“So Eric, how was your weekend?”

I don’t even know how to explain it.  I just spent time at Bob Kramer’s knife studio.

“What, are you serious? How did that happen?”

It’s a long and complicated story so I’ll save it for another time.

“We have to peel and clean these artichokes so I have time”.

Alright…….

About a year ago Bob Tate (click) came to my school and talked about knife sharpening and explained how he worked with and knew Bob Kramer personally.  He showed us his website and talked about how his interaction with Mr. Kramer was instrumental into making his knife sharpening obsession become his trade.   He learned from the best and from that moment I knew I had to one day own a Bob Kramer knife.

Fast forward a year later and Jethro (click) came in out of the Twitterverse and after a few conversations we talked about knives and knife sharpening and he explained how he had a friend named Bob Tate that sharpened knives.  I told him that Bob Tate came to our school and he said we could check out Bob Tate’s workshop (click) one day and see first hand how he sharpened the best knives in Seattle.  When we visited Mr. Tate he said that one day he would introduce us to Mr. Kramer and maybe Mr. Kramer would let us come to his knife studio.  WHAT? NO WAY!

Fast forward a month or two after that and there we were hanging out in Bob Kramer’s knife studio in Olympia.

No way, I’m really here.  Jethro reminded me that not many chefs get a chance to see this part of the knife making process, let alone be in the presence of Bob Kramer.  I understood what was going on and pretty much felt like I was in culinary Disneyland with a fast pass!

My first steps into the workshop was to check out the wood drying room.

There are some types of wood that take 5-7 years to dry out in this room and those custom pieces of wood find their ways into the handles of his perfectly crafted knives.

This is a three part post.  Bandwidth is eating this post up so I have to split it up.

Part #2  (click)
Part #3 (click)

Eric