Only the finest will do
Aside from the quality of our blades, the joy of a Savernake knife is in customising every aspect to suit your own style preference.
From traditional woods and colourful stripes, to contemporary materials such as Richlite, Corian or Durat – and not forgetting the infinite design options offered by our G.F Smith paper range – we have selected and tested every single material primarily for its longevity and durability.
Explore our materials in more depth here.
Woods
We’ve tested almost every wood you can think of for our handles and the ones offered are selected for their longevity and beauty. You’re also welcome to supply a favourite piece of wood if you prefer.
Stripes
Made from layers of wood, sandwiched together with resin, our striped handles range from the bold hues of our Random Stripes to the cheery tones of our Rainbow Stripes and wear beautifully over time.
Liners
The liner sits between the visible steel part of the handle, and the handle material itself. As well as providing a good surface for bonding, it also provides a great opportunity for a flash of contrasting or complimentary colour to your handle.
Choose from our standard range of liner colours or get in touch if you’d like a specific shade or multiple liner colour option.
SHOP NOWSteel
Last but by no means least, is the steel we use for our blades.
After extensive research and hours of testing, we now almost exclusively use Swedish Sandvik 14c28n, although on occasion we use RWL 34 powdered metallurgical steel and other exotics. For prototypes we use 420C, the steel used by most other knife manufacturers for their final product.
We chose Sandvik for a variety of reasons – not only is it a stainless steel with excellent strength properties, Sweden also has stated ambitions to remain at the forefront of technological and innovative development in a transformation to a sustainable society.
We are firm believers in the merit of buying once but buying the best you can afford – not only does a good knife stand the test of time but it’s also considerably better for the environment to buy products that are built to last. So using steel with strong sustainability credentials was an important choice for us.
In tests by CATRA (the Cutlery and Allied Trades Research Association) Savernake blades scored in the top 2.5% of knives tested and were rated ‘Excellent’ for both initial sharpness and durability.
Commissioning a bespoke knife
If you would prefer us to use a different steel for your bespoke knife project, we’re very happy to source alternatives for you.
Although not particularly our cup of tea, it is possible to get (at great expense) Damascus-pattern stainless steel, so that’s always an option if you like that sort of thing but would like to continue to use corrosion-resistant steel.
A rather better option might be Japanese layered steel.
We resolutely refuse to make knives using carbon steel, For us, choosing a metal type that corrodes as a knife blade makes little sense. Some will say that the ‘patina’ (i.e. rust) that invariably develops on a carbon blade tells a story, but we see this as an attempt to turn a bug into a feature. Also any knife that turns black when cutting onions – surely the mainstay of a kitchen knife – is of dubious utility.
Explore bespokeWoods
We’ve tested almost every wood you can think of for our handles, and continue to do so. We keep a small, rotating stock of all of the woods shown here. However, if there’s another you would like, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Just like all of our materials, these natural woods are selected primarily for their longevity. They also happen to look beautiful.
Browse our selection of woods
Stripes
Funk up your kitchen with our colourful striped wood composites – multiple layers of wood stabilised in resin to create a highly durable, playful handle material. Choose from rainbow brights to random stripes, keep it bold with our Tiger Stripes or mix it up with all the colours.
Browse our selection of stripes
Contemporary
Our modern materials such as Richlite, Corian and Durat offer an almost infinite array of colours together with exceptional durability and first class sustainability credentials. We showcase a small selection of our favourite material colours here – but if you’re hankering after a specific hue please get in touch to discuss.
Browse our selection of contemporary materials
G . F Smith Colorplan
Our latest offering is a special one. We use the wonderful paper from G . F Smith’s Colorplan range to offer infinite handle designs. Pick a selection of colours and tell us how you’d like it to look and we’ll put it through our special stabilising process to create a robust and visually stunning handle for you.
Design Your G . F Smith Paper Handle