“I’ve been around knives my whole life, and I know what people like and want to use,” says Dan Almquist, 36. Almquist, a chef and certified executive pastry chef, has used knives both professionally and for sport. Now he’s also making them.
Though his intricate, hand-forged knives are intended primarily for hunting and fishing, he also has kitchen knives in the works. (On his website, Almquist calls himself an “avid outdoorsman with a culinary background.”)
Almquist grew up “in the outdoors” in Eau Claire, where he also spent time in his dad’s woodworking shop, learning from him and his grandfather. He was among the 1% of Boy Scouts to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout and spent much of his time hunting, fishing and camping.
You may recognize his name from the time he served as sous chef and pastry chef at 43 North; he also spent 12 years as pastry chef at Lombardino’s. At Madison College, he was one of only a handful students to complete a dual degree in the culinary and baking programs and stayed on for 10 years as an instructor.
Almquist left Madison in 2013 to take a full-time job as chef at Elkstone Farm in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. There, he taught himself blacksmithing and built on his skills as a woodworker to make his own knives — “functional art,” as he terms it.
“I’m pretty picky about the knives I make. I want it to look good but I want it to be used,” he says.
The Hammer & Tine mark.
His knives begin on the forest floor, where he collects deer, moose and elk antlers, choosing them for their grain, patterning and coloration. These become parts of the handle, along with wood he collects nearby.
For the blades, Almquist uses mostly oil-hardening tool steel. The rough bars become blades over the course of about a week. He even uses local beetle-kill pine to make his own charcoal, which heats the metal to about 1,500 degrees. The metal is forged using hammers and an anvil — which he also made himself.
During this stage, he sets the bevels on the blade, adds the decorative hammered texture and signs the blade with his logo. The blades are quite brittle at this point, so they are then “annealed” or “normalized” — essentially relaxed — by being heated again and slowly cooled before he refines their bevel and shape with a belt grinder.
“I like to leave the part above the bevel untouched, showing the rough forged finish, giving the blades some rustic flair,” he says.
Blades, like bakery, also finish in the oven. The blades undergo heat treatments in a kiln, and a “quench” of oil changes the crystalline structure of the knife, making it hard and brittle again. Then he softens it again to add flex, before another round of grinding and then hand sanding.
Two clip point hunter knives: Top knife features an elk antler spacer and a handle of beetle kill pine. Lower knife has a copper guard, an elk antler spacer and a sequoia wood handle.
A blade truly becomes a knife in the fit and finish stage. Almquist buttresses the blades with a metal guard, made from metals such as copper, nickel silver or bronze, though he has also used airplane aluminum. He carves the wood or antlers for the handles, hand-sanding and oiling them with linseed oil. Finally, he hones the edge on the finished knife. All of Almquist’s outdoor knives come with a leather sheath.
Almquist has no plans to quit his day job, for his love of food also runs deep, but he hopes the knife-making can be a part-time profession.
In June, he began selling his knives online through his company Hammer & Tine, starting with 50 knives. He was down to just two a few weeks later. Currently, he has 11 knives for sale, with another 20 or so about to be completed. He is focusing on hunting and fishing knives, which run $200 to $300, but there are customers asking for kitchen knives. He’s still testing prototypes: “Kitchen knives are still coming along,” he says. “I finished one and have been using it in my kitchen for a week or two and am very pleased with it.”
Hammer & Tine hammerandtine.com, dan@hammerandtine
