I have posted many times that the Slysz Bowie is my favorite knife in my entire collection.
I had the amazing opportunity to talk with Sal Glesser while I visited Spyderco on Tuesday and we talked about the Slysz Bowie as well as the techno and many others. I was telling him that the Slysz is my favorite knife although the Techno actually gets more pocket time because its so small and convenient. He said the Bowie has been one of the most successful custom collaboration models and this one has the most attention to detail of them all. He explained that Marcin Slysz is an extremely detail oriented designer and that's what you see in his knives. He went on to say "I don't think people realize or appreciate how difficult it is to create the 3D contour on those Ti. handles". There's a good reason you rarely see Ti. handles rounded like the Slysz. We also talked about how the Taichung factory is very good at producing this high level of precision.
Spyderco has started making more and more high end knives and they are doing very well with them. To that point Sal told me that last year was their best year on record so far. I own most of Spyderco's high end knives and most of the knives Benchmade makes as well, and in my opinion almost ALL of my $200+ Spyderco knives are better quality than my comparably priced Benchmades. So, although I know people are used to Spyderco selling lower priced knives (which they still do, and Benchmade really does not) they also now make some of the best quality high priced production knives and they are selling well. Although they now have some expensive knives, it is my humble opinion that even on their high end knives you still get more bang for the $$ from Spyderco than any other company.
