Filicietti

G

GREENJACKET

Joined
Feb 23, 2000
Messages
1,363
Steve Filicietti stopped making sometime ago. Big shame as he was making some lovely stuff. At last I have one :D but its not one of his fancy ones :o but I'm happy as at the time his stuff caught my imagination.

Anyone else have one?

I know he let a few people down when he stopped; I thought it was for health reasons. What was the real story of why he stopped?

I'll show mine if you show yours ;) Trouble is mine has been about quite a bit and should be reasonably well known.
 
I used to own two but have kept this one which I had to search for quite awhile to obtain

standard.jpg


you might do some archival searches in BF for info related to Steve. Good knifemaker but with issues.
 
The mans talent can't be denied. He is a master craftsmen at whatever he turns his hand to be it knives, whips, musical instruments, carved bed heads or rifle stocks. I believe some customers payed him full deposits on knives and expected to go to the top of his list but that doesn't always happen here in Australia. To cut a long story short I think he got swamped and couldn't keep up with the orders, or burnt out , which resulted in customers not getting knives that they had payed for. He seems to go off on tangents jumping from one craft to another, unfortunately his business practices don't match his talents and it made it almost impossible for Australian makers to sell a knife into the US for quite a while. There has been speculation that he may want to come back to knifemaking, but he would have to make everything right again, if he hasn't already, to be able to make a comeback.
 
Doug C that is the one I have seen a few times over the years. It was on ebay once but I couldn't bid on it because of UK/ebay/US knife restrictions or something. Always loved that knife. I'm pleased mine is similar if not a tad bigger!

Don't know how to put photos up but hope this works. The third is a professional one that has been going around a bit. This knife has traveled!


IMG_4393.jpg




http://i820.photobucket.com/albums/zz128/Muskett_2009/IMG_4406.jpg

http://i820.photobucket.com/albums/zz128/Muskett_2009/KSFIL000-gig-bowie-combo.jpg
 
Last edited:
He made a great knife, but also ripped off a lot of people; including a few friends of mine.
 
GREENJACKET said:
Doug C that is the one I have seen a few times over the years. It was on ebay once but I couldn't bid on it because of UK/ebay/US knife restrictions or something. Always loved that knife. I'm pleased mine is similar if not a tad bigger!
Click to expand...
GJ,

Congrats on a nice one !
I got mine from a collector in the UK, a respected member here, Stephen F.
Wasn't aware he had it on the 'bay also.
Anyway it's 9 3/4" of 5160, stabilized Coolibah w/blued guard.

A shame what happened with Steve Filicietti.

Doug
 
I owned a couple back in the day - none at present. Wouldn't mind having this one back - the guy did some awesome damascus that didn't necessarily translate well in photos but would knock your socks off in person:

orig.jpg


orig.jpg


orig.jpg


I don't know that anyone has the full story on what happened. I do know that the above knife was one of the last two ever delivered.

Roger
 
DC it was on the 'bay 6 odd years ago; well a long time ago so probably how Stephen F found it; it made a good price if I recall correctly. I'm pleased you like yours. Mine is 10 5/8ths ?? so a tad longer. Otherwise very similar. Hard to see in my picture but there is a definite quench line from the differential heat treatment or something.

He liked big knives because he hunted Razorbacks with knife and dogs. Mine would do that job and as equally importantly I would be confident that it was made right too. I couldn't afforded one then so I've had to wait until now.

His fancy damascus and show knives were lovely though I've only seen a couple in the flesh. Others have taken up the gauntlet since but all credit to him for upping the game at the time.
I don't know how many people he let down; some I believe got their deposits back eventually... that might be very eventually?? I don't know for a fact but he did have an accident or health scare; got behind with everything; and finances went down the tube all at the same time. He really did disappear off the planet when he went walkabout. A deposit is one thing but if you really wanted the knife and could never have it then I would have been hopping mad as well. It doesn't take much to get on the wrong side of the Knife collecting community; even more difficult to make amends. I do hope we see some more of his talent at sometime in the future.

Going through forum and web archives I can only find about ten examples. Lets see them.

PS, you might say it doesn't look great in the photographs but that looks pretty jazzy to me.
 
I remember meeting him at a past show. i think it was a Winston Salem, NC show- maybe around 8 yrs ago? I was impressed by his knives, he had several nice large bowies in $400-500 range. This struck me as a real bargain.
 
Ellis, how badly screwed? Took your money and scarpered or gave you the pox to boot. Sorry to bring up old wounds just trying to work out how bad it was. I know I was trying to save up at the time to make a commission and then it all went dead.
 
Big talent from that guy!

From what I remember, a lot of guys got screwed.

Last I heard he was in the gun stock business and doing quite well.
 
PARKERKNIVES said:
The mans talent can't be denied. He is a master craftsmen at whatever he turns his hand to be it knives, whips, musical instruments, carved bed heads or rifle stocks. I believe some customers payed him full deposits on knives and expected to go to the top of his list but that doesn't always happen here in Australia. To cut a long story short I think he got swamped and couldn't keep up with the orders, or burnt out , which resulted in customers not getting knives that they had payed for. He seems to go off on tangents jumping from one craft to another, unfortunately his business practices don't match his talents and it made it almost impossible for Australian makers to sell a knife into the US for quite a while. There has been speculation that he may want to come back to knifemaking, but he would have to make everything right again, if he hasn't already, to be able to make a comeback.
Click to expand...



Reading this makes me think of Jimmy Fikes.
 
Yes gun stocks are his thing now, but not high grade walnut as you would expect. He has come up with a synthetic stock that has no molded seams and is quite revolutionary in it's construction. A lot of police and military snipers are looking at them. I think he calls the company Wild dog rifle stocks and yes he has partners helping out with the running of it all. I think we would all love to see more knives from Steve but how do you repare a reputation so badly damaged, especially in this game.
 
PARKERKNIVES said:
I think we would all love to see more knives from Steve but how do you repare a reputation so badly damaged, especially in this game.
Click to expand...

Step 1 - take ownership of your past mistakes - acknowledge and apologize.

Step 2 - make things right as best you can. Set out a plan for reimbursing funds or supplying knives to those who still want them. Make that plan public and transparent. Then stick to it.

You probably don't ever get all the way back, but you'd be surprised how many people are willing to cut a guy some slack who is making sincere efforts to do the right thing.

Roger
 
He told me that my knives were ready and pay him.I received one knife,he owes me two more
Dave
 
The guy sure did amazing work. I have loved most every knife of his that I've seen. Sucks that things worked out, or didn't... the way they did. The most impressive part of the good stuff- was that he did ALL the forging by hand with a large sledge hammer (at least according to everything I read about him).

I open up my mosaic billets based on a hopeful theory I came up with after staring at pictures of Steve's blades in a Knife Annual for several hours (trying to figure out how he was getting the kind of patterns he was getting). I'm pretty sure it's basically the same way as a lot of makers are doing it now, but since I've only seen other makers open a billet with an accordion cut, I'm really not sure. Steve came up with his method because you can't do all that damascus work by hand and then lose as much steel as you do with an accordion cut billet. STeven's jelly-roll fighter is one of the first blades I tried the technique with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top