Steady.
A knife that disappears into the everyday.
The chef knife we wanted to come home to.
- — Drawn from a single piece
- — Japanese steel, titanium-finished
- — Boring in the best way
- 01 / 18
Three things hold Steady together.
Material, process, design. Three decisions made once, so the knife asks nothing of you after.
Japanese steel, titanium-finished.
A core of Japanese AUS-10 — the steel home cooks reach for when they want a keen edge — shielded in a titanium nitride finish tuned for the counter, not the cabinet.
Drawn from a single piece.
One gesture, one material, one object. Blade, bolster, and handle are pressed and ground from a single billet — no pins, no seams, nothing to trap what you cooked last night.
Boring in the best way.
A matte silver silhouette that vanishes on a walnut board. No logo on the blade. No decorative flourish. A tool that lets the ingredient speak — boring in the best way.
Two questions had answers. The third didn't.
The first question was strength. The great workshops answered it — a knife built to outlast the cook.
The second was sharpness. The Japanese smiths answered it — steel taken thin, an edge that falls through a tomato's skin without pressing.
We didn't set out to win either argument. Two of us and a cat, a notebook, a counter. We asked the question nobody had built a knife around: what happens at 9pm, after the meal, at the sink?
So we chose the sharper steel — Japanese — for the edge. We shielded it in titanium, so pulp slides off and flavour stays where you put it. We drew it from a single piece, so there's no seam to hold what you cooked. No pattern. No logo.
Germany asked how strong. Japan asked how sharp. We asked what happens at 9pm.
The lemon test, in real time.
T = 10 min · ambient · wipe only
Before the spec sheets and the cross-references, there is a kitchen test you can run with two lemons and ten minutes.
Three ingredients selected for acid (citric), pigment (lycopene), and tannin (polyphenol). Cut in half, applied to a cleaned blade, observed at minute one and minute ten. Wipe with linen between observations.
Untreated edge · 90 seconds
Steady, titanium-finished · Brushed shield · 10 minutes
"The core is steel; the shield is titanium."
HomebodyPlus · titanium-coated chef knifeTitanium nitride is not a kitchen experiment.
The same surface chemistry that protects turbine blades, milling cutters, and food-line conveyors sits on the Steady edge — re-tuned for the weight of a home cook's hand.
Turbine blade surfaces.
PVD Titanium Nitride is the industry finish for jet-engine compressor blades — chosen for its hardness and its indifference to salt, acid, and fuel residue.
Milling & broaching tools.
Carbide endmills run four to six times longer in steel and titanium stock when TiN-coated. The same hardness keeps a kitchen edge from rolling on a walnut board.
Commercial food lines.
Conveyor pins, slicer shafts, and portioning blades on industrial meat and produce lines use TiN for non-reactivity — nothing leaches into the food stream.
The Steady chef knife.
Japanese steel takes a keen edge. Left bare, it also takes on the kitchen — acid, pulp, the slow dullness of a hundred washes. So we shield the faces. The blade is loaded into a vapour chamber at 400 °C; titanium and nitrogen bond to the steel as a hard, matte-silver surface — the same family of finish that protects cutting tools and engine parts, not a film that flakes off. The edge stays steel, where the work happens. Everything the edge can't do, the shield does.
| Bare steel | Steady · titanium-finished | |
|---|---|---|
| Tomato | Acidic pulp clings to the bevel; a faint gray film transfers to the next slice. Film transfer |
Pulp slides off the brushed shield. Flavour stays where you put it. Wipe clean |
| Apple | Fructose + iron bond to produce a metallic aftertaste on the cut face. Metallic note |
Apple tastes like apple. No transfer, no carry into the next prep. Neutral |
| Garlic | Sulphur compounds etch a persistent haze along the edge. Haze · scent carry |
Sulphur wipes off under warm water. No scent carry into fruit or herb prep. Rinses off |
There is no decorative inlay, no rivet, no logo stamped on the face. The blade, the bolster, and the handle were never separate pieces — they are one billet of Japanese steel, pressed and ground, then shielded. What's left is a matte silver object that does its job and sits quietly on the board, the way good tools age — slowly, and without commentary.
- Dieter RamsTen principles for good design1976
- ApartamentoInteriors magazineMilan
- KinfolkIssue 47, The Slow HomeCopenhagen
- Donald Judduntitled (stack)1967
The ten seconds between done and tomorrow.
Rinse under warm water. Wipe clean with a linen towel. Stow, spine up, on the magnet rail.
The titanium shield means there is no special ritual — no oiling, no drying schedule. Steady asks ten seconds a day. That's the only rule.
Four Steps. Ten Seconds. Every Day.
Every Steady knife asks the same ten seconds, every night. Rinse, dry, stow, ready. The titanium shield does the rest.
Warm water over the brushed shield. No soap required for most ingredients.
One pass with a linen cloth. The titanium finish releases moisture in a single wipe.
Spine up on the magnet rail — edge protected, handle visible, ready.
Tomorrow morning, Steady is exactly where you left it. Wipe clean once more, go.
One Family. Four Blades.
Bread · Chef · Santoku · Paring
Four blades, one design language. Same Japanese AUS-10 core. Same brushed titanium shield. Same matte silver silhouette that disappears on a walnut board.
Serrated edge for crusty loaves and ripe stone fruit.
The everyday blade. Tomato, onion, rosemary, repeat.
Flat profile for push cuts; balanced for softer produce.
Small work. Garlic, shallot, citrus supreme.
After the Kickstarter closes, here is what happens.
Kickstarter Q3 2026 · first boxes 2027
First boxes ship in 2027. A new core steel — Japanese AUS-10 — means new tooling, and new tooling means test pieces we'll reject before any knife ships. The campaign runs Q3 2026; production starts once those test pieces pass, and the first walnut boxes leave in 2027. We'd rather ship right than ship fast.
Friday letters every week — even the slow ones — until the last box ships.
The risks we see, and what we will do about them.
HomebodyPlus has shipped small-batch hardware before. Here is where this project can go sideways, and the commitment we are making in advance.
Yield
Freight & customs
Updates
Change of mind
Two of Us. One Cat.
A Small Kitchen.
Ethan and Mia met at the crossroads of numbers and narrative — days that ran fast, dinners that ran slow. Jimbo supervises everything from the counter.
We sketched Steady on a notebook at this same counter — sixteen iterations, every clever flourish thrown out — until what stayed was simply what works at 9pm on a Tuesday.
We built the knife we wanted to come home to.
That's the kitchen we build for —
Boring in the best way.
Steady comes to Kickstarter in Q3 2026; first boxes ship in 2027. The core is steel; the shield is titanium. The rest is your dinner.
$30 holds one of the first 300 knives and locks your Early Bird price — $99 all-in. We email the $69 balance before the first batch ships.
The first 300 lock $99. After that, Early Bird closes.
Not ready to reserve? Get the launch invite →One email when the campaign opens — Super Early Bird gets 48-hour priority at $99, capped at 300.