Knifemaking isn’t all anvils and hammers and hot sparks. Contrary to the familiar image of a blacksmith, Madison knifemaker Isaiah Schroeder gets to do forging — “the fun part,” he says — only about once every two weeks. Rather, he spends most of his workdays grinding, shaping, heat-treating and hand-finishing his artistic, stylized Japanese knives. Right now, his products are so popular, he can barely keep up with demand.
The gleaming, wavy-patterned Damascus steel knives featured on Schroeder Knifeworks’ website (and also sold at Underground Butcher and Wisconsin Cutlery & Kitchen Supply) are largely products of “a lot of elbow grease” and attention to detail, he says. The wavy effect is achieved by layering two kinds of steel, more or less “squishing them together” and dipping the blades in acid to make different patterns. The style Schroeder likes best is called a low-layer lazy twist.
They are aesthetically pleasing, but the sushi, paring, bevel and gyuto knives, and cleavers he makes perform better and keep an edge longer than most department-store knives, he says. It’s all about taking more time and using better materials.
Schroeder’s rebuilt “Little Giant” power hammer, and custom handles for custom knives.
“When a knife is harder, it’s going to stay sharp longer,” says Schroeder. “I choose steels that are harder and more abrasion-resistant. They also perform better. I’m able to dial in the geometry that works best for cutting. Using those higher-quality materials, I can get it down to a finer point.”
The geometry involved is more complicated than one might suspect, as a knife’s multiple tapers affect its performance in the kitchen. “There’s a light convex shape that’s really important to how it cuts through the food,” Schroeder says. “A lot of times, you’ll notice that stuff sticks to the side of your knife when you’re chopping. If you have a convex grind, that doesn’t happen as much and you don’t have to keep wiping off your blade.”
These are lessons Schroeder learned through instructional videos on YouTube as well as trial and error — which, in his line of work, often involves accidentally cutting himself. He’s worked carefully since a nasty run-in with a table saw when he was 16 years old, but minor cuts still are a regular occurrence. “We have lots of Band-Aids here,” he says.
A woodworker by trade, Schroeder started by making custom knife handles. The Fitchburg-based website ChefKnivesToGo imports Japanese knives, but sometimes the buyers wanted “to spruce [them] up with a custom handle,” he says. And that was his entry to the equipment-intensive craft of knifemaking.
The workshop on Gilson Street in south Madison is full of decades-old metalworking equipment he’s collected over the last several years, slowly adding pieces as he could afford them. He bought a worn-out power hammer for cheap off a guy in Mineral Point and restored it, enlisted a friend to build his forge, and built a hydraulic forging press himself. “I try to make as much as I can, you know?” he says.
Though knifemaking has expanded far beyond a hobby for Schroeder, he still considers it a work in progress and he continually picks up new tools and techniques. He’s considering offering classes on knifemaking in his workshop, since he knows how difficult it is to assemble all the right equipment. Plus, he’d like to encourage others to experiment with the craft he’s found so uniquely challenging.
“It brings so many different disciplines together,” he says. “There’s the forging, the casting, the metalworking and woodworking. You can bring it into all these different areas…. I like that it’s a functional object — it’s something that’s going to get used all the time — and that there’s a lot of room for design and creativity.”
Schroeder Knifeworks
schroederknifeworks.com; $150-$1,200+
