The Sentinel Set is the most ambitious project Arik Miller has taken on. It is a 4-piece set of custom Damascus kitchen knives on a sculpted walnut stand, and it took more time than anything he had built before.
To make it, Arik first had to learn engraving and inlay and make the tools to do both. Months of test pieces came first. Then came at least 100 hours at a pitch bowl and vise, sometimes in 12-hour days, working under magnification one tap at a time.
The blades are forged 1084/15N20 Damascus, layered high-carbon steel whose pattern runs through the full blade, so no two knives look the same. The handles are koa, with custom inlay engraving details on the bolsters.
The set was meant to have a block until a conversation with a coworker changed the plan. The two designed a stand together, and Arik built it. A single piece of wood was split into four arms that reach out like roots, set between two walnut slabs. Small caps on top match each knife’s butt cap, so every knife has its slot. The caps also cover the fixtures. “Functional art, that’s what I like making,” Arik says.
Artist Bio:
19 year old Arik Miller grew up in Haines, Alaska, population 2,500. He first made knives at 12 years old with a couple pieces of scrap aluminum and some paracord. These first knives wouldn’t cut much, but it was his first step into the world of knife making, and he was immediately hooked. With help from his Dad, they gathered scrap spring steel from cars, made a forge powered by a weed burner souped up with a hairdryer, got our hammers and pliers and started banging steel.
Over the span of the next 5 years he traveled back and forth to Sweden three times and took axe making classes under master smith, Friedrich Thelin. With the hook set on forging and knifemaking he and his dad built out a proper shop. He began mass producing railroad spike knives and selling them at local markets before progressing further and learning how to make damascus, and soon began taking on custom orders.
