Over the years the knives I have been involved with making have displayed various and evolving types and styles of blade mark. Today I favour a laser engraved version, I like the clarity, precision and flexibility the process lends itself to and being non-contact chances of damage and distortion are eliminated.
The first photo that you see below shows the original mark that my parents struck into their work when they began working together, it is a very special thing as the Pat Mitchell that you see there is an exact, hand-cut by files, representation of my mother's hand written signature.
I recall using this mark as I became more involved with the business.
Following on from this we explored the use of electrochemical etching, we used this process for quite a while but we were never truly happy with it as it can be a little hit and miss, we did like the fact though that as with the laser potential damage and distortion are taken out of the equation. Not being entirely happy with this current process (no pun intended) we were constantly trying to refine the struck mark route and we did devise a very good and efficient method of applying such to our Pat Mitchell range of knives.
We would rough grind the first side of the blades, the side that the mark was to be applied to, in Sheffield this is actually called the mark side being the traditional position for the blade mark. Our anvil would have been chocked up on an angle so the ground surface of our blades was again at around 90 degrees to upright. We would heat the steel and then hand strike to mark into that rough ground bevel.
Because the second side, the pile side as we call it here in Sheffield, still required grinding and that first side only roughed, there was still a good amount of grinding work to carry out on each one, this meant that any of the dreaded damage or distortion that might have crept in could now be fully ground fully away. It worked well for us for many years.
Even after I had lost my parents I was still using this mark and method, the knives I was making were still Pat Mitchell branded.
By now my journey into bespoke knives was well and truly underway, what was becoming apparent to me was that my clients were now expecting to see my name branded onto my sole authorship work, it was time for a change.
TBC……………….
