I've only had my 4.1 for a few days, so I'm allowed to change my mind. It's in the forum by-laws, you can look it up.
I'm going to reverse myself here. I keep looking at this knife, holding in my hand, turning it over, feeling the form and balance, checking details, then reading the complaints, then looking at the knife again...
I think you all should stay completely away from this company. Don't order, don't consider it, cancel your existing orders if you can. Leave these terrible tooling marks and horrible grinds to those foolish enough not to let it bother them (especially if they can't really notice the glaring "defects" without a lens), those foolish enough not to care even a LITTLE whether a banker would approve the company's business plan, foolish enough not to care greatly which of the United States they're being made in, foolish enough not to be personally offended by the very THOUGHT that some folks who ordered products that didn't exist yet at a steep discount ended up waiting quite a while in some cases.
I mean, sorry, but from everything I've seen so far this is a very nice knife indeed, as was the one other that I've held, and for some incomprehensible reason in SPITE of all those excellent reasons not to buy demand is still such that there just aren't nearly enough to go around... so...
Be offended. Be very offended. I'll help... I'm, um, OUTRAGED that it took, let's see, more than three weeks longer than was originally projected to receive mine, and I tell you right now, I have little doubt that after the next three or four it will be a LONG time indeed before I buy another one from this company. I'm DEEPLY troubled that a company selling goods faster than they can make them might not feel the need of the sage advice of bankers about it, Hell, if they don't need to borrow money they might not even HAVE a business plan for others to judge. Where would we be if more companies didn't go into debt to people who don't know anything about their business, if the people who started and built companies just made their own decisions about running them, I ask you? And how DARE they try to succeed without seeking OUR advice on this forum? Especially those who can pronounce judgement on the knives without having seen one, how can you possibly be more unbiased than that? A young company making their share of mistakes but still managing to make money hand over fist needs our advice to dwell on the mistakes properly.
Not only that, but I think they OUGHT to be made in my native state of Oklahoma, I'm VERY disappointed that they're not, and I'll be even MORE offended if they're moving but not going where I feel strongly that they should. Oh, and you know what else? When I ordered mine the only option for the handle screw finish was "tumbled", and these are BLACK! I think they owe me an apology and an immediate refund for that so I can buy another, maybe a slightly different model, with the RIGHT screws! The nerve.
All of you with any sense of propriety at all should just walk away, right now, before they open their order books again, and feel very good about yourselves for doing it, too. Leave these knives to those fools who don't have their priorities straight about what makes a good knife purchase. If I can help reinforce your morale on that point just let me know, happy to oblige.
Free market, if buyers don't like the tradeoffs a manufacturer presents them with then there's no demand. Survive! has got more demand than they can handle, so t seems that a lot of folks want more emphasis, and more of their money, spent on what makes a knife work as a tool rather than as a fetish object. They're up-front about what aspects of the knife they spend effort and the customer's money on on and what they don't. If you want a knife that doubles as an item of jewelry there's not exactly a shortage of those- do they ALL have to be like that? It seems quite a number of us don't care greatly about that aspect.
