The Model 1, in titanium with a button lock. The knife that started the company, on version seven.
The Model 1 is the first knife American Blade Works ever made, and Michael Martin drew it in AutoCAD in the late 1990s, years before he was a knife maker. The original file still lives on a floppy disk. This is version seven of that design, in titanium with a button lock, running a 3.25" MagnaCut blade on ceramic bearings with a fully nested liner.
Note from Lone Star Knife & Supply: Five of these came in. Michael has only made a few hundred button lock Model 1s ever and has gone a year at a stretch without running them, so this is not a configuration that sits on a shelf anywhere.
Specifications
- Brand: American Blade Works
- Model: Model 1, Version 7
- Blade Length: 3.25"
- Blade Steel: CPM MagnaCut
- Handle Material: Titanium
- Lock Type: Button Lock
- Bearings: Ceramic
- Liner: Fully Nested
- Warranty: One-Year Limited
- Country of Origin: Made in USA (Weaverville, North Carolina)
- SKU: ABW-M1-TI-BUTTON
Version Seven
Michael has revised the Model 1 seven times, and version two is the one that made the company.
A reviewer with a few hundred thousand subscribers bought an early Model 1 off the website and did a video saying he hated it. Michael reached out and asked what he would change. He got a list, made every change, and sent back a revised knife two weeks later. The reviewer named it his knife of the year, the editor of Knives Illustrated ran a five page spread on it, and the 80 knives Michael had built to last him the whole year sold in about fifteen seconds.
Five versions later, this is where that design ended up.
The Button Lock
ABW makes the Model 1 as a standard liner lock, a frame lock, and this button lock. The button is the rarest of the three. By Michael's own count he has made somewhere over a hundred, and he had not run them for about a year before this batch.
Titanium and MagnaCut
Titanium scales machined in house, ceramic bearings, and a fully nested liner. The blade is MagnaCut heat treated as close to Rockwell 64 as the shop can land it, and it comes back from the heat treater with an inspection sheet on the hardness.
About American Blade Works
American Blade Works is Michael Martin and his wife Kerry, working out of a 625 square foot garage in Weaverville, North Carolina. That is the entire company.
Michael spent 32 years in manufacturing, 20 of them at a contract shop running more than 60 CNC machines, where they built over 50,000 knives for Blackhawk and ran work for Microtech and Walter Brend. He started ABW in 2018 and made 12 knives that year, then 24, then 80. The two of them now turn out two to three hundred a month. Michael hand sharpens every one on a 2x72 belt. Assembly happens at the kitchen table. Shipping happens at the kitchen island.
Where he can, the materials are American too, down to the screws.
We Toured the Shop
The Great American Knife Tour™ visited American Blade Works in Weaverville and did a full shop tour.
Michael walks through all of it, including the 1989 machine he bought first and still runs, the original Model 1 drawing that lives on a floppy disk, and the kitchen table where he and Kerry hand assemble every knife that leaves the shop.
Watch here: https://youtu.be/kuyKBuBStKw
Proudly carrying American
