Knife handles made of cornotech

“Cornotech” is the trade name chosen by Coltellerie Berti to refer to a particular type of orthophthalic polyester resin that has been used to make the handles of some knives since January 2013.

It is a resin that, when poured into aluminum cylinders, due to its strong viscosity encloses the colors without spreading them throughout the entire mass. This results in sticks that, processed by hand according to a specific process, allow the creation of handles that look and feel very similar to horn.

It is a great quality resin, flexible and workable, resistant to dishwasher and light so much so that it is stable over time, does not yellow, does not age, and retains its luster.

There are many other materials that imitate horn, including materials that can be extruded, that is, cast at high temperature and injected into special molds to make ready-to-use handles.

These would be inexpensive manufacturing processes, but of very little aesthetic value: the resulting handles look decidedly “fake.”
The search for this material was dictated by the lack of “real” horn. In fact, in the year 2012, due to a disease that affected cattle in the African area where our tip horn comes from, preventing their slaughter for food, it was not possible to purchase batches of horn. Not wanting to resort to buying horn of lesser quality, we preferred to wait for the situation to recover. At the end of 2012, the health emergency having been overcome, the harvesting of horn finally resumed and arrived in Italy in early 2013.

Since at Coltellerie Berti we use horn with at least 18 months of seasoning, we understood that it would be difficult to produce horn knives in 2013 since our stock was almost exhausted.
Prompted by this “emergency,” we sought to identify a plastic material that could replace horn while re-proposing its beauty and pleasantness to the touch.

Cornotech can be washed in the dishwasher, although with the usual cautions about the knife-washing. Compared to other plastics, it is more brittle and therefore prone to breakage if dropped.