A sharp duo

Luca Distler and Florian Pichler may well be producing the best blades in Germany in their workshop in the shade of the Kampenwand mountain. Every knife they make is an ultra-sharp and precisely balanced work of art, a collector’s item, a legend.

Up to 350 layers of Damascus steel are extremely compacted until they’re just one millimetre thick – this is the very brief description of what goes into making a masterpiece. Luca Distler and Florian Pichler, the founders of Messer-Werk in Aschau im Chiemgau in Bavaria, only make a maximum of a dozen knives each month. Their workshop looks exactly how you would imagine it: high ceilings, massive workbenches, unwieldy hammers hanging from the walls, green metalworking machines from the 1960s that are just as powerful as they look. There’s hissing, sparks flying and cooling water being sprayed onto hot steel. It smells like a metalworking shop or a forge.

A boy's dream

This is right where it all began for our sharp duo. In this very hall, Distler trained as a metalsmith, learning how to forge windows and railings. One day after work, he decided to try his hand at making a knife. Or, as Distler says in his charming Bavarian dialect: “Here, every lad of a certain age always has a knife in his pocket for whittling sticks. I was just interested in knives.” The result? “It was brilliant, and I absolutely loved it.”

[Translate to English:] Messer Rote Bete

From gold teeth to bright steel

He made others but was disappointed with one thing in particular: the handle. But what are friends for? At the time, Pichler was learning to be a dental technician and was responsible for putting the finishing touches on gold teeth. With his fantastic fine motor skills, he was exactly the right partner for Distler. Together, they read textbooks, tried different things out and tinkered around. They made their first knives in a dark cellar, then they moved to a rented garage and later an unheated machine room in a sawmill – getting a small upgrade each time.

Making money from a passion

One of the duo’s friends had a spare metre of stand space at a craft market, so they decided to go and see how many people would be interested in their work. They managed to sell two of their simple, straight and very precise knives for a few hundred euros each. “That’s when we realised that we could make some money from our passion.” At least, the money that they made covered their costs and labour. “As apprentices we had barely any money. We gathered scrap metal and old tools,” explains Distler, “and every euro that we earned was immediately invested in tools and new materials.”

Japanese master craftsmen as role models

They spent every free minute they had working on their knives. “It was incredibly important to us both,” adds Distler. “While our friends were out partying, we were busy in the workshop. We put our heart and soul into our work and firmly believe that there is honour in producing such high-quality knives.” Highly skilled Japanese master craftsmen are role models for them, not only in terms of the quality of the products that they create but also with regards to their work ethos. “We want our knives to add something to the soul of the people who use them.” Over time, they got better and better and today they work with steel. Their business became more professional and the duo finally opened Messer-Werk in 2004.

They refine their work little by little

It’s probably important to mention here that there is a real community of knife enthusiasts who exchange information about every little detail of their knives at fairs and in forums. The knives from Messer-Werk are always very popular among knife fans. This is most likely due to the fact that our dynamic duo never take a break, they never rest on their (many) laurels and are always eager to try something new, perfect something, implement new ideas and refine their work little by little.

At 1,200 degrees Celsius the steel turns "doughy"

You just need to see the sparks in Distler’s eyes when he shows off three seemingly unremarkable whetstones that he found somewhere. “I’ve been looking for something just like this for ages,” he explains. “They open up a whole new range of possibilities for processing our knives. I’m still learning my craft and hopefully will never stop.” Only the best steel from carefully selected steel traders (“They laugh about the amounts that we order”) is good enough for the duo from Messer-Werk. The individual layers of steel are forged at around 1,200 degrees Celsius. This way, they reach the exact temperature that they need to. When this temperature is reached, the colour and consistency of the hot steel changes – no thermometers are used here. Once the temperature is right, the steel turns “doughy”, as Distler calls it, and the individual layers come together without the steel melting. A whole series of work processes follow until a sharp blade with the wave-pattern that is typical for knives made from Damascus steel is produced. Each wavy line represents another paper-thin layer of steel, and the delicate wave pattern appears depending on how the knife is sharpened.

"We sell emotions"

“Some customers might come to see us twice and talk for hours about how they want their knife to look,” explains Pichler. “For many of them, it’s a collector’s piece that they will take great care of and will take out to look at time and time again. Not only do we sell high-quality knives, we also sell emotions and stories. When we talk with our customers, we talk about the type of knife they want (cooking knife, bread knife, hunting knife, folding knife), the length of the blade and, of course, the handle. We firmly believe that it’s our job to make customers aware of what goes into our work and to work together with them to create their perfect knife. We have to do a lot of explaining, which costs us a lot of time but without which we couldn’t give our customers exactly what they want.”

Handles made of mammoth tusks

Now, a knife isn’t finished once the blade has been made. When it comes to the handle, there are no limits in terms of imagination or price. In the small showroom at Messer-Werk – the pair took over the workshop from Distler’s former boss – Pichler pulls a few drawers out to show us what´s inside. One is full of beautiful wood in a range of different colours (“I particularly like this one, it’s moor oak”), in another are more unique pieces made from mammoth tusks or molars. “Of course, we don’t use elephant tusks,” explains Pichler, “but mammoths are unfortunately already extinct.”

A curved digger from Bavaria

Customers from the Middle East or Asia often ask for gold or precious stones to be incorporated into their knives. One of the display cases contains a curved dagger, showing us that they have customers from all over the world. “We’re proud to have customers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It shows just how much our work is valued because they have some truly outstanding craftsmen over there too,” explains Pichler. While they are proud of their special and unique showpieces, for Distler and Pichler, it’s important that their knives are functional too. Their straightness, elegance, clean lines and absolute precision are very impressive, plus they’re stable, robust, resistant and extremely durable.

Text: Peter Würth Photos: Manuel Uebler

www.messer-werk.com