Handmade Damascus Knives

What makes a knife handmade?

A budget factory knife is usually cut from sheet steel, with the handle molded or machined to a template in large batches. A handmade knife is built by people working one blade at a time: the steel is worked, the bevels are ground, the handle is shaped and fitted, and the finish is done by eye. The small differences between two knives of the same model are the mark of that.

How a Bigcat blade is made

It starts as a stack of 15N20 and 1080 steel, heated and forge-welded into one bar, then folded until the bar holds 288 layers. The blade is shaped from that bar, heat-treated, ground and sharpened, then etched so the two steels show as the pattern. The D2 knives skip the layering and are cut from a single bar of tool steel.

Why every pattern is different

Folding a bar 288 layers deep and then grinding a blade out of it is not a process anyone can repeat exactly. So the knife you receive will not match the photo line for line, and it will not match anyone else's. That is how you can tell a pattern-welded blade from a pattern printed or etched onto a single steel.

The handle and the sheath

Each handle is shaped by hand from walnut, olive wood, black wood or Micarta, with grooves cut for your fingers and pins set through it. Each sheath is leather, cut and formed for its own blade, most with contrast stitching and a crocodile-texture inlay down the front.

Handmade, and still covered

Handmade does not mean unsupported. A 12 month warranty against defects in workmanship and materials comes with every knife.