Hand Tooled Leather Knife Roll, Six Pockets with Tie Strap

A knife roll is a bag for edges. This one is vegetable tanned full grain leather, stamped with a basket weave, six pockets inside and a leather tie strap to hold it shut. Roll it out and the set is in front of you. Roll it up and it travels. No knives come with it. You get the roll and the strap.

Specification

The leather

The leather is vegetable tanned full grain in mid brown. Bark tanning leaves the hide firm, so it takes a stamp and keeps it, and it darkens as it is handled. The brown here will be deeper in a year, and the pockets you reach for most get there first. The tooling is a stamped basket weave with a stamped border. Basket weave is one tool struck in rows across damp leather, moved along by eye, so the rows run true without looking machine made. The border goes on last.

How it is made

The panel is cut in one piece. The pocket panel is cut to match, set against it, and stitched down in divisions to make six. Every line is sewn by hand with cream thread, two needles through one hole, so a cut stitch stays put rather than running. The raw edges are burnished dark, rubbed with water and friction until they go hard and stop fuzzing. There is no metal on it anywhere. The closure is a leather tie strap.

How it is used

Lay it flat, put a blade in each pocket with the handle out, then roll from one end and tie it. It rolls out to 20 inches by 13 inches and takes blades up to 10 inches, six of them. Rolled up it goes in a bag, which a block on the counter cannot do. Six is the honest number, and a seventh knife stays loose in a drawer at home.

Who it suits

This is for people who own more knives than a block holds and move them about.

• Cooks who bring their own knives elsewhere
• Anyone with loose blades in a drawer
• People who want the set out on a bench
• Buyers with six good knives and no seventh

What comes in the box

• The hand tooled leather knife roll
• Its leather tie strap
• A care card
• No knives. The roll ships empty.

Every piece is different

Every roll is cut from a different part of a different hide. The grain runs its own way and old marks show through the stamping. The weave is struck by hand, row by row, so the count across the front shifts from one roll to the next. Yours will not match the photograph.

Looking after it

Knives go in dry. Steel left in damp leather pits, and a roll holds that damp against six blades instead of one. Keep it out of standing water. If it gets wet, open it out and dry it slowly somewhere cool, never on a radiator or in an oven. Feed it with a leather conditioner once or twice a year. Sharpening is covered on our care and sharpening page.

Put a name on it

Initials are stamped into the leather rather than lasered. A steel letter stamp is struck into damp hide. It is 20 dollars per piece and around 20 characters fits. We send a proof image first, because a stamp cannot be taken back out. It adds 3 to 5 business days, and it is free on orders of 10 or more. See the engraving page.

Questions buyers ask

Are any knives included? No. The roll and its tie strap ship, and every pocket arrives empty.

What size blades fit? Blades up to 10 inches, six of them. Anything longer sits past the pocket.

Why only six pockets? A wider panel sags in the middle and will not roll tight. Six is what this one holds.

Is it any use for travelling? That is the point of a roll. It lies flat in a bag with nothing loose.

Will the pockets dull my knives? No. Leather is softer than steel. Putting a wet knife away is what does damage.

How long does shipping take? Most US orders arrive in 5 to 7 business days.

For the knives themselves, the Leather Knife Care Kit rolls up the same way with a stone and a strop inside. For something you wear rather than pack, there is the hand tooled leather belt with a solid brass buckle. The rest of the leather work is in sheaths and accessories, this one turns up in gifts for him, and the newest pieces are in new arrivals.