History of the Archbishop Model

 

The Original Archbishop - 2016

It all began in 2015 in the mind of Elliot as he began to spread his wings as a knife designer and maker. Taking inspiration from his custom builds, he created a knife that combines the best aspects of his former one-off designs with everything we learned up to that point. Elliot focused on creating continuity of line through the entire knife and packing in the most blade possible. The resulting amalgamation became the first concept for what would become one of our most recognizable models.

 

 

Original Archbishop Prototype

 

Concepts are great and all, but the guys had to build the preliminary prototype by hand to make sure the engineering and internal geometry worked properly.  Like the first draft of anything, it needed editing and refinement, but that’s why we prototype. After some design amendments and a name change, the “Axel” became the Archbishop. Don’t ask why we changed the name, we can’t remember.  2015 and 2016 are a little blurry for us.  We built a ton of knives over those years and didn’t get much sleep. Watch some of the Youtube videos from back in the day and you can laugh at us. 

 

 

Original Prototype "Axel" from 2015

Prototype and Chris's Personal Archbishop

 

In 2016, the Archbishop beat out other designs for production and we began building the 200 piece limited run of Archbishops. Elliot made the call to use 20CV for the blades and away we went.  After a lot of screw turning, grinding, fitting, finishing, tuning, and sharpening, the Archbishops were complete and off to their new owners. We knew the Archbishop was good, but we knew it was something special after seeing the amazing positive responses from our customers and the larger community.  Unfortunately there were more new limited runs that weren’t going to build themselves and we moved on from the Archbishop design… for a while.  

Archbishop 2.0 - 2018

It was a no-brainer to update the Archbishop after the successful rebirth of our Fortis model as the Fortis 2.0.  The Archbishop was coming back and that was that. Now a full production model, the Archbishop 2.0 cemented itself as a fundamental part of Ferrum Forge style. The Archbishop 2.0 featured another of our favorite steels, M390.  

 

 

Mini Archbishop - 2019

 

And then, there was the liner lock revolution here at Ferrum Forge. Up until 2019, big, over built framelocks were the name of the game for us. But, it was time to expand our products to include more pocket friendly and budget friendly knives. It just felt right to make the Archbishop the first ever Ferrum Forge liner lock.  The full sized Archbishop isn’t exactly what we would call “pocket friendly” so Elliot scaled it down into the Mini Archbishop and our journey into the realm of liner locks commenced. 

Archbishop 3.0 - 2021

And two years later, here we are with the all new Archbishop 3.0. Elliot stepped it up again by eliminating the backspacer, adding the custom F shield pivot, and changing the handle construction to 2-piece that only requires 2 screws.  Now, there are no visible screw heads to clutter up those beautiful contoured titanium handles.