
Phillips Forged: Handcrafted Knives Made in East Tennessee
How do you become a professional bladesmith who forges one-of-a-kind pieces customers are willing to wait years to receive? After 15 years creating sculptures, fireplace screens, and chandeliers, John Phillips spent countless hours exploring and refining his interests until he found a natural intersection of the culinary arts and metalworking.
Since he hammered out his first knife in 2015, his work has been featured by Chef Sean Brock and he's gone on to win an episode of History's Forged in Fire competition. In our two-part series about his work, Phillips tells us about the artistry behind his craft and his path to success in a unique field.
A Craftsman's "Natural Fit"
For Phillips, the knives he sells are as much about the past as they are the future. His early products depended on reclaimed steel that was readily available on farms and other locations throughout East Tennessee – materials he foraged and forged with out of necessity. Though he no longer has to rely solely on what he can salvage, Phillips calls reclaimed steel "a natural fit."
"I started out using reclaimed steels because I honestly didn't have much money [or] access to knife-making steels at the time," says Phillips. "I still love using reclaimed steels because there is so much history in them. There's a story embedded in this object already."

Phillips also incorporates a mix of recycled handle materials into his knives, using bone and antler, copper and bronze, and even bowling ball resin. He also crafts handles out of Richlite, a composite created from recycled paper that's also used to make Epicurean cutting boards. However, "very simple, very classic" American walnut is his favorite material, and reclaimed wood is always easy to come by.
"I harvest a lot of the wood myself," says Phillips. "There are so many people around here who are milling their own wood, and a lot of people give me wood off of their properties. I'm making a knife set right now that has wood out of a house that was built in the 1700s."
Uniquely Forged
Like his products, the forge Phillips works in is designed to combine time-honored techniques with modern approaches to quality and functionality. Although most of his process is traditional, the proprietary equipment in Phillips' forge has been built by him, too.
Perhaps the biggest difference between his forge and that of a "traditional blacksmith" is that his forge is an oxygen-free environment that runs on propane instead of coal.
"Coal heats [with a] very direct heat, whereas with a gas forge, the entire piece is totally enveloped and getting totally cooked at one time," says Phillips.
Phillips puts his products through a kiln-based heat-treating system, which gives him more control over the metals he's working with.
"It's a very advanced kiln that holds the steel in a perfect climate in order to achieve the perfect hardness," says Phillips. "Traditionally, a lot of heat treating would be done just in a forge or with torches, where you don't have quite as much control over the steel."

The forge also includes a 42-ton hydraulic press for forging distinctly patterned Damascus steel, which is made by combining different metals and forging them together to create one piece of metal.
"I use different types of metals that have different metallurgical makeups," says Phillips. "For instance, one might have high manganese and high carbon content, and it will be stacked up against another metal that has high chromium and high nickel content. I stack all these different types of metals up in different orders, and then I heat them up to 3,000 degrees and compress them with 80,000 pounds of pressure."
Called a billet, this piece of metal ultimately becomes a blade with a unique pattern, which is brought out by more heating, grinding, and time spent stoking in an acid mixture that reacts to each type of metal. It's possible to have precise control over what pattern emerges on the blade, but Phillips prefers to be surprised by the final result.
"I have different steps in my process to make it organic and to keep a certain randomness in it," says Phillips. "I like to keep things interesting, and I enjoy seeing these patterns come out that I can't predict."
Phillips forges European- and Japanese-style knives and handles and enjoys incorporating the mokume-gane technique into his work.
"It's a process that's a lot like Damascus, but it's using precious metals: nickel, silver, copper, gold, palladium, platinum, things like that," says Phillips. "I generally build Japanese-style handles, where the tang of the knife is hidden inside the handle, but I also build European-style, or full-tang, knives where there are two pieces of wood attached to either side of the handle."
Worth the Wait
The time it takes to finish one Phillips Forged knife depends on how complex it is, but Phillips takes no shortcuts when handcrafting his showpiece tools.
"I have some knives that I've incorporated the mokume-gane and Damascus, with very intricate patterns," says Phillips. "Some of those pieces take over 100 hours."

Once you understand the intricacies of the time-consuming forging process, it's easy to understand why his handcrafted knives can cost quite a bit more than standard, mass-produced cutlery. From raw materials to final product, they undergo tens of hours of manual welding, grinding, hammering, and shaping, as well as thousands of degrees of heat and a tempering process that requires eight hours. And that, of course, is just the blades.
"Meanwhile, I'm milling the wood for the handle," says Phillips of his process. "All my wood is put through a stabilization process, where it is first baked to remove all of the moisture, and then I submerge the wood into a vacuum chamber underneath a special polymer."
The handle remains in the vacuum chamber, submerged in the polymer, for at least two weeks before Phillips can continue crafting it.
"I take the wood out and bake it in the kiln, and when I bake this wood after it's been in the polymer, the polymer expands in the pores of the wood," says Phillips. "[It] essentially makes the wood impermeable to water or anything getting in there, so the wood won't swell up if it gets left in the sink or exposed to moisture."
Fortunately, those who are lucky enough to be on Phillips' waiting list understand how much labor, time, attention to detail, and technique go into each knife.
"I'm really amazed at how patient some people are," says Phillips. "I've had some people waiting for two years now, and they don't care if it takes another two years because they know that my skills are always improving and always developing. Every piece I build is another stepping stone to the next piece. I never do two pieces that are exactly the same, so every piece is better than the next."
This is the first installment in a two-part series covering John Phillips and Phillips Forged knives. You can follow Phillips' work on Instagram @phillipsforged or visit his website www.phillipsforged.com for more.