Built by a Smith,
For the Trade

In 2016, Richard Nichol came home after his second tour and picked up a grinder. He had always worked with his hands — forges, steel, and patience made sense in a way that a lot of things didn't after service. Within two years he was producing custom fixed blades that were drawing real attention at shows and online.

But turning craft into income was a mess. Etsy charged listing fees and had no category structure for custom commissions. Forums were slow and full of tire-kickers who never converted. Instagram brought followers but no payment infrastructure. Every sale required a dozen DMs, PayPal invoices, and a prayer that the buyer wouldn't disappear mid-commission.

Worse, Richard watched talented smiths lose customers to circumvention — buyers who connected on the platform, then took the conversation offsite to avoid fees. He watched smiths do the same, both sides eroding the infrastructure that made discovery possible in the first place.

He looked for a solution that already existed. There wasn't one. Not for this trade. There were general freelance platforms, handmade goods marketplaces, and auction sites — none of them built around the specific workflow of a commission blade: specs, competing quotes, escrow, build photos, tier-based trust.

So in 2024, operating out of Citrus County, Florida, Richard started building BladeHubs. The brief was simple: make it look and feel like the trade deserves, protect both sides of every transaction, give smiths a fair commission structure that rewards growth, and build something that a master smith would be proud to have their name on.

This is that platform.

"I built what I wished had existed when I started. A place where a smith's reputation means something, where buyers have real protection, and where the work itself is what gets celebrated."

Platform Today