Also, I've posted in Italian Knives rather than American knives, as it's more Italian style than American style.
Knifelover2000 tipped me off to a site selling all kinds of knives, including the 13" bayonet stiletto you see below. (If you can't figure out the address from this post, PM me and I will be more specific.) The impression I get is that the business owner "Ski" is assembling components made here in the USA and selling them at prices competitive with 'standard' stuff from Maniago. He's recently begun to offer 13's, so that's what I ordered. I didn't set out to review the knife, but it was an unknown and not very expensive so I decided to buy one, because that's the best way to evaluate it. If the basics were good, I could maybe customize it and get rid of the brass bolsters, if not, I could sell it cheaply and not lose much.
Despite placing my order late on a Friday night, over Saturday and Sunday I was getting updates and the knife was delivered on Monday. It just doesn't get any better than that (unless you're Amazon and deliver on Sunday.) The knife was well packaged and Ski included a personal note. The knife opens and presents well, has a great acoustics and locks up great. It sits deep and centered (though I am getting some swish marks on the back) and has zero blade play. Speed is about what I'd expect from a 13". Everything works as it should, so for the money, it's pretty decent.
Length: 13" overall, blade 5-15/16"
Blade thickness: 7/64" or 3 mm, thinner than I would have expected, stainless steel I think
Liners: .06" or 1.5mm, steel or stainless steel, much sturdier than 1mm brass
Scales: Buffalo horn, front pure black, back nicely streaked
Bolsters: Brass plated stamped stainless steel, unlined ears
Pivot bolster release
Weight: 6.28 oz or 178 g.
The front of the blade is etched as shown:
Nice substantial sear pin, should give long service.
Slip in spring:
It's a good looking knife, fore and aft. The pivoting bolster can sit a bit high or low, it doesn't home every time. I consider this a minor issue and par for the price.
If you like slim and wicked, this is it.
A good friend of mine told me, "It's all about the blade." Unfortunately there are some serious problems here. The first thing I noticed was that the mid-blade grind line was high, that's not so bad, but if you don't make adjustments for that, things quickly go wrong. At the point, the grind line is low and at the back of the bayonet false edge, it reaches it's highest point. Rather than a straight line, it's composed of two short slightly curved segments. This looks terrible. The blade has a bright mirror finish, but unfortunately it was never ground flat to start with, so the reflections reveal vertical ripples along the full length of the blade.
The back side has the very same issues.
I believe the knife has a design flaw. Since it uses a square pin hole instead of a round one and since the tang of the blade is a bit long, it allows the locktab to start to drop into the locked position before the blade has completed it's arc. In my mind, the assembler should have fixed this. This is also a knife that would benefit from a 'ramp' cut into the underside of the locktab so that the pin doesn't crash into the end of the locking tab. Instead he chose to shorten the locking pin. It works fine, but it looks terrible.
Note the locking pin has been ground away below the top of the blade.
In locked position, the hole is not full. I'm afraid this will only get worse with wear and the lock will become loose and the blade will start to banana. Note also that most pivot bolster knives have a slightly longer scale on the button side than the back side which allows for cutting the radius for the pivot. This knife uses two scales of the same length, it's a compromise.
The scale length compromise leaves a gap on the back side. It's not great on the front side either, but I understand it.
I deliberately took this shot to highlight that the safety has a narrow thickness of steel going vertically through the scale, then the button is added on top. Only a narrow slit in the scale is needed.
The holes in the scale for the fire button and the safety are very oversized. In the top shot below the safety is all the way down, In the bottom shot the curved top of the safety is just starting to slide under the firing button. While this is informative and might be cool on a demonstration knife, it just looks horrible on a production piece.
My conclusion is that Outlaw knives is having some startup issues. In all fairness, I would mention that they have only very recently begun to sell 13" knives. I started there because I like 13's.
I feel that what I paid was of reasonable value to me, if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity. I will probably put the knife up for sale in a few days, and expect to recoup almost nothing of my initial investment. There are a lot of good points about Outlaw knives, and I'm confident that some collectors will want one.
Of course, this is only one man's opinion based on a early production knife. Ski seems to be a very nice and reputable guy. I'm sure the product will improve with time.
