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James Brand Scales up the Hell Gap for the Kitchen

November 18, 2020

James Brand is joining many of its peers in the enthusiast production knife realm and releasing a piece of kitchen cutlery. Their new Hells Canyon knife was designed in conjunction with chef Chris Cosentino to make an all-purpose, all-terrain food prep blade.

The Hells Canyon is based on the Hell Gap, which came out in the spring of 2019. The Hell Gap brought the signature James Brand aesthetic to fixed blades for the first time. With that knife, the company’s aim was to create a fixed blade that comfortably transitioned into as many cutting roles as possible, while still being lightweight and easy to handle. Thus the design they settled on was a simple one: a 3.8-inch drop point blade married to hand-filling, all-purpose ergonomics.

The Hells Canyon doesn’t deviate from its predecessor’s overall simplicity. However, being designed for use in both indoor and outdoor culinary settings, it needed to be scaled up a bit. So here we have a blade that measures 5.4 inches long; the wide drop point blade shape is retained, but the grind has been altered from a partial to a full flat grind. These changes create something that’s smaller than your typical chef’s knife, to allow for less cumbersome carry on camping trips, but big enough to accomplish most kitchen cutting chores. As on the Hell Gap and the second generation Chapter knife, the Hell Canyon’s blade steel is CPM-S35VN.

Clean and simple lines define the Hells Canyon handle. It comes outfitted with textured G-10 scales, over a full tang, neutral shape lets the user entirely dictate how they hold it. The Hells Canyon comes with a Kydex sheath.

Chris Cosentino competed – and won – in season 4 of the show Top Chef Masters, and runs the restaurant Cockscomb in San Francisco, California. He has been affiliated with James Brand for some time, but this is the first product to bear his name as a designer.

Knife in Featured Image: James Brand Hell Canyon

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