After forging and punching, the knives are roughly ground, calibrated and cleaned, followed by so-called ice hardening: the knives are cooled to -80 °C to improve the structure of the microstructure in the blade steel. In a further step, the knives are tempered in two stages. Tempering is a Solingen knife-maker term that means that the knife is heated again and thus made unbreakable. Now the blade is pre-ground, followed by pre-grinding of the upper part of the knife, the back of the knife. This is followed by the fine grinding of the back of the knife and the sharpening of the bolster, the thickening between the blade and the handle and at the end of the handle. The inside of the handle is now pre-ground. Pre-grinding of the front and rear bolsters is done in another 5 steps. Now it is the turn of the fine grinding of the blade. The Solingen knifemaker also calls this "pliesten". For bread knives, the special GÜDE serrated edge is now applied, and for hollow knives, the bolster. Tomato, cheese and steak knives get their serrations. The two olive wood handles are now fitted to the knife handle. Then the holes for the rivets are drilled. A countersink must be drilled in the holes for the heads of the rivets. The two handle scales and the tang are now joined by rivets. In another five or so operations, the grip scales are roughly sanded to the tang and the front and rear bolsters. These five steps must then be repeated with a finer abrasive belt. Now the back of the knife is given its fine grinding. The fine grinding of the front bolster follows and the knife handles are pre-polished. Then the central decorative rivet is inserted and the handles are finely polished. Only now does the knife get its sharpness, because the knife edge, also called the bevel, is now ground (the knifemaker calls this "honing") and the trigger is polished. In the next step, the GÜDE logo is etched onto the blade. In the final stages, the knives are cleaned and the quality is checked. Then the knives are put into a sheath for protection. And finally, the shipping bags are fitted with rivets and the labels belonging to the series and the blade type. The finished knives now go to the warehouse and are ready for shipping.