“Never meet your heroes” is an old adage that only really seems to apply when your heroes happen to, you know, suck.
Just ask the folks at burgeoning knife brand Oknife, who turned a meetup with knifemaking legend Ken Onion at Blade Show Atlanta a few years back into a pretty profitable partnership.
Onion’s subsequent design, the XEN OAL, raised almost $200,000 on Kickstarter, nearly 200 times its goal (!), lifting Oknife’s profile and leading to additional partnerships, like a recent one with Ostap Hel on a sleek new gentleman’s knife.
Perhaps even more intriguing for knife enthusiasts is Oknife’s latest spin on the XEN, which brings the magic of Damascus not to its blade but to its handle.
Road to Damascus
As the cutlery cognoscenti are well aware, Damascus steel has an incredibly long history, with the earliest version, known as wootz, appearing in the Middle East as far back as 323 BC.
Its modern incarnation dates back to 1981, and while the blending of different steels can yield varying results, Damascus blades invariably ripple with a compelling combo of edge retention and toughness.
