Aloha!
| About these knife handles... I love Japanese kitchen knives but sometimes I had found that the aesthetics and the quality of the handles did not match that of the blades. Over time, I had bought a few knives with custom handles that were made by ‘Fish’, a retired woodworker on Maui, HI. After he stopped making them, I started playing around with different woods and other materials myself, went through a lot of trial and error, and asked some very helpful people lots of naïve questions about wood, woodworking techniques, equipment etc. BTW, I was very impressed to find that everybody in the woodworking community whom I bothered with my questions was extremely helpful and happy to help out. Over time, I have made a variety of different knife handles, and I have started to occasionally sell some to offset the costs for my hobby. In the meantime, I have accumulated approximately 80 different types of wood plus other materials, including metal or reconstituted stone for spacers, mammoth ivory, tooth and bone, acrylic and corian, sterling silver accessories etc. I regularly send woods for professional stabilization, especially burl woods and spalted varieties. While I am not a professional wood worker, I try to learn more with every handle I make and I try to use only the best material I can find. I am doing this mainly as a hobby and not to maximize profit, and it is just more fun to work with good materials than with cheap stuff. I still mainly make handles for Japanese kitchen knives, and I loosely follow the traditional shapes, namely octagonal‘ or D-shaped’.
Sometimes I also play around with other shapes and sizes, and I can make different shapes for custom orders as long as they seem to make sense for a specific knife or knife type. I currently do not rehandle/rescale Western style kitchen knives but I can direct you to colleagues who might do that if you are interested. Each of these handles is the result of several hours of work. I do this as a hobby whenever I find the time, and I do most of the work out of my apartment. Fortunately, my property manager occasionally lets me use my belt sander outside which dramatically minimizes the amount of saw dust in my living room... If I have handles available for sale, I will list them here on this page. If you would like to order a custom handle for one of your knives I will be happy to work with you to design it as close as possible to your dream handle. But please keep in mind that this is not my day job, and it can take weeks or in extremely busy times even months before I can finish custom ordered handles. If you are looking for something fast and I have nothing available, I’ll be happy to direct you to places where you can find generic replacement handles in stock. Rehandling If you have tools available (recommended: vise, hammer, chisel for taking off old handles; vise, needle files/rasps, epoxy for attaching handle to a knife; cleaning material) and some experience in woodworking you can put the new handle on your knife yourself. I will be happy to give you tips if you want to try that. I also plan a short tutorial on how to do that but will have to see when I find the time for it. However, I cannot be held responsible for any damage, breakage etc. that happens if you attempt to do this yourself. Should you break a handle in that process, I may be able to repair it but reserve the right to charge a fee for that. In case you want an expert to put the handle on your knife, I recommend you contact Dave Martell at www.japaneseknifesharpening.com/handlereplace.html . Dave has rehandled dozens of knives since I started this and I am sure he will do an excellent job with your knife. You can send the handle to him together with the knife. Please be aware that you will be charged for this service and that this is not part of the buying price of the handle. The ordering process Before you consider ordering anything, please read the disclaimer below. Shipping and Payment The handle will be sent directly to you as soon as possible after receiving payment. This way you can inspect the handle and if you have any concerns or you are not happy, you can return it in its original condition within 7 days after receiving it and I will reimburse the full price to you. In that case, please contact me for details. All prices include tracked priority mail shipping to an address in the U.S. My preferred method for payment is Paypal. The email address for paypal payments is stefanaufhawaii@hotmail.com. Alternatively, I may accept money orders or checks but please contact me directly if you plan to send one. Returns If, for any reason, you do not like a handle I sent you, you can return it in its original condition within 7 days after receiving it. I will reimburse you the full purchase price. Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss return details, and I would also appreciate any honest and constructuive feedback about how I could become better in the future. Please understand that I can not be responsible for any returned handles that are lost in the mail. Custom handles If you want to order a custom design, please contact me directly at customhandles@skeller.info . I will be happy to work something out with you. The final price will depend on the complexity of the handle and on the materials used, and you will get an estimate before I start working on it. Considering that I cannot make a firm commitment to the time it will take me to make a handle, I do not expect payment up front. An exception may be handles with unusually expensive materials where I reserve the right to ask for a down payment. It will be easier to make a handle if I know what specific knife it will be for, and if you already have the knife I will ask you about several measurements and your preferences in order to make the fit as good as possible to your knife and your hand. To find out what some woods look like and to get ideas about potential combinations, you can go to my gallery page at www.skeller.info/handles/gallery/index.php and look around. Showing me what you like by sending me a link to a handle picture makes a great starting point for developing your own design. Since I do this as a hobby, there may be times when I am busy in my day job and I will not accept any orders. This is to save you and me from frustration because of long wait times. Generally, I expect to be the most productive over the summer months. Available handles In the table below you will find photos and short descriptions of the handles that are currently available. Since this usually is not a large number at any given time, I will try doing this without an online store system for now but I may change that if it seems necessary. If you want to buy a specific handle, please send me an email at customhandles@skeller.info and clearly state that you want to buy it and the number of the handle in question. I do not consider questions about a handle as an order, so please state clearly that you want it. They will be sold on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis based on the time the email with an explicit order is received. I will be happy to answer questions about any handle and will give you my personal opinion about which knife would go well with which handle. Payment is expected within 7 days of an order. After that time I reserve the right to relist the handle. Occasionally, I will announce on this site when (approximately) the next batch of handles will be available. Sometimes they sell fast, so please keep an eye on this site if you are interested. Explanations: Materials: I use stabilized and unstabilized woods. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and many people have personal preferences. In my descriptions, all stabilized woods will be marked with a *. I plan to make a list with all the materials I use but need some more time to put it together. Knife suggestions: I roughly use the following guidelines for sizes: knife up to 120mm - 110-120mm handle knife 150mm - 120-125mm handle knife 180mm - 125-135mm handle knife 210mm - 135-140mm handle knife 240mm - 140-145mm handle knife 270mm - 145-150mm handle knife 300mm - 150-155mm handle knife 330mm - 155-165mm handle There will be variations depending on the weight and/or the thickness of a handle. All suggestions are based on my personal preferences, and when in doubt I prefer a longer handle. I am happy to discuss selections for specific knives with you. Known limitations: I try to point out things I find noteworthy, e.g. if there small voids in the wood, if a characteristic of the handle limits it to a certain knife type etc. In most cases, these are not flaws but normal variations in the materials. If I mention anything as a 'flaw', e.g. an inlay slightly off center, I will have already reflected that in the price. Please read the disclaimer again: None of these are 'perfect', the ones you see here passed my inspection, and if I find a handle too flawed you won't see it here. Once you inspect it and find anything wrong, you can return it without any problems (please see returns). There will be
Disclaimer I don’t like disclaimers, but I guess it is necessary to point out a few things: These handles are predominantly handmade. I use a drill press for the tang slots and final buffing and a belt sander for rough shaping but they are all finished by hand. As a consequence, none of them is perfect – there may be minor asymmetries, one edge may be more rounded than another, an inlay or a tang slot may not be 100% centered etc. These ‘flaws’ are gradual; I will not offer anything for a regular price of which I know that it has major issues, and if I have any reason to fear a handle could be affected in its stability and/or longevity I will not sell it. But sometimes I think a handle is o.k. and the buyer may take issue with smaller things. In such a case I offer that any buyer can return any handle in its original condition within 7 days after receiving it if they are not happy with it – and as long as it is not yet put on a knife, obviously… Wood is a natural product that may have irregularities (small voids, bark inclusions or irregular figuring or coloring). The same is true for materials like mammoth ivory or buffalo horn. These are not considered flaws, they are a normal characteristic of the material. In some woods, like buckeye burl or other burl woods, they define the whole charme of the wood piece. Some woods, especially burl woods and denser woods, sometimes can develop small cracks that can be treated by closing them with epoxy or CA glue. In cases of very minor surface cracks or voids I may choose to do that, just like many other wood workers would, but when in doubt I will not use a piece of wood. The handles I make usually consist of a combination of different materials. These pieces are carefully cut, prepared and then glued together with different types of 2-component epoxies. After shaping, sanding and finishing the handles, they should hold up well in a kitchen environment under normal use conditions. But like other things, these handles can break when the fall on the floor or get abused, and I cannot be held responsible for such cases. While I try to use only seasoned woods or stabilized material, there is always a chance that wood, as a natural product, may continue to move, especially after strong changes in humidity. In handles with a combination of different materials this may lead to tensions resulting in cracks or you may find the wood receding compared to metal pieces etc. I do what I can to prevent this but this cannot be totally excluded. In the very rare case that a handle should break under normal use I will try to work with you as well as I can to find a solution.
Stefan
Keller |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
