Steve Shackleford

Fake knives—better known as counterfeit knives—are a worldwide problem that needs everyone concerned to pay attention, and National Fraud Awareness Week Nov. 12-18 is a good time to sit up and take notice.

Factory knife companies are especially prone to having their knives counterfeited by nefarious operations, the latter usually based overseas. The American Knife & Tool Institute has a dedicated program tailored to fight the plague of fake knives, and other cutlery companies such as Browning, CRKT, Cold Steel, Chris Reeve Knives, Knifeart and others have websites that address the scourge.

What can you do? Visit the above sites and others and familiarize yourself with the situation concerning counterfeits of those companies’ knives. While some custom knives are victims of counterfeits as well, it’s largely the factory guys that are targeted simply because their knives are recognized by many and sold on a much larger scale than custom knives, and can earn the counterfeiters much more illicit money as a result.

One thing to keep in mind is exactly what is meant here by counterfeit knife. We are not talking about design features, designs, etc., that are “knocked off” without the original maker/designer’s OK or approval. That is another matter entirely. There are some instances of where knockoffs are done and the parties involved eventually wind up in court to settle the issue. If the matter cannot be resolved otherwise, the original designer ultimately may have to prove that the design feature, design, etc., is his or hers exclusively, it has not appeared on another knife before, etc. As you can imagine, since knives have been around since the dawn of humanity, such a thing many times can be very difficult to prove. However, again, knockoffs are not the issue here.

The issue here is a counterfeit knife in which the counterfeiter has copied everything in question about the knife, from the knife’s exact features, blade stamp and even the product box in which the knife is packaged. The product box even will illegally sport the knife and company’s name, the company’s address, etc. Then, when the unsuspecting buyer purchases the fake knives and sends them to the company about a warranty issue, the company in question has the unsavory duty of telling the buyer that he or she has been duped by counterfeits, and the company cannot honor the warranty. The buyer is then stuck with worthless fake knives.

Some of the counterfeits are easy to identify because they are shoddily done. Others, however, are not as easy to spot. It’s a growing problem, one that knife companies and knife enthusiasts everywhere—including you—must continue to deal with and be vigilant about. For more information look for Daniel Jackson’s story on counterfeit knives in the January 2018 BLADE®, on newsstands Dec. 26.

Great knives have face. I’m not talking about a face like on a Halloween mask, but a knife with a design or style that’s recognizable by a large number of knife enthusiasts as having been made first by one knifemaker and one knifemaker only.

The face, in this instance, is the unmistakable knife design or style of the maker in question.

How the term came about I’m not exactly sure but I’ve heard it from or read it written about by long-time observers of the knife scene, including BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© members Bernard Levine, Bruce Voyles and others. One explanation of face that applies here is that I may not know or remember a person’s name, but if I know his or her face I almost always instantly recognize it. The difference in the instance of knives with face is that I recognize both the knife design or style and the maker’s name.

There are at least two provisos: 1. To fully qualify as a knife with face the knife must be recognizable by a large number of knife enthusiasts. Now, there no doubt are great knives made by makers that one or a few enthusiasts may recognize as being the knives of specific makers, but the ones that really fill the bill are the ones many enthusiasts can look at and say, “Yep, that’s so-and-so’s knife.” It’s effective in terms of a conversation starter among knife enthusiasts who are friends, or as a conversation icebreaker among those who have just met. They don’t know each other but they do know great knives with face.

2. Some of the makers of knives with face have had their designs with face emulated by many others. Even so, if the knife has face those who recognize it will say that it’s in the style of the maker who originated it.

Following is a selection of great knives with face and why they qualify. Enjoy!

1. The Bob Loveless dropped or drop-point hunter. The Loveless drop-point hunter is one of the great knives with face on this list that meets Proviso 2 above. While it may not appear to be all that unusual, the drop-point style of the blade—where the blade tip falls below the plane of the spine—is something Loveless popularized in the 1970s and ’80s, and it remains his signature style to this day.
2. The Bill Moran style. Actually, as with Loveless, any number of Moran knives have face, though I’ve chosen one of my favorites: the ST-24.  The flowing blade with a long clip point and ergonomically contoured dropped handle with silver wire inlay is unmistakably a Moran.
3. The Michael Walker style. Walker’s linerlock folder changed knives forever but he also makes models unlike anyone else. Outfitted with any number of his clever and innovative locks, each of which gives the handle a notably different look at the pivot, Walker’s knives use the latest and most exotic materials, are embellished in any number of creative and ornate ways, and usually have some of the most interesting blade shapes you’ll ever see.
4. The Jurgen Steinau style. When I first saw one of Jurgen Steinau’s knives, at first I wasn’t even sure I was looking at a knife. The designs, angles and materials of his knives are like something from a book on intergalactic architecture. Suffice it to say, Steinau’s great knives have face—and then some!
5. Jim Schmidt’s Goblin Folder. Schmidt’s Goblin Folders have face in more ways than one. Not only do they have the face of a goblin on the handle’s stag butt, but that face makes the knife unmistakable as the style originally made by Mr. Schmidt. A number of his other models have face as well.

There are others who make great knives with face. Which ones make your list?

Halloween knives conjure visions of human steak and Bela Lugosi, high tops and Frankenstein, and decapitations and zombies. Warming to the genre yet?

ABS master smith Wally Hayes makes a couple of Halloween knives that fit the mold like a stake in Frank Langella’s heart: the Vampire Stake and the Zombie Spike. Formed like, well, a stake to drive into the chest of one of the spooky set’s most famous blood-sucking ghouls, the Vampire Stake has a distinctive cross forged into the handle butt to intimidate the worst of the slimy night crawlers, antique coloration and a leather sheath. The Zombie Spike, on the other hand, is 6 inches long and fashioned from O1 tool steel ground and heat treated for high performance. Hayes says it’s popular among his law enforcement customers, though he didn’t mention if it was the officers in the CSI: Walking Dead unit or not. It comes with a Kydex sheath.

Dan Keyes‘ “The Count” features a coffin handle with inlaid ivory crosses, a fullered, 30-inch blade of double-drawn 440C stainless steel and LED bulbs that light The Count’s red eyes. The skull is powder-coated “anthracite gray” with highlighted airbrushing. Weight: Just short of five pounds. Overall length: 38.5 inches.

The creation of French knifemaker/artist Jean-Marc Laroche, The Living Knife has a “hand” for a handle with “fingers” that close, an “eye” and an overall lifelike appearance that will literally, er, grab you. As you grab the handle, the “fingers” actually grab back so that it’s hard to tell who’s holding whom. And, as the fingers grab your hand, the “eye” opens. The hand also is embellished with gears in the Steampunk style. The blade is a composite of 15N20, 15LM and UHB11 high-alloy nickel and carbon steels in explosion, twist and random patterns forged by Swedish maker Roger Bergh. Overall length: 25 inches.

The MacV Tool from SOG Specialty Knives & Tools is shaped like a skull and is 12 tools in one, including 1/4-, 5/16 and 3/8-inch wrenches, blade sharpener, strap/cord cutter, small and large flathead screwdrivers and more. Designed to resemble the original skull from the MACV-SOG group of Vietnam War fame the company is named after, it measures 2.5 by 1.5 inches and weighs .6 ounce.

As you might imagine, knives with a zombie theme are undead and well, including the Reaver Cleaver from Zombie Tools and the Zomstro Chopper from KA-BAR. Based on the Chinese war sword, the Reaver Cleaver features an 18-inch blade of 5160 carbon steel, weighs 3 pounds, 10 ounces, and is 31 inches overall. The Zomstro Chopper, meanwhile, features a big, bad modified cleaver blade in a black finish and KA-BAR’s toxic green Zombie handle.

If The Count and the rest of our Halloween knives don’t keep you down for the count, you might be among the living dead. If so, stay clammy and watch out for sunrise!