John Barker
Collaborating designer, Russian Hokkaido; finish artist, Quantum Dragon
John Barker is the Georgia custom maker whose Hokkaido, a large tanto folder, became the Shirogorov Brothers Workshop’s Russian Hokkaido of October 2018, a run of 200, and who came back to the workshop as a finish artist with the Quantum “Dragon” inlays, the one collaborator who stands on both sides of the line niives.com draws between design collaborations and finish editions.
Todd Eby, NIIVES
Biography
Barker, of Cumming, Georgia, came to knives through his father’s old Case pocket knives and collected knives for years before he made one. He built his first in 2006. His customs run to fixed blades with a tactical bent, fighters and hunters among them, ground from CPM steels, and to folders.
The tanto blade is his signature. The Hokkaido carries it. A large folder on a titanium frame lock, it came in more than one size. The Hokkaido went into production as the Mechforce Hokkaido, a CPM MagnaCut flipper with a titanium lock, sold as “Designed by John Barker.”
His other customs include the Shuck, the Intrinsic, the Hachidori and the Yatagarasu. With Lee Williams he has built customs on Williams’s Kickstop, the flipper tab that drops out of sight into the handle once the blade is open, and the Essential is one of those.
The workshop took the Hokkaido up as its third joint project with a Western maker, and Sergey Shirogorov reworked it in detail while he kept the lines that make it a Hokkaido. The run sold as a closed series by lottery. Barker came back later, on the other side of the line. For the Quantum “Dragon” he anodized the titanium inlays on a serial Quantum, the workshop’s frame under his finish, and Recon1 sold the pieces by lottery in small batches; on niives.com that is a finish edition, not a second design collaboration.
Designs and contributions
The Russian Hokkaido run, by release:
| Model | Released | Pieces | Steel | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian Hokkaido | October 2018 | 200 | Vanax 37 | Bronze anodized titanium scales, bronze backspacer |
The Russian Hokkaido keeps the tanto blade of Barker’s original at 95 mm long and 4 mm thick, and the whole knife weighs 170 g. Its backspacer carries five deep notches and a lanyard ear, the lock is a frame lock, and the pivot turns on the single row roller bearing system the workshop calls SRRBS and puts under its collaborations with Western makers. The run split 100 and 100, half for Russia and half for the United States, and entry ran for two weeks in October 2018 through Community accounts on the factory site, with the draw at a fixed hour on the closing day. Recon1, which distributes the workshop’s knives in the United States, ran the US draw. Every one is numbered and comes with the factory certificate, and the run’s full specification is on the Russian Hokkaido record.
What NIIVES tracks
The run is on niives.com under the Russian Hokkaido record, which dates it and names Barker as its designer; market observations for it sit in the price record with the other collaborations. The Quantum “Dragon” sits in The collaborations among the finish-artist editions, beside the other outside artists who have finished a workshop frame. NIIVES reads the factory news feed, where the run was announced with its entry rules, and Recon1’s pages for the run and for the Dragon lotteries; his own customs and the Mechforce production Hokkaido are outside the catalog.