Kitchen knife with a full tang hollow handle?

I imagine they start with a piece of tube and forge it to shape over a mandrel. weld up one end and then weld the other to the blade.
 
My (rhetorical) question is why, not how.

They are quite popular though, so... *shrug*
 
Some of us may roll our eyes at the Global knives, but to be fair, they are responsible for a goodly number of design/fashion conscious folks upgrading from Rachael Ray type crap or whatever happens to be in the cheap block set at Bed Bath and Beyond..
 
The short answer is that without a factory, an individual can't really make a handle like that.

If you were dead set on doing it, the only way would be to start with a round bar of 440-C and drill/mill out the handle hollow. After that you would mill the blade from the rest of the bar. The fancy divots would also be milled in. All this would best be done with a 3-D milling machine. From there you would have to grind and finish the knife.
When all was done you would have many, many hours work and a fair bit of cost to make a $100 knife.
 
Those are just divots in the handle? Not holes thru to the inside to collect crud?
 
I wouldnt personally want to make that knife, but if I did:

get some stainless pipe, forge it down to the handle dimension you wan
via stock removal make a blade from *stainless with a 1" stubb tang
Tig weld the forged pipe to the blade making a nice fillet weld that can be dressed off smooth afterwards





*stainless - you will NEED to do some research as to which stainless you can properly Tig weld, what filler rod you can use, how the HAF will work with the finished knife, etc.
 
the handles are cast in one piece the cleaned up they are then tig welded to a blade that has been ground and the blade is then harden in a argon atmosphere to avoid scaling
 
Cut out a flat piece of steel, blade shape as is and in the handle make a big flat drawn out trapezoid shape. Then heat and beat to roll that trapezoid into a handle. Like rolling up a piece of paper... Then tig the seams on the bottom and top with appropriate filler rod and weld in a filler at the back. Would be all one piece but hollow in the handle.

If I can get to a proper computer I will try and draw out what I mean with MS paint or corel or something... Harder to explain than it is to draw.

Or use a mill like Stacy said with a round bar, and then forge to shape. Back to the mill for divots...
 
If you can forge a spear, that knife would be a piece of cake.... unless you wanted the end closed, that would take some engineering.

One sees many middle-eastern knives with hollow metal handles, I believe these are built up from multiple parts and brazed together.
 
if i was a proper smith (im not ) i woudl take a SS tube and insert a tight fitting steel bar(steel of your choosing ) while leaving space hollow for handle section
forge as sanmai then shape handle 99% HT then tig the leftover hole in the back of the handle closed
 
[video]https://youtu.be/oVYhG5Y0uZc[/video]

If you really want a hollow handle(?), better off looking at the Cold Steel Bushman and forging out a rolled handle, but it would be worse than pointless in the kitchen setting.
 
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From what I have heard the Global knives are made in three pieces, the handle with two halves and the blade .The three then welded together .The problem with them is that unless the welds are perfect ,the three pieces will eventually come apart ! To make such a knife as a custom piece would be a big project ! Chris Reeve solved the problem by machining the whole knife out of a solid block of A2 and got the only good hollow handle knife !!
 
I can seen the appeal of a knife that fits your hand well. The non flat handles could feel quite nice in the hand. If they were dropped no handle to break like is often seen with a typical Wusthof style chefs knife.
 
Just looks like another place for bacteria to collect and be harder to wash out, though I suppose I can understand the appeal of a lighter weight knife.
 
Bill Burke said:
the handles are cast in one piece the cleaned up they are then tig welded to a blade that has been ground and the blade is then harden in a argon atmosphere to avoid scaling
Click to expand...

This is the process Global uses as they tell you anyway. Then each handle is filled with sand to make it a Neutral balance at the index finger position.

There is a set of these Global knives in the Museum of Contemporary art. Many Pro Chefs and home cooks swear by them. I sharpen quite a few of them and being a seamless knife they are much cleaner than the majority of the knives I sharpen. I like when I take the Mrs out for dinner and see that they are using Global knives.
 
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