South African Custom Knifemaker, Willem Steenkamp, has been making and selling knives since 2006. From 2008, he has also been a member of the South African Knifemakers Guild. Willem creates beautifully crafted folding knives, flipper knives, slip joint pocket knives and fix blade knives.
Willem uses materials like Bohler N690, D2, Elmax, Damascus and dama steel. For the handles he uses African hard woods, Giraffe bone and synthetic materials, like carbon fibre, G10 and micarta.
A pocketknife is a foldable knife with one or more blades that fit inside the handle that can still fit in a pocket. A typical blade length is 5 to 15 centimeters (2 to 6 in).
An assisted-opening knife is a type of folding knife which uses an internal mechanism to finish the opening of the blade once the user has partially opened it using a flipper or thumb stud attached to the blade.
A slipjoint knife consists of a handle with one or more folding blades. These blades are held in position by a strong “backspring” which biases them towards the open or closed position.
Fixed blade knives feature a solid piece of steel that is anchored to a handle. There are a variety of blade steel options, handle materials, blade edges, blade points, and tangs available.
