Tom Mayo
Collaborating designer, Russian Dr. Death series
Tom Mayo is the Hawaiian custom maker whose Dr. Death became the first Western design the Shirogorov Brothers Workshop built, the Russian Dr. Death of 2015, followed by the Dr. Death CF of 2016 and the Arctic Dr. Death of 2019, three runs on one shape that kept his milled hole pattern.
Todd Eby, NIIVES
Biography
Mayo, a Hawaiian maker, began making knives by hand in late 1981. His first came earlier, from his grandfather, who made it from a file when Mayo was about eight. The trade came from a magazine. He picked up a Sports Illustrated with Bob Loveless on the cover, and the article on Loveless inside it started him.
Glen Hornby taught him until Hornby’s death in 1995. A Mayo knife is known by its holes, the opening hole in the blade and holes milled through the handle. His TNT is a folder with a bowie blade, made in several sizes, the first of them in Talonite on titanium. The Dr. Death is a titanium frame lock flipper with the holes milled through its scales, made in more than one size as well, and it’s the knife the workshop took up.
Mayo was the first Western maker the workshop built for. Sergey Shirogorov reworked the Dr. Death’s shape, and the result took the workshop’s name for an outside design, the original’s name with Russian in front. The Russian Dr. Death came in 2015, the Dr. Death CF in 2016 and the Arctic Dr. Death in 2019, one shape across three runs and 400 pieces in all, and each of the three carries his hole pattern on both scales, and all but the Dr. Death CF carry it through the clip as well.
Designs and contributions
The Dr. Death runs, by release:
| Model | Released | Pieces | Steel | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian Dr. Death | 2015 | 100 | S90V | Full titanium |
| Dr. Death CF | 2016 | 200 | Vanax 37 | Carbon fiber presentation scale |
| Arctic Dr. Death | 2019 | 100 | Bjorkman’s Twist Damasteel | Silver Alutex presentation scale |
From run to run the blade steel and the presentation scale change and the shape and the hole pattern don’t. Each run keeps the same 3.875 in blade, 98 mm nominal, and the workshop puts SRRBS rollers, its single row roller bearing system, under its collaborations with Western makers. The first two runs sold as a closed series, announced on the factory news feed ahead of the draw, with entry through a buyer’s account on the factory site during a single day, 10 to 18 h Moscow time, and the draw itself at a fixed hour once the window closed. Half of those runs stayed in Russia. The other half went to the United States, where Recon1, the workshop’s distributor, ran the lotteries. Every piece carries its number and ships with the factory certificate. Each run’s specification sits on the Russian Dr. Death record.
What NIIVES tracks
The three runs are on niives.com under the Russian Dr. Death record, which dates each of them, and market observations for them sit in the price record under the collaborations. NIIVES reads the factory news feed and Recon1’s pages for the runs; his own customs, the Dr. Death included, are outside the catalog.