How the designs evolved

This page follows the designs; the company is on the story. It covers how each line changed from one generation to the next, what moved underneath them all, and how to read the names.

The lines, generation by generation

Where each line’s generations sit, and what separates one from the next. The dates a line arrived, and what it brought with it, are on From the early models to today.

F95

Five generations run from bronze phosphor washers to single-row bearings, then the MRBS, then revised ergonomics. The fifth thinned the blade from 4.0 mm to 3.5 mm, and the CPS anti-rotation pivot reached the line with the F95T Gen.4 in November 2022. The Gen.5 configurations arrived one at a time, from the F95 Zero in January 2022 to the F95NL Gen.5 in February 2024. See the F95 overview and the F95 record.

111

Gen 1 ran on SRBS and Gen 2 onward on the MRBS. Gen.5 was announced on 7 August 2021 with the blade thinned from 4.0 mm to 3.5 mm, a swedge, a stepped cutout replacing the fuller, carbon fiber scales only, and a clip on a hidden screw. The current Gen.5.1 runs 3.2 mm. See the 111 overview and the 111 record.

Hati

Gen 1 ran on washers; Gen 2, sold from 2017 as the HatiR, moved to MRBS. Gen 3, announced on 14 May 2022, brought a TechnoCarbo show scale with a matching inlay on the lock side, a slimmer profile and the first CPS pivot on a serial model. See the Hati overview and the Hati record.

NeOn

The NeOn is organized as variants rather than generations, and the one exception is the Zero, which moves the pivot forward to put a longer blade in the same handle and had a new generation announced on 11 May 2019. See the NeOn overview and the NeOn record.

Quantum

The serial line runs to two generations, the 3M of March 2020 and the Gen.2 of 18 September 2021, and the Ursus working line opened beside it with the Quantum Ursus NL of 9 December 2021. See the Quantum overview and the Quantum record.

Stellar

The Stellar does not run to generations. It introduced the liner lock with an apron, the shield over the gap between liner and scale. See the Stellar overview and the Stellar record.

Astrum

The Astrum does not run to generations either. It inherited the apron and kept its First Production’s dimensions when the serial knife changed steel to M390. See the Astrum overview and the Astrum record.

Bearings, locks, steels

In serial production the pivot went from phosphor bronze washers to a single row of balls, the SRBS, and then to the multi-row MRBS, first used on the Club Knife and the 111 and the serial standard since 2016. The Custom Division runs a single row of rollers, the SRRBS, on Custom Division F95s from 2014. The double-row rollers, the DRRBS, belong to Sergey Shirogorov’s full customs and a few early Custom Division pieces such as the Hati 3D Seashell and the F95 3D Silk; the multi-row MRRBS stays on the full customs. What each is and how it feels is on the bearing systems page.

The frame lock with a replaceable steel insert is the serial standard, on the F95, Hati, NeOn and Quantum. The F3 has been a liner lock since 2011, with a hardened stainless insert, and the 111 uses the same construction, known as the inset lock. The Stellar and Astrum added an apron to the liner, a shield over the gap between liner and scale; the Q95 Ursus of 2025 and the F95 Ursus of 2026 are also liner locks. The one departure was the Tabargan of 2010, on a spring-bar, axis-style lock, the only one of its kind on a serial model. No serial, Custom Division or collaboration model uses a tab lock.

Elmax was the early serial steel; M390 replaced it as the standard around 2015, and Elmax stays on the entry and Ursus configurations. S90V and Vanax 37 came in through limited runs and the Custom Division before reaching serial models, the Vanax 37 on the 2016 F95 Nudist. M390 was the standard on the serial Quantum from the 3M on; Cromax PM carried the working configurations, first on the Quantum Ursus NL of December 2021, then the 2023 F95NL. M398 arrived as an option on the Hati Gen 3 and the Mini Quantum. MagnaCut entered with the Molten Overkill in August 2023, the first collaboration in MagnaCut, then the Astrum’s First Production in July 2024 and its 2025 Custom Division run. The compositions and hardness bands are on the steels page.

The Three Bears and the tiers

From 2016 the factory sorted its serial models into a Bears classification, and the top category was the Three Bears, in Russian “Tri Medvedya”, which is where the 3M suffix comes from. The first knife in the category was the F95 Nudist of September 2016, the top serial F95 with Custom Division technology carried down into it. It has a 4 mm Vanax 37 blade, complex anodizing and a three-row bearing on a hardened steel washer. The F95 T-pattern of February 2017 was its pair, and the F3 of November 2017 continued the category. The Quantum 3M of March 2020 entered serial production inside it, and the F95NL 3M of February 2021 was the last release to carry the label. The category was a specification shared across models, M390 as the standard steel and, on most of the category, a three-row MRBS on hardened washers.

The Bears were a quality marking, and what replaced them was the tier structure the workshop sells today: production, Custom Division and full custom, with Sprint Runs and collaborations beside them. A factory renaming notice of 31 March 2022 dropped the 3M suffix from the model names. Generation numbers are a separate thread: by 2021, with the 111 Gen.5 in August and the Quantum Gen.2 in September, factory announcements named each serial revision by generation, and the Hati Gen.3, the F95T Gen.4 and the F95NL Gen.5 followed.

Collaborations as a parallel track

The collaborations run alongside the workshop’s own lines rather than in phases. Each brought a construction the workshop had not used before: the tanto on the Flippin’ Tanto, the folding flipper tab on the 110 Kickstop, the one-piece integral handle on the Lochsa. Dmitry Sinkevich’s track has run from washers on the earliest projects to MRBS from the Koordinal on, with the three Strips of 2025 and the Pike of 2026 on liner locks. The register dates every run: How the collaborations work covers the mechanics and the designers, and the Sinkevich projects have their own page.

The Elements series is the workshop’s own themed track, four names on two platforms with TechnoCarbo scales or inlays, the 111 editions in runs of 100. On the F3 it ran Aquatic in December 2022, Terrus in May 2023, Ignis in July 2023 and Aerum in September 2023, each on a different steel. On the 111 it ran Terrus in October 2024, Aerum in January 2025, Ignis in March 2025 and Aquatic in July 2025.

Reading a model name

The number is usually the blade length in millimeters: F95, 111, Q95, the 110 under the Kickstop. The F3 is the exception, a 95 mm blade under a name that is not a length. NeOn, Hati, Quantum, Stellar and Astrum are names.

The suffixes carry the variant. This table is the key the rest of the site points at.

Show names are edition qualifiers, not variants: a CCKS, Blade Show Atlanta, Arsenal or ORELEXPO edition is a standard model in a show finish, listed on Anniversary editions; the tier ladder explains where CD, SR and FP sit.

Milling patterns and design elements

The titanium scales carry the pattern that identifies a configuration. The geometric production milling is the baseline; the T-pattern, on the F95T from March 2017, was reworked for the Gen.4 of 2022 with a thinner blade and CPS; the Nudist is the smooth-scaled version. The BearPattern, a bear motif milled into the scales, came to the F95 in April 2025 and the Stellar in May 2026, where the workshop logo sits on the largest bear. The Frag pattern is Monkey Edge’s dealer exclusive. Custom Division pieces carry deeper 3D work, the Seashell, Silk and Honeycomb among them, one of the cues on the authentication explainer.

The lines share a small set of elements. The F95 is the drop point on a full titanium frame, most configurations without a backspacer, and the Hati is the same blade on an asymmetric handle. The F3 is scales over liners with a backspacer on every model, the 111 is that construction at scale, and the NeOn is the design at 85 mm. The Quantum brought the upswept blade, the suspended backspacer and the hidden clip screw to the serial lines; the Stellar and Astrum added the apron and carry the tip-covering backspacer and the CPS pivot. The slotted proprietary hardware (hex on the Q95 Ursus and F95 Ursus) and the bear logo are constant across all of them, and the steel lockbar insert across the frame locks, the F3 and the 111.