12 Facts About Opinel knife

Opinel knife company has manufactured and marketed a line of eponymous wooden-handled knives since 1890 from its headquarters in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Savoie, France where the family-run company operates a museum dedicated to its knives.

Opinel knife knives are made of both high carbon and stainless steel, the latter being Sandvik steel from Sweden.

Joseph Opinel began making knives in 1890 in Savoie, France as a simple working man's or peasant's knife.

From 1901 to 1903, Joseph Opinel built his first factory in Pont de Gevoudaz and produced a machine for mass production of the knife's wooden handles.

The Opinel knife was selected as one of the 999 classic designs in Phaidon Design Classics, and has been exhibited by the New York's Museum of Modern Art as a design masterpiece.

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Traditional Opinel knife has a beechwood handle and a high carbon XC90 steel blade.

Opinel knife offers most of its models with a Sandvik 12C27M stainless steel blade.

Custom Opinel knife models are available using luxurious or exotic handle woods such as oak, walnut, olive wood, bubinga, ebony and stained hornbeam, as well as other materials such as cowhorn.

Curve of the original Opinel knife blade is a Yatagan, while the flared butt at the base of the wood handle is referred to as a fishtail.

Traditional Opinel knife is designed to be opened with two hands, and a nail nick is provided on the blade.

Besides the Slim Effile series and the Couteau du Jardin, Opinel offers a hawkbill-bladed pruning knife designed for use in the garden or vineyard, and a large folding wood saw with locking blade using the same Virobloc mechanism as found on large Opinel knives.

In 2014, Opinel knife again released new varieties of knives for cooking.