Gehring table cutlery spade

At Gehring in Solingen, they still do all the work themselves, from forging to reiding and polishing. The knife blades are made of 1.4021 quenched and tempered steel, which due to the relatively high carbon content is at the same time very highly sharpenable and completely corrosion resistant with the finest grind; even in the basic grind, the knives are much sharper than usual for cutlery.

The already high edge retention of the blade thanks to the steel quality and optimum hardening is increased another 20-fold by the 1-mm saw grind in the front cutting edge area. The blades have a material thickness of 2.2 mm, which is ground down to 0.3 mm at the cutting edge. The knife handles and all other cutlery parts are made of 18/10 stainless steel.

This Spaten model dates from the 1950s. Blade steel and hilt are not welded here, but "gereidet", that is, the tapered tang of the blade is fitted with scales to the millimeter; this is the traditional way of joining blade and hilt, which is still hand labor intensive. The rest of the cutlery is not about - as usual - only flat embossed, but really sculpted.

There are manufacturers who are so taken up by the communicative care of their brand that they unlearn the making a little, which - for which there is a whole series of examples - sooner or later also clouds the radiance of the brand: Brand core rot, so to speak ...

There is also the opposite: a manufacturer who cares so intensively about the preservation and further development of its technical skills that he has little sense and little time for the purely "communicative". This is then also a "brand", a core brand even, famous and highly valued, especially in the industry and as an emergency helper for those "brand manufacturers" who can no longer do this or that. Gehring in Solingen is such a "brand of brands", producer of high-class cutlery, often emblazoned with a different logo, and one of the very few companies in Solingen, which have a production depth of actually 100%: from forging to reeding and polishing.

The knife blades are made of 1.4021 quenched and tempered steel, a special steel that is used for surgical instruments and must therefore bring two actually opposing properties to the optimum: Due to its relatively high carbon content, it is at the same time very highly sharpenable (suitable for scalpels) and, with the finest grinding, completely corrosion-resistant, which is absolutely essential for surgical instruments for hygienic reasons and because of the many sterilization processes. Due to the material used and the hardening process, the knife blades are thus much sharper than usual for cutlery, even in the basic grind. The already high edge retention of the blade, thanks to the steel quality and the optimal hardening, is increased another 20-fold by the 1-mm saw grind in the front cutting edge area. The blades have a material thickness of 2.2 mm at the back, which is ground down to 0.3 mm at the cutting edge. The knife handles and all other cutlery parts are made of 18/10 stainless steel.

Knives, forks and spoons are, at their best, truly elaborate tools, the instrumental quintessence, so to speak, of centuries of cultivation of table manners. A good, classic cutlery will always convince you with the neat balance of its individual parts. How the weight is distributed over the length of a spoon, for example, can be considered the result of very long trial and error; in proper cutlery, the cross-section changes continuously for reasons of optimal weight distribution. Another quality feature: in a good cutlery the blades are never rigid, but flexible and elastic.

The knives on higher quality cutlery are always composed of handle and blade and not made of one piece (monobloc). The knife must not become too heavy overall, which is only guaranteed with a hollow handle knife, where the blade and handle (or hilt) are joined together.