Premium Hand Forged Kitchen Knives

Birch & Bevel

Forged in Europe by Artisan Blacksmiths.

For years, Modern Cooking has curated the work of exceptional makers. Birch & Bevel is the other half of that story: our own interpretation of the gyuto, shaped by everything we’ve learned about performance, balance, and daily use. One idea, expressed through a considered family of knives.

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FocusThe gyuto
ProfilesClassic & Modern
HandlesMasur birch · Bog oak
Core steelsApex Ultra · RWL34 · 26c3

Classic & Modern

The two profiles.

The core distinction
Classic

Traditional Japanese

Classic

A flatter edge with a taller heel and a gentle, late rise to the tip — the line a Japanese maker draws for clean push-cuts and confident knuckle clearance. Quieter on the board, precise at the tip.

Modern

Japanese × French

Modern

A Japanese gyuto crossed with the curve of a French sabatier: a continuous belly built to rock as well as push, finishing in a finer point. One knife for the whole board.

Performance, finish, price

Same cut. Three finishes.

Honyaki · Clad · Mono

Every Birch & Bevel cuts the same. What changes from line to line is the finish — how much hand-work the surface requires. The honyaki polish and the wrought-iron etch take the most time and carry the highest price; the mono lines are the most efficient to produce. A professional chef gains nothing at the board from the more finished lines — the choice is aesthetic. Paint on a Porsche.

Most hand-finishing

Honyaki

Water-quenched mono-steel — high failure rate at the quench, then hours of hand-polishing and etching to draw out the hamon. The most labour-intensive line we make.

Fully forged · Laminated Steel

Clad

An AU carbon core jacketed in your choice of finish: antique wrought iron (high finishing — drawing out the pattern), X8Ni9 (a high-nickel steel chosen for the distinctive banded pattern it takes under polish — like alloy banding in some hand-forged carbon steels), plain stainless, or reactive iron. The core range.

The most efficient

Mono

Single-steel blades — no cladding, no quench-pattern to polish out. The same edge geometry and the same fittings as the rest of the programme, finished with the least hand-work.

What cuts

Three core steels.

Spicy White · Apex Ultra · RWL-34

Three steels form the cutting edge across the programme. In the clad lines they sit inside a Laminated Steel jacket — antique wrought iron, X8Ni9 (a high-nickel steel chosen for the distinctive banded pattern it takes under polish), plain stainless, or reactive iron — but the jacket is decorative; the cut belongs to the core. The honyaki and mono lines run their steel solo.

Carbon · Honyaki & Spicy White Mono

Spicy White (26C3)

High-purity white carbon with a touch more carbon — the "spicy" edge. Screaming sharp, easy to sharpen, reactive. Our honyaki steel, and the carbon in our entry-level mono line.

Carbon core · all Clad lines

AU core (Apex Ultra)

Fine-grained low-alloy carbon tool steel — the core at the heart of every clad line. The cladding (antique wrought iron, X8Ni9 with its distinctive banded polish, plain stainless, or reactive iron) is aesthetic; the cut belongs to AU.

Powder stainless · Modern RWL Mono

RWL-34

Powder metallurgy stainless mono — hard-wearing, low-maintenance, forgiving. For the kitchen that wants carbon-level performance without carbon-level upkeep.

The handles

Two woods, one bolster.

Birchbark & brass
Masur birch

Handle · Option A

Masur birch

Pale, figured, lively. The handle that flatters a kitchen — a friendly, light-toned wood that picks up the brass bolster like a watch on linen.

Bog oak

Handle · Option B

Bog oak

Dark, dense, calm. The handle that grounds the knife — a near-black hardwood with quiet grain, finished to read as one continuous shape behind the brass bolster.

Every Birch & Bevel handle is finished the same way: a birchbark spacer stacked behind a brass bolster, then shaped to a Rokkaku Hanmaru — a facetted top above a curved underside. It is the one constant across all lines — the detail that says the knife is ours.

Forged out · Finished in-house

How a Birch & Bevel is made.

Method · Philosophy

Three things matter when we make a knife: steel, geometry, and finish. We commission the blades and take them the rest of the way under our own roof — profile, grind, surface, handle, and final edge.

It all starts with the steel.

01·STEEL & CONSTRUCTION

It all starts with the steel.

Our knives are produced with the finest quality steels available. We use mostly non-stainless, high carbon steels because they are harder and, crucially, tougher.

The steels used in Birch and Bevel knives are heat treated for hardness ranging between 64HRC–66HRC. We select steels that lead the field in balancing hardness, toughness, and edge retention. Your knife arrives razor-sharp and holds that edge exceptionally well.

Forge & steel

Blades are forged to our specification in the steel each line calls for — 26c3, Apex Ultra, RWL34. In some cases we use a cladding material to aid manufacturing, enhance the aesthetic, and improve usability.

Why it matters

Steel and construction choices are the foundation of everything — from the making process and ease of maintenance, to the look, feel, and final finish.

Hand forged, not pressed.

02·GEOMETRY

Hand forged, not pressed.

Hand forging our blades rather than drop forging or pressing them means that we can offer a more complex, high-performance geometry. This is more time consuming, but it simply means that we can offer better cutting performance. In a product that could be with you for the rest of your life that makes sense.

The geometry on our Gyuto is designed to be a kitchen all-rounder. The forge tapered blade is satisfyingly thick above the heel and laser thin at the tip — giving you stability and heft at one end and dexterity and precision at the other.

Profile & grind

In-house, each blank is ground to either the Classic or Modern profile and thinned behind the edge — the step that decides how the knife feels on the board.

Why it matters

Profile and grind are where a good blank becomes a Birch and Bevel knife. We keep that work under our own roof.

What you touch first is the last thing we do.

03·DESIGN & FINISH

What you touch first is the last thing we do.

From our signature stacked birchbark and brass bolster that completes our tapered Rokkaku Hanmaru handle, to the hybrid and classic gyuto profiles we use for our blades, the fine convex geometry, to the steel choice, and finish of each of our blades, each design feature is a carefully considered feature selected to create an heirloom quality kitchen knife designed to seamlessly connect you to your cooking experience.

Our knives should vanish into your subconscious, no fighting with tough produce, no slipping over the surface of skinned vegetables, comfortable in the hand, a tough, sharp and resilient edged tool that elevates your cooking experience.

What does heirloom quality mean?

Heirloom quality means that with proper care your Birch and Bevel kitchen knife will be slicing and dicing a generation or two from now. We have partnered with the absolute best metallurgists, machinists, engineers, and blacksmiths to make sure that our knives perform at the highest standard and are built to last.

Design & Finish

We bring the blade surfaces to their final finish — polishing to draw the hamon on honyaki, etching to bring out the pattern on antique wrought iron, refining the banded surface on X8Ni9. Then we fit the birchbark-and-brass bolster in Masur birch or bog oak, balance the knife, and set the final edge by hand before it ships.

Why it matters

This is where the cost of the finer lines is paid. The honyaki and wrought iron lines absorb hours of polishing and etching that the clad and mono lines do not need. Same cutting performance, more hand-work for the look.

Our Team

Our story is our team.

Independent, but working as a team, our product is produced by a collective of like minded, passionate craftsmen and women, metallurgists, machinists, and engineers. Together we are able to produce a product that we love and provide a service that we are proud of — together we are Birch and Bevel.

Jonas Johnsson

Blacksmith

Jonas Johnsson

Inspired by the art and tradition of Japanese blacksmiths and western makers alike, Jonas produces some of the best Honyaki kitchen knives in the world today. His custom forged knives are prized by collectors who are often willing to wait a year or more to secure one of his mirror polished or integral Honyaki Gyutos. Working from his small studio in the Isabackarna (Ice Hills) region of Sweden, Jonas forges Birch and Bevel knives and is a member of the design team.

Tobias Hangler

Blacksmith & Metallurgist

Tobias Hangler

Austrian based Tobias Hangler is an extremely talented and passionate artisan blacksmith and professional metallurgist. A founding member of the development team that created Apex Ultra — an innovative new steel developed with the singular goal of producing premium culinary knives that can hold an incredibly sharp edge with best-in-class wear resistance. Tobias is forging a number of layered (San Mai) steels for us, all featuring Apex Ultra at the core.

Peter Buckwalter

Founder · Design Lead

Peter Buckwalter

Passionate about culinary experiences at home and in fine dining establishments, and having worked as a professional chef, Peter was driven to establish Modern Cooking — a curated platform that gives artisan craftsmen and women from around the globe a place to showcase their work. With Birch and Bevel, Peter has brought together a selection of these talented artisans with the singular goal of producing kitchen knives that break barriers, bringing quality, artistry and performance that has not been seen in domestic kitchen knives for many years.

Birch trees — natural inspiration for Birch & Bevel's birchbark handle accent

Inspired by natural beauty

A handle drawn from a Scandinavian tradition.

The bark from the birch tree has been used throughout European history as a beautiful and renewable source of material for the manufacture of furniture and handles for small tools — especially in the Scandinavian region of north-western Europe. We found it to be a beautiful accent for our handles, and an acknowledgement of the tradition and history that runs through them.

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