Bob Taylor aka "The Hobbit From Hell"; I met him a few times and he is quite the character with his high octane attitude. I believe I saw an interview with him that was conducted by Kelly Worden a couple of years ago. It may be posted on Kelly's site. He had a quieter partner named Bob as well (I forget his last name) who I found to be a very pleasent person to talk with.
Here's a link to the "Warrior" that started it all and will give you some more info into the whole Rekat Bob Taylor story.
http://www.snipercountry.com/InReviews/HobbitWarrior.asp
My purchase of a Hobbit Warrior (explained in the article) was my introduction to tactical knives and training. The specific model I have has a dull green colored titanium nitride coated blade. I also have one of the Al Mar Warriors with a black blade.
I purchased both a Folding Hobbit and a Sifu when they became available. The spring on the Folding Hobbit just couldn't stand up to the stress of full force kinetic openings and I had to replace the one in mine. Bob sent the spring to me for no charge. It was shaped something like the Treble Cleff symbol found on a music sheet or perhaps the "&" symbol on a keyboard. It didn't seem much thicker than a coarse human hair. The knife eventually developed an abnormal amount of vertical blade play and I got rid of it.
The Sifu was a giant of a folder and was even less reliable, fortunately the scars healed. Leverage was indeed the enemy of this big knife. From out of the box the slightest bit of pressure on the tip would cause it to fold. However if you went to the back third of the blade you could beat it on a desk all day and it would stay firm.
Bob told me that his company, Round Eye Knife and Tool (REKAT) started after having contracted with a Japanese firm to produce the Warrior. He said that not only did they alter the specs and materials of his design but that they then pirated it and started selling them apart from his contract. So he started his own company, Round Eye. Bob is not what you would call a politically correct person and I have a certain sneaking admiration for him because of it.
One year at the Eugene show he had a poster with pictures of the latest REKAT models around the border, but the most striking feature was a hot raven haired young woman in a rather skimpy bondage outfit her hands tied over her head holding two Hobbit Warriors. This picture scandalized many of the women at the knife show, but he told me that the woman in the picture was actually his wife and that the concept and execution were her ideas! I politely declined the poster at the time, but now...
While REKAT produced some very interesting knives (anybody remember the Escalator?) there seemed to be a certain instability about pretty much every aspect of the company and this, imho, led to it's demise.
C'est la vie.
