Custom King-S Chef #1, CPM154 Steel at 1/8" Thickness, Walnut Scales

There is no knife quite like your own. That very sentiment is exactly how Flightless Forge came to be. Constructed to its owner's specifications, the King-S Chef is a custom knife based on my King-S pattern but reimagined for the rigors of kitchen duty. For a start, it's hand made from CPM154 stainless steel to render it corrosion resistant. Instead of the usual 3D printed scales, these are sealed and stabilized walnut, permanently pinned into place and proof against ingress of liquids — and importantly, leaving nowhere for bacteria to hide.



Crafting this knife for its owner was an incredible experience which I'm thankful to have been given the opportunity to partake in. For me this King-S Chef is big a venture in a new direction. The process of producing it was hugely exciting, and not just because of the inherent potential of fucking up an expensive chunk of high end steel.



I learned a lot while making this. Mounting, shaping, and finishing the handles meant learning and applying a new skill right then and there, all in one shot. The surface finishing process, the heat treating process, and even the engravings on the blade all had to be done differently from all of my prior knives to varying degrees. It's rewarding enough for me to build these new skills, but you're telling me somebody's paying me to do it, too? This is the best job in the world.



After pouring so much into it I'm a little sad to have to let is go. But it has a new home to go to, so I have to. I do so with a little trepidation, to be honest. This is someone else's vision, and I hope like hell it meets all their expectations. It's a big ask to have somebody trust me, a relative unknown in this business, to take their money over any of the established big name kitchen knife manufacturers.

It's an enormous honor.



This is quite a bit beefier than your usual chef's knife. At a hair over 1/8" thick, the King-S Chef is very stout and very rigid. Its owner had a specific application in mind, and the King profile delivers a distinctive robustness that puts it somewhere between a traditional French chef's knife and a cleaver. The five degree bevel leaves a broad section of full thickness steel leading up to the spine which lends it a lot of rigidity. Completely unlike my kitchen knives, the blade on this has practically no flex.



It's the same story with the handle. The scales are sculpted to fit the hand and are nearly an inch thick at their widest — 0.960" or 24.4mm. This is to provide a secure and fatigue free grip when chopping, quartering, or dejointing. I've also made the commitment to hand sharpen every custom knife I produce, time investment be damned. This is finished down to 2000 grit at an edge angle of 15° per side. I don't know what kind of life this will lead, but I can at least promise its owner it'll arrive heckin' sharp to begin with.



For completeness I pressed a Kydex sheath for this with my usual Tek-Lok compatible rivet spacing. This has actually been a bugbear of mine over the years, vis-a-vis ostensibly nice kitchen knives that nevertheless don't come with any realistic way to transport them. Heavens forfend you might want to take your knife camping, or to the beach house, or tailgating, or whatever. That emphatically will not be a problem with this one.



Every Flightless Forge knife is slightly unique, but this King-S Chef is truly one of a kind. I present it with my sincerest compliments, and I will leave these words and pictures here so I have something to remember it by even after I've said goodbye to it.



Do you have an idea for your own custom knife? By all means, don't let any of the above get in the way of my crass commercialism. Drop me a line and we'll see about making your design a reality.