these you can compare?

sanmateo · Sep 27, 2023

bought another rosewood forschner. 2.4mm above the heel, 2.0 at the midpoint, and 1.3 about 1cm from the tip
seems like there's quite some manufacturing variation...

Ericfg · Sep 28, 2023

I'd suspect that were *many* variations over the years. I remember using an 8 or 10 inch chef's profile back in the 90s and it was pretty thick (as I recall).

chefpaulm · Sep 28, 2023

I've been using Forschner's for decades both in butcher shops and as a Professional Chef. I went through a bunch of knife rolls, go bags and tool boxes came up with 18 or so 8" and 10" Breaking knives. You are correct! The blades on the rosewood handled knives tended to be thicker than the plastic and fibrox handled ones. The good part for me is that they all functioned fairly well! I really can't recall anything being truly annoying because I still use them. I personally like the rosewood handles. BTW nice catch!