Fancy handles that will pass NSA inspections?

C

CDH

Active Member
I have a request for a "head turning meat cleaver" for a guy to use in a restaurant as he preps food. Since this is a fully health department inspected facility, anything porous is pretty much out as I understand it. Is stabilized wood okay? I assume Micarta is fine and wood, even well sealed and oiled wood, is not. What else is okay and upscale without being ridiculous? Something like stabilized burl would be ideal if it will pass inspections.

He wants something to use in splitting racks of ribs, chickens, and such at the serving line...
 
I would go for G10. I made two kitchen knives with it and it doesn't get slick when wet but I don't know how "head turning" it is. You might want to go to Tracy's store and check out some of the fancy "camo" patterns that he carries. Maybe combite it with some real fancy 1/4" mosaic pins or maybe some of the 3/8" mosaic tubing that Jantz carries to make a bold statement. Handle material like recon gem stone and other plastics are a bit brittle if the cleaver would get knocked off onto the floor. I would think that stabilized wood should be ok but the inspector might figure that wood, is wood, is wood reguardless that it's impregnated with plastic.

Doug
 
Hi CDH,
Micarta and that resin wood that boss dog sells is NSF rated.
Along with certain steels like 440C & CPM-S35VN and others of the CPM stainless Steels.
have you thought about the steel you are using for this Com Kitchen Cleaver?

Laurence

www.westsidesharpening.com/
 
I would recommend a stabilized burl, you could go to burlsource.us or talk to Randy at HHH knives, I have bought Randy and had a very good experience, never bought from burlsource but have only hard good things about them. Randy would have a better opinion on this than me, as I have never worked with something other than Corion. I recently bought more Corion than I can use in several colors/patterns or whatever you want to call them, if you decide to not use stabilized wood, G10, or Micarta.

Note: Corion is a little on the brittle side so if you decide to use it make sure you don't have thin areas near pins and such, it also wouldn't hurt to ask about chances of him dropping the knife on the floor or hitting the handle on hard surfaces.
-Cameron
 
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I've made several hundred steak knives for a very high end resort using first stabilized Thuya Burl and later stabilized Amboyna burl. (WSSI) The original instructions were that they were to be hand washed. That lasted about a week. Considering several trips a day through a commecial dishwasher and being thrown into bus tubs, they proved very durable. I didn't know NSF existed, but this was surely an inspected facility.

Rob!
 
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