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Nicholas Nichols Knives comes out of coastal southeastern North Carolina, where Nic Nichols traded a chef's career for a grinder after learning his great-great-grandfather had been a blacksmith in the same county. Trained at Johnson and Wales and a member of the NC Custom Knifemaker's Guild, he competed on Forged in Fire, won Our State Magazine's 2020 Made in NC award, and serves as the exclusive knifemaker partner of the USS North Carolina, the WWII battleship docked a mile from his home, whose reclaimed deck teak has handled some of his most collectible work. That chef's obsession with sharpness survives in everything he builds; his blades arrive with an edge collectors describe the same way every time: wicked sharp.
The Dreadnought is Nichols' second folder, named in his coastal tradition for the battleship that redefined battleships. It runs a 3.25 inch CPM MagnaCut modified sheepsfoot with a fuller that lets you flick it open from the lock side or fire the shortened flipper tab, over full titanium construction with a steel lockbar insert. Our allocation includes individually numbered pieces wearing burnt bourbon barrel inlays with bronze accents, plus Mexican blanket micarta, the kind of warm materials that make an overbuilt work knife feel like furniture. Where MagnaCut earned its reputation is covered in our knife steel guide.
The Guppy began life as one of Nichols' everyday fixed blades and worked so well it became his first folding knife, a compact titanium framelock flipper with the same MagnaCut steel and a closing action owners describe as hydraulic. Our Guppys wear hummingbird and marbelite G-Carta inlays that carry his hand-finished character into a knife sized for any pocket. Small batches from a working shop mean the wait between runs stretches months, and his kitchen roots mean every design, from cleaver-ish sheepsfoot to slim flipper, cuts like it came off a chef's station rather than a spec sheet, a lineage our kitchen knives collection knows well.
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