Claude Dozorme Le THIERS Secret 1.90.098.47 (genévrier / juniper)

Today I was finally able to buy a very special knife for my collection. It is not an ordinary knife it has a very unique mechanism to open and close. I saw this knife a few weeks ago and told the sales woman I would come back to get it.

This knife is manufactured in France using some more traditional methods. When I first entered the store (La Grande Coutellerie) I was actually looking for Victorinox Super Tinker but they didn’t have it. I started talking to the sales woman, she explained to me that most of the knives there were manufactured in their own workshop in France. I was amazed by her knowledge about knives, she not only explained to me the making at a technical level but also the history behind several knives she showed me.

But the one knife that completely blew my mind was the Le THIERS Secret by Claude Dozorme, she gave this knife to me and said that I needed to use my brain to figure out how to open it. I tried to find a button, lock, lever, tried pulling the blade out and nothing!

I was sold when she actually told me the “secret”, hold the knife tip up and push the blade, that’s it, for closing, hold it tip down and push the blade. I can’t describe how amazed I was about this secret mechanism, it is very well thought-out, very clever, and very impressive, not to mention elegant.

As far as I understand, here in France it is ok to bring your own knife to a restaurant and use it to eat, apparently in some places tourists used to steal the expensive silverware. This was the reason why they decided to go cheap and therefore we end up not being able to cut a steak sometimes! I am really looking forward to use this knife for this purpose. Here is France they usually don’t cut pizza in slices like in the U.S., so there is one use, and in general I like the idea of bringing my own knife. Sometimes I had to use my Victorinox Soldier’s knife to eat simply because the steak knives where not making it.I will need to test the plain edge, see how that works on the food I like. But in any case I think this knife is less “intimidating” for non-knife people.

There are several models available, I chose the one with juniper wood handle because it looks very nice and also, it smells!, yes it smells! I like the smell of juniper, I think this is another thing that makes this knife so special.

Here is the link to the catalog, if you want to see specifically Le THIERS go to page 22.

As usual, photographs were taken by me and here they are for you, enjoy!

• Steel: 14C28N (Sandvik Swedish Steel)
• Blade length: 8 cm
• Closed length: 11 cm
• Overall length: 19 cm