About Knife Maker Shop
We make heat treated knife blade blanks in Istanbul, Türkiye, and ship them to knife makers around the world. A blank from us arrives ground, hardened and sharpened, unless your order note asks for no sharpening. It is a semi-finished blade: the metallurgy is done before it reaches your bench, so you can spend your time on the handle and the finish.
Who we are
Knife Maker Shop is run by two related companies of the same business. Knife Maker Shop OÜ, registered in Tallinn, Estonia, is the seller on this website and collects the payment for your order. Evren Bıçak Metal San. produces our blanks in its Istanbul workshop and ships your order directly to you by UPS.
Where our steel comes from
We buy steel directly from Voestalpine. Böhler and Uddeholm are both part of that group, which is why you will see both names across our range: N690 and M390 from Böhler, AEB-L, Sleipner, Vanax and Vanadis from Uddeholm.
Buying from the mill rather than through a chain of distributors means we know exactly what alloy is in every blade we sell, and we can tell you.
How a blank is made
After laser cutting, each profile goes to the belt grinders in our Istanbul workshop, where it is ground by hand on ceramic belts at 40, 120 and 240 grit, using jigs we designed and built ourselves; selected full flat models are CNC ground for consistency.
Then comes the part most makers find surprising. We do not heat treat in our own workshop. The ground blades go back to Voestalpine and are hardened in industrial vacuum furnaces by the mill that made the steel. The powder steels (Elmax, M390 and Vanax) also get the cryogenic step they need to convert retained austenite.
A small workshop furnace cannot hold the temperature uniformity, the vacuum, or the quench rate that modern alloys are specified for. Sending blades back to the mill costs us time and freight. It is also the only way we can put a hardness figure on a product page and stand behind it.
Why we publish hardness figures
Every steel we sell has its HRC range stated: 1.4116 at 54-57, N690 at 58-60, AEB-L at 60, Sleipner at 60-62, Elmax and M390 at 60-61, Vanax at 60, and Vanadis 4 Extra at 63-64.
Composition tables are easy to copy from a datasheet. The hardness a blade actually reaches depends on how it was treated, and that is the number that decides how the knife behaves in your hand. We publish it because we control it.
What arrives in the box
Blades ship already sharpened, with the burr removed, unless your order note asks for no sharpening. The standard finish is ground on ceramic belts at 40, 120 and 240 grit. Pin holes are drilled. And we laser engrave your name on the blade free of charge: write it in the Delivery Note field at checkout.
The team
We are a small, dedicated team. That means you are talking to people who know every blade in our range, and it means we answer questions in detail rather than pointing at a datasheet. If something is not right with an order, tell us straight away and we will put it right.
Where to start
New to blade blanks? Start with how to turn a blade blank into a finished knife, then read why we send blades back to the steel mill for the full story on our heat treatment.