An introduction!

[eliasborota]

My name is Elias Borota and over the last few months I've taken an interest in custom knives and sharpening.

I can't cook for **** but am learning how to as a hobby, but not putting in nearly as much time into as I should be.

Every maker I've reached out to has been totally awesome to either work with or talk to, and the same goes for all non-makers I've reached out to on Instragram. Special mention goes to Tyler Leach ("tylerdavidleach") and Jerf Chang ("ching.chongchang"), and Gabe of Crocker Cutlery (who spent a long time on multiple occasions graciously answering many questions I had).

I index of performance—no matter how beautiful the knife, if I do not like its performance, I do not want it, though we are fortunate that many of the best performers happen to also be beautiful.

I plan on selling a few of the knives I've bought over the last year or two, and that they may end up for sell does not mean they do not perform extremely well—I am starting to get "too many" knives and only want a 5-knife rotation for the time being. There's no point in many of them just sitting around when they could be being used / bringing joy to others. I'm a having a hard time choosing which to keep.

Knives that may be up for sell relatively soon are from the following makers (an asterisk indicates I'm waiting on a shipped order from that maker):

1. Dan Bidinger
2. Tobias Hangler*
3. Tobias Heldqvist
4. Tony LaSeur
5. Andrea Lisch
6. Oliver Märtens*

The knife community has been awesome and I look forward to getting to know more of you!

 

[tylerleach]

Hey brother!! So happy to see you on here (finally!)

 

[Romain]

What an introduction! Do you have a favorite knife among all the makers that you tested ?
Welcome to the forum anyway!

 

[eliasborota]

What an introduction! Do you have a favorite knife among all the makers that you tested ?
Welcome to the forum anyway!

Hello Romain, I apologize for the delay. Of the ones listed above, Bidinger by far. I index on performance and the most-recent knife I picked up from him is by far the best knife I've ever owned, overall: best performance and most comfortable. I also now have a couple Bazeses and those things are extremely awesome performers (one of them may be a better cutter than the Bidinger I'm referring to and both are extremely beautifully made). Bang for the buck, hard to beat Birgersson. Thing cuts phenomenally well and I like the profile. All of them are excellent makers though. Gorgeous work. But in terms of what I was hoping for from a knife just in terms of sheer performance, Bidinger and Bazes are my current favorites, Birgersson is just an excellent knife that I never regret using.
In terms of craftsmanship, they're all very high up there, Birgersson possibly being the worst of those despite how well-made his work is: LaSeur's is extremely beautifully balanced but I don't care for S-grinds as it has turned out, but I'd absolutely be willing to buy more of his work someday because it's extremely well-made. The Lisch is absolutely gorgeous. Märtens's is too, and it came with some really neat packaging. Performs very well too. (Took it to a sharpener who is also a pro knife maker and he said it was the thinnest forged blade he'd ever seen. I also bought that knife due to Kamon sharing a post from that maker for that knife, basically saying it was legal robbery for the price being asked for it. So naturally I bought it. Beautfully well-made, performs very nicely.) They're all great. Haha

 

[daveb]

Tease.....

(Welcome to the forum )