He is alive. 100% sure about that.
Sorry to hear it brother. When I first joined the Spydie forum, your pics are what sent me to Steve 3 years ago. He's done a whole bunch for me too.
He refuses to man up here. Spoke with him the first week of July, had a couple of knives packed up ready to send his way.......with the cash inside. Then I saw this thread that Peter started and literally got nauseous. I was only a day or 2 away from shipping.
What really pisses me off is that he told me to send the knives and money to him the first week of August. He was, out & out, looking to rob me. At that point he was already deep in shit and had no intention of working on my knives. He was just setting me up.
I always sent cash along with my knives and 3 weeks later I'd receive a work of art with a thank you letter.
He was an excellent dude to deal with, every time.
Now??? He is just another scamming thief.
The money sucks to lose, but the knives??? That would hurt us much more. And he knows we're knife knuts. Losing those special ones, that's what I always sent him, hurts, bad.
Scumbag........never thought I'd see this day.
Again, sorry brother......losing that Lum Tanto hurts.
Joe
Talk about getting sick to your stomach reading this thread! Many of you know that I am (I guess now "was") one of Steve's biggest customers, and possibly have the largest number of his customs (a couple of dozen...) starting from late 2013/early 2014. His attention to detail is unmatched and it's completely terrible that he's disappeared completely. I'm guessing it's my turn to call the Clinton PD and put my name on the list they have going on him.
Steve currently has a large Lum Chinese folder of mine (with some custom Micarta scale slabs to go on it), a cheap Spy-DK and my grey Lum Tanto sprint (not cheap). I have always prepaid for my orders with him, and of course sent him the funds a few months ago to cover the first Lum Chinese job out of good faith. We were planning on something really special for the Tanto, now I just really want to see that knife in particular back in my hands.
What a huge loss for the Spyderco community in my mind. In many ways, my decision to buy a particular Spyderco knife was based on whether Steve could mod it to something really special for me. Guess those days are over, which is a shame...
Cheers, Radioactive