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The Workshop
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With more than 15 cutlers, whom several received awards, the
family company Coutellerie de Laguiole is today the first artisan
manufacturer of Laguiole knives in Laguiole |
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109 operations for a Laguiole knife with blade only and 216
for a Laguiole knife with blade, corkscrew and punch.
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Below you can see the alterations made by men to the raw
materials. It is in this long process that rests the
difference between mass production and handcrafted production,
which is the only way to guarantee that each knife is unique.
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The forging mill: the course of steel and brass
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Forging: it's a unit dedicated to working of materials and structuring
of metal. Even if mechanization is important at this point, it still
requires many stages.
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Blade
forging |
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Welding and stretching of the Damascus block.. |
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Logo branding |
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Plate riveting. |
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Plate drilling |
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Plate straightening |
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The assembling workshop
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Our knives are made from A to Z by the same cutler :
1- He prepares and adjust the knife components (spring, bolsters,
blade...)
2- He adjusts the handle manually
3- He assembles the knife in one stage (adjusting the spine, and the
blade, nailing and assembling the whole pieces).
4- He rough-hews the handles and the handles materials manually.
5- He carries out the finishing touches : He adds the cross on the
handle, he engraves the spine (process called chiseling),
rough-hews and polishes the handle.
6- He sharpens the blade.
7- He does the wiping.
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Making of the components. |
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Fitting of the spine. |
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Plates and spring riveting. . |
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Fitting of the handle with the plate and the bolsters |
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Handles fitting. |
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Handles fitting work post. |
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Handle drilling |
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Drilling the handle for the cross insertion. |
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Cross insertion. |
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Handle riveting. |
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Riveting of the lower bolster |
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Blade riveting. |
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Handle rough-hewing on a coarse-grained strip. |
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Handle Rough-hewing on a medium-grained strip. |
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Final rough-hewing on a fine-grained strip. |
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Laguiole knife polishing |
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Completions |
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Shaping of a Damascus blade |
Our motto : one man, one knife.
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Our handcraft workman shift respects the ancestral tradition of
original Laguiole knives.
Our knives are manufactured from A to Z by the same cutler. When a set
of knife is finished, the foreman controls it quality, erase the
imperfections and then the knives are rubbed and labeled.
In mass production men's role is reduced to the lowest degree.
In factories there is division of labor. The knife goes from one
unskilled-worker to the other, each of whom does one operation before
he passes the knife on to the next worker. Mass-production goes along
with outputs and thus the cutler's skill is replaced by numerically
controlled machines.
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