CRKT is now officially in the culinary world. They’re starting with three standard kinds:
- An 8-inch chef’s knife
- A 5.5″ utility knife
- and a 3.5″ paring knife.
Here are the quick specs:
| Blade Steel: | Damasteel’s Damacore pattern |
| Blade Style: | Gyuto |
| Handle Material: | Carbon fiber w/ titanium bolsters |
| Made In: | Italy |
The chef’s knife looks like a modified gyuto style blade with a little more belly and upward angling than is usual for that kind of knife. It’s fairly lightweight at around 190 g (for reference the Tojiro DP is about 160 G and the Shun Premiere is 206 g), with a balance that slightly favors the handle.
The handle shapes have something close to an octagonal shape seen on some traditional Japanese kitchen knives, but might be better compared to a coffin handle with a bit of curve. There is a bit of extra beveling around the bolster as well to facilitate a pinch grip.
This isn’t Ken Onion’s first foray into the kitchen knife world. In fact, he designed a very curvy chef’s knife for Shun back in the day. He also made the Rain series in collaboration with Chef Works, and the Sky series with Stratus Culinary. All of those knives have since been discontinued, though.
These new kitchen knives are being made in Italy. While CRKT hasn’t explicitly stated which Italian company, a good guess would be LionSteel since they already seem to have a good working relationship with them ever since the Michael Walker designs came out in 2023.
All three knives are available now from CRKT’s site. They’re not cheap, but, frankly, when words like “Damasteel”, “Ken Onion”, and “Italy” are getting thrown around, we really shouldn’t expect them to be.
