Gyuto 240mm & Petty 100mm "X" Mosaic Damascus Set

Some of the best San Mai blades around are forged in Martin Huber’s shop, but Martin has a taste for producing Mosaic Damascus as well. Forging mosaic Damascus, like honyaki, is a process wrought with potential frustration. The Damascus billet itself is a time-consuming process and when you consider that after several days work creating that billet, it must then be forged into a blade, which can, like all knives, fail at the heat treat stage. For this reason, you can imagine that knives like these are a rarity.

This set combines some of our favourite elements. Let’s start with that lovely mosaic crosscut “X” pattern with its tight detailed array of flowing lines giving the steel a mesmerising aesthetic. The repetitious process of forging layers of 1.2842, 75Ni8, and C100 then cutting and re-stacking the steel over and over in a precise way results in each cross within the pattern representing 100 or so layers of steel, the two knives in this set have a total 18,000 layers according to Martin.

The profile featured here is Martin’s classy K-Tip. At the edge, it’s a very elegant curve from almost straight out of the heel. You have a 20% flat, followed by a soft, subtle curve up to the tip. The spine does feature a distal taper, but it’s fairly moderate with 3.89mm gradually tapering down to 1.47mm before hitting a needle like tip. Speaking of the tip, this is where the classy comes in, this is not an aggressive K-Tip, there is subtle curve to the tip giving the knife a fairly ridged over feel at the business end of the knife.

Moving back to the handle, this knife features a Modern Cooking favourite tapered Rokaku Hanmaru in Australian Ringed Gidgee and black micarta. It’s a stunning piece with dark brown, red and yellow hues traversing the handle in a ring like pattern.

Overall, a very classy and timeless pair of premium knives in a magnificent mosaic Damascus.