Once (and future?) Spydercos - the Challif

J

James Mattis

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Oct 3, 1998
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Once upon a time, Spyderco had in its kitchen knife line an odd looking knife called the Challif. Something like a 5" x 2" rectangular blade and a straight full tang handle with black linen micarta slabs. Thin stock. That thing is a veritable razor!

A challif is originally a tool to turn a live chicken into kosher poultry as painlessly as such things can be done, but it is also a great little vegetable slicer.
 
I'm not one to question your knowledge of knives, but are you sure they were micarta handles. My knowledge of kashrut tells me that knives cannot be resharpened and still be used for slaughter. It seems odd to put good handle material on a somewhat disposable knife, unless it was expected to be relegated to other duties after the original edge was gone.

Aaron
(Granted most of this knowledge is second hand, my chicken comes pre-dead from Empire.)
 
My uneducated guess is that they just used the name. I don't think that most of the sales went to shohets.
 
The challif was in fact designed and produced for Rabbi Yurman in New York. It's intended use was as James described. The object is that knife is so sharp that the chicken does not know that is has been cut and dies without fear of death. This is what makes it kosher. Rabbi Yurman and his associates do in fact sharpen their knives, almost contantly. In fact their skill in sharpening exceeded mine. That is how I first came to know him. Rabbi Yurman was retrofitting our Santoku into a challif becuse of the exceptional performance and resharpening ability of the MBS-26 steel. The 1.05 Carbon was ideal in grain size. We decided (incorretly as time showed) to "upgrade" the steel to 1.15 Carbon (the original Al Mar steel). However when the challifs were sharpened to their very thin edge (1/10th of 1 mm thick), the larger secondary carbides were breaking out at the edge causing a very small knick. Knicks are unacceptable as they let the chicken know what's up. We all learned a lot (magna flux and microscopes). I have commited to make a challif for Rabbi Yurman from CPM-440V for his testing. Owen Wood is coming on board in April as our "in house" prototype maker (to help us out). Good project for Owen. Yes the handle was micarta. As long as the edge is over .008 (at the shoulder), there shouldn't be any knick problems. We reground a few into pointy fixed blade pieces. quite awesome in their performance.
hope this helps.
sal
 
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