Two-Material Laguiole Bee Back Knife in Red Elder Burl and Red Carbon Fiber – Guilloché Liners

595€

This Bee Back exists in one example only, and every stage of it, from rough shaping to the last polish, was carried out by hand by Laguiole en Aubrac’s best cutlers. On the blade side, its handle goes up in flames: the red elder burl runs from golden yellow to deep red in real tongues of fire. Those colors are the work of resin stabilization, because elder left alone never strays beyond cream and beige. On the bee side, red carbon fiber answers with dark marbling shot through with copper-toned glints that wake up whenever the piece moves. Their border is a thin metal line, with a red spacer on either side.

Look to the far end of the handle and you find the bee. Engraved with a radiating pattern, it rises a touch above the butt so the thumb lands right on it, and it has long since outgrown its role as an emblem: on a Bee Back, the lookout has been promoted to lock. Tilting it is what frees the blade or keeps it shut, and that new role changes how you live with the whole piece. After a few days, reaching for the bee first becomes pure reflex.

Everything hinges on one tilt. With the blade folded, it sits locked at the bottom of the handle, with zero chance of it working loose in a jeans pocket or a backpack, so it travels safely in any situation. Tilt the bee and the blade eases up out of its slot toward your fingers, then swings open to the traditional forced notch. The stainless steel liners, filed with arcs and points over their whole length, accompany that motion with a steady, hand-cut rhythm.

Here is a Bee Back for anyone who loves a knife with personality and a mechanism worth showing off. It wears the colors of fire, carries a lock no other Laguiole offers, and every bit of its finish is handwork, the filed liners and the polished handle alike. Lay it on a table and heads turn; pass it to a friend and the stories start.

two material laguiole bee back knife in red elder burl and red carbon fiber – guilloché liners

SKU: LEA PU - BEEBACK MCL - LPE SUR RGE/FC RGE Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives

Born in the workshops of the Laguiole en Aubrac manufacture, the Bee Back reinvents the Laguiole knife: its emblematic bee becomes a mechanism and locks the blade, an innovation crowned at the IWA Knife Award 2023.

Laguiole en Aubrac Bee Back Knife in Red Elder Burl and Carbon Fiber

This Bee Back pairs two fiery materials: red elder burl streaked with golden-yellow flames and red carbon fiber with copper-toned marbling, split by a central line edged with red spacers. It is a palette of fire laid over the most recognizable angular profile Laguiole en Aubrac makes.

Tilted one way, the bee locks the closed blade; tilted back, it raises the blade a little before it opens to the forced notch, the exact mechanism that brought the Bee Back its international award. Stainless steel liners, guilloché by hand with arcs and points, complete the piece.

Two materials: Red Elder Burl and Red Carbon Fiber. Red spacers.
Exclusive model: this piece is one of a kind and will never be reproduced.
Stainless 12C27 steel blade, 3.1" (8 cm) cutting edge. Closed length 4.5" (11.5 cm).
Blade locked closed by tilting the bee. Forced notch.
First prize, Innovation, IWA Knife Award 2023.
Made entirely by hand by a single cutler.
Cotton pouch and numbered certificate of authenticity included.
14-page guide to the craftsmanship charter of the authentic Laguiole included.
Lifetime warranty against any manufacturing defect.

Fire and mechanics share this Bee Back: a burl in full blaze, carbon that smolders, and one bee in charge of locking, releasing and lifting the blade in a single movement.

Up close, tongues of orange and gold lick up through the deep red of the elder, while copper-toned light glows under the black marbling of the carbon fiber. The stainless liners keep a steady beat of filed arcs and points from end to end. At the rear sits the engraved bee, its radiating lines catching the light just where the thumb comes to rest.

Description

Far from being one more Laguiole in the lineup, the Bee Back is the model that won Laguiole en Aubrac recognition around the globe. That moment came in 2023 in Nuremberg, during the IWA show, the largest international gathering for cutlery, where it collected the top Innovation prize of the IWA Knife Award. The jury rewarded precisely the mechanism this piece carries: a tilting bee that locks the blade, invented by a cutler of the house and unknown on any knife anywhere before it.

Its styling is every bit as daring. The blade has crisp corners and the handle is cut in flat panels, tightening every line the traditional Laguiole has been rounding off for two hundred years. The result looks graphic, nearly architectural, and impossible to confuse with anything else. Behind that look, though, the making stays firmly at the bench: hand assembly, a mechanism adjusted to the millimeter, guilloché cut with a file. A new silhouette, shaped by old habits of the hand.

This piece is all about fire. The red elder burl climbs toward the blade like a flame, from golden yellow to dark red, and no burl on earth will ever burn with that exact pattern again. The red carbon fiber smolders in reply, its black marbling crossed by copper-toned flashes, while the red line of the spacers runs between them like a fuse. All that heat is held in check by the cleverest piece of engineering ever to leave Laguiole en Aubrac: fire on one side, clockwork precision on the other, and your hand in between, enjoying both every day.

Red Elder Burl

Elder burl takes shape where the trunk bulges into growths and the grain, pushed off course, coils into patterns nobody can predict, dotted with pockets and tight knots. On this piece it looks like a bonfire: golden yellow, orange and deep red flames rise toward the blade and run into one another without ever repeating. During vacuum stabilization, resin soaks into every fiber, and it is this step that produces the fiery colors; on its own, elder stays between cream and pale beige. The burl gains density, hardness and stability that holds over time.

Smooth and substantial under the fingers, it takes moisture and everyday use in stride. This blaze of color exists on a single handle, and no other burl will ever light these same flames.

Red Carbon Fiber

Born in aircraft design and on the racetrack, carbon fiber earned its place in high-end knives through a rigidity and low weight that wood, horn and bone cannot offer, and through the depth of its surface. The red version here shows dark marbling crossed by copper-toned glints, like embers glowing beneath the surface, a direct reply to the burl's flames on the other side of the metal line.

It feels cool at first contact, soon takes on the warmth of your palm and stays perfectly stable through any climate and over the years. It gives a firm seat to the back end of the handle, exactly where the bee does its work.

This Bee Back joins wood and carbon, open flame and banked embers, in a single hand: two materials united by one cutler, on a handle nobody will ever match.