MCx Hangler is a partnership in the truest sense — a direct collaboration between the MCx studio and Tobias Hangler, built less on a contract than on friendship and a genuinely kindred spirit. What draws us together is a shared, restless curiosity about the craft itself: how a kitchen knife is made, and how it could be made better. Can we build at this level efficiently, without ever compromising performance or quality? Can we do it in a way that's more thoughtful and sustainable? Those questions are the real heart of the line, and the answers keep evolving — every release a step forward in an ongoing conversation about process, material, and design.
The line began with a vision the MCx studio brought to Tobias: how fun it would be to bring two of Europe's most innovative, high-performance steels together in a single project — Apex Ultra, the remarkable carbon steel Tobias developed alongside Marco Guldimann and Larrin Thomas, clad in Damasteel, the Swedish PM stainless damascus. By a happy coincidence, Tobias had been turning over a similar idea with another Modern Cooking alumnus, Erik Gulikson — which is why the inaugural edition carries Erik's mark too.
This combination is the line's enduring thread. Rather than chase novelty for its own sake, MCx Hangler will keep returning to this pairing of Apex Ultra and Damasteel, exploring it edition after edition — each one an attempt to refine the last, sharpen the geometry, rethink the handle, and push the limits of what two such different steels can become in one knife. It's less a series of releases than a long experiment in getting closer to the ideal. An evolving line, made in limited numbers — join the waitlist to secure a future allocation.
