Luca:

I may not have been clear on my last post. What I am saying is have your EU group get an order together and have someone over here ship everything to just one of you, and that person then distributes it to everyone who ordered something. The next time your EU group puts together an order, have the volunteer from the USA ship everything to a different member of your EU group and that person would then distribute to everyone that ordered something; and so on, and so on. In this manner, you don't have one person in the EU group always receiving packages and always having to send them out to members of the EU group. If you have 7 people in the EU group, the 7 of you would all be contacted when any 1 of you wants to order something. The other 6 could add to the order or pass on that order. The order gets shipped to 1 of the 7 in a rotating order on who takes the shipment each time. That way, if you have 7 orders in one month, they are not all coming to the same address, and none of you in the group is excessively burdened by being the only one having to reship to all the participants in the EU group.

I import Italian stiletto knives with an accessary spring kit. It is against USA law to import switchblade knives (Stupid facist law.) into the United States. I have found a supplier (After about 12 years of searching.) who makes the style & QUALITY of knives I have been looking for. The knives are sent to me with the handle portion assembled and with a plastic comb attached to the handle by an unpeened compression style pivot pin. The bayonet style blades are shipped seperately as are the blade springs and spring retaining pins.

When the knives reach me, I knock out the comb pivot pin, remove and throw away the plastic comb, insert the blade, insert the blade pivot pin and peen the pin on an anvil to hold the blade and bolsters in place. I take the springs and their pivot pins out of the cheap plastic bag that they come in and encase them in heavy 2" wide shipping tape. I put them in shipping tape for two reasons, one is so that some dummy inspecting the knife does not try to put the spring in the knife, "just to see if it works" and thereby create a switchblade while the ownership of the knife is still mine, and the other reason is because the parts are easily lost and the cheap bag they come in is not safe for storing the parts until I sell them.

The biggest factor in the legality of the knives I import is that the blades have a fingernail groove in them, and therefore can be opened like any folding knife which is what I sell them as. The spring kit is included, and once the person buys them, what they do with them is not my concern. Everything is legal under USA law and the laws of the State of Wisconsin.

Two things have changed since I started doing this and one is I sell only to 21 year old and older individuals, whereas I used to sell to 18 year old and older individuals. I do it this way now in order to avoid having anyone trying to entrap me on a small technicality about the 4" blade length. The other thing is that I have raised my prices from $45.00 on the black & white handled knives and $60.00 on the stag handled ones to $50.00 & $65.00 respectively. They sell the DIY 9" knives at the SKM site for $60.00 & $80.00 for the same knives, and SKM charges $20.00+ shipping charge for one knife sent to the USA.

Because I jump through all the legal hoops properly, I advertise in the police stations and Federal government facilities and have not encountered any problems thus far. Of course with all the anal explosive legislators we have in the states, one of these days even this source may be eliminated.

Good luck!

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />