Sergey Shirogorov's full customs

The top of the range is not a line. A full custom is a knife Sergey Shirogorov builds himself, one-off or a handful, with no catalog listing and no run; it exists because he made it. This page collects the pieces with a documented history. The full custom FAQ answers the buyer’s questions, and the tier ladder places the tier against Custom Division.

What marks a full custom

Double- or multi-row rollers in the pivot (DRRBS or MRRBS; double-row rollers also appear on a few early Custom Division pieces, the Hati 3D Seashell and the F95 3D Silk), the duck foot pivot that appears on no other tier, materials that vary piece by piece, and Sergey’s own documentation. A piece with standard hardware and single-row rollers is not a full custom, whatever the listing calls it.

The Baikal

The Baikal is a full custom on a 95 mm (3.74 in) blade, 8.5 in overall, 4.76 in closed and about 125 g, with a frame lock and steel insert on DRRBS. No two are alike: one version carries a three-layer laminate blade with a D2 core forged by Mikhail Anosov, another a ZDI-EVa Damascus blade, on titanium handles, often with a carbon fiber overlay and sometimes a zirconium backspacer. Sergey’s hand signature inside the backstrap is the usual mark, and a piece typically comes with a box, an auction certificate and a bead. The factory sold a Baikal as lot 28 of its auction of 11 June 2015. There is also a Hati Baikal with a 3.875 in Damascus blade.

The customs behind the catalog

Several of the workshop’s numbered releases began on Sergey’s bench. The F7 of 2016 has only ever been made as a full custom and, in 2024, became the model for the Custom Division’s CDX; the F7 overview has the variants. The IceBreaker custom of 15 December 2014, a 5 mm ZDP-189 blade on the F95 base, flew on the 2018 round-the-world expedition and became the 100-piece IceBreaker of 2021, on Anniversary editions. Sergey’s custom MidiQ took Best M.A.C.K. (Machine Assisted Custom Knife) at Blade Show Atlanta in 2024, and the Custom Division MidiQ that followed is on the Quantum overview. The Quantum itself began as a custom that took Best Tactical Knife at Blade Show Atlanta in 2019.

Recent pieces

The Astrum Nebula, a full custom on the Astrum, was auctioned at Blade Show Atlanta in June 2025. The F95 PivotOnly Design, a custom with a new handle construction, was announced on 5 June 2026 after an F95 POD took Best Tactical Folder of the Year at Blade Show Atlanta that year. The early F95 washer models, prototypes and pre-production samples that surface from time to time are workshop pieces rather than Sergey’s customs, and are read by the serial checks.

How they reach buyers

Auctions attached to the major shows, the factory’s own auctions (the Baikal of June 2015 was one), dealer secondary listings and the occasional show-floor sale; Recon1, the workshop’s US distributor, hosts the US events where recent pieces have surfaced. The dated sale and auction results are in the price record.