Aaron Bakke, the owner and artist of Ginger Worx Art in Delafield, is a fiery redhead who found his purpose in the art of hand-crafted knife making. Leveraging his unique combination of artistry and metalworking skills, he has built an unusual career. His beautiful knives are functional statement pieces for his customers. 

Beautiful hand-crafted knifes by Ginger Worx.

“The knife is arguably the most useful tool in the history of all man,” according to Bakke. He creates a variety of knife styles, including “integral’ knives, which are made of a single piece of carbon steel forged so there is a smooth transition between the blade and the handle, and “full tang” knives with a blade that runs from its tip through the handle. 

Bakke commented, “It’s just different strokes for different purposes. If you’re going to use a bushcraft knife, you want a full tang. A bushcraft knife can be used for hunting, building shelters and other survival-type stuff. If I fell out of an airplane, this is the knife I’d want with me. One that has a full tang on it because if the handle breaks, you still have the knife, and you can hold onto the tang. You can wrap the tang in some cloth or twig or pull up some vines from the woods, crush them and make them into another handle. Simple as that.” When asked if he ever had to do that, Bakke replied, “Not out of desperation, but I’ve played around and spent a lot of time in the woods.”   

Bakke uses various materials, from classic woods to “some crazy, crazy stuff including UV resin,” to create beautiful and unique handles for his knives. He explained that he uses a UV resin “overpour block” built by pouring leftover resins on top of each other to create crazy colors and patterns. “When I book match it, because it’s UV, it looks trippy when it’s under blacklight.” 

He commented that there are more knifemaker websites now for sourcing interesting handle material, and then he opened a cabinet filled with more unusual materials, including a woolly mammoth tusk. Bakke said, “When woolly mammoths walked the Earth 4,000 years ago in Siberia and Alaska, some would wander into sinkhole pits thinking they were water, get stuck and drown. Today, their skeletons are excavated, and the tusks are used in various ways. Sometimes, the tusks are fragmented, shattered like a piece of wood, so they’re hose clamped together, duct taped and have resin cast inside them. Woolly mammoth molar teeth are so hard you have to use diamond blades to cut and grind them. I could use a piece of molar as a handle spacer.” He sometimes also uses leopardwood, which is dark, reddish-brown with lighter areas resembling a leopard’s spots 

Bakke demonstrated how he attaches handles to the finished blade using the UV resin block. “So, I drill my pinholes, trace the outline of the handle and then cut out the outline. Then, I make a sandwich from the UV resin pieces and set the pins with a high-strength resin. Next, I finish grind the handle and use a belt sander to shape it, moving through different grits and different styles of belts to create whatever profile I need. After everything is finish ground, I sit by the vice, smoke a cigar and hand sand. Every knife is hand-sanded.”   

Depending on how the knife will be used, Bakke will make either a leather sheath or a Kydex® thermoplastic sheath that, when heated and compressed, takes the shape of the knife.

Bakke commented that the most unusual knives he has made were sickles. “They were hard to make because they’re so large. Forging that shape was challenging, and grinding the blade’s edge was even more challenging because the metal didn’t want to grind in a circle. There wasn’t one flat profile like a hatchet where you get a nice clean grind. With the sickle, I had to grind flat while moving in a circle. I did it really well on my first try, and it looked great. And then, when I was polishing it, the point of it got caught on the stand, which threw it straight at the ground, and it broke.”

Touring the Blacksmith Shop

Bakke began the tour of his blacksmith shop in the forging section where he proudly described two anvils he uses to shape metal into knives. One anvil has a forged, welded top and a cast iron body that sits on a wooden base Bakke made. He explained that the other is a Trenton anvil likely made in Germany in the late 1890s or early 1900s by a team of two to four men. The anvil has a wrought iron body, while the top edge or face is made of steel. 

Thermal Cycling

After forging a finished blade, Bakke places it in a kiln at up to 1600° for 2.5 – 3 hours to undergo thermal cycling. Bakke explained, “Forging is a hard workout for the knife, and the metal ends up twisted up in a knot. The kiln is the sauna, the massage, the relaxation. It recombines and aligns the steel carbides, the iron carbides and the carbon in the knife because the kiln goes through a process of repeatedly heating up and cooling down really slowly.” 

After thermal cycling, blades are ground and then heat treated again to the steel’s “critical temperature” to soften the steel and allow drilling the pin holes needed to attach a handle. Different steels have different critical temperatures with high carbon ranging from 1450° to 1600°. The blades then go through touch-up grinding, file work and etching.   

Examples of etched knives. Photos courtesy of Ginger Worx.

Etching

“When etching or bringing out the pattern in a blade, I use about half a jar of the crummiest, cheapest instant coffee to soak the blade in. The coffee darkens the pattern in the blade,” said Bakke as he pointed to another knife. “I forged two types of steel together to make this blade. And you can’t see anything on that blade now, right? But there’s a pattern hidden inside of it. The coffee soak just brings out the natural pattern of the steel.” Sometimes, chemicals such as ferric chloride are also used to etch blades. 

“Some steel has grain structures because when steelworkers made it, they would melt down iron ore and get an ugly ingot that they would heat and fold like taffy, constantly throwing in limestone, silicone glass, sand, or whatever. So, some of the pockets we see could be limestone, and when I etch it, the etch eats it away, revealing this new pattern and boldness to it.”

Bakke enjoys experimenting with different metals and patterns, such as a copper Damascus made by a company in Boone, North Carolina. He said, “Copper is soldered between all the layers. When heated to a precise temperature and given just the right amount of pressure, the metals solder together. You get these bright, almost mythical patterns. It’s a little bit harder to work with, but I’m starting to play with it.” 

Human Torso Metal Art

Photo by Patricia Puccinelli Bakke enjoys creating artistic interpretations of the human figure and whatever his mind imagines.

Mushroom Metal Art

Photo courtesy of Ginger Worx Metal mushroom artwork by Ginger Worx

Shark Metal Art

Photo courtesy of Ginger Worx Ginger Worx metal shart art piece.

Ginger Worx Metal Art

Bakke not only makes beautiful knives, but he also uses his blacksmith skills to create unique metal art. While working as a laser operator before starting his business, he collected thousands of scrap metal laser drops, which he uses to create art pieces, including interpretations of the human abdomen, an oversized mushroom lawn ornament and a scaly fish. Bakke’s steel shark is formed from reclaimed steel, stainless steel, nails and chains. Bakke has kept it uncoated to let it age, as the rust and patina will give it a new look year after year.

Bakke offers in-shop blacksmith instruction. His knives and metal art can be found on the company’s website, at Harbor Honest Goods in Oconomowoc and at the Gwenyn Hill Farm holiday market in Waukesha.