Unfortunately Lone Wolf is no more. Benchmade bought them out a while back, and then closed them down a couple years ago. I love my Lone Wolf Knives though.
I wrote what I was able to piece together in a review of a Lone Wolf T2 I did a while back:
So What Happened to Lone Wolf Knives?
It is hard to find complete and reliable info on Lone Wolf Knives, but here is what I have been able to gather (any inaccuracies are mine) though a combination of actual credible information and stuff-some-guy-said-on-a-forum type sources: Lone Wolf Knives was an upstart company that made very high quality production knives using high-end materials, for a price that was much lower than most comparable knives. Lone Wolf worked with some very distinguished custom knife makers and designers to create production versions of very nice knives. Designers like Bob Loveless, Bill Harsey, Paul W. Poehlmann, and Brian Tighe. They also worked with other companies like Fantoni Knives to produce some of their knives (I have a Loveless designed Lone Wolf integral hunter made by Fantoni, for example).
Apparently, Lone Wolf came up with an exciting design for an OTF (Out The Front) automatic knife (a switchblade that comes straight out rather than swinging open like a regular folding knife) around 2009. People were very excited about this new knife, and Lone Wolf ended up agreeing to a large number of orders for the knife, but they ran into trouble during production. They were not able to make the knives in a timely fashion, and could not get more money to cover the unexpected costs, so the company was sold to Benchmade.
Benchmade proceeded to shift the Lone Wolf brand into being an outdoors/hunting brand, and discontinued the earlier product lines. Presumably they made this move with the brand so that they would not have two brands in direct competition. The T-series and the D2 automatic folders designed by Harsey were casualties during this period. Benchmade was going to move at least some of the Harsey folders over to their brand, but that fell through (and I have no idea why, any guess would be total speculation). The new Lone Wolf knives included some very interesting knives, particularly for people in saltwater environments, but in 2014 it would seem that Benchmade quietly shut down Lone Wolf altogether. So now there is no Lone Wolf knives being made at all. Benchmade has launched a new line of knives called Benchmade Hunt, which fills the niche that Lone Wolf used to fill.
I don't want to invent motivations for the way that Benchmade handled the Lone Wolf brand, particularly since I think that Benchmade is an excellent company. I'm not trying to suggest that Benchmade is bad, or Machiavellian schemers seeking to wipe out competitors. It really seems like straight up business, if anything I would say that it seems like they did their best to keep Lone Wolf in business. You can't blame Benchmade for not wanting to undermine their own primary brand, or for deciding to go with their own, more recognizable brand for their outdoorsy knives.
If you want to read the rest of the review you can find it
here.
