"BLUE STEEL BEAUTY":

Deep Cut: Behind the Scenes with a Knife-Making Genius: Nobody crafts knives quite like Quintin Middleton. Probably because his story is one of a kind. (STINSON CARTER, JUN 9, 2022, Gear Patrol)

I cruise slowly down the gravel road and park in the grass beside his new home, currently under construction. By the time I step outside, he's greeting me with an outstretched, work-gloved hand. We had met a week earlier at the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, where he presided over a table draped in a white tablecloth, every square inch covered by his stunning chef's knives, paring knives, fillet knives, cleavers, and his newest creation: a crowdfunded folding chef's knife called the Ona.

There, he held court in a black leather jacket zipped to his neck and a different set of gloves to keep fingerprints off the blades, sharing the fruits of his labor with all manner of aspiring foodies. At his home, I saw the other side of the show table. A world of grinder belts, steel dust and hard work. I would come to learn that Middleton's ability to move in and out of different circles is one of the keys to his success.

"That's not just my cool swagger, that's a limp," he says as we make our way to his shop, referring to a physical disability resulting from nerve damage in his leg caused by a benign tumor that compressed his spinal cord. Parked in and around his shop are a golf cart, a three-wheeled motorcycle and a two-wheeled electric motorcycle that help him easily traverse his property. Everyone I have spoken to -- his friends and mentors -- confirms my impression of a man who rises to face this measure of adversity like he would any other. As an ordained minister and a "very spiritual person," his well of positive resolve runs deep.

The inside of Middleton's workshop is dark on this overcast day, with fluorescent lights hanging where they're needed most, like over the band saw he uses to cut the knife shapes out of sheets of stainless steel, or above the row of six grinders where he freehand-grinds his blades. Metal dust clings to everything, and on the wall hang hundreds of grinder belts, each with a different job to do.

Middleton makes both stainless steel and carbon steel knives, and each type begins in a different way. Stainless steel knives are cut out of small sheets of steel in a process called stock removal. Carbon steel blocks start off thicker and are heated in a forge and hammered out or kneaded into shape.

"A lot of people romanticize forging, and say that's the only way to make knives, but truthfully, everything is forged," he explains. That's because stainless steel has already been forged in the manufacturing process, whereas with carbon steel, you complete that step manually. "I learned how to do forging first, but after having all these issues with my body, forging is a little harder on my body and stock removal is easier for me," he says. Yet Middleton still makes knives both ways, and he makes a lot of them -- typically 30 a month.

Once the basic shape is outlined, Middleton uses belt grinders with varying grit levels to fine-tune the silhouette. Then it undergoes heat treatment. The first stage is high heat, around 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, for 15 minutes. Once rapidly cooled, the metal is extremely hard but also brittle. That's where tempering -- reheating the blade at 400 degrees over two hours -- comes in, lending much-needed resilience to the final product. One needs a deep understanding of how to use heat to manipulate the grain structure of the steel for the perfect balance of hardness and strength.

Next, Middleton grinds the bevel, or the cutting edge, of the knife. He etches a line down the middle of the steel as his grind-to point. "Everything for me is done by hand," he says, and this freehand grinding stage seems more art than science.

A chef's knife must be super thin for delicate tasks, unlike a hunting knife. Or as he puts it: "A chef's knife is a Ferrari, and a Bowie knife is a Hummer." When the blade is finished, he adds the handle material, using grinders to carve out his signature contoured "Coke bottle" handle shape, a tribute to the style of his mentor, Master Bladesmith Jason Knight.

When does he know a new knife makes the proverbial cut? "I have two rules," says Middleton. "It needs to perform well, and it needs to look sexy."

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2022 12:00 AM

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