Personal Design Project
2017-2019
Quell is an everyday-carry folding knife, its name pulled straight from the definition: to suppress, put an end to, extinguish. The design drew from traditional American folding knives, which use a contrasting material around the pivot, historically bone or brass, today more often titanium or carbon fiber. The blade shape adapts the function-first "sheepsfoot" profile farmers used to avoid stabbing livestock by accident, a shape that also happens to share a lot with a modern box cutter.
All the initial prints were done utilizing off the shelf hardware for the ceramic ball bearings and titanium pivot screw
Prototyping ran through three real iterations. The first 3D print was the first version that could actually assemble and fold, though a parallel metal print failed outright on part fit and tolerance. The second refined the blade and flipper tab geometry and added keying geometry for the bolster. The third finally hit correct tolerance for the internal components, and was the first version that opened and locked successfully. The finished knife carries that iteration forward into real engineering: ceramic bearings for smooth, low-friction opening, a pocket clip machined from solid titanium rather than bent spring steel, and a hardened steel insert exactly where the titanium lock bar would otherwise bind against steel. An early direction used a carbon fiber bolster insert, but that was dropped once it read as too close to an existing knife already on the market, pushing the design toward the more distinct construction that shipped.
The initial reveal of the quell to the world, the design at this point still had the carbon fiber bolsters
On a whim, I sent knife renders to Kizer, a knife brand whose manufacturing and materials matched what I'd designed around. They responded the next day. Eighteen months later, that side project became a real prototype, shown publicly at SHOT Show 2019. Quell shipped as the Kizer Quell KI4530, CPM S35VN steel, titanium handle, sold through Kizer's Bladesmith Series, their collaboration line with the custom knife world, before eventually being discontinued after a full production run.
Unlike most design objects, knives often carry the maker's name, it's likely the only product I'll ever ship with mine on it
Boston, MA