Extremely Sharp

At a mere 8,000 euros, the unique knife is an expensive tool, but it has virtually the same cutting properties as a "normal" C150 knife from Nesmuk: the narrow and razor-sharp blade glides effortlessly through the food, which also detaches easily thanks to the ground facet.

At 65 HRC, it is extremely hard, but due to the special composition of the carbon steels, it is not brittle. A side note: Although the C150 series is the most exclusive variant of the EXCLUSIVE series, its cutting ability is hardly noticeably different from the cheapest Nesmuk knives in the soul and janus series (starting at 450 euros for a chef's knife). The large price difference is therefore mainly due to the craftsmanship and the materials used.

...explains Stephan Borchert, Managing Director and, for the past year, co-owner of Nesmuk. Fifteen years ago, Stephan joined the small forge, founded in 2008 on a farm by Lake Steinhude near Hanover, as a kind of intern – after seeing a TV show about the "sharpest knife in the world." A side note in the show mentioned that the smith could use some help. At the time, Stephan, a sociologist by training, was working in the Bundestag and was fed up with the out-of-touch political circus. Through the Japanese martial art Aikido, which he encountered during his studies, Stephan became deeply involved with Japanese culture, devoured Kurosawa films, and naturally developed an interest in swords and knives, which is why the show resonated with him. So he contacted the smith, drove to him the very next week, and eventually convinced him, by working for a month for room and board, that he was serious about becoming a Damascus smith.

What Stephan didn't know then: his master had two partners from a Düsseldorf advertising agency on board who wanted to turn Nesmuk into a brand. The brand name refers to the American writer and outdoorsman George Washington Sears, who learned hunting, fishing, and survival from his childhood friend "Nessmuk" of the Narragansett tribe. Out of gratitude, Sears later used the young Native American's name as a pseudonym for his outdoor books and also coined a type of knife with a very thin and strikingly curved blade. "Nessmuk roughly translates to forest or wood duck," adds Stephan Borchert.

The first Nesmuk knives were primarily forged for hunting, which can still be seen in the shape of the blade with its downward-pulled tip. The brand quickly became known in "nerd circles", among hunters and knife enthusiasts who understood metallurgy. However, the niche proved to be limited, and the kitchen emerged as a field with greater potential for the brand. Following this realization, the forge got a new "playground" in Solingen in 2013 – more space, more possibilities. Stephan was appointed production manager, "for lack of alternatives," he jokes in retrospect.

Nesmuk had arrived. In Solingen, due to its outstanding quality in fine dining and as a status symbol in the kitchen. However, with this desirability also came misunderstandings. Some customers, unfamiliar with carbon steel, expected Damascus knives, which cost between 1,300 and 5,000 euros, to always stay sharp and for their beautiful Damascus surface to remain as it was on day one. The "convenience" of the 2010s, which produced knives that could simply be put in the dishwasher, also destroyed much of the appreciation and understanding of good knives. And this created a new purchasing hurdle: some potential customers refrain from buying out of fear that their wives might put the knife in the dishwasher.

As for sharpness: every knife eventually becomes dull if it is not regularly maintained and occasionally resharpened. The catch: when chrome steel knives, more commonly known as stainless steel, become dull, small pieces usually break off the edge, and this "break-off bluntness" with a barely visible, unintentional serration means an ostensibly dull knife mostly still cuts. With a carbon steel knife, and especially with a Damascus knife, the structure and edge are so fine-grained that while dulling takes significantly longer, it is quite homogeneous. Suddenly, the blade then only "slides" back and forth on the skin of a tomato instead of cutting it.

Especially lateral sliding movements on the cutting board cause rapid dulling, because the hard steel cannot offer resistance at the maximally thin "cutting phase". It quickly became clear to Nesmuk: "We need something tougher" and more flexibility, even at this point. One of these solutions was niobium. A rare element that refines a unique and patented steel alloy to make it more flexible, stronger, and more stable at the same time, and which is used for the SOUL and JANUS series. The extraordinary flexibility is impressively demonstrated by the "Slicer," Nesmuk's filleting knife. It can be bent like a thin sheet and returns to its perfectly straight shape by itself - without damage. However, lateral pushing and tilting should always be avoided with all knives.

The only disadvantage of niobium steel: it tarnishes over time. So, for the Janus series in 2010, a proprietary micrometre-thick coating called "Diamond-Like-Carbon" was developed, where carbon ions interlock with the steel at an atomic level. This black coating makes the knife impervious to acids and bases and has enormous scratch resistance. "Of course, we also tried to coat a maximally sharpened knife," says Stephan Borchert, but the 2 microns were relevant for the sharpness, which is why the blade in the "V-grind" at the cutting edge is uncoated.

Here, too, a detour was made in the base material to be better and sharper. The EXCLUSIVE knives are made by the Damascus smith in their own forge from three high-alloy tool steels. One of the secret ingredients is the addition of 1.3 percent tungsten in a steel specially made for Nesmuk, in combination with the use of 1.3 percent carbon in the iron (usually 0.6% is used to make very sharp blades).

"More carbon refines the steel," Stephan mentions, making it even finer and tougher after forge welding, but also significantly more difficult to process further. The challenge: "How do you process such steel cost-effectively?" All processes require more time and experience, from forging to sharpening. Special abrasives are also needed, just to achieve the blade geometry and extreme sharpness.

Research has been and continues to be carried out in cooperation with institutions such as the Max Planck Institute and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. This is primarily to address the question of whether it is possible to develop a transparent protective layer to eliminate the weaknesses of Damascus steel – namely its susceptibility to rust and the release of an inherent taste when in contact with acidic foods. Three and a half years of research finally yielded the solution: a glass coating! The NPC coating, short for Nesmuk Protective Coating, invisibly protects the elaborately manufactured blades from all external influences; only the cutting edge was left uncoated for sharpness reasons.

 
This development also convinced the Damascus smith Markus Patschull, who takes care of the hand-forged Nesmuk knives. Markus is actually a microbiologist by training, treated himself to a knife-making course after graduation, and stuck with it. For him, Damascus is not art, but craftsmanship – above all, it's a craft, he emphasizes, because as a craftsman, you must be able to create what someone asks for on demand.

However, the master smith is allowed to fully unleash his creativity in the forge for mini-series or unique pieces once the series products are finished. While the Damascus knives C90, C100, and C150 have a "defined" pattern of hand-forged "wild" Damascus that needs to be reproduced – even though each knife is still unique – Markus Patschull exploits the potential of pattern influence to the maximum for "free" works, virtuously combining, among other things, mosaic Damascus, explosion Damascus, and layer Damascus. Markus Patschull has a vision for a blade from the very beginning and creates these patterns through repeated spatial rearrangement, breaking of edges, twisting, and so on. One of his specialties is the "Ferry Flip," in which he creates a complex pattern on the inside, i.e., on the head side, by "puzzling together" previously forged elements, then cuts them into small boats, welds them together, and then forge-welds them to perfection. The "big moment" is always when the finished forged and ground blade is immersed in an acid that brings out the contrasts of the layers and makes the Damascus pattern visible.

Despite this high appreciation for craftsmanship, Nesmuk moves with the times and does not shy away from automation. The task of grinding handles, which is rather unpopular among craftsmen, will soon be fully automated by a collaborative robot. For the woods, the manufacturer mainly relies on European trees and is pleased to finally be able to offer French juniper. Bog oak and olive wood are the most popular woods, desert ironwood is perhaps the most extraordinary, and if it's not exclusive enough, even gemstones can be used as handle material for the chef's, steak, and folding knives – which, with their blade length, can be taken to any restaurant. Tropical woods, on the other hand, are now completely avoided.

In addition to process optimization to avoid supply bottlenecks, things are also being reorganized for international expansion – with America as the primary target and Japan as the aspirational goal. First, however, the brand wants to stay in touch with its German customers and regularly offers factory tours and culinary events – because you simply have to pick up the thin and extremely sharp knives and experience for yourself how they glide through a tomato.