Fatty (such as ham), Oily (like smoked salmon) or starchy (like potatoes) foods create a vacuum with the smooth surface on the side of the knife as you cut and so the food sticks to it. If the blade surface is not smooth there is less chance of foods sticking to the side as you cut. If the side of the knife is has indentations, often called ‘Granton’ or scallops the area of smooth surface is reduced and there is less chance for food to stick to it – making preparation faster, smoother and more efficient. Most manufactures have one or two knives in their range that have such indentations. Here is an entire collection of such blades! In most cases the indentations are smaller than the area between each scallop and therefore the system is not efficient. Our Granton Collections has the deepest and widest scallops in the industry (apart from our handmade Glestain Series). The indentations are wide, square and deep providing the most efficient ‘Granton’ blades available.

The knives are constructed from High Carbon Molybdenum Vanadium steel that is expertly forged and tempered to provide razor sharpness that is easy to maintain. To be super effective the scallops are far deeper than possible on a laminated steel (as the indentation would go through to the core layer) and so these blades are made from a single layer, therefore, to make them easy to maintain, they are tempered to a slightly softer level (58 +/- 1 HRC) which is still harder than most knives on the market. Furthermore, with lower compression during forging the steel crystals are smaller and less dense than those forged with full compression. So whilst the knife will remain sharper longer than most western knives they do require a little more frequent sharpening than many Japanese knives.

As food can only stick to the outside surface – indentations are only required on one side of the blade. At present we do this only on the right face of the knife – so these knives are only suitable for the right-handed user.