Estate Sale Knife Hunt!

I went estate sale shopping today and found some knives.

Vintage Zwillings Twinworks 202-10" and L F & C Universal Chef's Knives

Let me first post these two chef's knives. The top knife is the L F & C Universal chef's knife, the bottom one in the picture is the Zwilling Twinworks chef's knife.

The L F & C is a vintage carbon chef's knife with a giant 12" blade. This knife was made in a process that we call stamped. A stamped knife is made by cutting out (stamping like using a cookie cutter) the knife shape out of a specially prepared steel blank. If you look down on a stamped knife you would see one long length of steel. It is made of carbon steel. Carbon steel was used to make knives before stainless steel was developed. The gray mottled appearance tells us it is carbon steel.

This knife is marked L F & C UNIVERSAL MADE IN U.S.A. It is in excellent shape!

Friodur Twinworks Forged 202-10" 10" Chef's Knife

And here is the Zwilling knife. This is a stainless steel forged knife made by Henckel.

A forged knife is made by taking an amount of steel and pounding it — usually using molds — into the desired knife shape. You can usually identify a forged knife by the bolster (the bolster is where the handle meets the blade). The bolster on a forged knife is think metal, and if you are looking down at the top of a knife you would see how the bolster is made of the same metal as the blade, but gets wider where it meets the handle.

This Friodur Twinworks chef's knife is a forged 10" bladed knife forged from stainless steel.

Dexter and RusHar Knife Honing Steels

I picked up two knife honing steels. Both are 14" one is made by Dexter, and the other is a RusHar. The Dexter seems to have had little use, the RusHar is more worn — but I am not really sure how a steel wears out. What I mean is my guess is that a steel that has been worn smooth with use should pretty much still hone the knife edge back to good condition.

Ontario Pacific Carbon Steel Paring Knife

This little knife is marked Ontario Pacific. It seems to be a small utility knife, being that I found it in Santa Clara County — my guess is that it is a cot knife, a knife used in the apricot industry that was big here years ago.

Cutco Knife Sharpener

I came across this handheld Cutco brand knife sharpener. I bought it just because I know that any Cutco items are always desired. I have already resold this guy.

Cutco Knife Set and Cutco Knife Wall Rack

The same estate sale had this set of Cutco knives. The rack that they are in hangs on the wall (with the handles facing down), and you lift the knife up and out.

Cutco Knife Set

Here is the Cutco knives out of the wall rack. There paring to chef's knives, and also a serrated spreader.

I sharpen Cutco knives every day — and everyone that I ask says that they love their Cutco knives!