Nasgul Workshop
Outside shop; Flipper 95 customization projects Golf, Gorynich and Flag; bead maker
The Nasgul Workshop is Vadim Shaykhitdinov’s shop, an outside shop rather than an outside designer, which customized finished Shirogorov Brothers Workshop Flipper 95s in three numbered projects from 2014, the Golf, the Gorynich and the Flag, made the first beads to carry both names and has sewn leather cases for Shirogorov knives.
Todd Eby, NIIVES
Biography
Nasgul is a shop, not a designer. It did not draw a knife for Sergey Shirogorov to rework. It took finished Flipper 95s and turned them into something else.
Each project had a name and a cap, and every piece in it carried the same mark, the cap of the run, inside a scale or under the clip. The Golf came first, in 2014, marked “Golf 1#10″ under the clip. The Gorynich was announced in October 2014 as the next round of Flipper 95 work and had places still open five days later; it is named for the dragon of Slavic folklore, with three-dimensional dragon scales milled into the handles and anodized blue, and it also goes by the English name Firedrake. The Flag came after it, in two designs, the Victory Banner and the St Andrew’s flag of the Russian Navy, each piece marked “1#70″ inside a scale.
The beads sat alongside the knives. The shop made beads with the Shirogorov logo and shipped them with its customs, and the Shirogorov/Nasgul bead came out of the first run of Shirogorov beads. Shaykhitdinov also sews. Leather holsters and cases for Shirogorov knives have been part of the shop’s work from the start.
Designs and contributions
The three Flipper 95 projects, by release:
| Model | Released | Pieces | Steel | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipper 95 “Golf” | 2014 | 10 | ||
| Flipper 95 “Gorynich” | October 2014 | 30 | Elmax | Frame lock, 95 mm blade, both logos inside the scales |
| Flipper 95 “Flag” | By 2017 | 70 | Elmax | Frame lock, anodized titanium scales |
The Gorynich is a Flipper 95 in all its mechanics. The blade runs on single row bearings. The clip rides tip up. Nasgul’s work is the surface, the dragon scales cut into the titanium and the anodizing over them.
What NIIVES tracks
The Shirogorov/Nasgul bead is on niives.com in the bead register, where its aliases, Nazgul among them, resolve to the same entry. The three Flipper 95 projects are customizations of the knife on the Flipper 95 record, and the Gorynich is named on the collaborations register as the one entry there for an outside shop. Market observations for Nasgul pieces are filed under the Flipper 95 on the price record. The shop’s own knives, cases and beads that carry no Shirogorov name are outside the catalog.