Sergey Shirogorov

Sergey Gennadievich Shirogorov is the co-founder and principal designer of the Shirogorov Brothers Workshop in Yaroslavl, who has drawn the workshop’s own line from the F95 of 2010 to the Astrum of 2024 and builds his full customs under his own name.

Todd Eby, NIIVES

Biography

Sergey Shirogorov was born in Yaroslavl in 1973. He took an engineering degree at Yaroslavl State Technical University in 1999, in internal combustion engine design, and did his military service over the following year. The knife that set his direction wasn’t one he designed. It was a rusted Soviet multi-tool, bought because the Victorinox tools reaching Yaroslavl cost more than he could pay, which he rebuilt over two years until every part had been replaced and the mechanism worked. Folding mechanisms, and the tolerances that make them work, became his subject.

He went professional in 2003, from a home workshop and alongside other employment, and Russian knife shows gave his early folders a first audience. His younger brother Igor joined him in 2005 with CNC training behind him; Igor ran the machines, Sergey drew. Serial production started in 2007 and the company was registered in 2009. The F95 went on sale in 2010. Igor died in June 2015. The workshop kept both brothers’ names, and Sergey has led it since.

He gives few interviews and does not like cameras. In October 2019, at the Arms & Hunting show in Moscow, he set out how he thinks about the work: no compromise on a defect, ever, and a part remade several times if need be before it goes into an assembly; a knife made straight, every chamfer visible and symmetric, each blade heat-treated on its own. On price he offered no defense. If the values the workshop works for aren’t the ones a buyer sees, it isn’t their knife. He had carried nothing but his own knives for fifteen years, a Quantum at the time, and when the interviewer offered Dmitry Sinkevich’s name he called him the one designer whose knives he would carry if his own were forbidden him. He has no interest in designing for another factory; his own production exists to build his designs the way he knows they should be built. The full account is on The Shirogorov story.

Designs and contributions

All but the MidiQ have been released as serial knives; several were shown first as his own custom, then built through the Custom Division, then released in series.

Sergey is also the workshop’s hand in the design collaborations: an outside designer’s shape reworked by him and built in Yaroslavl. Dmitry Sinkevich has been the constant since the Nura and the Dark of August 2010. The Western designers came one at a time: Tom Mayo (Russian Dr. Death, 2015), Brad Southard (Russian Flippin’ Tanto, 2017), John Barker (Russian Hokkaido, 2018), Lee Williams (110 Kickstop, 2020), RJ Martin (Russian Overkill, 2021), Scott Cook (Russian Lochsa, 2024) and Charles Marlowe (RKMP, 2025), with Chris Reeve the design collaborator on the UniHati and the Hati CGG. The dated register is on The collaborations.

At Blade Show Atlanta his custom Quantum took Best Tactical Knife in 2019, and he took Best M.A.C.K. in the custom competition in 2023 and again in 2024 with the MidiQ. The workshop’s own awards, from the Mini Quantum CD in 2023 to the F95 POD and the second Manufacturing Quality Award in 2026, are in the chronology on The Shirogorov story.

What NIIVES tracks

The model line pages for the workshop’s own designs name Sergey as designer, and Full customs is a register of his custom and prototype knives, one entry per knife. His full customs sit at the top of the tier ladder, above the Custom Division, and their sale and auction results are in the price record alongside the serial and Custom Division observations. NIIVES reads the workshop’s own site and Instagram account; it uses no personal site or dealer page for Sergey.

Related

• F95
• Quantum
• Full customs
• The Shirogorov story
• From the early models to today
• How the designs evolved
• The tier ladder
• Igor Shirogorov
• Dmitry Sinkevich
• Chris Reeve
• RJ Martin