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and
Kramer
Bob
OUR. FAR.-FLUNGCOR.R.E5PONDENTS
the
secret
lives
ofknives.
kitchen-
Kramer
the
later,
asked
months
La
few
Sur
A
years.
chain
Table
line of knives,
he prepared for his mass-market debut,
whether such a seemingly straightforward
knife could be worth its exorbitant cost
(four hundred and seventy-fivedollars, at
the time). The editors' answer:"Yes. The
Kramer knife outperfonned every knife
we've everrated." Kramer's backlog of orders,alreadylong, immediately jumped to
and hunting
hollows
M
like
alrefining
One
is
be
be
to
can
He
fun.
was
he
planning.
for
seems
him
to
face
when
advance
lookout
his
Talking
dog;
to
tile
a
fast.
1997,
in
allergic
on
with
moves
he
playing
constantly
the design for his chef's knife, a passerby,
stunnedby the sight of ablacksmith'sshop
in downtown Seattle (Kramer moved to
Olympia in 2005), popped in and started
badgering him with ideas. Rather than
was
the
man
the
listened
that
adamant
was
he
that
Kramer
out
away,
turned
the visitor
It
drive
and
no-nonIllustrated
the
Cook's
morning,
One
magazine
badly.
culinary
calledhis shop, in Olympia, Washington,
and ordered one of his knives to include
in an equipment-rating article. Kramer
worked into the night for three days,and
then shipped off an eight-inch chef's
knife. When the magazine'sstory ran, last
year, it included a small sidebar asking
most
spond in waysthat baffle the most experienced metallurgists. Even so, he has not
ranchlands
of rural America, and they look, speak,
and dresslike throwbacks to the days of
the coveredwagon. By contrast,Kramerwho has been not only a chef but also a
waiter, a folk-art importer, an improvisational-theatre performer, and, for a yearin
his twenties, a Ringling Brothers clownarrives at knife shows looking like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur:button-down silk
shirts, neatly pressedslacks,a thin goatee
on a sharp face.Now fifty, and a trim five
feet ten, Kramer is upbeat and alert, and
morning
other selection of chemistry's basic elements. The amalgams continue to re-
ost bladesmiths come out of the
him.
can~
unsolved
he
steers
of
awe
alchemist,
in
mad
a
remains
Like
Kramer
mysteries.
not stop tinkering with steelrecipes,forging together different metal blocks and
powdersto ennobleiron with just the right
amount of nickel, manganese, or some
holdtool.
to
in this order:cut through
an inch-thick piece of Manila rope in a
singleswipe;chop through a two-by-four,
twice; place the blade on his foreann and,
with the belly of the blade that had done
all the chopping, shave a swath of arm
hair; and, finally, lock the knife in a vise
and pennanendy bend it ninety degrees.
The combination of thesechallengestests
steerstwo chief but conflicting capabilities: its flexibility and its hardness.
Despite attaining a master's status,
sailor,
plish four tasks,
few to Japan, the High Church of steelmaking, where his commercial knives are
being manufactured. Kramer's itineraries
matched the way he lives:a resdess,almost
insatiable searchfor essences,
for the soul
of craftsmanship;for perfectionin a house-
a
ety, Kramer underwent five yearsof study,
cuhninating in the manufacture, through
hand-forging, of six knives. One of those
was a roughly finished, fifteen-inch bowie
knife, which Kramer had to useto accom-
done
to design a commercial
which the storeintroducedthis fall. As
by the AmericanBladesmithSoci- Kramer made a seriesof trips, including a
ferred
sense
supply
B
ob Kramer is one of a hundred and
twenty-two people in the world, and
the only fonner chef:to havebeencertified
in the United States as a Master Bladesmith. To earn that tide, which is con-
two
BYTODDOPPENHEIMER.
shapeof Kramer'sblade should match the
lines of a Six-Metre sloop-a curve, he
argued, that holds universal value. That
line remains one of the hallmarks of a
Kramer knife.
Earlier this year,when Kramer took me
inside his shop (a quintessential prefab
industrial cavern), he explained why he's
polishing compound. Kramer now asked
me to lay a long bolt acrosshis anvil. He
picked up the newly forged knife, held
it on top of the bolt, reachedfor a heavy
forging hammer, and started banging
away.The bolt gave,but so did the knife.
Damage to bolt: a quarter-inch cut. Damageto knife: a sixteenth-inch chip.
Kramer studied the pile of broken
or a tomato assmoothly asa d1in, tapered
edgecan,but it will murder chickenbones;
and so, Kramer figured, it ought to do a
job on a bolt. This time, the bolt split and
left only a slight mark on the blade'sedge.
Kramer's eyeswidened: "I think I just did
it! Let's do that again-that was fun!" Another whack, more success;but when it
came to the final test-cutting newspaper-the knife failed. Kramer againexamined his blade. "fm still in the dark," he
said.
ning of the night's work or attheend-almost never during mealtime: Moreover,
sharpeningsteds aremeant for European,
or 'Western," cutlery, not Japanese.Either
this chef, an elderly Japaneseman, did
not know how to use his own cutlery
(which was unlikely) or he wasn't using
a sushi knife. Mter
our meal, Kramer
A
re-
amused.
then
up,
He
it."
looked
not
~d
that's
hand
his
know
in
we
'Well,
metal
approached the sushi counter, thanked
the chef, and peeked at his knife. It was
a cheap Western chefs knife, not even
peatedthe processwith a secondblade-a sushi blade. Outside on the sidewalk,
heating and cooling it at a different series
Kramer paused to absorb the incident.
of temperatures--but this time he tried an
t dinner one night, while biting into
"You would never seethat in Japan," he
old trick: when shatpening the blade, he
a pieceof tuna at a well-regarded said. The encounter explains a lot about
gaveit a "beefy" edge,grinding it to a rel- sushirestaurant,Kramer suddenlystiff- the great war between Japanese and
ativelywide y. Kramer took this route re- ened. "Did you hear that?" he asked. Western cutlery, a story that unfolds the
luctantly, knowing that it might draw Kramer was sitting a good twenty feet moment these two kinds of knives hit a
scorn. Sharpness,it turns out, is a surpris- from the kitchen, with his back to the simple sharpeningsteel.
ingly complex and contentious notion.
chef, but he immediately recognized the
Sinceanygood knife canbe maderazor
Any decent knife can be made sharp at its faint sound of steel against steel, as the sharp, the ultimate question is what hapcutting edge;what matters is the shapeof chef took a moment to work his knife over pensto it in the minutes, hours, and weeks
the steelbehind it-what cutlery experts a metal rod called a honing or sharpening after its first use,ascookscut food. Part of
call "edge geometry." A blade that is steel."That was reallyweird," Kramer said. the answerlies in the hardnessof the steel,
ground, for instance, with wide, heavily Professionalchefs, especiallysushi chefs, which is commonly measuredby a family
angledgeometrywon't move through fish typically sharpentheir knives at the begin- of devicescalled Rockwell scales.These
punch steel with a pin, then calibrate its
resistance from zero to near seventy.
(Some of the world's softest steels,with
Rockwell ratings down in the teens, are
found in our buildings and bridges,where
elasticityis paramount; items suchastrain
tracks and car axlesfall somewherein the
middle, with Rockwells in the thirties and
forties. At the top of the scale are tool
tionalJapaneseknife, by contrast, runs in
the middle sixties-at least near its edge,
which is often harder than its more resilient back side. The blade's profile also
tends to be thinner, becauseJapanesecuisine revolves around relatively yielding
foods (primarily fish and soft vegetables).
If Japaneseknivesarerestrictedto this cuisine, and used carefully, they will remain
steels, such as drij1bits andball bearings, sharp far longer than Western knives do;
and knives.) On the retail market, Westthis is what cutlery dealers really mean
ern knives tend to be the softest, with
when they say that Japaneseknives are
Rockwell ratings in the middle to upper "sharper." When the edge of a Japanese
fifties. This makesa Western knife dull in knife dulls, however, its tiny teeth do not
a relatively forgiving fashion: the micro- bend: their points break off That's what
scopicteeth at the knife's edgebend over. happens,quickly and disastrously,when a
A sharpeningsteerspurpose,therefore, is traditional Japaneseknife is "steeled." If
to push back the blade's teeth so they stand
damagedlike this, Japaneseknives can be
up and cut again. (In this sense, a sharpenfixed only with a proper set of sharpening
ing steel doesn't actually sharpen; it just restonesor an expertregrinding. This partly
aligns, or "hones," the edge. On a Westexplainswhy they havebeen slow to catch
ern knife,
in fact,thehairlikeedgeis often
so soft that, when sharpened,it forms a
flimsy, invisible burr, which is best removed with a compound-soaked leather
wheel or strop.) The Rockwell of a tradi-
on
in Westernkitchens.Americanssim-
the averageAmerican reachesfor any
knife that's handy-thick or thin-arid
treats a cutting board like a chopping
block. As a result, any cutlery dealer can
regale you with stories about customers
who havecomein, frustrated,with chipped
Japanese knives. Kramer has been approached by dozens of professionalchefs
with this complaint, mostly during his sixyear stint asa knife sharpener--a business
he once operatedout of the back of an old
bread truck.
Kramer first became fascinated by
sharpening in the mid-nineteen-eighties,
when he was in his earlytwenties, and was
hopping from restaurantto restaurantasa
prep cook. In each kitchen, he met chefs
who knew almost nothing about knives.
"These are our main tools," he recalls
thinking. "Why don't we know how to
take care of them?"
Kramer
decided
to
learn everything he could about the process.At first, all he found were the coarse
ply eat more roughly than the Japanesedo.
We cook ribs and T -bone steaks.We split electric sharpening machines popular at
chickens.When halving an acorn squash the time, which do little more than ruin a
or making a post-Thanksgiving sandwich, good knife. Then he heard about an
to
years
wootz
ten
produces
that
and
recipe
him
a
out
took
it
figure
Verhoeven
see what
enough
table
a
up
to
me
metalsmiths-first,
by his show table-to
garden-variety
fascinated
have in-
new metallurgical findings Pendraycould
suggestthat might help a knife cut a bolt.
Pendray promptly took Kramer on an
hour's conversationalride, through the ins
and outs of how carbon and iron, the basic
flour and water of steel, behave under
various conditions. Carbon, Pendraysays,
"is one of the fastest-moving little atoms.
They're very active. They boogie all
around." And they continually surprise,
Pendray said, sometimes "spheroidizing
the whole cotton-pickin' thing!" (That's
when carbidesin steel assumea spherical
shape,lesseningthe metal'sbrittleness.)
soaked
has long
becauseit was reputed to make unusually
lethal weapons(legend has it that, during
the Crusades,Muslirnsoldiers sliced up
not only their European opponents but
their swordsaswell), and, second,because,
in the early eighteen-hundreds,the tech-
stopped
the
Damascus.
had
of steel called
ingredients
walked
form
(The
cluded fresh-picked tree leaves, broken
glass,oyster shells, and a pinch of vanadium.) Pendraycannow talk about the innards of steelwith anyone,blacksmith or
physics professor. That's why Kramer
he
tinctive
The Damascuspattern originated sometime in the third or fourth century, A.D.,
but it has become commercially popular
only recently,largely becauseof its evocative appearance: a watery swirl on the
blade's surface.Today, the effect is typically achievedby welding slabsof different
metals together and then etching the
surfaceto revealtheir contrasts.The original Damascus, now known as "wootz,"
achievedits watery striations very differendy: by growing those whorls, organically,within a singlepieceof metal.W bOtz
consistently.
of
almost
some
for
Kramer
is famous
possibilities,
and
single-handedly re-creating the ancient
Persian method for making a highly dis-
offered
Bladesmith,
dray and one of his smithing partners,
John Verhoeven, a professor emeritus of
engineeringat Iowa StateUniversity, subjected Pendraysknivesto an ancientEastern test: cut a silk scarf as it floats to the
ground. A scarfissolight that most knives,
evenwhen razor sharp,either grab the silk
or leavea raggedcut. When the scarfwas
slashed by Pendrays blade, Verhoeven
told me, "it looked like it had been cut
with a pair of scissors."Verhoeven suspected something unusual involving carbides, which are compounds that result
when carbon and other elements,such as
iron or chromium, bond during forging.
(Bladesmiths love carbides,becausethey
are hard and sharp, like microscopic diamonds.) Pendrays signal discoverywas a
way to control how the carbidesaligned,
which yielded wootz's unique pattern. If
luck strikes, Verhoeven explained, those
carbidescan line up along a knife's edge.
Pendraysinitial forayswere hit or miss;
Once
of California's
new
Keller,
French Laundry restaurant and New
York's Per Se,callshis Kramer meat slicer
his "show knife." Lisa M~anus, a senior
editor at Cook'sIllustrated, said that her
testing team was surprisedby how quickly
and smoothly Kramers chef's knife cutup
a raw chicken. When her teammates attempted the sametask with other knives,
they were soon "sweating and cursing,"
their bladesslipping in their hands.
In the exhibit hall, Kramer set out one
morning in searchof additional insights,
specificallyregarding Frank Richtig. This
led him to AI Pendray,who was standing
behind a table where some of the show's
most serious knife collectors were gathered.AI Pendrayis a farrier (a horseshoer)
in Williston, Florida; in the course of a
fifty-year career,he has shod, by his estimation, asmany astwo hundred and fifty
thousand horses. Among those are five
winners of the Kentucky Derby and several dozen others that have placed in a
Triple Crown race. He is also a Master
that
lack. Thomas
much
have
pretty
was
scientists
wootz
European
making
since,
for
Ever
lost.
nique
Damascus that's made today. Here, he
explained the differencesbetween the avbeenexperimentingand theorizing. Then, erageAmerican smith's treatment of this
one day in June of 1993, a Florida horse- form (which he follows) and the version
shoer appearedat a Damascusconference generally found on industrial cutlery. In
in Hagen, Gennany.
smith-made Damascus,carbon steeland
Pendray'sblades,which have an eerie other metals are forged into hundreds of
charcoalcolor, proved to be the first ever layers, and often mixed throughout the
to match the old Persianpatterns. Could knife the way vanilla and caramel are
they cut the sametoo? To find out, Pen- twisted into saltwater taffy. Commercial~
catedthis way,too, with someof today's matter: whether Kai could smooth out the
new, high-grade, stainlesssteel, in a design that he hoped would remain faithful
to his principles.
which
unexpectedly
an
factory,
to
Shun
treated
Kai's
at
was
meeting
he
O
tense
in Japan,
morning
first
industrial
small
a
City,
Seki
in
based
is
room,
eight
women
as
con-
Kill
floor,
a
from
top
outside
players
factory's
collected
leading
the
Table
the
On
ference
La
Sur
and
Tokyo.
town in Japan'sgeographicbelly that was
once a center for sa\:nuraisword-making,.
and is now known for its mass-produced
cudery. The factory is housed in a boxy,
modern building that is surroundedby the
tiny commercial vegetablegardens,many
no bigger than half an acre, that speckle
nearly everyJapanesecity outside central
Kramer
once had a practical purpose. It allowed
smiths to surround a strip of good, hard
steel with cheap, softer metal. Modem
Damascus, however, is usually made entirely of high -grade metals. The combination is attractive and, if the knife were
ever used like an axe, the slightly softer
jacket might keep a blade from snapping
in half. In a standard kitchen, though,
today s Damascusdoesvirtually nothing,
despite cutlery dealers'claims that rough
surfaceskeep food from sticking to the
blade. Still, plenty of respected cutlery
is made with these laminations, includ-
and
it
and
mass-produced,
was
steel
grade
n Kramer's
high-
before
cultures
Eastem
various
by
Damascus generally uses only a few
dozen layers,"andthe pattem is laminated
onto regular knife steel, creating something like a ham sandwich: the bread and
condiments are the whorled Damascus;
the ham in the middle is the blade'score
steel-the knife's cutting edge. This
technique of cladding had been devised
in matching
blunt sides of Kramer's knives. These
edges-the "hee~"at the back of the blade,
near the handle, and, more important,
the "spine," along the top-are typically
squaredoff: becausethat is how industrial
machinesstampout a blade.But the harsh
corners can irritate the hand. As petty as
this point may seem,it matters gready to
professional cooks. The Japanese,for instance, control their knives by pressing
their forefinger on the spine. Western
cooks often go further, and "choke up" on
a bladewhen they chop food; rve talked to
some who showed me deep, crackedcallusesat the baseof their forefingers.Knowing this, Kramer, like many smiths, puts a
"crowned" spine and a rounded heel on
eachof his custom knives,and for months
he had been pushing Kai to do the same.
"We talked about it.."Dennis Epstein, Kai
U.S.A.'s senior manager, said. 'We just
checkeredvestsstood up in their cubicles
and bowed in unison to greet everyone. didn't havethe skill to do it."
Almost immediately, though, the meeting
Kramerwasbaffledby this. Kai'sining someof the finest knivesin Japan. led to conflict over last-minute changes, dustrial process, after all, was distinguished
Kramer's Shun knives were being fabrione of which involved a seeminglysimple by its emphasison hand-finishing--a pro-
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asked what that goal was, he was taken
aback-After an awkward pause, he said
that his dream was to be classified as a
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making tools, he was still learning,still
striving "to reach my goal.'" When I
~
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i,fJ¥f
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ex-
some
arrived
with
just
had
called
he
package
a
in
news:
He
Kramer
too.
tomatoes,
it,
edge.
for
knife
a
not
with
unchipped
newspaper
but
a
was
cut
fat
a
dream
him
make
to
enough
it
was
ap-
J
his
when
experiments
more
He
States.
United
some.
about
ordered
the
in
but
Kramer
that
kind
a
was
tungsten,
promptly
grain
structure.He prompdy sent somesamples
to a laboratory, to seeif the grain sizewas
dropping to a level that would allow some
extra hardness without lessening the
blade'sresilience.
To his surprise, the laboratory report
came back with only a partial reading:
apparendy, Kramer's grain structure was
so fine that the laboratory's microscope
couldn't bring the particles into focus.
Elated, Kramer returned to his forge.
Days later, he sent me a photograph
of a bolt and a baby pork bone, both
splayed open with numerous slices.
Lying on top of them was a blade with
it
because it con-
open, revealed an unusually" creamy'
knew
pecially wear-resistant
from the nation's leading Richtig knife
collector, Harlan Suedmeier. "There are
about twelve knives in there," Kramer
said."My heart is pounding. They're cool.
They arevery simple, and they are thin. If
these things go through a bolt, rve got a
lotto learn."
Although Richtig collectors tend
not to test their knives, Suedmeier was
willing to let Kramer test two "to destruction." Kramer soon struck his best Richtig
pose and started hammering. The blade
crumpled. Kramer was crestfallen; then
he found one of Richtig's old advertisements, in which the smith acknowledged
using wider edges for demonstrations.
Kramer retracedhis Atlanta conversation
with Pendray, returned to his metallurgy
books, and discovered a diagram that
might lead to a crucial refinement. Then
he forged some steel that, when broken
had
ecutivesscramblingto pleaseeveryone.
Japan, of course, has no shortage of
expert knifemakers, and Kramer managedto visit severalin Niigata, a province
north of Tokyo that specializesin a variety of handmade tools, including kitchen
cutlery. While most small Japanese
bladesmithing shopsmake knives only in
the Japanesestyle-that is, with a onesided, "single bevel" edge-':Niigata
smiths also forge knives with the symmetrical, double bevel that is popular in
the West. One is Junichi Takagi, a tiny
seventy-one-year-old with soot-black
hands who is reputedly Japan'slast artisan of carpenter'sadzes.He also makes a
simple, crude-looking kitchen knife that
Kramer was particularly taken with. "I
bet it will get sharper the more you use
it," Kramer told me. During tests,the behavior of Takagi's steel-its sparks on a
grinding wheel, its "toothy" capacity to
cut rope again and again-suggested ingredients that Kramer thought would,
when combined with his own steels,create a distinctive Damascus edge. "You're
getting, basically, three different surfaces,"he said. "It's freakishly good cutting material." Takagi, after all, was accustomed to making tools that had to
survive hours of slamming through lumber. Sure enough, his steel, which is es-
find
stein arguedthat the time it would take to
crown a knife would price Kramer'sknives
out of the market. Kramer disagreed,and
performed a mock demonstration of how
he crownsa knife on a grinder within minutes.Epstein grimaced.«.None
of the massproduced knives in the marketplacehave
a crowned spine," he said. Yet hadn't
Epstein just been talking to the Sur La
Table executivesabout the retail market's
continual need for new knife designs?
"You're spending so much time trying to
be innovative,"Kramer said."This is a very
simple innovation that will payoff for the
life of the knife, and that every serious
cook will appreciate,every time they use
it. And the thing is, no one's doing it."
(Months later, when Kramer's Shun
knives hit the stores,there was noticeable
improvement. But the spines and heels,
and the handles,did not compareto those
on a custom Kramer.)
In the following days, Kai entertained
its guests royally while continuing to
stumblewith more designand production
details. This concernedthe Sur La Table
people, and their difficulties say a lot
about the recent upheavalsin the cutlery
market. For most of the past century, European knifemakers (primarily Wiisthof
and Henckels, th~ two German giants)
havedominated the market for mass-produced cutlery. In essence,while the Japanesewere perfecting assembly-linecraftsmanship, the Germans perfected their
robots. Over the past decade, however,
American cooks began to grow interestedin Japaneseknives, a trend that Kai
jumped on, in 2003, with its Shun line.
Suddenly, culinary aficionados began
tains
force bent over grinding wheels. But Ep-
talking about those "clunky" German
knives. Demand for Shun cutlery soon
outstripped Kai's capacities,leaving its ex-
cannot
tour,
a
work-
during
factoo/s
the
of
witnessed
most
just
saw
had
we
we
where
cess
citing
Seattle,
O
ne morning, when Kramer was back
'Youmeanall this timeyou'vebeenlaughingat me-not with me?"
anesesteelarrived, and another possible breakthrough:a kitchen knife that
would cut through a cookedlamb bone.
moment of classic Japanese humility,
that, despite fifty years of experience 'That," he said,"would be huge.".
Before we left, Takagi, who works in
a narrow, smoky shop, mentioned,
in a