Samuel Lurquin, known to most collectors as Sam, is a Belgian bladesmith and an ABS master smith, and his knives have more presence than almost anything else that crosses my table. Sam is a friend, and I sell a good deal of his work.

A Sam Lurquin Raptor XL in Damascus, one of the pieces that has passed through the gallery.

From Farrier to Bladesmith

Sam did not start out making knives. He started as a farrier, shoeing horses, which is about as honest an introduction to the forge as there is. Over time he wanted more from the steel than a shape. His travels put him in front of bladesmiths who could turn raw metal into finished blades, and he went after that skill himself. He found it with Achim Wirtz, the German smith known as the Pope of Damascus, and learned his metallurgy the hard way, by trial and error.

The American Bladesmith Society noticed. Sam earned his journeyman smith stamp at the 2013 BLADE Show and has since become a master smith, which is not a title anyone is handed. You can see that training in every knife. He respects the old patterns, but he builds for use first. As he puts it, there is never just one perfect knife. The job decides the design.

What Sam Lurquin Makes

Sam works in fixed blades. His best known patterns are sub-hilt fighters, Bowies, hunters and daggers, and he favors large, dramatic blades that are every bit as functional as they look. The sub-hilt, the extra guard behind the forefinger, is a feature you see on many of his fighters.

Damascus is central to his work, including sunburst and mosaic patterns, and he pairs it with handle materials chosen to match the blade: desert ironwood burl, musk ox, stag, and Micarta among them. Pieces I have sold include a Raptor XL, a large sub-hilt sawtooth fighter, and a frame handle stag fighter.

Collaborations

Sam has worked with other makers and with production companies, which means there are two very different ways to own his designs. He collaborated with Tashi Bharucha on the Evil Dead knife, and he designed the Wardog 2.0 series for Editions G. His own Wardog Fighter was one of the cover knives on the June 2022 issue of BLADE Magazine.

He is also close with Jason Knight and Adam DesRosiers, two makers whose work I also sell, and he and Adam have built a collaboration knife together. If you like Sam’s work, look at Adam’s too. I have his Cleaver in stock now. Production collaborations like those start in the low hundreds of dollars. His own high end Damascus pieces run to several thousand. Both are genuine Lurquin designs, but only the handmade pieces carry his hand on every surface, and those are the ones collectors chase.

Why Collectors Want Them

Sam’s knives combine three things that rarely arrive together: real fighting knife proportions, finish work worthy of an art knife, and his own unmistakable style. Even at a distance you can tell a Lurquin. That kind of identity is what holds value over time, and his pieces do not stay on the market long.