Most homemade pizza cutters end up as stamped sheet stock with a rivet through the middle. Carl Thom - LilyCraft has taken the opposite road, treating the humble wheel cutter like a premium kitchen knife, and the difference shows at every stage of the process. The range of machine tools alone sets this apart from the usual garage approach.
The construction splits cleanly across machines. Aluminum handle bodies are milled from stock plate, sandblasted inside a blasting cabinet, then hand-ground and polished along the bolsters. Contoured wooden scales come off a CNC router and are bolted to the frame. Two blade routes exist: circular wheels machined from stainless steel plate, or blades laser-cut from flat stainless sheet, with the cutting edges ground down on both versions. Brass hub retainers are turned on the CNC lathe, and ceramic bearings plus stainless steel runners are fitted inside those hubs.
The finishing details stand out to me. Serial numbers and text are laser-marked onto the aluminum frame, a threadlocking compound is applied before the blade assembly gets its final tighten, and the finished cutters are wiped down with isopropyl alcohol and sealed in clear bags with silica gel packets. Each one is then fitted into a custom carved wooden presentation box.
The open question for me is the two blade styles. Laser-cut or machined blades are priced between 140 and 205 dollars on their own, while the finished cutters are listed at 200 to 295 dollars. I would love to know how the two blade types compare in daily use. The spread in those numbers makes me think they are not treated as identical, though that is only my read.
Project by Carl Thom - LilyCraft. Watch it on their YouTube channel: