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Ansø Wraps up Mojo Extreme Project with Timascus Composite Blade

July 24, 2017

Jens Ansø finished his fifth and final Mojo Extreme knife, completing a project which began several years ago. Although the Mojo Extremes currently represent the high water mark for Ansø collectors, the Danish maker hinted at even more ambitious plans for the future.

In its original custom form, the Mojo frame lock embodies the Ansø style, with an organic blade shape and refined ergonomics. Ansø chose to make the Mojo Extreme project a platform for experimentation with complex construction and very high-end materials. “The only thing [the Mojo Extremes] have in common with the regular Mojo is design and the base materials,” Ansø explains. In previous Extreme models Ansø played with Damascus, Mokume, and Timascus in different configurations. “This last one was the only one in the mix with a blade spine in Timascus and inlays in titanium,” he says.

Ansø achieved the particular composite blade construction on the Mojo Extreme by utilizing pins to hold the materials together. He was inspired by Michael Walker’s work to discover his own style of composite blade. “The construction in itself was very hard to design, as I would need to consider every single radius and joint.” For the fifth Extreme, the Timascus spine was heat treated to become colorized – according to Ansø a painstaking, high-risk process given the blade construction. “Having blade steel with a very thin cross section pinned to the Timascus made the process very nerve wracking, but it ended up perfect.”

The Mojo Extreme project began several years ago. Before he produced the first knife, Ansø spent a significant chunk of time planning and preparing. Even though the Mojo model existed already, the additional flourishes required extremely precise tolerances and machining – things that couldn’t be achieved with improvisation in the shop. “I spent more than a month working on the concept, doing the design and programming and machining on the CNC,” Ansø recalls. He tells us a simple liner lock folder can consist of as few as 14 parts whereas the ornate Mojo Extreme no. 5 nearly triples the part count, totaling 41 individual pieces.

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Both Böker and Viper offer lockback versions of the Mojo. But the fifth, and final Mojo Extreme went to a collector for a price north of $4,000. While the Extremes remains the most complicated test of skill he has done up to this point, Ansø says they won’t hold that crown forever. “The Mojo remains the ‘Extreme,’ but I expect that will change in the not too distant future.”

Knife featured in image: Ansø Mojo Extreme No. 5

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