Cisco,
Although I do agree with most here in that if that sort of thing ruins your day, you might want to stay away from non-custom man made slipjoints. But you are the one that needs to be happy with the knife, nobody else. I have noticed that the GEC factory has several of these in their inventory and they would be glad to replace / repair it to meet your expectations. Just shoot it to them with a note and they will take care of it asap.
On somewhat of a tangent: For most of us, it was the 80 year old Case, Remington, Winchester, etc. knives that got us started in this hobby. And we always catch ourselves saying "they just don't make them like they used to". But if you handle very many of these fine old knives you will find that these little "less that perfect" issues occurred in nearly every example. Nail breaking backsprings, slightly opened backsprings, rubbing blades, etc. It was a tool and if it worked our grandfather used that dude. Schrade and Camillus are gone because they couldn't make a work knife cheap enough to compete with china machine made brands. Case is hurting because the demand for pure collector knives is faltering. Now we have a handful of American craftsmen making knives that can be the collectible and workhorse solutions. Even if there is zero cost in a knife (equipment, rent, utilities, raw materials), how many do you have to make in a day to keep 25+ workers paid enough to support their families? (do your own calculations here assuming a knife that the factory will sell for $60).... Now, if they insured every one was near custom grade, how many fewer would they be making? (again do your calculations here)... I'm glad I am not in the knife manufacturing business in 2010....
My figures: 25 people times $15 per hour times 8 hours is $3000 daily cost just in personnel cost. Means you have to make 50 knives daily if they didn't cost a dime to produce. Now if each knife took an extra 25 minutes to fine tune to near perfection (and there was no material lost in correction) the production would be cut to 45 knives per day which is $2700 which is $13.50 per hour. Sadly bone slabs, nickel silver, brass sheets, steel, utilities, rent, free shipping, and depreciation of equipment is not zero cost or these people could average $31,200 making fine knives or $28,080 making near custom knives. Since I don't have a clue what all the overhead is, let's just assume that it does cost a significant amount.... I repeat, I'm glad I am not in the knife manufacturing business in 2010...
Mike Latham
CollectorKnives.Net
