Raw Craft with Anthony Bourdain - Episode Four: Bob Kramer

the term handcrafted gets thrown around a lot these days it's become a movement a trend that can obscure the passionate folks who actually make amazing things by hand they're remarkable stories need to be told and I'm gonna find them I'm Anthony Bourdain and this is raw crap to say that the knife is a chef's most valuable tool isn't just stating the obvious it's an understatement of Titanic proportions it doesn't matter if you're the executive chef of a michl a three-star restaurant or the prep cook dicing a 50-pound bag of onions a good knife is the foundation of everything you do so who makes the finest chef's knives in the world this guy Bob Kramer Bob's one of only 122 master bladesmith certified in the American bladesmith society and the only one who specializes in kitchen knives simply put he's a rock star forging knives that are is desired for their beauty as they are for their legendary sharpness resilience and strength Cramer knives have become a status symbol among serious chefs and serious knife collectors alike their knives that demand excellence of their owners and more importantly excellence from their creatively I paid Bob a visit at his workshop in beautiful Olympia Washington how does one make the most awesome knife in the world today I'm incorporating meteorites into my material this is probably man's first encounter with a solid chunk of iron that's a meteorite wow that's a star stone the first thing Bob does is forge his own steel in this case from melted meteorite next it's a matter of layers I'll lay up a sandwich basically that's your knife right there so the idea is to cook it down and exact smashing yeah and push all of these layers together those layers fuse together and it becomes this so then this gets ground clean on both sides and cut and re stacked and becomes that and then cut a knife out so it's literally a whole bunch of these become this correct becomes this yeah then this then this yeah and then then the work begins exactly Wow yeah I see it yeah I'll protect your helmet yeah all right whoo-hoo Wow how long would it take me to make a pizza yeah about a half the second baby that's sweet this is just like cooking it's time temperature and technique right you need good material to start with and the proper heat treatment just like you can ruin a steak by overcooking it could be a great steak to begin with but you could really mess it up right improper technique so now I'll bring both sides clean make sure that the gross scale cut and restock that village all this gets cut away the fat so on this we can either use the bandsaw to cut off that extra material or use this grinder to just get rid of that excess meat it's like trimming a steak exactly so next now that I've met the blank cutout I need to grind these tapers and this tapered and that's all done by eye now that the blade is ground and shaped and taper it's the magic part this is where the steel becomes hardened so we have to take the material up to a particular temperature and hold it like baking a cake only the temperature is 1500 degrees Fahrenheit this is molten salt so this is sort of a high-tech high temperature of sous-vide rise it's an amount about let me set it Inlet so there's carbon and steel steel is iron with one percent carbon there's something very interesting that happens when the carbon dissolves and goes into solution not only that it changes color right there's a shadow that moves through the steel so this is what the samurai guys were looking for these guys would fast beforehand they'd pick an auspicious day which is probably a moonless night and so it'd be really dark in the shop so with this I'm gonna pull it out and you'll see it's all orange and then you'll see a shadow move through the blade that's the steel transforming that's how that line that's marching across there that's the phase ship it's gone you know what's happening in there what is what's going on so this is a this is ferric chloride which is a base it's kind of on the other side of the acidic scale and this chemical starts to eat into the steel at a very subtle level so you know some layers get eaten away faster than others you know somebody stabbed you to death with that knife and that would be wrong I hasten to say sure that nice so beautiful you you couldn't help but say wow that's a really a big a nice garden you'd remember Wow look at that oh I think it's good I think it's ready for a handle and now I just need to shape and make this comfortable and presumably I wanted to fit into my massive yet incredibly sensitive paw exactly all right final step yep put an edge on this guy sooner or later if you have a good knife in fact sooner if I constantly you should be doing what we're about to do here and I'm trying to use the full surface of the stone and the purpose this is the most crucial stone this first stone sets up the edge this is the foundational stone so if you watch all this cuts it doesn't want to push cut it's because we haven't dropped the edge it'll slide cut easily right but it won't wash cut and what the push cut is is what a razor will do right and if I just give this a few strokes on the leather and this is just a plain piece of leather whew oh yeah like butter nice thank you get that oh man that's fun hey I'm having fun using this knife I've never had so much fun cutting ties look at those things hey yeah you you you were chef before you you were cool calm as a cook I would say I was never a chef but yeah I was definitely in the business swinging a knife for eight hours a day so is that where this all started you where you were just satisfied with the quality of a blade that you were seeing I was in college I was taking science classes I was working at a hotel full time and it was curious to me that nobody in the kitchen really knew how to take care of their knives so I thought I'd make a little extra money I figured out how to sharpen some knives and and the more are the deeper I got the more I was hooked and so you know I quit school and just started sharpening and making knives you'll forgive me for saying so but that sounds like a really bad idea yeah I mean it was just about the dumbest thing you could do at the time yet it worked out it has worked out yeah but you didn't really know what you were doing either I had no idea so the other night I'm in here working I'm making some steel for a knife using a meteor I'm thinking what's a cool way to make some salad and I'm gonna heat up a meteorite and use it to smoke this induction coil alright Chuck the Stardust piece of cherry wood all right hello smokey all right I believe you could pour the beverages now all right so you gotta tell me what do you think did you notice now when he decided to throw away a perfectly good career in one dead-end job and a rest to proceed you see Khloe he was with the club did you go to Clown College yeah you wonder there is a clown college in Florida huh no I want to drink so when I was making food I might spend two or three days making a sauce prepping a stock stuffing a turkey or something everybody sits down 45 minutes later it's gone hopefully we have a great memory this knife could get used every day to make a meal that maybe that makes a memory so this is like a magnifying glass goes on through whoever's using it if you're using it and you make a bunch of meals that sort of transcends out I like that feeling I think that's cool Bob Kramer is clearly out of his mind this process is so difficult and so long it's insane to work this hard to improve something as utilitarian as a knife you'd think but at the end of the day what comes out is so unique and so beautiful all I can say is that I want that kind of crazy that's the kind of crazy that makes the world a better place

Channel: BalvenieUS

Views: 3,536,271

Rating: 4.9283895 out of 5

Keywords: Anthony Bourdain (Chef), Cooking (Interest), Balvenie Distillery (Distillery), Brewery (Website Category), Scotch Whisky (Beverage), Whisky (Distilled Spirit Type), Scotland (Country), Washington (US State), bob kramer, raw craft, knives, craftsmanship

Id: 4x0f2b_0kn0

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Plzdontkillmeforthis]

Bourdain is what reality TV should be.

[u/tomsawyeee]

That's a great video and really shows how talented Bob is and all the hard work that he puts into a knife.

He's a fucking legend, and his wife is pretty hot too.

His knives can sell for over $10,000 on eBay

[u/JesmasterAgain]

Am I the only person made totally uncomfortable by Bourdain's lack of safety glasses?

[u/jon2thegram]

If you enjoyed watching Bob make this knife, you will love this short film of Scandinavian Damascus steel knife making. https://vimeo.com/56287630 (This video is also one that inspired me to start making films).

[u/Brochachoski]

I've been really getting in to Anthony Bourdain lately. His shows just really captivate me.

[u/[deleted]]

How do they compare to ceramic knives?

[u/Protip19]

This series is like the white guy version of Most Expensivest Shit with 2chains.

[u/Poop_Tornado]

How much are these knifes?

[u/Mentioned_Videos]

Other videos in this thread: Watch Playlist ▶

VIDEO	COMMENT
Man vs. Meteorite (Hombre vs. Meteorito) Artisanal Knife	22 - Idk, but I suspect it's more of a gimmick than anything else. It gave this guy a lot of grief, but he was basically sent the metal equivalent of sawdust to work with, so who knows.
The Birth Of A Tool. Part III. Damascus steel knife making (by John Neeman Tools)	20 - If you enjoyed watching Bob make this knife, you will love this short film of Scandinavian Damascus steel knife making. (This video is also one that inspired me to start making films).
You are so dumb. You are really dumb, for real!	6 - I think the sound is what really drives my point home here.
south park smug farts	1 -

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