Golden Bough Handmade D2 Steel Drop Point Utility Ladies Knife with Olive Wood Handle & White Leather Sheath | Women’s Kitchen & Camp Knife | BMK-1208

Description

Golden Bough lives in the kitchen more than it lives on a belt. The blade is broad through the heel with a straight spine and a deep, generous belly that stays in contact with a board for most of a cut — a genuinely useful small utility shape rather than a scaled-down hunting knife pretending to be one. Behind it, olive wood: pale gold, wild with grain, with those dark chocolate streaks that make every board of it different.

Olive wood

Olive is dense, oily and slow-grown, and it comes from orchard trees at the end of their productive life rather than from forestry. That density is why it takes a fine burnish and why it resists absorbing kitchen smells and moisture better than most light-colored timbers. The grain almost never runs straight; expect swirls, knots and sudden dark figure, because that is what the material does.

Steel and edge

D2 tool steel, hardened in our own shop and finished in a hand-rubbed satin. High carbon content gives it real edge retention, and the chromium in it means an occasional damp hand or a wet rinse will not mark it, though it is a tool steel rather than a stainless one and should be dried rather than left to drip. Full tang, with pins through the scales and a comfortable curve where the fingers close behind the choil.

Carbon, stainless and the kitchen

People ask which is better for food work and there is no single answer. Simple carbon steel takes the finest edge and reacts with acidic ingredients. Full stainless is carefree and slightly harder to bring to a screaming edge. A tool steel like this one sits between them and, for a knife that will be used on a board and then wiped and put in a drawer, that middle position is the practical sweet spot. We compare the options properly in our piece on carbon versus stainless for kitchen use.

What it is for

Vegetables, cheese, bread rolls, herbs, camp cooking on a tailgate, trimming twine in the garden, picnic duty. It is the knife that ends up doing the small jobs a chef’s knife is too big for and a paring knife too small. If you are trying to work out which shapes belong in your kitchen at all, our overview of knife types covers the ground.

Sheath

Pale full-grain leather, hand stitched and shaped around the blade, with a loop so it can ride on a belt. In the box. It exists so the knife can travel to a campsite or a picnic without rattling loose in a bag.

Care

Hand wash only — a dishwasher will wreck the wood and dull the edge in a single cycle. Wash, dry immediately, and work a little food-safe mineral oil or board butter into the olive wood a couple of times a year, which is what stops it drying out and checking. Sharpen on a fine stone when the edge stops biting into a tomato skin. Store it in the drawer or on a magnetic strip rather than sealed in leather.

Questions

Is it food safe? Yes. Bare steel, unlacquered wood, oiled with food-safe oil.

Will the wood match the photo? No two pieces of olive are alike. Yours will be the same pale gold with its own dark figure running through it.

Can it go outdoors? Easily. It came with a sheath for exactly that reason.

A companion piece? The Meadowlark in matching olive wood uses a different blade profile for finer work.

Made in Tennessee

Ground, hardened, fitted, burnished and sharpened in our Memphis shop, with the leather worked up alongside it. Covered for the whole time it is in your hands, against flaws in the materials and in the making. Choose the gift option at checkout and it will be packed to be opened.

Model: BMK-1208