Looking for info on an Al Mar knife

Dudleyd

Dudleyd

Joined
Feb 4, 2022
Messages
28
I am hoping to gain some insight from those familiar with al mar knives and al mar history.

A have recently acquired an eagle ultralight with the micarta scales. But the only stamping on the blade tang is “product of japan”. There is no blade steel indication although the seller had it listed with aus8.

Can someone please explain to me why this blade marking is not consistent with most al mar knives? Is it authentic? Was this done during a only certain years?

Thank you
 
Most AlMar japanese made knives are AUS8. Do any image search and look at tang stamps.
 
Do you know when it was made? It has to be at least a little old because now days Al Mar is just a random chinese company. There's a cool Al Mar collectors group on facebook. Many Al Mar's from the 90's were made by Moki in, I believe, AUS8. Their AUS8 is good stuff though.
 
All Al Mars knives were made by G.Sakai from 1979 to the mid 1990s. After Fadden took over completely he switched to Moki. Moki made FAM (Fadden Al Mar) knives in Aus8 and later VG10 until he sold to the company to Edge Technologies Engineering in 2019 who now sell knives Made in China under the Al Mar brand.
I believe the Eagle Talon ultralight Micarta should be a G.Sakai knife from the 1980s.
 
Dudleyd said:
I am hoping to gain some insight from those familiar with al mar knives and al mar history.

A have recently acquired an eagle ultralight with the micarta scales. But the only stamping on the blade tang is “product of japan”. There is no blade steel indication although the seller had it listed with aus8.

Can someone please explain to me why this blade marking is not consistent with most al mar knives? Is it authentic? Was this done during a only certain years?

Thank you
Click to expand...
Your knife certainly looks to be authentic. It's been my experience that blade markings on Al Mar models occasionally varied over the years. Sometimes this was due to the markets for which they were destined (Asia versus Europe versus America), but that's not always the case. Many of those explanations are lost, unfortunately, as the Al Mar history wasn't well kept.

Regardless, you've got a beautiful classic. Enjoy!


-Steve
 
Hi,
For USA market stamp markings the history goes as follows:
U.S.A. SEKI-JAPAN: Manufactured in 1979 sold from 1979 until 1982
SEKI-JAPAN: Manufactured 1980-1997
MOKI/JAPAN: 1997-2006
FM Co/Japan: 2007-2019 Stands for Fadden/Mar Company

There's still a surprising amount of people that know the history of the company quite well whether by knowing Al Mar or Gary Fadden personally (such as RyAnne Mar, Sal Glesser, Bill Harsey, Kirk Rexroat) or through public records (court case between Ann Mar and Garry Fadden for example) and old forum threads.

As to the knife it has the old style of thumstuds so they are pre-2009/2010 when they modernised them.

This specific reference having a satin finish would be an Eagle Ultralight 1005UBK2.
The fact that it says Product of Japan is highly unusual...
If it was prior to 1997 then I would say it was made by G.Sakai for the International Market (they held the rights to sell Al Mar Knives designs internationally until Gary Fadden got involved, for good reasons, and transferred production to Moki with US and International sales rights solely owned by Al Mar Knives) but I don't think the ultralights were in the catalog back then.

Hard to say as my archives have a bit of a gap between 1995 and 2002 but archive.org indicates that Ultralights were available as early as 2000.
Prior to that I cannot say with 100% certainty.
 
Good information, as always, bouddha0357. But, after some casual searching, it appears that the "Product of Japan" marking isn't unusual.

IMG-3878.jpg


IMG-3879.jpg


IMG-3880.jpg


IMG-3882.jpg



I also found some other models in the Ultralight series with the same stamp.


It seems at least some of the Ultralights were marked "MOKI" after the transition.

IMG-3883.jpg


So I suspect that Dudleyd's is a G.Sakai model.

-Steve
 
KenHash said:
All Al Mars knives were made by G.Sakai from 1979 to the mid 1990s. After Fadden took over completely he switched to Moki. Moki made FAM (Fadden Al Mar) knives in Aus8 and later VG10
Click to expand...
You forgot there was a run of ZDP-189 for the Eagles.
Moki has also done special runs of Spyderco Caly's in ZDP-189 before, all those steels are in their wheelhouse.
 
Ourorboros said:
You forgot there was a run of ZDP-189 for the Eagles.
Moki has also done special runs of Spyderco Caly's in ZDP-189 before, all those steels are in their wheelhouse.
Click to expand...
True. But TBH I haven't freally followed AM products after he passed away.
 
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