Today I received a delivery from the lovely people at Brisa. I’ve been using Brisa for the bulk of my knife blanks since I first started in 2013. They’re Finnish, and as well as providing a source of materials that aren’t particularly easy or cheap to acquire in the UK (such as reindeer antler), they stock blade blanks from a variety of makers including manufacturers producing affordable stainless steel blades that are stamped or cut from sheet stock as well as artisanal blacksmiths working in Scandinavia and the Baltic region.
Over the years I keep coming back to them; I like the fact it’s enabling me to support some small traditional smiths, and the mass-produced items are reliably consistent in quality. I’d rather buy a blade made from a named steel from a European supplier via Brisa, than risk buying something from elsewhere where I’ll have no idea what quality the steel is and how well it will hold up to use and abuse.
When I first started using them, materials would arrive wrapped in sheets of Finnish newspaper. I couldn’t read them, but I enjoyed the fragmentary window into where my new materials had come from. Thesedays everything’s wrapped in a simple waxy brown paper. It’s always beautifully neatly done and with a minimal use of sticky tape that means unwrapping things is a breeze, but I do miss unwrapping the pictures and stories!
This afternoon’s package contained pre-cut wooden slabs of curly birch, a number of knife blanks and these sheets of vulcanised fibre. I’ve not used it before, but vulcanised fibre is a hybrid material made from a cellulose-based pulp such as paper or cotton, that’s chemically treated to get the cellulose fibres in suspension rather than knotted together. Then they’re laid into sheets and tightly compressed under great pressure and dried, forming this stiff, mostly rigid material that has a little flex to it.
Cutlers often use it as a liner material, sandwiched between other materials where it can compress slightly and help ensure a tight fit between materials that might not otherwise match perfectly. As it can be brightly coloured, it can also inject a small dash of colour to a project.
I’ll often use thin strips of leather in the same way, so my intention is to try the fibre as an alternative. I’ve yet to make a knife for a vegan, but potentially I could now get the same sort of layered effect that I’ll often do along the spine of a knife without using leather.
There was plenty more in the package – it contained about a dozen knife blanks as well as the handle materials – and the intention is to make up a small batch of various kitchen knives in the new year.
