What We Mean When We Say Better Handling

In our tagline, we often say “Lighter, Smoother, Better Handling.” The first two adjectives are fairly straight forward. So what does Better Handling mean? Better Handling begins with tacit knowledge of the way things should feel in our hands and it’s where we concentrate a lot of our design decisions at Field Company.

In my case, growing up as a jock— golf, tennis, baseball —and then working as a furniture maker, my hands have always communicated with whatever piece of equipment or tool I’m using. Some of that is personal. I have large, fairly strong hands, so I respond well to a bit of heft and firm textures. My skin is typically dry which means I respond well to tacky surfaces and have trouble gripping rough, dry surfaces.

But a lot of it is also objective and I can give some prime examples in both the world of cast iron cookware, antique tools and furniture, and sports equipment.

Let’s start from the latter and work toward the former.

Good Tools

Similar tactile feedback is evident in the world of tools. Before Field Company, I became great friends with some guys who loved antique tools. When I first started joining them at antique shops, estate sales, tool barns, and the like, I would find something interesting and ask them whether they thought it was good or not. Sometimes they knew something special about the maker or material or function, but after a while, I noticed a common theme: Good stuff feels Good!! Less good stuff feels less good. And that feedback was immediate once you held the tool in your hands.

Again, the common thread is that once we overcome the noise of price and market and social value, our hands will tell us just about all we need to know about the quality of the tool. And once you learn to trust that sensibility, you need not worry about name brands and resale value, assuming you’re buying the tool to use it and not collect or sell it for more. Good is Good.

Enter: the Field Handle 

Longer Handle to Grip

Field Skillets are designed to be light enough to maneuver one-handed and we wanted to optimize that even more. We took cues from the vintage tear drop shape, modernized it to feel even better in your hands, and made it longer.

A large hand needs 4-4.5” of handle to grasp fully. Accepting the fact that the pan would be really hot near the base of the handle, we extended that 4.5” to 6” total.

Appropriate Heat Management

We did not go as far as to create a “stay cool” handle. The trade-offs were not worth it—expensive, gimmicky, unable to use on an open fire, or worse, false confidence that the handle is cool enough to touch bare handed (they aren’t). So we asked, “what if we just accept that the handle is going to get hot?”

We added a little the extra mass in the sidewall connection and in the arch support, and created a heat sink to delay the spread of the heat from reaching out into the handle. This choice also meant we could cast the pan as one solid piece, minimizing parts that could fail or break and supporting our promise of a lifetime guarantee.

Weight Balance

The handle itself contains a decent amount of material — about 7oz of metal. That means it takes longer to heat it up and it also distributes some weight away from the pan body making the pan easier to handle. In our original No.8 Skillet, about 10% of the weight is in the handle itself.

Compare that to Lodge and other modern cast iron where the handle represents a much smaller percentage of the pan weight. Now you are forced to use two hands every time you want to move your skillet around. We have a helper handle for those times it’s necessary but we wanted to give you the ability for quick one-handed maneuvers around your stove, grill and oven.