As always,
@knifeswapper had excellent turn-around and the knife arrived today. She is certainly sexy.
This knife represents my first...
- Italian knife
- lionSTEEL knife
- Niolox steel
- Olive wood
I've only had it less than an hour but fit and finish appears excellent. I really like the grip-feel and the blade shape.
That said, this knife is very hard to close. Like, very hard.
Mike's site reads:
"It has a unique catch in full open position that is not a lock – but requires a bit more force to start the closing process."
It does indeed. If you have any kind of hand issues, I would not recommend this knife. I didn't even feel comfortable closing it on the side of my leg like I do so many other slip joints. Now, this is intentional of course. They are trying to make a very secure knife for the slip joint-only market and I applaud that so I am not criticizing it in any way as somehow being defective. It's doing exactly what it is designed to do. But it definitely takes some adjustment and you need to pay attention to what you're doing. Pressing the spine with your thumb while holding the knife in the fingers of your other hand breaks it pretty readily and I think safely.
I'm not sure a knife of this design really needs to be this stout but it is a super cool knife overall. One of the things I really liked about it was that it has a clip and so many of these guys don't. I immediately pondered sending it back for an exchange but it's such a good looking and feeling knife I'll probably end up keeping it for gentleman carry.
I need to spend some time with it.