Inlaid Pocket Knife, Gold Medallions and Engraved Steel

What Is the Medallion Pocket Knife?

A folding knife with four circular medallions inlaid into an engraved steel handle, each one a disc of gold and copper set flush into the surface with a dark centre.

Engraving runs around and between them, flowers rising on fine stems against a stippled ground, arranged so the medallions sit as the focal points rather than competing with the pattern.

The blade is forged Damascus with a flowing layer pattern. Overall length runs 8 inches open. A hand stitched cowhide leather cover is included.

What Are the Specifications?

Blade material: Hand forged Damascus steel
Blade length: 3.5 inches 
Handle material: Engraved steel with gold and copper medallion inlays
Overall length: 8 inches open
Lock: Liner lock
Includes: Hand stitched cowhide leather cover

What Are the Medallion Inlays?

Discs of a second metal set into the steel rather than applied on top of it.

Each one is a small composite in its own right: a gold outer ring, a copper or rose gold band inside it, and a dark centre worked with fine radiating detail. The whole assembly sits flush with the handle surface, so running a thumb across the knife feels continuous rather than raised.

Four of them are spaced down the handle at intervals, which is a compositional decision rather than a random placement. Inlays read as points the eye returns to, so they have to sit in balance with each other and with the engraving between them. Too many and the handle becomes noise. Too few and they look like repairs.

How Does Inlay Differ From Engraving?

Opposite operations, and the distinction is worth knowing because the two are often sold as if they were the same thing.

Engraving removes metal. A graver cuts into the surface and the pattern exists as absence, visible through the shadow sitting in each cut line. Everything on our brass folder and collectible scroll folder works that way.

Inlay adds metal. A recess is cut to shape, the walls of that recess are undercut so they lean slightly inward, and a softer metal is set into it and worked down until it fills the cavity and locks mechanically under those overhanging edges. Nothing holds it but the shape of the hole, which is why the cutting has to be exact before the gold ever touches it.

Gold and copper are the traditional inlay metals for the practical reason that both are soft enough to be set cold, spreading into the undercut rather than needing heat that would ruin the surrounding work.

The result is colour that engraving cannot produce. A cut line is the same metal as the handle, seen in shadow. An inlay is genuinely a different metal, and gold against steel stays gold for the life of the knife.

What Is the Handle Engraving?

Flowers on fine stems, rising through a stippled ground, cut around the medallions rather than over them.

Worth saying what the engraving is doing here, because it is subordinate by design. On a fully engraved handle the pattern is the subject and fills every available surface. Here it is a setting. The stippled background knocks the surface back so the polished petals and the gold discs come forward, which is the same logic a jeweller uses in mounting a stone.

That is why the flowers run small and open rather than dense. Tight scroll across this handle would fight the inlays for attention and both would lose.

Our floral full steel folder carries floral engraving as the subject rather than the setting, if that is the version you want.

How Should You Care for Inlaid Metal?

One rule matters more than all the others: do not polish it.

Metal polish is mildly abrasive, and gold is considerably softer than steel. Polishing an inlaid handle wears the gold faster than the steel around it, so over repeated cleanings the medallions sink below the surface and the flush fit that defines good inlay is lost. The damage is gradual, permanent, and entirely self-inflicted.

Polish also drives residue into the engraved lines and the stippled ground, flattening the contrast that makes the flowers legible.

A soft dry cloth is the whole routine. Darkening in the cut lines and the stippled field is patina and should be left, since it deepens the pattern rather than dulling it. The gold will not tarnish.

Keep the handle dry. Dissimilar metals in contact hold moisture at their boundaries, so wipe the knife down after wet handling rather than letting it sit.

The blade is forged carbon Damascus with little corrosion resistance. Wipe dry after use, keep a thin coat of mineral oil or dedicated blade oil on it, and avoid cooking oils, which oxidise and turn rancid against steel. Grey patina on the blade is normal and protective. Orange rust is not.

One drop of light oil at the pivot. Sharpening follows the knife sharpening guide, and the steel comparison covers forged Damascus.

Who Is the Knife For?

Collectors of decorated folders who already own engraved pieces and want inlay, which is the scarcer technique and the harder one to find done flush. Buyers who want colour on a knife handle without resorting to a coloured material.

Gift buyers looking for something ornamental that still functions, where the gold reads as occasion without the knife becoming an ornament.

Less suited to hard carry, since inlaid work is best kept away from keys and pocket grit. Working folders sit in the EDC pocket knives collection, and the full decorated range in the pocket knives collection.

Why Choose the Medallion Pocket Knife?

Gold and copper medallions set flush into steel rather than engraved into it, floral work cut as a setting for them, a forged Damascus blade, and a hand stitched cowhide cover.

Every knife is forged and finished by hand, and we have been making knives since 2001.