Long before wagon wheels wore steel rims, they wore wrought iron — a softer, more forgiving metal wrapped around a wooden wheel to keep it running another hundred miles. That iron is where this knife begins. Reclaimed from a wheel built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, it carries the grain and texture that only a century of use can put into metal, and it turns out to be close to perfect for inlay work: soft enough to carve clean with a chisel, tough enough to hold its shape once the silver is set.
That same wrought iron forms the bolster, hand-inlaid with fine silver in a technique that leaves no room for shortcuts. Every line is cut and hammered by hand, held in place by a dovetail groove carved to lock the silver in for good — thousands of hammer strikes, where a single miss can undo hours of progress. It took the maker hundreds of hours of practice before he was ready to put the technique into a piece like this one. Seventy of those hours are in the knife in front of you.
Hawaiian koa, warm-toned and quietly figured, carries the story down into the hand, meeting the wrought iron and silver at the bolster and finished with hand-textured background work that rewards a closer look. The blade is a 7" Nakiri in 1084/15N20 Damascus, built for the long, straight push-cuts a vegetable knife should make. The pattern doesn't have a name yet — the maker will tell you as much himself — but it reads like faces in the steel, no two folds alike.
One knife. One block of history. Go ahead — pick it up.
Blade: 1084/15N20 Damascus
Handle: Hawaiian Koa with Wrought Iron w/ Fine Silver Inlay Bolster
Overall length: 12.75"
Blade length: 7"
Blade Height: 2.625"
Artist Bio:
19 year old Arik Miller grew up in Haines, Alaska, population 2,500. He first made knives at 12 years old with a couple pieces of scrap aluminum and some paracord. These first knives wouldn’t cut much, but it was his first step into the world of knife making, and he was immediately hooked. With help from his Dad, they gathered scrap spring steel from cars, made a forge powered by a weed burner souped up with a hairdryer, got our hammers and pliers and started banging steel.
Over the span of the next 5 years he traveled back and forth to Sweden three times and took axe making classes under master smith, Friedrich Thelin. With the hook set on forging and knifemaking he and his dad built out a proper shop. He began mass producing railroad spike knives and selling them at local markets before progressing further and learning how to make damascus, and soon began taking on custom orders.
