Most decorative work I know of gets done on parts before a knife ever comes together, so seeing the piccadura cut straight into a finished knife caught my attention. The pattern is the traditional Sa Piccadura, worked onto the ring of a Sardinian resolza, and here it goes on after the brass collar, light-colored horn handle and pointed steel blade are already in place.
The detail that stands out is how restrained the tooling is. A small bevel-edged chisel and a small hand-held graver, used at a wooden workbench, are enough to cut delicate notches and radiating lines around the pivot pin of a polished brass bolster. The completed knife, with its decorative brass collar, curved horn grip and pointed blade, is then shown rotating outdoors, and the pattern reads as one clean rhythm around the ring.
To my eye the boldest choice is doing this on a completed knife rather than on a loose part. My guess is that at that stage there is little room to correct anything, and the pressure of that would get to me long before the graver slipped.
The catch, plainly put, is that the process demands significant experience and practice. Four craftspeople are shown working on the chiseling motion, which tells me this is not picked up in an afternoon. Alongside the traditional cutting, the maker also offers a 3D configurator for composing knives.